I grew up during the time when the 80’s material girl was every boy’s wet dream as she was a shot in the arm to the airwaves with her provocative videos, scintillating lyrics and her outgoing sexuality.

That was the 1980’s…now in the 21^st century the 53 year old going on whatever, is still trying to keep up her youth with her outgoing sexuality.

Ewww…the 80’s pop girl has surpassed cougar status and now is crawling into the creepy category.

Hey, I’m all for women who are older trying to remain young, but Madonna almost tries too hard to go out of her way to say “Look at me! Look at the crazy thing I’m about to do next”.

All of her musical life, Madonna has tried to be the centre of the universe. Her ‘Like a Prayer’ Video sent shockwaves through the catholic community, the whole ‘Like a Virgin’ thing angered parents of teenage girls, getting arrested for sex acts on stage, her coffee table book “Sex” which was basically a hardcover porn magazine…these were all when she was still good looking and young.

Fast forward a couple of decades, after settling down for a bit and getting married, she decided to scrap the white picket fence life and get back to her sexual roots. Unfortunately for her, she was well past her “best before date” at that point.

The Britney Spears on stage kiss, back to touring trying to pretend to be young and hot, going after married sports figures (A-Rod, what the hell were you thinking) and now of course Nicki Minaj, the “15 minutes of fame” singer that Madonna has kissed.
Madonna has always been the queen of P.R. and tabloids fodder but enough is enough!

Maybe I’m getting old but watching her plastic surgeon sculpted body taking the stage at half time at the Super Bowl maybe the perfect time to head to the bathroom and wash my eyes out with soap. The sad truth is what has been seen, cannot be unseen.

Let’s just hope that there is no “wardrobe malfunction” this year!

After Ford’s election as mayor of Toronto, Councillor Joe Mihevc solicited the legal opinion from “a respected Toronto Law firm” to see if Mayor Rob Ford has the power to change the transit plan that had been ushered in by the previous regime.

In the report “respected lawyers” Freya Kristjanson and Amanda Darrach state;

“Under the City of Toronto Act, the power of the city resides in City Council. The Mayor of Toronto has very little independent authority beyond his role as head of City Council. Unless specific power is delegated to him, the mayor does not have the authority to speak for the city independently.”

In full disclosure, Freya Kristjanson was the lawyer who represented Mayor Hazel McCallion during the judicial inquiry that found her guilty of sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong and allowing the awarding of lucrative contracts to her son.

So three issues I have with all of this;

Calling a lawyer “respected” holds about the same amount of water as the tern “beloved politician” the two words just don’t work together.

Secondly, Joe decided to go outside of the city instead of using Toronto’s own city hall lawyers to get this “unbiased” report. When reports are being paid for, I don’t believe that the term unbiased should ever be used. Whether the law firm is being motivated financially, politically or some other motive, bias will always attach itself in some form. You get what you pay for.

Finally, the statement itself ignores the whole democratic process itself. “Unless specific power is delegated to him, the mayor does not have the authority to speak for the city independently.”

Umm I don’t know; does winning an election by a wide margin not count as power delegated to him?

Toronto councilors are elected by their own riding but the mayor of the city of Toronto is elected by everyone in the city. Rob Ford ran on a platform of building subways and the overwhelming majority of people agreed to this by voting him in.

Whether people like what Rob Ford is doing, he was given a mandate to stop wasteful spending, build subways, get rid of the vehicle tax, remove the land transfer tax and the one thing that should happen but won’t, purged Toronto city council to 22 seats instead of the bloated 44.

There was a lot that mayor Miller did that people didn’t like and at re-election time, he was renewed as mayor by the Toronto voters. This was a reaffirmation of his policies.

If people don’t like what Rob Ford does in his 4 year mandate, then they can come out of their tents and vote for once in their life and boot him out. Until then, the majority of voters have said “Rob, you’re in charge”. Not Joe Mihevc, not Adam Vaughn or any of the other union catering left wing hippies on Toronto city council.

This report is simply a new stall tactic to negate progress in Toronto and keep the TTC running as poorly and inefficiently as it has been.

