Since he was effectively paying himself $1.1 million thereby reducing reported profits (the cause of the lawsuit) and he has yet to actually fully implement his new employee pay structure (it's a 3 year plan) wouldn't his cutting his salary by over $1 million in a company that only reported a $2.2 mill profit previously be responsible for the majority of the new bump.
Just from his pay cut from what was a questionably legal salary the company's profits immediately jumped 50%. With the huge boost in free publicity as well as some other major cash infusions an additional 50% short term increase would not be too surprising.
By his own admission, the idea for changing the salary structure happened on a hike with a friend which occurred weeks after his brother in law served him with papers concerning the upcoming lawsuit (in Seattle you can be served before the actual filing of the suit). The suit was then filed officially filed a couple weeks after his announcement.
The only reference to 2010 was from a paper written in 2010 by a couple of Nobe-laureates that he referred to in his discussion with his friend.
Your numbers don't really help your argument. Being #19 in giving when you are one of the wealthiest countries in the world with one of the highest GNI (gross national income) when countries of similar population size with gni's much lower routinely give more than 4-6 times as much humanitarian assistance just makes it look like your doing it for show. Much like a Prince worth 22 billion (yes with a B) giving 1 million to charity.
That's like gloating because you give a penny to feed the hungry.
And don't look at other countries in the region like Qatar because they make Scrooge McDuck jealous with how tight they hold onto a dollar.
Atheists are not exactly known for being in favour of violence and murder in the name of some god, you know.
No, but there has been a long history of atheist leaders using peoples belief in "some god" as an excuse to kill them en masse.
People have a tendency to see any competing ideology as opposition that must be eliminated, but the degree people are willing to go to eliminate that opposing belief varies greatly. In terms religions (which includes Atheism) it can be any other religion or even other factions of your own religion and they can try to eliminate it through proselytizing or just trying to lead by example or, as is the case of ISIS, just kill off anyone who disagrees with them.
And Liberals, when Chretien was in charge, used threats of expulsion from the party to force back benchers to vote against even a symbolic Reform party proposal to give compensation to victims of the tainted blood scandal of the 80's (oddly enough, the next Liberal PM happened to be on the board of one of the companies that was shipping in tainted blood from the US prisoners to save money). Several were seen to be crying while voting against the non-binding motion.
That one incident goes down in history as possibly the worst display of pure Prime Ministerial abuse of parliament.
Without accepting the fact that they will probably lose power, there is really nothing members of the 'ruling ' party can really do if their PM decides to go on a power trip and no matter how they start, most eventually do.
A properly elected Senate would go a long way in curbing Prime Ministerial abuse. As it stands the Senate is the worlds most expensive rubber stamp, even when stacked with opposition party members. Most senators are just happy to accept their paychecks and not rock the boat because they know having unelected party hacks preventing legislation from passing would look very bad. Without some form of appointment/election system that would at least put the power to determine who represents each zone (since the seats aren't divided by strict provincial lines) into the hands of the people or provincial/territorial governments making up each zone then they really can't serve their proper purpose of giving potential legislation a proper second review.
You do realize, by it very structure anytime we elect a majority government we are effectively living in a dictatorship. The Canadian federal system has no effective check or balances on the power of the PM if they have a majority of the House. Even supreme court decision can be overridden with the "not withstanding" clause.
So saying Harper had to pander to anyone to extend his power is ridiculous because, as Trudeau has already shown, in Canada, what the PM says is essentially the law. House members (mostly of the PMs party) are pretty much just there to fill in the little details on the legislation the PM wants. Opposition MPs are really only there to complain to the cameras.
Without some form of major overhaul we'll just keep going from one dictator to the next with an occasional (and usually short lived) minority government thrown in for spice.
So congrats, your dictator is currently in the big seat but don't try to polish it up to anything more than that or try to make it sound like your different from your opposition.
Election results show the Conservatives only lost about 55,000 votes from the previous election but the Liberals picked up all the new voters plus stole a lot from the NDP for a gain of 4+ million votes.
