Thursday, December 22, 2016

Do Uber taxi drivers commit more sex assaults?

Incentives Matter

You kinda gotta expect it. I mean, superficially, there ought to be no statistical disparity between the number of small and independent taxi drivers and the number of corporate Uber taxi drivers who commit sexual assaults. Employees of both the politically favored Uber and the maligned incumbent taxi operators will often find themselves in the proximity of vulnerable people. Yet the news reports continue to stream in about Uber cabbies assaulting their customers.

Is it real? Or just an anomaly?

I see one significant difference, though, between Uber cabbies, and those who complied with government taxi industry mandates.

The average non-Uber taxi driver enters the trade as a means to a livelihood. He obtains a license. It costs him time and money. It becomes a thing of value to him. He doesn't want to take unnecessary risks by preying on, rather than serving, customers.

HE DOESN'T WANT TO LOSE HIS TAXI LICENSE.

The average Uber taxi driver, on the other hand, couldn't give a shit.

He doesn't have to get a license. All he has to do is fill out a form and provide a driver's license and proof of car ownership.

The average Uber driver is NOT MOTIVATED by the desire to make a living driving a cab. Just read the Uber driver forums, as I do. Other than the few bullshitters, and they have always been around in the cab business..... you know the guys who boast they make 2X or more of the average on any given night, most of the Uber cabbies are either whining about how little they earn, or boasting that they don't really do it for the money. They do it for fun and adventure, or to alleviate boredom on Friday nights, like the granny I wrote about a week ago, or so, who completed an 800 mile round trip for Uber for a lousy $139 which covers barely half of her vehicle costs for that trip, let alone providing her with anything approximating a wage.

She said it was worth it to her because of the "adventure."

So it gets down to some lonely Travis Bickle type maniac, suffering from severe akathisia, deciding to take the opportunity Uber offers him, to cruise the bar districts at times when the supply of vulnerable, attractive, and mostly young, women goes into *surge* mode.

I think this is where the equilibrium between the frequency of Uber cab drivers vs. incumbents will experience a nudge in the direction of a larger number of Uber cabbies committing sexual assaults.

Paul Bernardo would have loved Uber.

And perhaps what pisses me off the most about this is that the politicians who are responding in knee-jerk, gutless, spineless, opportunistic, and completely predictable fashion to facilitate Uber's drive for power and profit, seem blissfully unaware, or sociopathically unconcerned with the monster they are unleashing.


London Uber driver CHARGED with sexually assaulting passenger.


One final comment.

Whenever I hear some spineless, gutless, politician or bureaucrat say, "Well, we will have to see what is being done in OTHER JURISDICTIONS," in other words, classic passing of the buck, I want to

PUKE.

In their minds, obviously, it's not a question of right or wrong. It's about the cowardly security that can be experienced by creatures whose main survival technique consists of blending with the herd, like so many wildebeest or striped zebras.

And then, to make matters even worse, I can't help but think of the salaries these paragons of public virtue receive compared to the pittance that cab drivers earn.

PUKE

doesn't quite describe it.

More Uber news.

Uber is hiding everything it can from users and investors who deserve to know the facts

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Hilarious Comments from an Uber Spokesperson!

This is Uber's idea of effective public relations?

"Susie Heath, a spokesperson for Uber Canada, tells us they’ve worked with law enforcement agencies to help build a series of tips for consumers. (I.E. Uber customers.)

Tips include sitting in the back seat so you can easily exit the car in case of emergency, following your intuition, planning ahead by letting family & friends know where you are, giving Uber feedback and being respectful in your driver’s car."

Try to imagine any other corporation feeling the need to "work with law enforcement agencies" in order to protect the public from their own employees! It might take the form of a large poster installed at every Walmart entrance.

Without Uber, I couldn't make this stuff up.

I mean, I can understand why some pharmaceutical companies might be required to inform the public that the use of their product might result in anal leakage, but, have standards dropped so low that companies now have to warn the public about the possibility of being raped by their employees?

