Quote of the Day: “I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals’ imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.” Thomas Sowell
Liz Monteiro and Laura Booth, in their Front Page article today tell us that: “It’s a horrific time to be buying” a house. Oh, how shocking. On Monday, I can hardly wait for their equally shocking headline: “It’s a terrific time to be selling” a house.
Luisa D’Amato gives us the results of an Ipsos survey of Regional Police Service members that was presented at the 03 February 2021 police board meeting. She tells us that job satisfaction is very high at 80% – considering the events of last year. But she claims that: “The bad news is how slowly the police are changing in response to an increasingly diverse community.” Ummm…. I’m not sure how this is bad news. Turnover at WRPS is rather low and that is reflected in the job satisfaction scores. So, just exactly what does D’Amato want to do? Dump experienced white cops and hire, new inexperienced rookies by skin colour. Some people would call this racist. Some people just do not think. And would someone please sit down with D’Amato and give her a quick stats lesson. It is embarrassing how this former WLU lecturer could be so out of it when it comes to simple statistical concepts. She says: “Of the 509 people who responded to the survey, 93% are white. Yet in Waterloo Region, as a whole, 81% are white while 19% are visible minority” What? The last time I checked the WRPS have about 800 active service members. How can you compare the number of respondents to a non-compulsory survey to a racial population and pretend to come up with some kind of valid comparison? She says that the “…police use force against Black people six times more frequently that the Black population overall would warrant.” Wrong. You cannot make this conclusion based on general population numbers. I’ve mentioned this before so I’m not going into the math but there are many factors (age for example, criminality for example, social economic standing for example) that are overriding determinants of force besides a straight population percentage. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Luisa!!!
Very interesting column by Beverly Sabourin and Peter Globensey on the Editorial Page today. They state that “A white supremacist is simply a racist, and that is what they should be called” and they are 100% correct. They give the correct dictionary definition of the word racist and tell us that according to Oxford Language Dictionary, “a racist is a person who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically some that is a minority of marginalized.” And I agree. So, I think that TheRecord should apply this standard to all of its columns and articles. No more throwing the word “racist” around unless it meets this strict definition. O.K. Editorial Board???
Here is the opening few words in Leah Connor’s Community Editorial Board op-ed today. Quote: “By now most of us are familiar with Wilmot Mayor Les Armstrong’s racist social media post…” Oh my. And she used the R word. Pathetic.