Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Chancellor Merkel Addresses the Nation of Germany about Corona Virus (En...
Balanced, controlled simple facts with NO self aggrandizement. Stark contrast with “someone else”
Monday, March 30, 2020
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Friday, March 27, 2020
Thursday, March 26, 2020
According to Einstein....
E=mc2 Einstein developed this remarkable formula:
Energy = Mass x Speed of Light squared...... A brilliant genius as we all know.
Another lesser known of Einstein's formulas determined :
If you were to strip naked and run around in a circle at the speed of 298 KM/sec (the speed of light), it could be possible for you to sodomize yourself.
Should you
determine you are not physically capable of achieving that speed at your
age....
Donald the Deceiver
The US has been appealing to its allies for help in obtaining medical supplies to overcome critical shortages in its fight against coronavirus.
In his public rhetoric Donald Trump has been talking up the domestic private sector response to the crisis.
“We should never be reliant on a foreign country for the means of our own survival,” Trump said at a White House briefing on Tuesday evening. “America will never be a supplicant nation.”
However behind the scenes, the administration has approached European and Asian partners to secure supplies of testing kits and other medical equipment that are in desperately short supply in the US.
Trump privately appeals to Asia and Europe for medical help to fight coronavirus
Despite president’s rhetoric that the US would not rely on foreign nations for help, the administration has approached European and Asian partners
Frugalistas rejoice
Frugalistas
can all agree on the amazing usefulness of baking soda. it’s one of the most
versatile ingredients in our homes and should never be relegated to just the
fridge. With baking soda at hand, you can make easy and cost-effective
solutions for all around the house. Here’s a list of ten tested applications
that work like a charm.
COMB CLEANER
Fill a tall
glass with warm water, add a pump of dish soap and a sprinkle of baking soda.
Put your plastic comb or brush into the glass and swirl it around to agitate
the liquid cleaner. You will be amazed at how much oil, grease and hair product
residue will come off your comb.
Let things
soak for a minute and then rinse your comb/brush with hot water.
FOOT BATH
Fill a deep
bowl - that will fit your feet - with warm water. Add 1 to 2 tbsp of baking
soda and a dash of peppermint/spearmint extract.
The baking
soda will soften callouses and cracked heels. Use a foot scrubber after your
feet have soaked for 15 minutes. Follow up with some moisturizer and put on
some socks. Instant spa-worthy pedicure!
DEEP CLEAN
FACIAL CLEANSER
Mix 1 tsp baking
soda with 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice and a few drops of olive oil. Mix into a
paste and apply onto face.
Leave on for
a few minutes and then rinse well and pat dry. The combination of baking soda,
lemon and oil will leave your face feeling fresh, looking brighter and super
soft to the touch.
CUTICLE
SOFTENER
This tip is
really effective and such a luxury.
Mix equal
parts warm water and baking soda to make a thin paste. Apply this concoction to
your cuticles and let soak for as long as comfortable possible. Rinse your
hands and push your cuticles back with ease. Great treat for dry winter months.
FRESHENING
MOUTHWASH
Fill a
tumbler with warm drinking water and add a sprinkle (up to 1 tsp) of baking
soda.
Mix well and
use the solution to gargle and swish away bad breath. The baking soda
neutralizes the pH level in your mouth. Add a pinch of salt and this works well
to battle a sore throat too!
FLUORIDE-FREE
TOOTHPASTE
This may not
taste exactly like traditional toothpaste, but if you’re looking for a natural
and fluoride-free option, it’s definitely worth a try.
Mix ½ cup
coconut oil with 3 tbsp baking soda. Add a splash of edible essential oil or
peppermint extract. Top it up with a 1 to 2 packets of natural sweetener
(optional) and mix well to form a paste. Use this as a replacement to
traditional toothpaste.
CLARIFYING
SHAMPOO
Use this
trick whenever you feel your hair and scalp need a deeper clean.
Add a tsp of
baking soda to your palm and top up with your regular amount of shampoo. Work
this through your scalp as per usual and rinse well before finishing with
conditioner.
