This Blog is About to Rise Again
What a headline, like this blog had really been active before and died. I have paid very little attention to this blog as other things in my life took my attention away. I’m using this spring, the spring of 2010, as a time of rebirth for this blog.
Cash Challenged is going to be focused on helping Canadians understand how to deal with their debt, how to rebuild their credit, how to live more frugally and to build savings for their future.
I’m a debt & insolvency counsellor registered with the Superintendent’s Office. I’ve been meeting and working with debtors in financial distress for several years and will be bringing that knowledge to this forum to help my visitors learn to take control back in their lives.
In the coming days I’ll be installing a contact form for you to be able to reach me privately and to ask your questions. I’ll do the best I can to let you know what your options are and point you in the direction of finding the help you need.
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Gmail URL Trap
If you are engaged in email marketing, you will need to be careful how you format your links for those receiving your emails in Google’s GMail.
It appears Google has made a change which has impacted the entry of links. If you make sure all your links start with “www” then you should be okay. If you prefer to drop the “www” then be sure NOT to use capital letters in your URLs.
Have a look at this video by Frank Bauer for a more detailed explanation of how to structure your links.
visit the Patti Network News to see where else I’m writing.
Law & Order? — Maybe
The optics on the Rahmm Jaffer decision yesterday is just plain bad.
A former Conservative federal member of parliament, married to a current Conservative Cabinet minister is charged last fall with impaired driving and possession of cocaine. He comes before a judge who was appointed by the current federal Finance Minister when he was the provincial Attorney General. He gets off with what amounts to a slap on the wrist by pleading guilty to a dangerous driving charge and receiving a $500 fine.
The Crown gave no explanation for the deal they struck other than saying they had no reasonable chance of conviction. For just about any other, average Canadian, blowing over on the breathalyser would result in a conviction. These days even blowing .05 results in an immediate license suspension which doesn’t even get you a day in court.
As for the cocaine possession charge, if he wasn’t in the possession of cocaine then why didn’t the Crown just exonerate him and admit the police’s error? Maybe because that would be just out and out lying instead of just deception.
Yes, I know, he was convicted in provincial court and all those elected officials involved directly or indirectly are all federal types. If you believe that feds don’t get favours from officials at other levels of government, have I got some smoke and mirrors you need to buy.
The last time I looked, drug possession is a federal crime. Yes, feds as in those ‘law and order’ Conservatives who would jail someone for possessing one marijuana plant but can let a provincial Crown drop a cocaine possession charge.
Not being a drug user myself, I’m prone to get this wrong but is cocaine not considered a harder drug than pot? OH, just for citizens who don’t have the right connections and deep pockets.
The Conservatives don’t have a corner on situations smelling really bad.. doesn’t make it okay when they do though.
So, did Jaffer get political relief or is he just a poor misunderstood fellow?
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Does God Play Favourites?
Through a friend on Twitter, @gailhyatt I’ve been exposed to some Orthodox Christian podcasts. They are interesting to listen to, they provide perspectives I wouldn’t always encounter from an Anglican viewpoint. Everyone needs perspective.
One of the podcasts I listen to is by a Father Thomas Hopko, it is called “Speaking the Truth in Love”. A week or so ago Fr. Tom read an email he had received from a listener which caught my attention. She wanted to know why God played favourites.
The lady indicated in her email she had grown up in an alcoholic home, which at minimum meant she had experienced emotional abuse. I didn’t grow up in an alcoholic home but I experienced abuse.
The lady wrote that she believed some children are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, they are holy from birth and have all of the advantages. Others never get the chance to become saints because they are used and abused and never have a choice. She asks why some go sailing up the mountain to be saints while others stumble around at the foot of the mountain, never able to trust God enough to make it up the mountain.
She hasn’t been able to trust people let alone a God who doesn’t talk to her. A God she doesn’t believe she’d have a chance of having prayers answered for really important things in her life. She has tried for 15 years and hasn’t been able to form a relationship with God. She concludes by asking: “Is God too busy with ones he really likes to even bother with the ones at the foot of the mountain?”
Fr. Tom answered as the theologian he is, I have some thoughts as a lay person and a fellow survivor.
Twenty years ago, I could have been the lady writing that email, except I hadn’t spent 15 years trying to form a relationship with God. I had spent 15 years rejecting the whole concept of God though.