Attention Walmart Shoppers. Beware of Walmart employees.

Tips include:

  • keep a safe distance between yourself and Walmart staff.
  • know where all of the exits are in case of an emergency. You never know when a Walmart employee might try to pull an Uber.
  • follow your intuition, whatever that is supposed to mean.
  • plan ahead by letting family and friends know you intend to go shopping at Walmart.
  • give Walmart feedback if you find yourself turning down the wrong aisle, only to be confronted by some sex-crazed Walmart employee offering you free merchandise in exchange for a blowjob. Remember, Walmart hires anyone who walks in the door as long as they have a driver's license and a car.
  • be respectful when visiting your friendly Walmart location. For example, don't vomit on the merchandise, in the aisles, or on fellow shoppers.

Walmart has been working with law enforcement to help build a series of tips for Walmart shoppers. This should make you feel very secure when visiting Walmart.

Walmart is all about sharing.

Please come again!

Is it just me? OR is it a brand new interpretation of the old warning, "Caveat emptor?"


See:

Uber Driver Charged in Sexual Assault of Passenger.

Oh. And let's not forget the fact that the corporation that is now working with law enforcement to warn the public about using its own service was the same company that had the balls to rip its customers off with a "safe ride fee" that has magically morphed into a "booking fee," much like the fraud of Global Warming has morphed into "Climate Change."

"You don't believe in climate change? Let me guess, you probably don't believe in gravity either."


See also:

Thursday, December 15, 2016

What happens in a taxi, stays in a taxi. When you choose Uber, God is watching.

After Uber blew onto the scene I was stunned to experience something I never expected to happen. I found myself entirely at odds with my own home political movement, the libertarians.

I was called a "hypocrite," a "Luddite," and a "parasite," because I dared point out the fact that Uber did NOT represent a pivotal point in the libertarian battle for human freedom. While a majority of libertarians and free market conservatives were creaming their jeans over the Uber phenomenon, I was pointing out that Uber was NOT about deregulation of the taxi industry, but about changing the regulations in order to create a lop-sided, two-tiered regulatory system with a whole new set of rules designed to guaranty success to Uber and failure to every other taxi company.

For decades, I have experienced a growing disgust and loathing for politicians. My analysis reveals that most politicians are cowards and moral hypocrites. However, there was always an element of doubt in my mind. I have always felt compelled to leave a spot open in my mind for the possibility that my understanding of issues is not quite deep enough to be 100% certain that politicians are just a bunch of posturing phonies with the same old motives as everyone else.

Self-interest.

As I live and learn, I realize that I don't know enough about medical care, education, banking or climate science to be 100% confident of my impression of the dishonesty practiced by politicians.

But when it comes down to the taxi business, I can see what is being perpetrated with crystal clarity.

It would not be correct to say that most politicians in most Ontario jurisdictions have been bending over and spreading their ass cheeks in order to appease and accommodate Travis Kalanick because politicians NEVER spread their own ass-cheeks if they can find someone else's ass-cheeks to spread.

In a nutshell, this is how politicians handle most issues:

Lie (The law applies equally to everyone.)

Deflect (It's not about taxis, it's about technology.)

Spin (it's not a garage sale, it's the new "sharing economy.")

Distort (The taxi industry had decades to change its business model (even though the government mandates prevented it) and, taxis charge too much for their services (even though the government mandates their prices, as well.)

Sacrifice (others) (Oh jeez, look at all these people who are facing homelessness and poverty! How can "we" help them? Oh, let's get the taxpayers to pay.)

Pretend you care. (At least the Marxist-Leninists were somewhat honest with their slogan, "Make the Rich Pay!" Our modern politicians don't bother themselves with such triffles. "Make someone else pay!" is good enough.)

If you need proof, consider this:

It is not the politicians who are being reamed up the butt by Uber, it's the less politically powerful taxi operators.