The baking
soda helps clarify and cut through extra build up on your hair and scalp. Don’t
do this regularly because it may be too harsh and affect the pH balance of your
hair negatively. But for the occasional deep clean, it’s amazing!
LAUNDRY
DETERGENT SUBSTITUTE
If you ever
find yourself running out of laundry detergent and feeling too lazy to go to
the store, here’s a perfectly effective and cheap solution. Add ½ to 1 cup
baking soda to your wash cycle.
Adjust the
amount depending on the size of your machine. Add a couple pumps of dish soap
and then run the wash cycle as per usual. Your clothes come out clean without
an overpowering scent.
NON TOXIC
OVEN CLEANER
If you hate
the self-clean oven option and don’t like breathing in the toxic fumes of
store-bought oven cleaner, this solution is for you.
Remove the
oven racks and clean them by hand. Pour vinegar into a spray bottle and spritz
the entire interior oven (including door and glass). Mix 2 cups baking soda
with enough water to make a thick paste.
Apply the
paste to the inside of the oven using a basting brush or paint brush. Don’t
forget the oven door and glass! Let the baking soda and vinegar work their
magic overnight. Use a clean rag to wipe off and clean up.
SHOE/BOOT
DEODORIZER
There are so
many tips and hacks online for freshening smelly shoes.
This
particular solution has tested the best if you want an all-natural option. Find
a pair of thin socks and fill each one with a ½ cup of baking soda.
Squeeze some
fresh lemon into the sock and/or add citrus peels. If you have leftover coffee
grinds they can go in too! Tie the top of the sock in a loose knot and then
place one filled sock into each shoe. You have options at this point:
Let the
shoes sit with the socks overnight and they will smell fresher in the morning.
Put the
stuffed shoes into a pillowcase and let them tumble in a HOT dryer for 30
minutes.
Put the
stuffed shoes in a plastic bag and put them in the freezer for a few hours —
there isn’t a lot of science behind cold killed germs but internet commenters
seem to believe this works.
No matter
which option you choose, you will have fresher smelling shoes and boots.
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
There is an idiot in the White House
"President Donald Trump touted the drug for its potential during a news conference last week; however, the Food and Drug Administration later said that it had not approved chloroquine for the coronavirus and that much more study was needed"
He just doesn't care
Donald Trump Has Never Been More Dangerous Than He Is Now
Link https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/03/donald-trump-has-never-been-more-dangerous-than-he-is-now.html?fbclid=IwAR02a9FUy74xqTToh77TZJvZ5dOyVyjkM8OW08ogla7BUUsfQEww59bgXcs
Link https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/03/donald-trump-has-never-been-more-dangerous-than-he-is-now.html?fbclid=IwAR02a9FUy74xqTToh77TZJvZ5dOyVyjkM8OW08ogla7BUUsfQEww59bgXcs
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Monday, March 23, 2020
Exponential growth and the spread of COVID-19
Quote:
Why is it so difficult for us to appreciate the scale of what an unchecked global pandemic could do? The answer may have something to do with how difficult it is to intuitively understand abstract concepts like exponential growth.
This difficulty has been appreciated since at least 1256, when an Islamic scholar recorded what is known as the wheat and chessboard problem. The problem appears in a parable about the inventor of chess, whose king demands to purchase the new game. The inventor names his price, to be paid in wheat. He suggested that one grain of wheat should be placed on the first square of the chessboard, two grains on the second, and so on, with the sum doubling in this way over 64 squares. The king thinks this a great bargain, and is stunned when his treasurer informs him that the sum would bankrupt the kingdom. The total number of grains comes to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.
Here’s another example. If you took 30 steps from your front door, with each step twice as large as the last, how far could you get? The answer might surprise you – it’s 26 times the Earth’s circumference. Our inability to appreciate how extraordinarily powerful exponential growth can be has concrete consequences. It’s a major reason why people don’t take their retirement accounts seriously enough, for one. It’s also why people seem to be struggling to understand why every single day matters enormously in limiting the spread of the coronavirus, which follows an exponential growth pattern.