I looked up online prior to going to see what to expect from the show and the majority of reviews that I found about the show were all from events held in other cities so I thought doing a review on the Toronto Monster Jam show would be beneficial for those that are considering going in the future.

There are two shows usually held on a Saturday night and an afternoon Sunday show. There is usually an opportunity for fans to come on to the field 2 hours prior to the shows but I didn’t have the time to check out the Monster Jam Pit Party.

The event itself is set up in four parts; the time trials, the head to head races, the freestyle portion and a demolition derby put on by the Ontario Demolition Derby organization.

The time trial portion is fairly mundane; 2 trucks go in a figure 8 and try to set the lowest time. The head to head race runs the same figure 8 course with no real excitement to it. They run an elimination bracket of 4 rounds to crown the Monster Jam Champion. You get the distinct wrestling feel that the outcomes are predetermined as there were a few races that Grave Digger (the fan favorite) and Northern Exposure (the Canadian entry) were close to losing a race when suddenly their opponent would conveniently wipeout allowing for them to win. On this day neither truck won but they were given all the chances.

The freestyle event can be a lot of fun; monster trucks get to basically run the course at their leisure showing off their talents and tricks. Unfortunately trucks break down during the event and only a few of the participants manage to survive the 2 minute timed run.

Although it’s a throw in for the fans, the demolition derby can be fun to watch. Many fans head for the exits but seeing cars crash into each other until only one is left standing can be entertaining.

For people heading to the Toronto Monster Jam looking for a jam packed exciting event, you may be disappointed. For kids, the roar of the engine and watching the trucks run around the course seemed to entertain the masses under 10 years old. As a kid I remember more cars being driven over and fewer attempts to make it into an actual race. Fans just want to see cars get crushed by the Monster Trucks and the promoters need to focus the show more to that.

The 4 year old I took to the Toronto Monster Jam enjoyed himself but had moments of boredom while races were being reset or cars were being fixed.

In the end, if you have a child who is a fan of monster trucks on TV, taking a trip to the Toronto Monster Jam show at the Rogers Centre once will appease them for a lifetime. If you are a teen or young adult looking to get a thrill from monster trucks, this show may not fit the bill.

Toronto Monster Jam
Northern Nightmare
Toronto Monster Jam

I watched over and over again student group representatives parade themselves and whine about cuts and demand that taxes be raised so that the city services remain intact.

Students and people who pay no property taxes should not have a say when cost savings are being looked at!

If Toronto’s property taxes were to go up 10% next year, there is not one student in university that would feel that financial pinch. Many homeowners would have to borrow just to pay for their weekly allotment of Spam and Kraft Dinner but hey at least the future beggars of tomorrow get to keep their services.

I do include renters as people that do not pay property tax and yes they should be banned as well.

I am bound to eventually get angry comments that imply that renters pay more tax then the average house owner through their myriad of calculations. However tenants seem to forget that when property taxes rise 3-4% a year, the landlord can only raise the rent by about 1% per year according to the provincially mandated rent increase.

Eventually while trying to save affordable housing, you will continue to drive landlords away and have even less affordable housing.

And how can we forget the poor parents that want free daycare to be provided by the city of Toronto for their young while they go back to work. Dalton McGuinty already makes me pay for government free daycare in the form of all day kindergarten so I don’t see why I should be forced to pay for your child’s care from birth until the age of 6.

Of course the most humorous moment for me was when Toronto councilor Janet Davis was asking her soft ball questions to one of the deputants and she stated “and the cost of keeping that program would be only $150,000…sigh’. Yes Janet, only $150,000, but that means you need to find that in the budget without just turning on the taxpayer faucet to pay for it!

Aside from imposing road tolls into Toronto for the 905’ers coming in, there was not one constructive solution to the city of Toronto’s finances.

All I heard was whining of “we want to keep everything just the way it is”.

Great, but then offer a solution on how to pay for it that doesn’t involve raising taxes.