I'd have to agree with you that legalizing weed was a much larger factor than anything having to do with the census. Hell, if 20% of the weed voters knew it would lead to them having to do homework in the form of the long form census they may not have bothered to show up and we might still have a Conservative government or a minority Liberal one.
The electorate decides who best represents their views and while ~50% of the population are women only 26% of the MPs elected were, meaning that a significant portion of women in the country are just fine with a man representing them, at least in terms of the federal government.
For most people in established democracies, gender is simply not the primary defining condition as to how they want their government managed. They want competent representative that share at least some of their views and if that happens to be a man or a women, so be it. That's not to say that you might not relate more to a person because of shared life experiences that are gender specific (they might be the mother of small children like you) and if that's the determining factor in deciding your vote, that's fine, but once elected it's a poor reason for the person in charge to give someone the reigns of a multibillion dollar branch of government.
Women are representative enough in the all industries that simply choosing good people from your list of elected officials you should get a mix of both sexes. Artificial and unrelated criteria just guarantees you're not going to always get the best person for the job.
And yes, several countries have a higher female representative percentage than Canada but many of them had to rig their systems to force that to occur.
Each cabinet has had people who spent a life outside of politics working in related fields as well as people who have no relation to the department they now head (like say and astronaut and Transport - unless you think we'll start sending things cross country strapped to booster rockets). It was true of Harper's cabinets and is equally true of Trudeau's.
It is funny you mention the Science Minister since it was the last Liberal government who removed that position from cabinet and Harper who brought it back.
The liberals helped balance their books like most politicians balance their books, by cheating.
They made changes to employment insurance requirements which resulted in fewer eligible people. While not necessarily a bad thing based on circumstances, they failed to then adjust the EI payment rates to reflect the new number and instead kept it artificially high to collect more money than following the federal formula would normally allow.
They also made significant cuts to the transfer payments to the provinces, offloading Federal expenses to the various provincial governments. In your household anology, this would be like a slumlord putting in new flooring and an in ground pool at his house while letting all his tenant buildings going to ruins and pointing at his beautiful house to prove how great a real estate mogul he is.
The also greatly benefited by the implementation of the GST under the previous government, the abolishment of which was a major party platform that the Liberals ran on. Surprising no one with a functioning brain cell, the Liberals decided NOT to get rid of the GST once in power.
In general, neither the Conservatives or Liberals have been great at putting forward useful budgets that actually work, the liberals were just a bit better at making theirs look good on paper.
Was it a science based decision to force his cabinet to be 50% male and 50% female? Should decisions as to who runs a department of the government be based on merit not the chromosomal lottery?
Not to say some of the ministers of either sex weren't the best person for the job but whenever you arbitrarily apply some external criteria to your hiring practices you're pretty much guaranteeing the best candidate won't always win.
The video, while not direct evidence into the circumstances of the confrontation and shooting, does go toward the state of mind of Brown. Having just gotten away with the convenience store theft he may have immediately suspected the officers intentions when confronted and asked to move off the street.
Hearing an unarmed man got into a fight with police resulting in his death over a small traffic violation always raises questions. Hearing that same man was wanted for another unrelated crime and most people start to understand why things may have escalated.
It's the same mentality that leads to high speed chases over minor speeding tickets when the driver has either been drinking or driving on a suspended license. People make stupid decisions when they think they are about to get into trouble often leading to outcomes that are far worse than the original problem.
Using the German system of 50% representative and 50% proportional it would have worked out something like:
Liberal: 39.5% of vote = 48.7% of seats vs actual 54.4% Conservative: 31.9% of vote = 32.1% of seats vs actual 29.3% NDP: 19.7% of vote = 17.5% of seats vs actual 13%
All other parties failed to meet threshold for proportional seats though to be fair, this is based off our single vote ballot as opposed to Germany's two part ballots. A little better, to be sure, but still only a handful of seats away from total domination with less than 40% support.
I think in addition to House reforms a properly elected Senate would be a massive improvement. Elected Senators as opposed to lifetime appointments would actually make them accountable to the people.