Why is it so difficult for us to appreciate the scale of what an unchecked global pandemic could do? The answer may have something to do with how difficult it is to intuitively understand abstract concepts like exponential growth.
This difficulty has been appreciated since at least 1256, when an Islamic scholar recorded what is known as the wheat and chessboard problem. The problem appears in a parable about the inventor of chess, whose king demands to purchase the new game. The inventor names his price, to be paid in wheat. He suggested that one grain of wheat should be placed on the first square of the chessboard, two grains on the second, and so on, with the sum doubling in this way over 64 squares. The king thinks this a great bargain, and is stunned when his treasurer informs him that the sum would bankrupt the kingdom. The total number of grains comes to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.
Here’s another example. If you took 30 steps from your front door, with each step twice as large as the last, how far could you get? The answer might surprise you – it’s 26 times the Earth’s circumference. Our inability to appreciate how extraordinarily powerful exponential growth can be has concrete consequences. It’s a major reason why people don’t take their retirement accounts seriously enough, for one. It’s also why people seem to be struggling to understand why every single day matters enormously in limiting the spread of the coronavirus, which follows an exponential growth pattern.
A parallel in fear - The threat of nuclear war and the COVID -19 pandemic
1962, the threat of nuclear war weighs heavily on the World, the sabre rattling of America and the Soviet Union amps up. Television and newspapers are filled with headlines and commentary about the real threat to mankind.
The people of the USSR and the free world are living in constant fear.
It’s race week, February 1963 in Daytona Beach Florida the rhetoric and fear mongering reaches its peak with the Cuban crisis. The USSR and Cuba are allies, missiles are being sent to Cuba by the USSR in retaliation for America’s build up in Europe, the question is, and will level heads prevail?
The US deploy Warships to block the USSR ships entry to Cuba, Voodoo jets patrol the Florida coast, they are within striking distance of Cuba.
The US deploy Warships to block the USSR ships entry to Cuba, Voodoo jets patrol the Florida coast, they are within striking distance of Cuba.
I am on vacation in Daytona with my sister, her husband and my grandmother. I was 18 at the time and like any other 18 year old ready to defend my country and the world if called to do so but, this would be no conventional war, it was very intimidating.
One day while walking the beach the Voodoo’s, in tandem, passed so low overhead you felt as though you could touch the undercarriage. Suddenly the banked and headed to Cuba, once out over the Atlantic they lit up the afterburners and were gone, just like that.
Is today the day? Thank God not
Life is very fragile and every generation faces some kind of threat COVID-19 is just one more in the chain but we have science on our side and I believe in the miracle of science and the incredible ability of those who practice it, just like my generation survived a cold war so will you survive COVID-19 and so shall I survive yet another.
Stay calm, stay smart and most of all stay safe
Good read
Excerpt: Bonnie Henry’s ‘Soap and Water and Common Sense’
Henry, now B.C.’s provincial health officer, provides insights into viruses, the 2003 SARS outbreak, and the top 10 myths about bugs
Thousands of people get sick from diseases caused by microorganisms that we inadvertently pick up from contaminated surfaces, ingest in our food, or inhale from the air. Countless hours of misery are caused by bugs called viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites — yet much of this suffering is preventable.
Welcome to the awe-inspiring world of Microbes Inc., a global corporation that has dominated our planet for 3 billion years. As in any global conglomerate, there are several divisions in the world of bugs, or microbes, and while they can all cause illness, some can be beneficial, too. Let’s take a tour through the halls of Microbes Inc. and explore the different divisions.
Viruses
The first group of bugs is the smallest and often the most lethal: the viruses. Viruses are small packets of genetic material that have evolved over billions of years to infect humans, animals, and even plants; no living organism can escape from the destructive touch of viruses. Viruses need to use another organism’s cells in order to replicate and survive. They reproduce by inserting themselves into the cells of the body, where they hijack the programming mechanism that the cells use to replicate, making thousands and thousands of copies of themselves instead. The replicated viruses then burst out into the bloodstream, killing the initial infected cell and sending the legions of copies to find and infect more cells.