So back to the questions of starry-eyed libertarians who embraced, en masse, this vile and corrupt political organism, there was one other voice from the libertarian side who saw Uber for what it is, right from the start.

His name is David Knight.

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Travis Uber is the 21st Century Version of Tom Sawyer.

Back in 1987 when I worked for the Du Pont Corporation, the company would compensate me for the cost of using my own vehicle at a rate of 25 cents per kilometer. That's equivalent to 40 cents per mile in Canadian dollars.

The equivalent in U.S. dollars at $1 CDN = $.75 U.S. would be about 30 cents, U.S. per mile.

Any decent company that asks its employees to use their personal cars for business will offer fair compensation for the use of that vehicle. Even the government offers compensation.

Janis Rogers's round trip consumed 397 X 2 = 794 miles.

If Uber were to offer its employees fair compensation for the use of their own cars, at 1987 levels, this sweet li'l ol' granny should have received 794 X $.30 = $238 for the use of her car on this assignment. If she were to be paid for her 15.5 hours at, say, $7.00 per hour she would receive an additional $108.50.

That would achieve a grand total payout of $346.5.

Instead, she says she made about $9 per hour (=139.50) for her troubles after paying $32 for her own gas.

So, when the estimated cost of using her own vehicle (at $.30 per mile) is taken into account, her actual pay, if she were compensated fairly, would be her vehicle cost plus a wage. It would be $346.50. Instead, she claims that she got a paltry $139.00.

Now multiply that ripoff by the total number of Uber cabbies, and you begin to see where the Uber corporation could make some money for its rich investors. Except that it doesn't.

Now according to this sweet li'l ol' Uber granny,

“This was not lucrative,” she said. “I did it because it was an adventure.”

Yep.

Paying the Uber corporation 25% or so of the amount the customer pays for the use of your time and your automobile is one heck of an adventure.

Maybe Janis Rogers is willing to work for nothing in order to enrich Travis Kalinik and his investors because it is all just a great "adventure." I guess the subsidy she gets from Uber for the high-tech version of picking up hitch-hikers is just a kind of bonus.

I have used ballpark numbers for this analysis. I decided it was not worth the effort to go digging down into Google holes to collect more current data. Suffice it to say that the 25 cent per Km. payout I received from Du Pont in 1987 has gone up since then. Therefore, the situation for Janis is likely even worse than I have described.

Uber is just a modern re-telling of the old Tom Sawyer tale, "Whitewashing the Fence."

Maybe this is why so many aspiring cab drivers have jumped on to the Uber bandwagon, not for compensation, but for adventure. Maybe this is also why Uber has issued a new set of directives to both its cabbies and its customers. (Uber tries to solve sexual misconduct issues by banning riders from flirting)

Most of the time, when I am in my cab and an Uber driver is beside me, I notice with some amusement that they rarely make eye contact. It's as though they feel guilty in the knowledge of the damage they are doing to their legally straight jacketed competition.

The joke is on them.

This Just In

According to one of my sources, a taxi owner who was recently subjected to a mandatory City of Hamilton taxi inspection, was told he had to replace his vehicle, even though it had another year of useful life under the six-year bylaw limitation.

The reason?

Because the "check engine" light was glowing on the dash, and even AFTER the owner had had the issue resolved by a mechanic, he was STILL FORCED to replace the vehicle.

Not one Uber cab has undergone a similar inspection to date.

You would have thought that, given the City of Hamilton's disgusting abeyance of Hamilton's taxicab regulations in order to accommodate the Uber corporation, they would have, at least, eased up on their heavy handed treatment of the incumbent taxi operators.

You would have been wrong.

This is what bothers me most about the slime-handed way in which the City of Hamilton has handled the Uber issue. They relentlessly harass the incumbent operators while giving Uber a free pass.