If costs rise in my household, I look at the budget and eliminate frills. I don’t get to punch in some numbers and create income through taxes. The previous mayor loved doling out these wonderful city services but he believed that he could simply charge the costs to the taxpayer credit card and we get to live in his socialist utopia.

Guess what, the real world doesn’t get to work that way and Rob Ford unfortunately now has to play the bad guy and find the money to pay for all this splendor that David Miller left us with.

Next time there is an open forum for people to register an opinion, they should only be let into council chambers if they bring a copy of their Toronto tax bill, otherwise stay home and whine to somebody else!

These are the same people that blame Mike Harris for everything that is wrong in Canada.

Mike Harris ran on a political platform that expressly stated that the PC Party was going to eliminate the massive NDP debt that Bob Rae left Ontario in. Harris laid out where the cuts would be made to stop the financial bleeding and won a majority. When the cuts began to happen to services, Ontario went mental crying that they didn’t expect there to actually be cuts to services.

Fast forward to the Rob Ford era of Toronto.

Mayor Rob Ford ran a campaign that stated that he would find efficiencies and trim the fat off of Toronto city services. When asked if there would be service cuts he stated “No”.

Now that Ford has made his proposals, people seem to still live in “La-La Land” believing that Ford wasn’t telling the truth.

Ford asked every department to trim 10% off their budget.

That didn’t mean that 100% of the TTC would shut down, but yes maybe an underutilized bus route would need to be chopped.

10% didn’t mean that there would no longer be a Toronto police force patrolling the streets but there are a number of management positions as well as other clerical duties that are being done by high paid officers that could be done by someone for $15 per hour.

It didn’t mean that we don’t need a fire department, but there are a lot of fire chiefs, assistant fire chiefs, fire captains and other fancy well paying titles that are not on the front lines battling infernos but sitting on desks collecting big paychecks that could be shown the door.

Regardless of what Margaret Atwood’s hippie beliefs are, all 99 libraries were never going to be closed; but a few could be and some reduced hours could be looked at to save the Toronto taxpayer a few bucks.

Yet people still don’t get it and now the mayor’s approval rating has sunk to a low level. Again, what did people expect would happen?

If a family sits down and looks at their budget and decides to find efficiencies, what does it mean for them? Does Fido go without food for one week a month? Does the family put out newspapers around the house to save on diapers for their newborn? Do they stop bathing to cut the water consumption in the home?

No, but belts are tightened, some frills get eliminated and you move on with life until there are better times.

The people of Toronto voted in Rob Ford to fix all the financial messes that the previous spend happy mayor left us. The city has a deficit of almost $800 million which means that if nothing is done, the debt of the city of Toronto will grow by $800 million every year.

Have you seen what has happened in Greece and Spain? Not dealing with the city’s debt will mean that the same financial woes that those countries face will eventually happen here too.

The mayor has some controversial ideas for how to eliminate the deficit and bring Toronto back to prosperity, it’s time to just let him do the job that the overwhelming majority of taxpayers voted him in to do, and stop listening to the non taxpaying hippies that want the David Miller utopia to continue.

The Winnipeg Jets are back in the NHL and everyone in Canada is excited for the return of a Canadian hockey franchise. Having watched the Winnipeg Jets fly off to Phoenix was sad for hockey in Canada but the Jets are back and with season tickets sold out in record time, fans are eager for the new NHL season to begin.

Here in Toronto the Winnipeg Jets come visit the ACC on October 20th and if you have tickets to the game or just want to be part of the nostalgia, why not get a Winnipeg Jets hockey jersey from Ice Jerseys.

Ice Jerseys is the premier hockey jersey seller and you can choose from a deep selection of types and sizes as well have them professionally customized with your favorite player’s name from today’s team, or from previous teams. In fact, you can have your own name placed on the back of your new Winnipeg Jets jersey.

Don’t wait, the Winnipeg Jets are coming and now is the time to buy. Be the first of your friends to own a piece of a new Canadian hockey history.

