Thursday, November 22, 2007

HOUSING FIRST


Mo, who is one of our regular commenters, passed on this fascinating article about a New York City program that provides housing to the homeless.


It's a "housing first" policy and it is achieving great results.


Do yourself a favour and read this piece.


For all the money and angst being spent by all the local do-gooders, why haven't we found something this simple and this effective?

More Fred & Ginger - I Won't Dance



Complete with Randolph Scott at the bar in the opening moment...

NIMBY alive and well in Richmond


We urgently need addiction treatment centres.


Turning Point has quietly and successfully been running addiction treatment centres for years. They are a private, non-profit agency, run not by government fools, but by people who know and understand addictions and the road to recovery.


Turning Point is adding a few houses and beds to its inventory in Richmond.


Of course,some neighbours are screaming Not in My Neighbourhood. In fact, they are calling their mistaken, short-sighted, evil, selfish, pig-headed campaign of hate and stupidity "Not in Anybody's Backyard."


Of course, the addicts come from everybodys backyard and they cannot find the road back downtown.


Neighbours have been living quite nicely now for almost 30 years next to Turning Point and other recovery houses, often without being aware of their presence.


People scream for more treatment for their addicted children; they just don't want the treatment too near to them.


Fools.


Columnist Has a Revelation - Discovers What Everyone Else Has known for Years


Some people are just a little slow.


Ah well, better late than never.


Sun columnist Pete McMartin has figured out what you and I have been screaming from rooftops for years now - the Downtown East Side is a cesspool of social agencies sucking up money and producing absolutely zero.


Hello!!!!!


The funniest example he gives - if you have the strength to laugh at this robbery - is something called BOB - the Building Opportunities with Business Inner City Society.


This fiasco has well over $5 Million from various helpful governments.


Its net product is roughly 15 people got jobs.


The CEO of BOB is none other than Shirley Chan, who has been sucking government money her entire working life.


She failed to get elected to Parliament a few years ago when she launched a vicious personal attack on Libby Davies' personal life - not her policies or platforms - and the public saw clearly the stuff of which Ms. Chan was made.


Of course, that has hardly stopped her from drawing good money after bad for herself and her staff on the backs of the poor and hopeless.


How do these people who are making major salaries in the DES look at themselves in the mirror?

Canadian Coprorate Welfare is Collosal


The most important story was buried on page C7 of the Business section this morning.


The Headline is "Taxpayers' Bill for Corporate Welfare Soars." The report comes from a Fraser Institute study called "Corporate Welfare: A $144 Billion Addiction," and it includes these gems:


"There is no concrete evidence showing that government subsidies to business provide any net benefit to Canada's economy."


"The top 50 business subsidy recipients include Ford Motor, Rolls-Royce, Noranda, IBM...and so on."


What this timely study does is two things:


It reveals the truth of David Lewis' famous catch phrase of 30 years ago - "Corporate Welfare Bums."


And it exposes the utter duplicity of the so-called "free enterprise system" that we have been led to believe in by endless myth making from the captains of industry.


The shoddy truth is that these Barons of Bumph have been sucking on the Public Teat with greater vigor and success all along than any unemployed dishwasher.


You, the taxpayer, are working so that General Dynamics can have leather seats in their board rooms.


Fred & Ginger & George & Ira



"Can't really sing. Dances a little."

That was the original assessment of Fred Astaire's talents.

Within a few years, writers like George & Ira Gershwin were creating songs just for him.

Watch the masterful, real responses from Ginger Rogers, who, in addition to being a great dancer, won an Oscar as Best Actress.