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." -- H. L. Mencken

At this point, I am quite proud of myself. I have managed to write another commentary on the morally questionable Uber corporation, and the ass-kissing of that same corporation that has been displayed by the equally morally corrupt government of the City of Hamilton without using ONE SINGLE EXPLETIVE.

That's FUCKING AMAZING!


How the Uber Scam Actually Works.


The Actual Life of an Uber Cab Driver.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Poor Uber drivers are whining. (A profanity-free Blockrant.)

From the Uber driver's forum,

"Made 9$ today in 3hours
I got three pings
One I took was 4.9
The two I skipped on were both pax under 4.4."

I have been predicting this outcome all along. I knew from the start that Uber's much-praised "business model" would result in misery and disaster for ALL cab drivers. Uber is NOT about technology and it is NOT about a free market revolution. It's about corporate manipulation of the taxi business via a broken political system.

Nothing has changed in the cab business since it was regulated in London in 1654.

In a free country, dominated by pure laissez-faire free markets, there would be plenty of alternative employment opportunities. Such huge disparities between the incomes of low-skilled, low investment employees, and the wages of the rest of the employed population, as we are now seeing happen to all cab drivers, whether they work for Uber or less politically privileged taxi brokers, would not exist.

Unfortunately, the economics of the taxi industry are not hermetically isolated from the wider economy. Limited opportunities in the wider economy, (A.K.A. - involuntary unemployment or under-employment) will result in a higher number of entrants into the taxi trade as would otherwise be the case.

The Trudeau government's decision to import more hundreds of thousands of potential cab drivers will only make the situation worse for those attempting to eke out a living in this industry. If you want to know whether federal immigration policy is bringing in too many, too few, or just the right number of people from third-world countries, all you need to do is observe the rate of change in the numbers of cab drivers and compare it with their average income performance.

The popular move toward increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour will only serve to create even MORE taxi drivers as it destroys entry-level jobs, since minimum wages have not yet been imposed upon the taxi trade and the artificial surplus of labour will easily migrate into Uber, and Uber-like occupations, where employment has not been effectively prohibited by statute. This would suit the Uber corporation just fine since it will continue to extract it's 25% commission from the taxi-using public, regardless of whether there is a 10% surplus of cab drivers or a 2,000% surplus of cab drivers.

There is also the matter of resource deployment.

In Hamilton, before Uber was given the nod, there were 447 licensed taxis. Most of the time, these resources were only being utilized 25% of the time due to negligent regulatory policies. That was bad enough.

Wasted fuel. Wasted steel and rubber. Wasted insurance premiums. Wasted time.

Wasted lives.

Now that the City of Hamilton has decided to give the Uber corporation an unlimited number of taxi licenses, the numbers of under-utilized private hire vehicles can be expected to vastly multiply. As if the City's backward-looking anti-car traffic philosophy hasn't caused enough gridlock, with it's attendant gaseous and particulate emissions, the doubling, tripling or who know's what multiple, of excess idle taxicabs can only make the situation worse.

I am just a simple cab driver. I am awed by the plethora of issues the decision-makers in the city government deal with. Such an endeavor far exceeds my own feeble abilities.

All I can confidently comment on is the city's traffic and road construction philosophy, and it's failure to effect a rational taxicab regulatory policy.

Sometimes, Hamilton's politicians strike me as having to be extremely intelligent, given the number of issues they deal with on a daily basis.

But when I consider the possibility that their incompetence in road policy and cab regulation may indeed infect all of the other areas in which they have been given public trust and authority, contemplation of the sheer enormity of the damage is truly disheartening.

It's a good thing we live in a country that still has enormous wealth. People don't pick up the pitchforks and grease up the guillotines until they are reduced to eating rats, shivering in the cold, and seeing their relatives dying in droves.

"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think." -- Adolf Hitler.

So long as there is sports on the TV and an ample supply of beer, they barely take the time to notice.

History has demonstrated that this could all change in a heartbeat.


"It is dead slow. I think i need to get up early. There is nothing during the day after rush hour." -- source, UberPeople.NET.