I also personally think we have too many MPs and Senators for the rubber stamping of PM/party policies they currently do. Sure, they occasionally do some personal work to help constituents but for the most part that could be done by lower level staffers. Either revamp the system or start lowering their numbers.
Every poll including ones requested by the CBC, had support significantly above opposition to the bombing missions, including amongst Liberals and NDP.
Polls by Ipsos Reid, EKOS and Angus Reid all had support for the mission at between 54-74%, while opposition maxed out at 33%. The only place opposition was above approval was in Quebec but on a party line, all parties had a majority supporting the mission (66% for Liberals specifically).
So unless every poll performed on this was just dead wrong, yes, a majority of Canadians supported the mission.
While true, only Liberals or Conservatives/PC have had enough seats to claim the PM title, smaller parties have held significant power at times. Whenever you get a minority government the ruling party must make deals with someone to get legislation passed and it's at those time the smaller parties can get some things done.
The problem is in a majority government the ruling party doesn't have to listen or negotiate with anyone, in many cases even their own members so the PM can pretty much do whatever they want. While not a legislative issue, Trudeau's already shown his willingness to rule from on high by effectively removing Canada from the multinational anti-ISIS campaign against the wishes of his own party members and the majority of Canadians. Our handful of jets weren't doing much but at least they gave us a voice at the table and showed some willingness to help.
There are simply no checks or balances in a majority government.
If we at least had a useful Senate then there might be some hope but seeing as they are all just appointed and would rather not rock the boat while getting their nice paychecks, what the PM wants the PM pretty much gets.
As far as I know RT's weighing formula is simply the total numerical score given to a movie from reviewers divided by the number of reviewers. That's why their scores show all decimal points (6.4/10 or 3.1/10); there is no rounding. You can select which reviewers are included in their rating but it's still simple math.
The freshness rating is another creature entirely and while quasi-related to the score, the reviewers are free to rate a movie fresh or not independent of the score they gave it. That's why you can see a reviewer giving a movie 6.5/10 on their own site but still rated as rotten. Reviewers are not held to specific rules as to what they define as fresh or rotten.
Talking about a solution used by a country of just over 20 million with a population density of 3/km2 is just barely above useless when talking about US issues.
Good idea, let's make sure that criminals know that all those homes in the middle to low income parts of town are generally "gun free zones" and they are free to enter as they wish.
As is common in the anti-gun crowd stats, deaths and not homicides are generally used to show how evil guns are. Your own link has a link to FBI stats showing that while deaths began increasing, homicides continued decreasing. Why the discrepancy? Suicide stats show that at around the same time of the uptick suicide rates began to clime again and the primary method of choice for suicides in the US is of course, guns.
These same anti-gun stats groups also attempt to link access to guns to suicides but studies comparing suicide rates between countries with varying level of gun access show rates generally unaffected by gun access. Depressed or desperate people find a way.
The assault weapons ban was also generally a meaningless piece of legislation as there is no such thing as an assault weapon, or it's probably more accurate to say all weapons are by definition "assault weapons". Most of the restrictions in "assault weapons" laws target cosmetic components of guns are are easily bypassed with a few mods by the manufacturers. Grip and stock styles and choice in optional mounting brackets did not affect the behavior of the actual gun or change its lethality but looked great for politicians trying to get their faces on TV.
Passing real legislation to fund and improve validation systems which can properly link databases together so that mental health restrictions and other red flags are visible in a timely manner during background checks just isn't the same as being able to hold up an M16 lookalike on camera and talk about how your new law "pulls machine guns off the street" even though machine guns were never legally available in the first place (but what constituents don't know doesn't hurt you in the polls).
It used to be between $50-80 but it's been $100 for a while now. I believe it's even mentioned in the Interac commercials that play every now and then.
My grocery bills are routinely in the $90 range and I always tap to pay. It's amazing how annoying it is when you just go over the limit and have to take the 10 seconds to insert your card and type the pin.