More: https://www.tvo.org/article/excerpt-bonnie-henrys-soap-and-water-and-common-sense?fbclid=IwAR2QjJYhMu3DlTr2nlvdEEUrTaxeyyCqvIExqhYAD3YhADJutVtF4jr889M
Sunday, March 22, 2020
Saturday, March 21, 2020
Friday, March 20, 2020
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Alberta's UCP working against the people
Progress Report #208
Your weekly update on Alberta politics for March 10, 2020
Your weekly update on Alberta politics for March 10, 2020
To spite all the stress and anxiety that the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak is putting on us, I want to open this edition of the newsletter with a story that fired me back up a little.
Last Friday, Sammy Hudes with the Calgary Herald reported that CSEC, the corporation that owns the Calgary Flames, was not going to pay any of its event staff or part-time workers whose jobs were being cut because of the pandemic.
CSEC is owned by a group of extremely rich men--including CNRL chairman Murray Edwards, former CNRL chairman Allan Markin, and Alvin Libin, founder of Extendicare (a private senior-care operator recently in the news after the absolutely inhumane death of one of its residents in Viking, Alberta.)
These are some of the richest men in Canada. They enjoyed quite the windfall thanks to UCP’s recent gigantic corporate tax cuts, and CSEC itself only a few months ago received nearly $290 million from the city of Calgary to build a new arena. But when it came time for them to pay it forward, they were happy to turn hundreds of struggling and precarious workers out into the cold in the middle of a pandemic that is shutting down the entire country.
People pay a lot of attention to news about their favorite sports teams and word of CSEC’s cruelty got out quickly. By Sunday morning a massive backlash was spreading online under the #ShameTheFlames hashtag. And after getting absolutely thrashed online and in the media by public figures, officials, and thousands of working-class folks, CSEC blinked. They announced yesterday that yes, they would pay their workers.
If you think that no amount of pressure or outrage will be enough to drive back Jason Kenney and the UCP, you should think again. I guarantee you that the billionaire ghouls behind CSEC don’t have any more empathy for humankind than Mr. Kenney does. But they blinked. They caved. And the UCP will cave too.
There’s no shortage of things we need to push back against.
Yesterday the UCP announced--in the middle of a global pandemic!--that they were ending the contracts of roughly half of Alberta’s radiologists. These folks just three months ago had been forced to eat a 12% cut, but Minister of Health Tyler Shandro directed AHS to tear up those contracts anyway. As of March 2021, they’re fired.
Yesterday it was revealed that the UCP are selling off Crown land around Taber--land that they have no right to sell. All of Alberta is treaty land, and the free and informed consent of Treaty 7 people must be given before the province can sell Crown land in that area.
And the UCP are still rushing to ram through a budget that makes per-capita cuts to healthcare, education, and public services.
They’ll tell you that now “isn’t the time for politics,” all while they're doing the politics to you. Meanwhile, even their response to the pandemic itself is deceitful. Did you hear in the news last week that the UCP were bringing in 14 days of paid sick leave for workers impacted by the coronavirus? You might even have seen the press release online where they promised to amend the Employment Standards Code to do it. All signs point now to that being a flat lie: the CBC’s Janet French, reporting on the budget yesterday, found that in fact there were no changes to the ESC coming, and that really this was just the 14 days of EI that the federal government--Trudeau, not Kenney--was giving to us.
It’s outrageous and I know that with all of us cooped up to avoid spreading the virus, it can seem like just another thing that’s out of our control.
But remember how quickly the billionaire owners of the Flames, some of Canada’s most powerful men, were forced to back down. All it took was us standing up as one. So even if all you’ve got to fight with for the next couple of weeks is your keyboard, fight. Don’t let up. We can win!
Last Friday, Sammy Hudes with the Calgary Herald reported that CSEC, the corporation that owns the Calgary Flames, was not going to pay any of its event staff or part-time workers whose jobs were being cut because of the pandemic.