Let’s recap the Liberal gifts to the province;

$60 million for senior’s home care – Doctors will perform house calls to seniors to help keep them at home longer. Nice idea except for two problems; I as a working member of society just see less doctors available to help me which will means less family doctors to help me get better and a longer ER wait if I get sick and need to take time off work. I guess if I live long enough to be a senior, I can finally have a doctor come to me to tell me what has been wrong with me all this time. Second problem is the money…where is $60 million coming from? We have a $15 billion deficit and yet McGuinty has stated that we have discovered funding for a $60 million program. No Dalton, if you have found $60 million, it goes to paying off debt, not buying the seniors vote

30% Tuition cut – Wow, so let me get this straight; in the 8 years that McGuinty has been in power tuition has steadily gone up and yet now as an election comes, he gets to pander to the student voter and chop tuition that he has overseen rise throughout these years. Now since post secondary institutions are not government run, how are they supposed to handle the budget shortfall? Will there be more government grants (i.e. more taxpayer $), will schools have to offer less services to students to help offset the 30% tuition chop? At least the uninformed voter will have McGuinty’s vote.

$10,000 for companies to hire immigrants – Imagine you just finished your 30% off postsecondary education and are still saddled with debt. You’ve achieved high marks and now just need to find a job to start becoming a productive member of society. You find the perfect job opportunity only to not be hired because the other applicant was a new Canadian and the employer was given $10,000 to hire him instead of you. Moral of this program; if you work hard in Ontario to put yourself through college or university you will still not be on equal footing as someone who has just entered the country, can’t speak the language and whose family is probably also on social assistance. In other words, go out of province for a job.

Full Day Daycare (Kindergarten) -  Ahh the grand-daddy of all election vote buying. McGuinty took a theoretically good idea and in the midst of an economic recession implemented a plan that bought votes for low incomes households by taking their child away for a full day to learn. Originally the goal was to provide education for these students but critics have stated that this is just free daycare for low income households. Even their own Liberal website states that fact; “FDK is saving parents up to $6,500 per child per year in child care costs”. No mention about how making your children learn all day is beneficial, just simply that it will save you money.

These are all nice promises provided you aren’t the actual taxpayer that has to pay for them. He states that jobs are being created and yet there is no evidence to support these claims, unless of course they are government jobs for life in which the average middle class taxpayer gets the privilege of paying for as well.

McGuinty’s promises usually add up to disappointments, new taxes and lies. The sad part is most voters only look at the splashy headlines and vote for the party that promises the most. Unfortunately in the last two Ontario elections, the party that has promised the most has delivered the least!

That being said, listening to the likes of Margaret Atwood and the other tree huggers come out of the woodwork to express their displeasure in the idea of closing a few libraries has made me come out of hibernation this summer and throw in my two cents on the matter.

First off, the KPMG report merely suggested cutting back some library branches; Toronto city council hadn’t even discussed the matter before Atwood and her band of merry lefties came out to string up Rob Ford in the centre of Toronto’s Reference Library.

This report was the beginning of what should be a discussion on how to make the library system more cost efficient for the city of Toronto and Toronto taxpayers. Yet instead of bringing up any constructive ideas they simply piled a bunch of blowhards into Toronto city council chambers for a 24 marathon filibuster for public attention.

Do these people realize how many people don’t actually use the library anymore? I have had discussions with friends and relatives that will happily schlep down the road to a Chapters or Indigo and spend $4 for crappy coffee at the Starbucks and then buy a book for $29.95 and a magazine for $7.95 instead of getting the same reading material for free down the street.

Many kids are aware of the Toronto library system because teachers use the facilities for neighbourhood field trips and learning exercises and yet by the time high school rolls around, everything is Google this or Yahoo that.

Technology has become an enemy of the library system as well. With the growing popularity of e-books and portable readers, many people have rediscovered reading without leaving the comfort of their living room.

The library is becoming a dinosaur and as much as it would pain me and my family to lose our neighbourhood library, I can see the reasons why cutting back on some of the libraries may need to be looked at.

Toronto unions have fought the proposed cutbacks fairly strongly; I remember years ago when David Miller decided to try and reduce the library hours by closing on a Monday to attempt to reel in some of the city of Toronto’s spending. That experiment lasted one day and resulted in library workers sitting in an empty library with the lights off getting paid as per their union agreement while the public was locked out.