Of those 100 'doctors' you consult, 15 are podiatrists, 25 are ophthalmologists, 6 are audiologist, there's a handful of anesthesiologist there are also a large group of non-doctors who happened to have been using some hospital lab equipment at the time when you came in for a checkup and finally you have about 18 (including 2 of the nays) actual heart doctors. Of course those heart doctors all have different levels of training because in the country you live there is no formalized requirements for claiming to being a heart doctor (some may have not even gone to medical school).
So the consensus (for what that's worth) is you lifestyle is affecting your heart. So you ask, quite reasonably, what is the #1 thing you should do to help yourself in the future.
30 say - reduce your stress levels at work and home. 34 say - eat healthier (but they suggest 20 different incompatible diets) 26 say - get more exercise (but the suggested amount varies from taking a 30 minute walk every other day to doing a solid hour at the gym daily). 5 say - get more sleep 2 say - align your chakras (hey, who let those chiropractors in?) the 3 say - genetics are the main cause of your issue but eating better and doing some exercise, while not harmful, is always a good idea in general.
Then you ask how much each change will affect your life expectancy and no 2 estimates are the same; ranging from very little to you'll become immortal (seriously, who let those chiropractors in?).
Finally, deep in thought trying to crunch all the numbers from all the 'experts' and their related costs, you walk out of the hospital and are immediately hit by the ambulance.
The article still mentions federal subsidies as well as local subsidies (10 year tax abatements). An article linked in the comments or you linked article even talks about how the projects have slowed since the State stopped handing out subsidies.
Probably because most other places had competent City and State governments in place who knew how to handle the crisis. NO went to hell because no one knew what to do and took forever to even officially request federal aid and even then tried to retain control over things they had no clue how to handle.
People forget than FEMA is not a first response organization. They are suppose to come in to assist already established State and Local teams, take over centralized command if the locals are not capable and to help spread around federal funds where needed. They can do a lot of stuff but it all comes down to what the local governments allow them to do and what aid they can get at the local level.
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Since he was effectively paying himself $1.1 million thereby reducing reported profits (the cause of the lawsuit) and he has yet to actually fully implement his new employee pay structure (it's a 3 year plan) wouldn't his cutting his salary by over $1 million in a company that only reported a $2.2 mill profit previously be responsible for the majority of the new bump.
Just from his pay cut from what was a questionably legal salary the company's profits immediately jumped 50%. With the huge boost in free publicity as well as some other major cash infusions an additional 50% short term increase would not be too surprising.
By his own admission, the idea for changing the salary structure happened on a hike with a friend which occurred weeks after his brother in law served him with papers concerning the upcoming lawsuit (in Seattle you can be served before the actual filing of the suit). The suit was then filed officially filed a couple weeks after his announcement.
The only reference to 2010 was from a paper written in 2010 by a couple of Nobe-laureates that he referred to in his discussion with his friend.
Your numbers don't really help your argument. Being #19 in giving when you are one of the wealthiest countries in the world with one of the highest GNI (gross national income) when countries of similar population size with gni's much lower routinely give more than 4-6 times as much humanitarian assistance just makes it look like your doing it for show. Much like a Prince worth 22 billion (yes with a B) giving 1 million to charity.
That's like gloating because you give a penny to feed the hungry.
And don't look at other countries in the region like Qatar because they make Scrooge McDuck jealous with how tight they hold onto a dollar.
Atheists are not exactly known for being in favour of violence and murder in the name of some god, you know.
No, but there has been a long history of atheist leaders using peoples belief in "some god" as an excuse to kill them en masse.
People have a tendency to see any competing ideology as opposition that must be eliminated, but the degree people are willing to go to eliminate that opposing belief varies greatly. In terms religions (which includes Atheism) it can be any other religion or even other factions of your own religion and they can try to eliminate it through proselytizing or just trying to lead by example or, as is the case of ISIS, just kill off anyone who disagrees with them.