CSEC is owned by a group of extremely rich men--including CNRL chairman Murray Edwards, former CNRL chairman Allan Markin, and Alvin Libin, founder of Extendicare (a private senior-care operator recently in the news after the absolutely inhumane death of one of its residents in Viking, Alberta.)
These are some of the richest men in Canada. They enjoyed quite the windfall thanks to UCP’s recent gigantic corporate tax cuts, and CSEC itself only a few months ago received nearly $290 million from the city of Calgary to build a new arena. But when it came time for them to pay it forward, they were happy to turn hundreds of struggling and precarious workers out into the cold in the middle of a pandemic that is shutting down the entire country.
People pay a lot of attention to news about their favorite sports teams and word of CSEC’s cruelty got out quickly. By Sunday morning a massive backlash was spreading online under the #ShameTheFlames hashtag. And after getting absolutely thrashed online and in the media by public figures, officials, and thousands of working-class folks, CSEC blinked. They announced yesterday that yes, they would pay their workers.
If you think that no amount of pressure or outrage will be enough to drive back Jason Kenney and the UCP, you should think again. I guarantee you that the billionaire ghouls behind CSEC don’t have any more empathy for humankind than Mr. Kenney does. But they blinked. They caved. And the UCP will cave too.
There’s no shortage of things we need to push back against.
Yesterday the UCP announced--in the middle of a global pandemic!--that they were ending the contracts of roughly half of Alberta’s radiologists. These folks just three months ago had been forced to eat a 12% cut, but Minister of Health Tyler Shandro directed AHS to tear up those contracts anyway. As of March 2021, they’re fired.
Yesterday it was revealed that the UCP are selling off Crown land around Taber--land that they have no right to sell. All of Alberta is treaty land, and the free and informed consent of Treaty 7 people must be given before the province can sell Crown land in that area.
And the UCP are still rushing to ram through a budget that makes per-capita cuts to healthcare, education, and public services.
They’ll tell you that now “isn’t the time for politics,” all while they're doing the politics to you. Meanwhile, even their response to the pandemic itself is deceitful. Did you hear in the news last week that the UCP were bringing in 14 days of paid sick leave for workers impacted by the coronavirus? You might even have seen the press release online where they promised to amend the Employment Standards Code to do it. All signs point now to that being a flat lie: the CBC’s Janet French, reporting on the budget yesterday, found that in fact there were no changes to the ESC coming, and that really this was just the 14 days of EI that the federal government--Trudeau, not Kenney--was giving to us.
It’s outrageous and I know that with all of us cooped up to avoid spreading the virus, it can seem like just another thing that’s out of our control.
But remember how quickly the billionaire owners of the Flames, some of Canada’s most powerful men, were forced to back down. All it took was us standing up as one. So even if all you’ve got to fight with for the next couple of weeks is your keyboard, fight. Don’t let up. We can win!
Sundries
Folks with money in the bank or good union jobs that give sick days have been able to hunker down and isolate in order to slow the spread of the pandemic. But folks living paycheque to paycheque in low-paying jobs don’t have that luxury, and that’s turning our grocery stores, our Tim’s, our senior facilities and all kinds of other places into dangerous hubs for the virus. That’s why we’re demanding this provincial government go beyond just taking credit for Justin Trudeau’s EI crumbs and bring in legislation now to make paid sick days mandatory until at least the end of the pandemic. Add your voice by sending a letter to your MLA with our tool here.
We aren’t in this awful situation with the pandemic out of nowhere. It’s the consequence of a system that has been cutting corners and dumping all the risk onto working-class people for years just to run up a few billionaires’ bank accounts. On the latest Alberta Advantage podcast they break down just how we got into this mess.
Press Progress (not us! but we’re fans of their work) caught a bunch of Tim Hortons franchises last week demanding doctors’ notes from workers who wanted to take unpaid sick days. It’s of course madness to be piling even more sick people into doctors’ offices, spreading the virus, and tying up doctors’ time just to get a piece of paper; after big backlash online Tim Horton’s changed the policy the next day. If your boss is demanding a sick note from you, we heartily recommend you tip Press Progress off immediately.
