At five in the morning on October 14, my Montreal based roommate Kamee Abrahamian (producer of the Blood Ballet Cabaret) and my native New York self crawled out of bed to head to Wall Street. We heard that chaos was going to go down before the sun even came up. We thought we would witness some arrests and be part of the fight for whatever these protests are about…
Tag: Economic Issues
State Economic Planning for Conservatives: Drop the Ball on the Military After the Election
The ruling Tories have dropped the ball in the one domain they repeatedly claim to be exclusively their own supporting the Canadian military. Let me be more specific. Tories typically talk a good game around election time about how they, and in their minds they alone, support the Canadian Forces. Both Stephen Harper and Brian Mulroney began their terms in office promising sweeping reforms, new equipment procurement plans, increases to personnel levels and a general ‘re-investment’ in ‘our men and women in uniform’…
AA+: The Debt Ceiling Revisited
The other day Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s credit rating for the first time in its history, knocking it down one level from AAA to AA+. The downgrade happened despite an eleventh hour deal between the Republican controlled House of Representatives and the Democrat controlled Senate to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, the deal was signed by President Barack Obama early last week. The deal brought an end to months of bickering by politicians over spending cuts and tax hikes. The battles that raged in Washington over that period of time came across as a battle of good and evil and not just differences of opinion…
The ridiculously skyrocketing price of fuel
I was shocked and appalled last week when the skyrocketing price of gasoline topped $1.40 per litre. This is a 40% increase in less than two years! I had already complained bitterly I had already complained bitterly about rising gasoline prices and the underhandedness with which gas companies treat their consumers less than two years ago when the price hit $1.06! The rate of inflation is set at roughly..
A Question of Choice: this Saturday’s Protest Against Charest
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered this past Saturday to send Premier Jean Charest a cautionary warning on the contents of the upcoming budget. After the shocking social cuts that were announced almost a year ago in Charest’s previous budget, social activists came out of winter hibernation to remind Charest that the people of Quebec will not tolerate a repeat.
The roughly 50,000 protesters, comprised of students, union members, women’s groups, les patriotes, the raging grannies and the average pissed-off citizen with baby in tow, gathered at…