And Liberals, when Chretien was in charge, used threats of expulsion from the party to force back benchers to vote against even a symbolic Reform party proposal to give compensation to victims of the tainted blood scandal of the 80's (oddly enough, the next Liberal PM happened to be on the board of one of the companies that was shipping in tainted blood from the US prisoners to save money). Several were seen to be crying while voting against the non-binding motion.
That one incident goes down in history as possibly the worst display of pure Prime Ministerial abuse of parliament.
Without accepting the fact that they will probably lose power, there is really nothing members of the 'ruling ' party can really do if their PM decides to go on a power trip and no matter how they start, most eventually do.
A properly elected Senate would go a long way in curbing Prime Ministerial abuse. As it stands the Senate is the worlds most expensive rubber stamp, even when stacked with opposition party members. Most senators are just happy to accept their paychecks and not rock the boat because they know having unelected party hacks preventing legislation from passing would look very bad. Without some form of appointment/election system that would at least put the power to determine who represents each zone (since the seats aren't divided by strict provincial lines) into the hands of the people or provincial/territorial governments making up each zone then they really can't serve their proper purpose of giving potential legislation a proper second review.
You do realize, by it very structure anytime we elect a majority government we are effectively living in a dictatorship. The Canadian federal system has no effective check or balances on the power of the PM if they have a majority of the House. Even supreme court decision can be overridden with the "not withstanding" clause.
So saying Harper had to pander to anyone to extend his power is ridiculous because, as Trudeau has already shown, in Canada, what the PM says is essentially the law. House members (mostly of the PMs party) are pretty much just there to fill in the little details on the legislation the PM wants. Opposition MPs are really only there to complain to the cameras.
Without some form of major overhaul we'll just keep going from one dictator to the next with an occasional (and usually short lived) minority government thrown in for spice.
So congrats, your dictator is currently in the big seat but don't try to polish it up to anything more than that or try to make it sound like your different from your opposition.
Election results show the Conservatives only lost about 55,000 votes from the previous election but the Liberals picked up all the new voters plus stole a lot from the NDP for a gain of 4+ million votes.
I'd have to agree with you that legalizing weed was a much larger factor than anything having to do with the census. Hell, if 20% of the weed voters knew it would lead to them having to do homework in the form of the long form census they may not have bothered to show up and we might still have a Conservative government or a minority Liberal one.
The electorate decides who best represents their views and while ~50% of the population are women only 26% of the MPs elected were, meaning that a significant portion of women in the country are just fine with a man representing them, at least in terms of the federal government.
For most people in established democracies, gender is simply not the primary defining condition as to how they want their government managed. They want competent representative that share at least some of their views and if that happens to be a man or a women, so be it. That's not to say that you might not relate more to a person because of shared life experiences that are gender specific (they might be the mother of small children like you) and if that's the determining factor in deciding your vote, that's fine, but once elected it's a poor reason for the person in charge to give someone the reigns of a multibillion dollar branch of government.
Women are representative enough in the all industries that simply choosing good people from your list of elected officials you should get a mix of both sexes. Artificial and unrelated criteria just guarantees you're not going to always get the best person for the job.
And yes, several countries have a higher female representative percentage than Canada but many of them had to rig their systems to force that to occur.
Each cabinet has had people who spent a life outside of politics working in related fields as well as people who have no relation to the department they now head (like say and astronaut and Transport - unless you think we'll start sending things cross country strapped to booster rockets). It was true of Harper's cabinets and is equally true of Trudeau's.
It is funny you mention the Science Minister since it was the last Liberal government who removed that position from cabinet and Harper who brought it back.
The liberals helped balance their books like most politicians balance their books, by cheating.
They made changes to employment insurance requirements which resulted in fewer eligible people. While not necessarily a bad thing based on circumstances, they failed to then adjust the EI payment rates to reflect the new number and instead kept it artificially high to collect more money than following the federal formula would normally allow.
They also made significant cuts to the transfer payments to the provinces, offloading Federal expenses to the various provincial governments. In your household anology, this would be like a slumlord putting in new flooring and an in ground pool at his house while letting all his tenant buildings going to ruins and pointing at his beautiful house to prove how great a real estate mogul he is.
