Organic website design

Here's my summary of the Ontario organ donation website:

"Organ donation is super important and can save lots of lives; that's why we lead you to believe the donor card you filled out earlier was valid by itself when really you still need to fill out an online form that is a series of hyperlinks away from our homepage with each link hidden amongst dozens of others."

You need to click on this gif to see the animation

I would give my left kidney if it meant that government websites did not have to be discombobulating.

Truth in Tourism

Just once I'd like to hear someone come back from a vacation to another country and, instead of talking about how great it was, admit, "Yeah, [Country X] sucks."

Holiday Blunder Wonder

I can't believe that Dalton McGuinty managed to pick a Monday in February for Family Day that is a) not the Monday after the Super Bowl, b) not the Monday that the NHL trade deadline is most likely to fall on, and c) not the Monday that most closely corresponds to Valentine's Day. Instead he picks the Monday that falls on reading week. What a dick.

It almost makes me believe that there is a powerful post-secondary education lobby made up of evil university administrators that want students to suffer as much boredom in classes as possible. These are the same administrators that prefer to hire professors that blather and pontificate on inane student questions instead of actually teaching something.

To make matters worse, employers can reinstate work on any non-statutory holidays that employees may have already been enjoying to keep the number of annual statutory holidays at nine, which usually means workers lose the "Civic Holiday" at the start of August. When McGunity made a 2007 campaign promise to put a statutory holiday in February, I don't think the average voter interpreted that to mean that they were giving up a prime August long weekend for one of the shittiest Mondays of the year.

And you would think that McGuinty would at least put a holiday called "Family Day" during "National Family Week" in October, but no, that would make too much sense. Instead he decided to copy Alberta and Saskatchewan which is the inter-provincial equivalent to seeing a country bumpkin humping his cousin on the back of a rumbling snowmobile leaking oil and thinking, "Gee, that looks like fun."

Oversight

Wow, the Japanese are ready for anything (except nuclear meltdowns).

Every Year

Every year a big-name musical group performs at the Super Bowl half-time show. Every year I scream out, "THE BAND IS OUT ON THE FIELD!" And every year no one laughs.

Missing Out

I just feel like, as a society, we don't talk enough about how the richest person in the world is a Mexican dude named Carlos Slim.

Deficit Confusion

I am so confused about the deficit and I don't think I am the only one.

Less than five years ago, in September 2007, the Conservative Party of Canada ("CPC") announced Canada had just run a $13.8 billion surplus for the government's 2006-2007 fiscal year, inherited from the Liberals.

A year later, in October 2008, Stephen Harper said, "We'll never go back into deficit." He criticized Stephane Dion for "enormous spending promises that we can't afford," and said, "[Dion] would put Canada into deficit again."

Three months later, in January 2009, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's federal budget stated that, "Canada needs to run a temporary deficit." After an "explicit adjustment for the risks to the private sector," Flaherty projected deficits of $33.7 billion in 2009–10 and a surplus of $0.7 billion in 2013–14.

Instead of the projected figure of $33.7 billion, the 2009-2010 federal deficit run by the CPC ended up being $55.6 billion, a difference of $21.9 billion. It looked like the 2015-2016 fiscal year was the earliest date by which the deficit could be eliminated and Flaherty's March 2011 update said as much.

But then, a month later during the 2011 federal election, the CPC promised to eliminate the deficit by 2014-2015. By an amazing coincidence, the CPC's outlook on balancing the budget became much rosier at the same time that an election campaign was taking place. Stephen Harper said, "Our platform is realistic, accurately costed and looks four years down the road." The CPC not only forecasted that the deficit would be gone by 2014-2015, but that Canada would run a $3.7 billion surplus that year.

Seven months later, the platform was not realistic any more. The November 2011 budget update from Flaherty said he would not balance the budget until 2015-2016. The projected surplus of $3.7 billion for 2014-2015 had turned into a projected deficit of $0.3 billion (and if history is any guide that might be off by tens of billions of dollars).

The CPC platform in 2011 was to eliminate the deficit by "controlling spending and cutting waste." In terms of controlling spending, we're told the CPC is ahead of schedule when it comes to making cuts and Tony Clement has told Canadians that cuts may be twice as deep as originally stated ($8 billion instead of $4 billion), yet the CPC is still going to fall short on the promise it made just 9 months ago during the election.

The CPC's excuse is that the economy is underperforming but: (A) they said they were going to "adjust" for the risk of poor performances; (B) the economy grew by an unexpectedly strong 3.5% in the third quarter; (C) government revenues for the first eight months of 2011 were up $5.7 billion, mostly thanks to income tax; and (D) the CPC prides itself on its effective management the economy. The party's "steady hand on the tiller" supposedly makes Canada's economy better than all other G-7 nations, yet they consistently miss the target they are aiming at.

The other confusing part about all this is that half of the CPC's plan to eliminate the deficit was to control spending but that has not really happened. For example, the party's failure to get deficit reduction on track did not dissuade the CPC from moving ahead with its omnibus amendments to the criminal law in Canada despite the costs associated with those amendments.

For a party that prides itself on its nuanced understanding of the Canadian economy and its fiscal conservatism, it seems like the CPC has no idea what is going on with the economy or how to meet its budgetary objectives.