Musings —12.22.2010 01:21 AM
—Share Christmas
If you live in Toronto – or if you live near Toronto – I’m extending an invitation.
This afternoon starting at about 4 p.m., my kids and I will participate in Community Centre 55’s annual Share A Christmas campaign. If you’re nearby, and you have time, you should, too.
In Share A Christmas, we deliver food and toys to hundreds of families in Toronto’s East End. Families apply to receive the food baskets and toys, and they come all faiths and walks of life. We’ve delivered food to community housing neighbourhoods, but also to addresses where families have fallen on bad luck, or worse. For my kids, it is always an eye-opener, and it always leaves a big (and positive) impression on them. You get rewarded in a special way, too.
C’mon by. You – and we – will be glad you did.
Details are here. We converge on Centre 55 at 97 Main Street, between Kingston Road and Gerrard, at about 4 p.m. We get food – and, if there are kids in the family, toys too – and start delivering right away. It’s an amazing program, and one that helped more than 600 families last year.
Hope to see you there.
By participating in Community Centre 55’s Share A Christmas, you too, can earn special and rare recognition! Get your Bachelor, Master or PhD of Christmas…………..
Although Warren is too humble to draw attention to this, he and his kids are officially Doctor’s of Christmas.
http://www.centre55.com/blog_2009.htm
Give charity to the poor and they call you a saint. Ask why people still live in poverty and they call you a communist. If we had any politicians with the intestinal fortitude to reintroduce a stoutly progressive income tax on the top 2% of income earners like we did in the 1950’s and 60’s and took that cash and used it to top up the incones of the bottom 5% to a LIVING income like the good folks of … Oh … Sweden and Norway and Finland and Denmark and Austria and … we wouldn’t need charity and more people could actually participate in the economy and it’s completely doable. The alternative is to give $21 billion to American arms dealers for flying bricks or turning our pensions over to Wall Street. Doesn’t seem like a tough choice to me (or for the Conservative Party.)
….Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work,
Retire, Volunteer, Retribution, Redemption, Die.
I’ve often wondered if the Chilean pension system is the way to go, even though it was introduced by Pinochet’s regime. Rather than a government-run plan, workers have a choice of six different privately-administered plans, with a variety of payment options and benefits. Of course, there are government guarantees to prop the system up in difficult circumstances.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile_pension_system
The Chilean system is terrible. It’s not a real system. It’s forced payment to private corporations with no guarantee of income. The point of an income security system for seniors is to ensure NO senior citizen has to live in abject poverty as was frequently the case in years past. A public pension is guaranteed. Half of chileans have no pension to speak of. It’s not equal. Government isn’t a business and we’re not customers. We’re citizens. There’s a difference. Conservatives don’t seem to know this. Government is the entity through which we guarantee equality and take care of each other. Wall Street won’t look after anyone … Except maybe Henry Paulsen and Ben Bernanke.
“You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time;
all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.” Charles
Bukowski