Friday, December 2, 2016

Block Report: Hamilton's War on the Car a Stunning Success!

This past week the City of Hamilton has provided us with a spectacular display of the quality of thinking that goes on at our City Hall. Something the city planners could not accomplish after spewing millions of dollars into an increasingly creative array of impediments to vehicular traffic, from two-way streets, to crackhead bicycle lanes, to artificial potholes, etc., appears to have been accomplished by mother nature with a mere shifting of the ground adjacent to the Claremont Access.
The gridlock the City politicians have been slyly implementing for the last quarter of a century was doubled in an instant with the closure of the downbound lanes of the Claremont Access. One commenter on the Hamilton Spectator's report on the closure states:

"Almost speechless... i am utterly disappointed, i work at 2 locations and used the up. James access daily, which should only take me a 8 min drive home, It took me over an hour yesterday."
Think about that for a moment.
While Hamilton politicians blow scarce tax dollars on juvenescent tricks to discourage citizens from driving their own cars, their decision to simply neglect the Claremont Access has increased one commuter's wasted time from 8 minutes to more than 60 minutes.

(Speaking of juvanescent, it's not ironic that Kids voted on how to spend $1M on Hamilton street projects. Maybe they should just fire the entire traffic department and let kids in JK do the job. It's not like the results would differ much.)

Increasing someone's commute by 750% has to merit a prize-winning spot on the list of "planet-saving" shenanigans by phony politicians whose only real skills involve public bamboozlement. Well done, Hamilton politicians!

(Speaking of public Bamboozlement, hey, Mayor Fred, why not try to get out in front of this one and turn the downbound Claremont into a pedestrian mall, like you wanted to do with King Street? The traffic impact would be the same but it wouldn't cost the city a cent.)
I said it about twenty years ago, back when Bob (Flower Power) Morrow and Mar Vin Caplan were still posturing as wise guardians of the interests of Hamiltonians.

"Well, if greater traffic congestion is called for why stop at two-way streets? Why not quit repairing the roads!? Let those potholes proliferate. Imagine what a combination of two-way streets and potholes will do to revitalize the core!" -- source
In retrospect, that comment strikes me as funny. They could have followed my advice, or they could have chosen to do something really stupid instead. Now they are installing rubberized potholes all over the city. Instead of letting nature take its course, they had to piss money away on an artificial "solution." If a bunch of schoolkids were to run around with sledge hammers and picks, poking holes in the roads, it would be called "vandalism." When the city government does the exact same thing, they call it, "planning."
Here's just one example of the butterfly effect in Hamilton as it applies to the recent closure of the Claremont.

The Jolley Cut.

If John Street had been left alone as a one-way street, the chaos that is now creating such a "pedestrian friendly environment" on that street would have been completely avoided. Northbound traffic would have had the benefit of synchronized traffic lights and any increase in traffic volume would have dissipated quickly and efficiently. Unnecessary idling would have been minimized. Pedestrians on the sidewalks and people living in the neighborhood would have been exposed to a minimum of tailpipe emissions. The spread of particulate matter from brake dust and other automobile-induced PM due to unnecessary anti-car shenanigans would have been minimized.

"Traffic-related sources have been recognized as a significant contributor of particulate matter, particularly within major cities. Exhaust and non-exhaust traffic-related sources are estimated to contribute almost equally to traffic-related PM10 emissions. Non-exhaust particles can be generated either from non-exhaust sources such as brake, tyre, clutch and road surface wear or already exist in the form of deposited material at the roadside and become resuspended due to traffic-induced turbulence. Among non-exhaust sources, brake wear can be a significant particulate matter (PM) contributor, particularly within areas with high traffic density and braking frequency. Studies mention that in urban environments, brake wear can contribute up to 55 % by mass to total non-exhaust traffic-related PM10 emissions and up to 21 % by mass to total traffic-related PM10 emissions, while in freeways, this contribution is lower due to lower braking frequency." -- italics: mine. source
In other words, Hamilton's war on the private transportation option is, arguably, creating more pollution than it is preventing.