This should go without saying at this point, and you shouldn’t need to hear it from your local politics newsletter, but please stay at home as much as you can and absolutely avoid crowds right now. You can have the virus and not show any symptoms for up to two weeks--and during that time you can get other people sick! COVID-19 can permanently harm or even kill people and is absolutely terrible for seniors and for folks with compromised immune systems. Do your part to slow the spread of the virus: keep your distance from folks and for heaven’s sake wash your hands.
That's all for this week. Please share our newsletter with any friends or family who you think would like political news and commentary from a progressive point of view. If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, you can sign up for it here.
If you like what we do and if you want to see more wins against this UCP government donations to support our ongoing work are always welcome and if you're interested in volunteering with us, just reply to this email.
Jim Storrie
http://www.progressalberta.ca/
If you like what we do and if you want to see more wins against this UCP government donations to support our ongoing work are always welcome and if you're interested in volunteering with us, just reply to this email.
Jim Storrie
http://www.progressalberta.ca/
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Its coming but don't get too excited it will be a while yet
Canada's First Coronavirus Vaccine Made In Saskatchewan Is Now In Testing Stages
They recently got $1 million in grants for the vaccine.
While the world is making monumental changes in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, a vaccine is being worked on in Canada. And now, a Saskatchewan coronavirus vaccine is officially in the testing stages. Although there is still a long road ahead for human use, officials are working hard as more grant money comes in.
Back in January 2020, it was announced that the University of Saskatchewan received permission from the Public Health Agency of Canada to start working on a vaccine for COVID-19.
Since then, researchers have been accepting grants to help the process along.
Don't panic
There was a time when it seemed possible for the world to contain COVID-19—the disease caused by the new coronavirus. That time is over. What began as an outbreak in China has become a pandemic, and as a growing number of countries struggle to control the virus, talk of “flattening the curve” is increasing. That is, a lot of people are going to get sick, and delaying infections as much as possible is imperative, so that cases occur over a long period of time and health systems aren’t suddenly inundated. Almost every country is trying to achieve this goal through the standard arsenal of public health—testing people and tracing contacts—and through more restrictive measures that include instituting quarantines, closing public spaces, banning mass gatherings, and issuing strong advice about social distancing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-herd-immunity-uk-boris-johnson/608065/?fbclid=IwAR3dCcH_VbtJSvQuaSs_K3tvHJnGA3sxhQPBRPQOg-c7mBd0zMsK5kK5cac
The U.K.’s Coronavirus ‘Herd Immunity’ Debacle
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-herd-immunity-uk-boris-johnson/608065/?fbclid=IwAR3dCcH_VbtJSvQuaSs_K3tvHJnGA3sxhQPBRPQOg-c7mBd0zMsK5kK5cac
Three things I've learned from this pandemic
1 - What it is like to be a senior shut-in
2 - Howie Mandel's phobia of germs
3 - What it is like to be held captive to someone's paranoia
2 - Howie Mandel's phobia of germs
3 - What it is like to be held captive to someone's paranoia
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Laying out the heartlessness of the UCP
Laying It Out: We don’t need a pandemic of failed leadership
Since I’ve been home sick the past couple days, and since COVID-19 is affecting everyone’s life at this point, I suppose it wouldn’t do much good to do my planned piece, Economists: For Cryin’ Out Loud, Quit Listening.
At the same time, most everyone with a keyboard has the best course of action for dealing with this global pandemic, taking to social media and news comment sections to argue with all the other “experts.” Some are so worried that they think toilet paper will be the next currency, while others jump on our Facebook page to blame “the media” for fear mongering over something “not even as bad as the flu.”
Frankly, I have no problem owning the fact that I don’t know much about this virus, other than having an ability to Google a few statistics, follow the advice of health officials and exercise common sense. Other than that, which most everyone could do, I’m doing what anyone else is – waiting to see what happens next.
No one needs my thoughts on the seriousness of COVID-19, especially when the realization of that changes every day.
