h/t Maz2
Heh. Proposed name for Stronach’s electric car – “Bricklin Bridge”

Highlights from the Tim Geithner Traveling Roadshow.

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch, and who is this Galt chap you keep speaking of?

SOL ZAKAY, the billionaire property tycoon, is the latest entrepreneur to quit Britain after the introduction of a 50% tax rate on high earners.

And judging by some of the reader comments, not a moment too soon.

“Good riddance. Most of these people dont pay tax anyway so best be rid of them. Just shows there is no loyalty from them either and we can do without spongers.” aziz, london, uk

Yeah – faster, please!
(h/t Adrian)

Help me out with some math here…
What’s 6.25% of nothing?

SDA: where our posts come fortified with “delicious irony”!

“The moist, dark, warm interior of a folded used reusable bag that has acquired a small amount of water and trace food contamination is an ideal incubator for bacteria.”

This latest discovery of the blatantly obvious has been turned over to the “federal Sub-Committee on Food Safety currently investigating the safety of Canada’s food system, federal and provincial health ministers and medical organizations across Canada with a request for immediate action.”
h/t John B.

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch, and beating up 7 year olds is about to become fashionable again;

City Councils across Britain are calling upon its citizens to become “citizen snoopers”–people who will report on loud neighbours, litterbugs, and even people who take their garbage out on the wrong day. Children as young as seven are being recruited, and so far over 9000 Britainers have signed up.

I like the idea of a list. When Britain finally unravels, they’ll be able to line them up in alphabetical order.

It’s the number one reason that socialists run out of money.
h/t Ed S.

Rigzone – “Energy industry executives seriously must consider the proposition unveiled in the Obama budget that the energy industry is to be a “piggy bank” to help fund the President’s grand social vision.”

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Edmonton Journal, May 12: “No one tells us what specialists we can or can’t see, as some American HMOs do.”
Edmonton Journal, May 13: “The Royal Alexandra Hospital will cancel 15 per cent of elective surgeries after receiving a directive from Alberta Health Services to cut costs.”
{Nicely done, Norman.)

Star Phoenix;

High school students and their families might be surprised to learn that computers at the Ministry of Education take every final grade of 48 and 49 per cent and bump it up to a passing grade of 50.
Furthermore, explains Darryl Hunter, executive director of accountability, assessment and records with the ministry, when a student obtains a grade of between 44 and 49 per cent in a class, and that one mark stands in the way of graduation, the ministry will also nudge it up to 50 per cent.
The point, Hunter says, is to give students who are extremely close to passing the benefit of the doubt.

It’s odd that nobody asks why knowing only 50% of the required material should get you a passing grade in the first place.
Via John Gormley Live

Sandy Bay Indian Reserve story that everybody but The Black Rod missed.
h/t Mike W.

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and from each, according to his wins; to each, according to his losses;

The Government is demanding a radical overhaul of English football finances to break the domination of the “big four” clubs.
Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, is calling for Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool to share their winnings in Europe with other Premier League teams.
Mr Burnham, an Everton fan, is pressing for several measures to redistribute the wealth of the richest league in the world to its lower reaches. He wants the league’s £1 billion revenue from television and sponsorship rights to be shared out more evenly among its 20 clubs. He also wants smaller squads and compulsory quotas of English players in team line-ups.

h/t old Lori

Brian Lilley;

Here in Ottawa, were I to lose my job, I would have to prove that I was employed at a job that paid into the system for 700 hours, or about 4 ½ months of full-time work. If I could do that and show that I was not fired for taking money out of the till, I would be eligible for 41 weeks of EI benefits equating 55% of my “best 12 weeks” of work; it’s not lucrative, but I could get just over $400 per week. Now if I lived in rural Newfoundland, I would only need 420 hours of work (just over 10 weeks of full-time work) and would be eligible for up to 50 weeks of benefit payments.
The reason for the difference in qualifications is that unemployment rates vary, in Ottawa where help wanted signs are still posted on the side of the road, the unemployment rate is 5% while in rural Newfoundland the unemployment rate is 20.4%. One would assume it is easier to find a job in Ottawa that in Goose Bay and so the system adjusts each month based on local conditions.
What the opposition parties and the assorted commentators are calling for is EI to be enriched and expanded with what is called a national standard. Instead of different qualifications, the idea is that all Canadians will be eligible for EI after 360 hours of work, or 9 weeks of full time employment. In a vote on an opposition motion in the House of Commons in March, the Liberals, Bloc and NDP also supported getting rid of the two-week waiting period, allowing the self-employed to participate in the EI plan and expanding payments from 55% of your best work weeks to 60%.
What this would do in essence is give some Canadians 52 weeks of EI payments for 9 weeks of work. Someone who worked during July and August could get EI payments until the end of the next summer.

h/t Shipped Out

Under “things I didn’t know, but might have guessed“…

Like the more famous Teach for America, the New York Teaching Fellows program provides an alternate route to state certification for about 1,700 new teachers annually. When I met with a group of the fellows taking a required class at a school of education last summer, we began by discussing education reform, but the conversation soon took a turn, with many recounting one horror story after another from their rocky first year: chaotic classrooms, indifferent administrators, veteran teachers who rarely offered a helping hand. You might expect the required readings for these struggling rookies to contain good practical tips on classroom management, say, or sensible advice on teaching reading to disadvantaged students. Instead, the one book that the fellows had to read in full was Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.

h/t Peter G.

QOTW from Michael Caine;

“The Government has taken tax up to 50 per cent, and if it goes to 51 I will be back in America, We’ve got 3.5 million layabouts on benefits, and I’m 76, getting up at 6am to go to work to keep them.”

Although, taking one’s wealth from Tony Blair’s Britain to Big Owe’s America is like an egg leaning out over the edge of the pan, threatening to jump.
More…“it’s always heartening to see a successful man from a humble background being badmouthed by a Stalin groupie from a privileged background. “

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is calling for the federal government to shut down the department of Western Economic Diversification;

Since 1987, the department has handed out over $3.9-billion in funding to various organizations, businesses, governments and individuals through a number of grant and loan programs. A mere 51.8% of “loans” have ever been paid back.
“Over the years there has been a striking correlation between the department’s spending spikes and the timing of federal elections,” said CTF Manitoba director Colin Craig. “It’s too bad that legitimate projects have to wait for an election in order to receive funding. The fact that the department funds everything from airport lighting to cemeteries doesn’t help its reputation as a ‘catch all’ political slush fund either.”
“It’s quite a stretch to call some of these payments ‘loans’ when the government barely even collects half of the dollars back,”