The also greatly benefited by the implementation of the GST under the previous government, the abolishment of which was a major party platform that the Liberals ran on. Surprising no one with a functioning brain cell, the Liberals decided NOT to get rid of the GST once in power.
In general, neither the Conservatives or Liberals have been great at putting forward useful budgets that actually work, the liberals were just a bit better at making theirs look good on paper.
Was it a science based decision to force his cabinet to be 50% male and 50% female? Should decisions as to who runs a department of the government be based on merit not the chromosomal lottery?
Not to say some of the ministers of either sex weren't the best person for the job but whenever you arbitrarily apply some external criteria to your hiring practices you're pretty much guaranteeing the best candidate won't always win.
The video, while not direct evidence into the circumstances of the confrontation and shooting, does go toward the state of mind of Brown. Having just gotten away with the convenience store theft he may have immediately suspected the officers intentions when confronted and asked to move off the street.
Hearing an unarmed man got into a fight with police resulting in his death over a small traffic violation always raises questions. Hearing that same man was wanted for another unrelated crime and most people start to understand why things may have escalated.
It's the same mentality that leads to high speed chases over minor speeding tickets when the driver has either been drinking or driving on a suspended license. People make stupid decisions when they think they are about to get into trouble often leading to outcomes that are far worse than the original problem.
Using the German system of 50% representative and 50% proportional it would have worked out something like:
Liberal: 39.5% of vote = 48.7% of seats vs actual 54.4%
Conservative: 31.9% of vote = 32.1% of seats vs actual 29.3%
NDP: 19.7% of vote = 17.5% of seats vs actual 13%
All other parties failed to meet threshold for proportional seats though to be fair, this is based off our single vote ballot as opposed to Germany's two part ballots.
A little better, to be sure, but still only a handful of seats away from total domination with less than 40% support.
I think in addition to House reforms a properly elected Senate would be a massive improvement. Elected Senators as opposed to lifetime appointments would actually make them accountable to the people.
I also personally think we have too many MPs and Senators for the rubber stamping of PM/party policies they currently do. Sure, they occasionally do some personal work to help constituents but for the most part that could be done by lower level staffers. Either revamp the system or start lowering their numbers.
Every poll including ones requested by the CBC, had support significantly above opposition to the bombing missions, including amongst Liberals and NDP.
see above. every poll had support for the mission significantly above opposition across all party lines.
google is your friend.
Polls by Ipsos Reid, EKOS and Angus Reid all had support for the mission at between 54-74%, while opposition maxed out at 33%. The only place opposition was above approval was in Quebec but on a party line, all parties had a majority supporting the mission (66% for Liberals specifically).
So unless every poll performed on this was just dead wrong, yes, a majority of Canadians supported the mission.
While true, only Liberals or Conservatives/PC have had enough seats to claim the PM title, smaller parties have held significant power at times. Whenever you get a minority government the ruling party must make deals with someone to get legislation passed and it's at those time the smaller parties can get some things done.
The problem is in a majority government the ruling party doesn't have to listen or negotiate with anyone, in many cases even their own members so the PM can pretty much do whatever they want. While not a legislative issue, Trudeau's already shown his willingness to rule from on high by effectively removing Canada from the multinational anti-ISIS campaign against the wishes of his own party members and the majority of Canadians. Our handful of jets weren't doing much but at least they gave us a voice at the table and showed some willingness to help.
There are simply no checks or balances in a majority government.
If we at least had a useful Senate then there might be some hope but seeing as they are all just appointed and would rather not rock the boat while getting their nice paychecks, what the PM wants the PM pretty much gets.
As far as I know RT's weighing formula is simply the total numerical score given to a movie from reviewers divided by the number of reviewers. That's why their scores show all decimal points (6.4/10 or 3.1/10); there is no rounding. You can select which reviewers are included in their rating but it's still simple math.