Four days ago it was low-risk, and the next day the U.S. cut off travel to Europe. The day after that we cancelled large gatherings and began putting our lives on hold. Then Sophie Grégoire Trudeau caught it and the federal health minister said up to seven in 10 of us could join her.
By the time this reaches you, things will no doubt have changed dramatically, and it doesn’t seem like many people have an overly educated guess on how that turns out. I think concern is smart, while fear is understandable, and I think we should all take steps to better each other’s safety.
That’s all I’ve got for you.
What I will do is discuss the obvious reality of this situation, which is Mother Nature is a force we can’t control and she doesn’t remotely care if she mucks with human creations like, say, the economy.
Whether you’re sad you missed the Brad Paisley concert and can’t watch the Oilers finally not suck, or whether you’re wondering how you might get to work should your kid’s school close, the virus doesn’t care. Whether you’re rich and powerful, or poor and unassuming, the virus doesn’t care. Whether you’re young and likely to slide through it unscathed, or in your golden years and therefore at the highest risk of not making it through at all, the virus doesn’t care.
But maybe most importantly, under this system, the virus does not give a damn how much money is in the budget to cover the cost of containing it. It doesn’t care about money you might lose from lack of work, or lack of customers, and it certainly doesn’t care if provinces or countries go deeper in debt.
It seems to me like this would be a good time to realize that money (something we made up) has no business standing in the way of being alive (something we did not). And if it shouldn’t stand in the way of life, why should it stand in the way of wellbeing?
More: https://medicinehatnews.com/commentary/opinions/2020/03/14/laying-it-out-we-dont-need-a-pandemic-of-failed-leadership/?fbclid=IwAR1ztbijS7-iQ9eTSAQ3s42sQBjkwpr8Iit1zyFZK7MZGsW__vAf-7LgzcA
As we watch and listen to Jason Kenney waste more money on the oil industry.
Meanwhile, in Alberta...
I got this from a friend's page.
"Because there is no hockey on TV, and I really don't want to change the oil in the tractor when it is -15, I will make one more comment before I find a documentary on Apple TV.
People often ask me "What happened to the Alberta Advantage?".
They begin to talk about a Notley Trudeau alliance, and the job killing policies of the NDP, and the accidental election, then I have to school them on where the Alberta Advantage went.
They begin to talk about a Notley Trudeau alliance, and the job killing policies of the NDP, and the accidental election, then I have to school them on where the Alberta Advantage went.
When Lougheed was Premier, Resource royalties made up almost 80% of our revenue.
We used it to fund much of our public services (that are funded in other provinces by tax revenue and user fees).
We had a Heritage Savings and trust fund and were putting away money for a rainy day.
Through the Getty, and Klein years, the oil Companies cozied up to our Premiers, and our Governments reduced royalty rates, and even put in sliding scale royalty rates that protected producers when prices fell.
We used it to fund much of our public services (that are funded in other provinces by tax revenue and user fees).
We had a Heritage Savings and trust fund and were putting away money for a rainy day.
Through the Getty, and Klein years, the oil Companies cozied up to our Premiers, and our Governments reduced royalty rates, and even put in sliding scale royalty rates that protected producers when prices fell.
At the same time, oil companies donated millions of dollars to the Progressive Conservative Party.
You will see that the percent of Provincial revenue dropped steadily over the decades, even though conventional oil, bitumen and natural gas production increased.
You will see that the percent of Provincial revenue dropped steadily over the decades, even though conventional oil, bitumen and natural gas production increased.
By the time the NDP were elected, royalties made up only 9% of our revenue. In 2014 our revenue was just over $9 billion and by 2016 it was less that $3 billion.
Policy decisions that favored their donors were the root of our current financial situation (We put no money in The Heritage Savings and Trust fund since 1986, and on the strength of our sliding scale royalties, Albertans collect only 1% when prices drop below $55).
This is the product of PC policy, not "job-killing NDP policy".
When Stelmach started talking about a royalty review, the oil companies started to give millions to another political party, to stop the royalty review, and the Wildrose conservative Party was born.
Stop trying to blame the NDP
Stop trying to blame the NDP
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