I had been raised in a nominally Christian home. I say nominally in that my parents taught Sunday School classes, faithfully took us to Sunday school and church. I was always bothered by the seeming disconnect between Sunday and the rest of the week. I rarely remembered any mention of what I learned at church and what happened in our lives being remotely connected. No wonder that by 15 I was anxious to rid myself of church.
The relationship with God came after I learned to trust some people in my life. After I learned that there are people who can and should earn trust. I’m still slow to trust but once it is earned, I find much strength in being able to. It was one of those people I slowly learned to trust who started my awakening to giving a relationship with God a second look.
At some level I caught on that God speaks to me in His way, and it’s my challenge to recognise the ways. I rarely discern his hand in my life until later, it takes listening, watching and thought on my part. If I waited for God to just respond to my prayers like a person does to my comments, I’d never believe God was anywhere in my life.
I’ve learned along the way I can’t control how the relationship with God develops. As much as I really want to, I have to let it develop as I seek deeper understanding of what that relationship means.
For some reason, I don’t find myself feeling less in God’s eyes because I experienced abuse. I’ve learned to accept that I can stumble around at times. I can even fall flat on my face. When I stand upright again He’s just as much present as he was when I was stumbling or falling.
I’ve managed to reconnect with the instincts which help to guide me in how I respond to people through learning to trust in He who I can’t see. I think I’d be inclined to suggest to this lady that instead of waiting on faith, she needs to pursue her faith. She may discover the question isn’t so much why is God ignoring her as it is, why is she ignoring Him?
What was your experience with coming to faith? Did God pursue you or you Him?
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Where Is the Recalibration?
Well, I’ve read through the Throne Speech which was delivered yesterday. I’ve read some of the commentary which has appeared this morning in reaction to it. For the most part, they are echoing my thoughts as I read through the speech, where exactly is the recalibration? There was very little real focus or meat.
I had the sense that the speech came about from a brainstorming session around the Cabinet table on how many buttons could they find to press in a bid to make Canadians believe this government has a real sense of need and direction. The point form results was then handed over to speech writers to form into what was delivered yesterday.
I know the devil is in the details and Throne Speeches are not where one would expect to see details. Some will emerge today as the Budget is delivered. For the most part, speech repeated previous announcements and claims from the government.
Public Wage Freezes
It does say there will be a freeze on not only public service budgets but the wages of the Cabinet, Senators and MPs. That is really sharing in the hardship that 1.5million Canadians are going through, not to mention the millions of Canadians who find themselves under-employed as the result of jobs lost through business failures and jobs moved offshore.
If the government really wants to show some belt tightening, they should be looking at some cuts to their $100,000 plus salaries and pensions. Struggling Canadians just don’t relate to a freeze on incomes which are already higher than they can expect to see.
Foreign Investment & Free Trade
The speech says it will be opening the door to more foreign investment in the telecom and mining industries. Canadians have already watched many of our Canadian firms being gobbled up by foreign interests under this government’s watch. When the doors are thrown open for foreign interests to sweep in, the dangers of Canadian jobs going offshore rise proportionally.
We need to be likewise wary of free trade agreements the government is overseeing. There has already been alarm raised in some quarters that the agreement being negotiated with the European Union could see some areas of our public service forced into privatization in order to conform to the terms of the agreement.
That is not safeguarding Canadian sovereignty. The Conservatives can wave the flag all they want, protecting our right to make Canadian choices puts the proof in the pudding.
Law & Order Platform
Once again, the government is touting their so called law and order platform. A platform sledge hammered into Parliament as supposedly necessary and urgent. Those same bills that died on the order table when Harper closed Parliament for almost three months in order to recalibrate are once again being trotted out.
While I agree with the premise of some of the measures, like keeping violent convicts in jail for life, I note the government has been very coy about the added financial burden on the taxpayer of the increased prison population. The speech claims this is the will of the Canadian people. Really? I must have missed that referendum.
Increasing the prison population doesn’t decrease crime. Our neighbours to the south have learned that already. Increased prison populations, at a time when crime rates are dropping, only serves to incubate increased crime later on as non-violent offenders learn to graduate to violent offenders. Who is going to be building and running the additional prisons these bills will necessitate?
Democratic Reform
The speech references the government’s continued intent to ‘reform’ the Senate but no references to democratic reform a little closer to home, like curbing the powers of the Prime Minister. Those powers have been subject to abuse for many years but none have escalated the abuse to the point Harper has.
Canadians are becoming more aware of this democratic defict and will increasingly demanding change. Which politician is going to have the guts to curb his own power or potential power in the name of democracy and accountability?
Have you read the speech? How do you view it?
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