The freshness rating is another creature entirely and while quasi-related to the score, the reviewers are free to rate a movie fresh or not independent of the score they gave it. That's why you can see a reviewer giving a movie 6.5/10 on their own site but still rated as rotten. Reviewers are not held to specific rules as to what they define as fresh or rotten.
Talking about a solution used by a country of just over 20 million with a population density of 3/km2 is just barely above useless when talking about US issues.
Good idea, let's make sure that criminals know that all those homes in the middle to low income parts of town are generally "gun free zones" and they are free to enter as they wish.
As is common in the anti-gun crowd stats, deaths and not homicides are generally used to show how evil guns are. Your own link has a link to FBI stats showing that while deaths began increasing, homicides continued decreasing. Why the discrepancy? Suicide stats show that at around the same time of the uptick suicide rates began to clime again and the primary method of choice for suicides in the US is of course, guns.
These same anti-gun stats groups also attempt to link access to guns to suicides but studies comparing suicide rates between countries with varying level of gun access show rates generally unaffected by gun access. Depressed or desperate people find a way.
The assault weapons ban was also generally a meaningless piece of legislation as there is no such thing as an assault weapon, or it's probably more accurate to say all weapons are by definition "assault weapons". Most of the restrictions in "assault weapons" laws target cosmetic components of guns are are easily bypassed with a few mods by the manufacturers. Grip and stock styles and choice in optional mounting brackets did not affect the behavior of the actual gun or change its lethality but looked great for politicians trying to get their faces on TV.
Passing real legislation to fund and improve validation systems which can properly link databases together so that mental health restrictions and other red flags are visible in a timely manner during background checks just isn't the same as being able to hold up an M16 lookalike on camera and talk about how your new law "pulls machine guns off the street" even though machine guns were never legally available in the first place (but what constituents don't know doesn't hurt you in the polls).
It used to be between $50-80 but it's been $100 for a while now. I believe it's even mentioned in the Interac commercials that play every now and then.
My grocery bills are routinely in the $90 range and I always tap to pay. It's amazing how annoying it is when you just go over the limit and have to take the 10 seconds to insert your card and type the pin.
Continuing with that analogy.
Of those 100 'doctors' you consult, 15 are podiatrists, 25 are ophthalmologists, 6 are audiologist, there's a handful of anesthesiologist there are also a large group of non-doctors who happened to have been using some hospital lab equipment at the time when you came in for a checkup and finally you have about 18 (including 2 of the nays) actual heart doctors. Of course those heart doctors all have different levels of training because in the country you live there is no formalized requirements for claiming to being a heart doctor (some may have not even gone to medical school).
So the consensus (for what that's worth) is you lifestyle is affecting your heart. So you ask, quite reasonably, what is the #1 thing you should do to help yourself in the future.
30 say - reduce your stress levels at work and home.
34 say - eat healthier (but they suggest 20 different incompatible diets)
26 say - get more exercise (but the suggested amount varies from taking a 30 minute walk every other day to doing a solid hour at the gym daily).
5 say - get more sleep
2 say - align your chakras (hey, who let those chiropractors in?)
the 3 say - genetics are the main cause of your issue but eating better and doing some exercise, while not harmful, is always a good idea in general.
Then you ask how much each change will affect your life expectancy and no 2 estimates are the same; ranging from very little to you'll become immortal (seriously, who let those chiropractors in?).
Finally, deep in thought trying to crunch all the numbers from all the 'experts' and their related costs, you walk out of the hospital and are immediately hit by the ambulance.
The article still mentions federal subsidies as well as local subsidies (10 year tax abatements). An article linked in the comments or you linked article even talks about how the projects have slowed since the State stopped handing out subsidies.
Probably because most other places had competent City and State governments in place who knew how to handle the crisis. NO went to hell because no one knew what to do and took forever to even officially request federal aid and even then tried to retain control over things they had no clue how to handle.
People forget than FEMA is not a first response organization. They are suppose to come in to assist already established State and Local teams, take over centralized command if the locals are not capable and to help spread around federal funds where needed. They can do a lot of stuff but it all comes down to what the local governments allow them to do and what aid they can get at the local level.