It is time to examine which branches are not used frequently and should be mothballed. It is time to come up with solutions for reducing the expense of running a library system as opposed to simply crying at council meetings about wanting to keep the status quo.

One suggestion that I had was closing some branches in the middle of the day during the week. The library opens at 9am and is usually open until 8:30pm. Why not close the library for a couple of hours in the daytime. People that use the library in the daytime have the flexibility of when they can go so why not close the library from say 12:30 to 2:30, library staff will have to take the hit on this but is every library closed for 2 hours a day, would result in a savings of 51480 hours per year. If you just took an average rate of $18/hour the city of Toronto would save almost $1 million annually. Would the average Toronto library user suffer if the library was closed for 2 hours a day during the week?

Schools could schedule their visits in the morning, retired or unemployed who use the library would just have to choose different hours of the day to use the library.

A simple cut in hours such as this would generate a savings of $1 million, are there not any other out of the box ideas that we can come up with?

If cutting branches was still to be discussed, that would be a further savings depending on how many branches are cut.

Other ideas have been suggested such as merging libraries with half empty schools in Toronto as was done in Kitchener a few years ago.

Yet mention these ideas to library backers and nothing but resistance comes spewing out.

The city of Toronto is going broke. KPMG’s report came up with a myriad of ideas of where savings can be found. Although my honest belief is that until the labour force in Toronto is cut down and union wages are scaled back to private sector levels, there will be no easy solution to Toronto’s financial woes.

I don’t want my library to be eliminated, but I also don’t want my tax dollars to be strewn about city services in some ideal utopia of a city with services plated with gold.

Some of the highlighted cuts that they suggest the city of Toronto make are;

Contract out garbage collection even further

Eliminate commercial waste collection for small business owners

Reduce the Bicycle Plan that the city currently has

Reduce the 70% target for waste diversion as landfills are still an affordable waste option

Reduce street sweeping in the summer months

Reduce some snow removal services in the suburbs

Increase fees for street event permits

Eliminate community environment days which are held by councilors in their wards

Eliminate the 4 free garbage tags to Toronto residents and the “Toxic Taxi” service which collects hazardous waste

Eliminate the Toronto water fluoridation

Now, I live in Etobicoke and enjoy having the city come and remove snow from my sidewalks but admittedly, I have seen the little bobcat come by when there was hardly any snow on the ground. I have a corner lot so there is quite a lot that needs to be removed but in the end I really don’t want my taxes to continue to increase for the sake of keeping free snow removal for the 3 dumpings of snow a year that we get in Toronto.

I agree that the garbage removal service needs to be overhauled and if there are massive savings there then all the better.

These community environment days held by councilors are photo ops for them with our tax dollars. Schools already have jumped on the bandwagon with the April clean up day in Toronto so having my councilor smiling in front of a camera with a broom is pointless.

The elimination of fluoride in the water is one that I would be strongly against as I believe that it has aided in the long run of improving dental health in the city of Toronto.

Hey, do I want services cut? Of course not. Do I want my snow removed, of course. Hell I also want my grass cut and my leaves raked but the pockets of the taxpayers aren’t lined with gold and in the end savings have to be found.

The previous regime spent their way and argued that Torontonians wanted all these city services. Well yes, I would also love to have someone helicopter me to and from work every day but I don’t see that being in the budget of the city.

There is a huge fiscal hole and it’s time to trim the frills and pay for the basics. Snow removal, bicycle lanes are not as important as fixing the sewer systems and building transit or in my previous arguments, more roads.

I heard the next Toronto mayor candidate Adam Vaughn stand up and say that the people of Toronto want the status quo, well No Mr. Vaughn, they voted out the status quo and brought in change because they couldn’t afford the status quo.

These are reasonable cuts to services and I would guess that there could be further cuts that make sense. Until then, this report shows how the city can chop a large amount of the city deficit away and it may need to be given the green light sooner rather than later.