James Mountain Road.

If you think the idiocy that the city has engineered at the bottom of the Jolley Cut is the end of the story, you ain't seen nothin' yet. The results of the conversion of James St. from one-way to two-way absolutely deserves a Nobel Prize for MONEY WASTING POLITICAL STUPIDITY.
In the old days of evil capitalist efficiency, James Street was a one-way street from Barton to St. Joseph's Drive.
There were four lanes of traffic available for south-bound traffic. The buses and postal vans could clog up the right-hand lane but three lanes would remain for the remaining traffic, to be exploited in accordance with the skills and foresight of the drivers. People making left turns from James Street could do so, smoothly and efficiently, without having to wait for non-existent opposing traffic to clear.
And even if those desired left turns were delayed by pedestrians using those intersections, there were still TWO LANES available to southbound traffic.
After the GENIUS conversion of James St. to two-way traffic, the whole pattern of traffic flow on that street was reduced to the lowest common denominator. (I.E. that to which the political philosophy of socialism appeals.)
Now, if the right lane is blocked by a Canada Post delivery vehicle, and the left lane is blocked by pedestrians or northbound traffic, you have no choice but to waste time, fuel and quality of life in order to participate in the charade that the lost minutes of your life are, somehow "saving the planet."
Well, I guess you already know what I have to say about that.
It's
COMEDIC CHAOS!
And I haven't even got to the worst part yet.
In the "old days," northbound traffic on the James Mountain Road, upon arriving at St. Joseph's drive, could easily slide into the east-bound lanes of St. Joe's and continue their journey over to John St, for a comfortable glide down one-way street John Street, with synchronized lights and MINIMUM DISRUPTIONS.
Now they have to wait for the light to change, so that those drivers wishing to use the new northbound James idiot lanes, cars who are blocking the right turn option can proceed after pointlessly wasting the time of the vehicles behind them. What brilliance. Who could not have seen it coming? The result was entirely predictable.
I documented the outcome of the City of Hamilton's IDIOTIC traffic plans in 2013 with my YouTube video.
As if this kind of BULLSHIT is going to save the planet.

Conclusion

As if it isn't obvious.
If a private corporation were to attempt to get away with the kinds of utter lunacy the City of Hamilton has adopted as its dominant philosophy, they would have gone broke decades ago.
What have they achieved so far? Wasted money? -- Check. Traffic chaos? -- Check. Examples of what happens when you elect totally incompetent people into positions of "law making?" -- Check. Zero positive results? -- Check.
No wonder Donald Trump won the election.
---
The government of Hamilton is a fraud.
You know it. I know it.
Government is a business. It just operates under a different set of rules. Just like Uber.
Related:

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

I have a loved who has been targeted by one of the ACTION teams the Spec article talks about.

The table below contains a rundown of the fines he got over a period of time. In 2010 he was 17 years old. In 2010 he became the victim of a serious illness.

Notices of Fines and Offence Dates from the Ontario Court of Justice






Date Offence Amt. Due. Total




March 31, 2010 LIQUOR ILLEGAL PLACE $130.00 $130.00
March 31, 2010 UNDER 19 YEARS HAVE LIQUOR $130.00 $260.00
March 31, 2010 SOLICIT NEAR TRANSIT STOP $70.00 $330.00
April 6, 2010 ENTER PREM WHEN PROH $70.00 $400.00
April 10, 2010 ENTER PREM WHEN PROH $70.00 $470.00
October 4, 2010 ENGAGE IN PROHIBITED ACTIVITY $70.00 $540.00
November 8, 2010 SOLICIT NEAR PUB. TRANSIT STOP $70.00 $610.00
July 22, 2012 SOLICIT NEAR VEH/IN PARKING LOT $70.00 $680.00
November 15, 2012 ENGAGE IN PROHIBITED ACTIVITY $70.00 $750.00
November 15, 2012 DISOBEY SIGN $115.00 $865.00
November 15, 2012 SOLICIT NEAR VEH/IN PARKING LOT $70.00 $935.00
April 6, 2013 SOLICIT NEAR PUB. TRANSIT STOP $70.00 $1,005.00

