A Closer Look At Tomorrow's Municipal Election

A Libertarian friend of mine has an online radio show. He has just done done a special episode looking at tomorrow's municipal election as it relates to Waterloo region.

Some good journalism being done here about how many of our currant candidates vying for your vote seem to have changed their tune on certain issues or have conflicts of interest on the LRT issue. Unfortunately the LRT is pretty much a done deal and will be very difficult to stop.

Among the facts he dug up:

•  At Least 4 regional Councillors who voted for a 12.9% tax increase for the LRT project, live in townships that are exempt from the tax increase.
  
  
• Councillor Sean Strickland was quoted in 2010 saying a 9% tax increase for the LRT project was too high only later to vote for the 12.9% increase.
  
  
• Waterloo mayoral candidate Dave MacDonald has said during election debates that as Mayor he would be very transparent and have an open door policy. However he has ignored virtually every media interview request during the campaign.

... And much more. If you live in Waterloo Region, I highly suggest you take a listen to this 37 minute commentary before you vote tomorrow.

Link: http://fauxcapitalist.com/2014/10/26/jason-erbs-informative-and-candid-take-on-the-october-27-2014-waterloo-region-election/

The RCMP Has Some Explaining To Do...

Obviously, yesterdays shooting in Ottawa is a tragic event and all types of questions are being asked. But leave it to the mainstream news media to ask questions EXCEPT the one question that everyone is wondering... How did a gunman get so far into the main parliament building in the first place?

I've been thinking about this Kevin Vickers situation. Mr. Vickers is the one who successfully brought down the gunman at parliament hill yesterday. And today is being hailed as a hero. By taking down the shooter he definitely stooped a terrible tragedy from getting worse and that's of course is a good thing. However... let's not forget that this guy is the head of all security at parliament hill and he should be put on the hot seat about how a gunman was able to advance that far into parliament hill and come within feet of being able to kill mass amounts of people at once.

It's my understanding that the two security guards at the main entrance are unarmed. This seems to be irresponsible to me. Supposedly, the main duty of these officers is to check ID. A little further inside the hill are armed officers in civilian clothes. But even this failed yesterday as one of these undercover officers was shot in the leg while trying to grab the shooters riffle. The shooter continued down the hall getting within feet of where parliamentary meetings were going on. At this point, Mr. Vickers heard the chaos in the hall and grabbed his gun from his desk drawer (which also seems a bit odd to me) and shot the gunman in the hallway.

Government security failed us big time yesterday. If I were the prime minister, there is no way I would trust my well being and security to a government agency. I would hire a private security firm who has a vested interest in making sure I'm safe. Otherwise, they wouldn't have a job. The problem with many Government agencies is they rarely have to answer when they mess up and are rarely held accountable for their actions.  

How much heat is the RCMP going to take for "Being Caught Off Guard"? Government never goes out of business, they just keep on rolling along. If this were a private security company, guaranteed... there would be a different company looking after parliament hill starting today.

Kevin Vickers. Hero?... Maybe. Completely innocent? He'll have to be put on the hot seat to know for sure.

Dirty Politics...

Big story in the Ontario Municipal elections from Kitchener, Ontario. Follow me here, it gets a bit confusing.

A Candidate in Kitchener's Ward 2 (Wasai Rahimi) posted a screenshot last night of an e-mail he recently received from one of Kitchener's mayoral candidates (Dan Glenn-Graham). This e-mail, supposedly written by Glenn-Graham asked Rahimi to step down and declare support for another ward 2 candidate (Dan Graham). I know this is confusing because two of the people named above have very similar names.

In short, a candidate for mayor asked a ward candidate to withdraw from his campaign and endorse one of his competitors. This e-mail claimed that this candidate was "Close to Winning", and that a win for Rahimi is "unlikely". Of course this is a fact that that is virtually impossible to know.

In multiple media interviews this morning, Dan Glenn-Graham claimed that it was in fact a member of his campaign team who sent the e-mail and this team member is no longer with the Glenn-Graham campaign.

And in perhaps the strangest twist of this story, this e-mail was apparently sent on the same day that another candidate for mayor (James Rhodes) mysteriously dropped out of the race without any real explanation. And on his way out the door, who did Rhodes endorse?... Dan Glenn-Graham.

This is supposedly a coincidence, but in the dirty world of politics... anything is possible.

This is one of the main reasons people are disgruntled with politics, lies and dirty games... anything to get elected. And of course, once you are elected, you'll spend most of your time trying to win re-election. Regardless of who sent this e-mail and why, it centrally looks bad on Dan Glenn-Graham. If you can't manage your campaign, how will you be able to manage the 10th largest city in Canada?

I live in Kitchener's Ward 2 and up until today, I was going to leave that section on my ballot blank as I wasn't overly impressed with any of the candidates in my ward, and I won't stand to vote for the lesser of 6 evils. But I may now consider voting for Wasai Rahimi, If he is the anti Dan Glenn-Graham... I'm in.