What interests me about the Spectator report, is not that the police officers might have been writing ghost tickets, in which case I sympathize with them for having the clarity of thought to understand that the entire enterprise was a total farce, typical of the kind of policy horseshit that the government of Hamilton is so stunningly good at performing, but that these officers are being penalized for refusing to waste their time, assuming the allegations are true.

Why risk confrontations with the targets of city policies (the homeless, the addicted, the lost,) many of whom are mentally ill, and could become agitated in confrontations with police, and end up dead in the street, all over the issuance of tickets that will never be paid? Why bother with the performance of meaningless rituals? (Then again, that is 99 per cent of what government is all about.)

If the allegations are true, these cops should be given medals.

Even one of the police supervisors could see that this whole campaign was nothing more than a bunch of political posturing designed to make the politicians look like they were "doing something." They are doing something alright.... they are fucking up everything they touch. Look at what they've done to our streets with all of their pro-idling traffic disruptions! (two-way street conversions, artificial potholes (A.K.A. speed-bumps), buffer zones, crackhead bike lanes and retarded snail-paced speed limits.)

Sgt. Michael Dunham, Team One's supervisor in 2014, testified to the seemingly pointless exercise of issuing tickets.

It "was going nowhere" and was mostly for the public to see police doing something about problems downtown.

"But, you know, there's nothing going to happen to them (the panhandlers, drunks and loiterers). They weren't going to pay the tickets. They weren't going to court."

"Unfortunately, we dealt with the same 25 people day in and day out, 365 days a year."

Yeah. He got it right. It was "mostly for the public to see police doing something about problems downtown." Political posturing.

Real problems get swept under the rug. The homeless and mentally ill targets of these policies need help, not tickets. And when they are not sweeping real problems under the rug to hide their impotence, they are manufacturing fake problems, and outrageously proclaiming that they can effectively solve them. Like "climate change."

It reinforces my belief that most politicians are a bunch of flaming charlatans. They are not interested in solving real problems. They are only interested in the optics.

Guess what? I think a lot of other people are starting to come around to my way of thinking. They are starting to see through the phony problems politicians wring their sweaty, grubby, ambitious hands around, and they can't miss the real problems, because those are the ones that directly affect them.

No. They are not terribly concerned about allegedly vanishing polar bears. Not rising sea levels. Not racists lurking around every corner planning their next move to oppress people of colour. Not Christian bakers refusing to serve gay couples. Nor trannies who get upset about the limited array of bathroom choices.

They are more concerned with the problems that they can feel. The problems that affect them on a day to day level.

Like their sky-rocketing hydro bills, their declining standard of living, depressed sons and daughters rendered hopeless by unemployment and tales of doom unless they turn out their lights and freeze in the dark, public school "education," Islamic terrorism (a real problem) and even their freedom of speech and thought.

Yep. I think people are starting to see things the way I see them.

As evidence, I offer the election of Donald Trump.

---

This rant was inspired by the following article from the Hamilton Spectator. By the way, it pisses me off that the Spec has apparently chosen to disable comments for this report. What's up with that?

Nearly 300 tickets, none paid: panhandler tells trial.

---

Oh, and one final thought.

It concerns the popular vote in the recent election.

One source I googled had Clinton ahead.

"Clinton now leads the popular vote by 1,152,016 votes and 47.8% to 46.9%."

Now, considering that half of the population have an IQ of 100 or lower, where would you guess the IQ level of the people smashing windows and electrical boxes, beating up "suspected" Trump voters, and burning garbage in the streets is?

I'm just wondering.

---

Tempo