I’m sorry, but this is shameful. He can’t stand on Canadian soil and make such a declaration and he’s still pretending that he’s done something special with the Canadian economy.
What’s his track record?
Record deficits
Structural financial issues
Massive handouts to non-Canadian companies
Elaborate and expensive advertising campaigns, resulting in billions in taxpayer funds going to Canada’s media monopolies
Expensive defense programs that have no lid on them
Brutal attacks on democratic institutions in Canada
And now … the war on pensioners.
If you’re a Conservative, can you really be proud of this? Do you enjoy the idea of pulling the plug on your parents?
Good luck Boomers. Enjoy your Alpo after all the contributions you’ve made to Canada.
I hope you think twice before you choose Conservatives and pocket-book politics if we ever get a chance to go to the polls again.
Is this an admission of the failure of the world’s economic intellectual ‘powerhouses’ to develop a real and functional economic system that doesn’t pit man against man, man against nature, and so on?
I didn’t think I’d really care about what happens with the GOP (Republican) race in the US, but the reality is that there is one candidate that makes sense to me: Ron Paul.
And there’s something that doesn’t make sense to me: the coverage (or lack thereof) of this candidate and the other candidates being presented as the most likely to win.
CNN in the US has completely dropped Ron Paul from the list of Republican candidates, possibly because some of the people with CNN are married to the military establishment, but possibly because Ron Paul simply sends a message that they don’t like.
In a CNN poll buried along the right-hand column of the same news page, there’s a poll. Here were the results yesterday afternoon, with more than 250,000 people answering the question:
Ron Paul is the leader, fighting it out with Romney. Gingrich is a distant third.
If you don’t like these numbers, how about a little comedy from Jon Stewart:
What’s important is the lack of fair coverage with the likes of CNN. The question is why? Why would they risk any journalistic integrity that they purport to have and avoid coverage of this viable candidate.
Under Ron Paul, many supporters hope that the military would face severe cuts (although this remains to be seen). CNN reporter Gloria Borger is married to Lance Morgan, influential employee with Tate Powell, a lobby group in Washington. Tate Powell also happens to represent the US military, US Chamber of Commerce and dozens of other organizations that wouldn’t be in favour of big cuts to the pork-barreling politics that is the US government today.
Now, I don’t really care about all of this, but I feel it’s important for people to understand that there are bigger things at play when it comes to what’s happening in US politics.
The only clue available on the links above is that the story is regurgitated from the Canadian Press, Canada’s for-profit propaganda source owned by Bell and others. Perhaps they have everything to gain from unending war from the US?
From ‘the Rothschild Model’ to the ‘Rise of Corporations’ as methods by which we are all fueling perpetual war.
This is 26 minutes well spent.
Of course, not all of it should be taken as gospel, but we need to understand his last comments as they relate to the ‘market’. There is a supra-national group of organizations that are not subject to any democratic input.
I also like the solution: don’t fight the beast. Stop feeding it.
The essence of the article addresses America’s expansion around the world and extension of hegemonic corporate powers universally.
It explores the deceit that’s being used to fool us into believing that a revolution is happening worldwide, while it also exposes the abyssmal coverage of the #occupy movement that occurred in North America and elsewhere.
Go ahead. Click through, print off and grab a coffee and enjoy some truth for the holidays!
Yes, it was an important story as a record number of Canadians declined to exercise their most important right – the right to vote – and allowed the Harper cons to take over Canadian politics in an absolute way.
Of course, 2011 got even better for them because Harper cajoled the opposition parties into an election and turned around and blamed them for being power hungry. Really? No irony in that statement?
The resulting election was another pile of cash thrown at all of the major media companies by ALL of the major political parties (including the NDP).
Net impact for Bell, TorStar and SVC: mega profits at the expense of Canadians.
No wonder they were quick to trip over themselves to declare that 2011 was the Year of Harper. In fact, I’d suggest it’s all part of the plan.
When is our fricking independent media going to get organized and call BS on this kind of crap?
This Act will allow the American military to arrest any American citizen without cause and without warrant if there’s even the most remote whiff of ‘terrorist’ smell to them.
Once arrested, people can be detained indefinitely.
These are basic principles that were fought against in the American War of Independence.
And now they’re gone.
And if they’re gone in the US – the birthplace of modern democracy – don’t expect better treatment elsewhere.
It won’t be long folks. Arbitrary and multiple arrests will be coming.
In the world of fiscal and monetary policy, once you make specific changes, it’s very difficult to turn back on them.
Unfortunately, this is true for reductions that we’ve seen in the past with specific tools like the GST (now HST) which was reduced by Stephen Harper, Dalton McGuinty and other leaders in an economically questionable tactic to get into office. Today, our economic instability continues and yet our leaders still commit to reducing corporate tax rates, forcing us to shake our heads at the gross inequality of Canadian citizens compared to capital owners.
With this in mind, I’d like to spin the topic a little towards something more positive: eliminating or reducing tax deductions. I’m sure lots has been written about this, but I personally feel that little has been done to explore the impact of altering deductions when it comes to corporate and income tax policy. Here are some standard deductions, all of which create questionable policy outcomes:
Car and gas: the more I drive for business, the less I pay in tax. Larger organizations would have entire ‘fleets’ that are deductible for tax purposes. Also, allowing car, gas and other fleet deductions encourages the consumption of the wrong kind of transportation and carbon-based fuels. My mind would change if someone actually developed a functional hydrogen vehicle or mode of transport that used an alternative fuel, but allowing these carbon deductions only keeps us stuck in the 20th century.
Meals and entertainment: the more I eat and the more hockey games I go to, the less tax I pay. This makes no sense.
Land and real estate assets: I don’t know a lot about this, but my instincts are that if we taxed inactive land assets, they would be used for economic activity or put on the market. While this might push down the value of land in the short-run, it would ease the cost for entrepreneurs to open up office space or local retail locations. It would also help put an end to the miles of waste that we see everywhere now with closed offices, land for lease and excessive apartment costs.
Business losses: my understanding is that business losses that are accumulated in any given year can be carried forward for use indefinitely years for the company in question and are also transferable to other subsidiary or parent companies. Are there ways to proactively reduce losses that are carried forward against profitable organizations? I know I’m playing with fire on this, but at what point should we just force unprofitable companies to be shut down?
Charity activity: ‘charity’ runs counter to the goals of profit maximization, so why do we allow massive deductions against corporate activity (some might argue ‘meddling’) with charities and non-profits? Why don’t we just increase the deduction at the personal level?
Professional services: how many lawyers are enough?
Dividend tax preference: once again, I’ll concede that the economics on this topic are grey, but giving preferential tax status to dividend income seems to run counter to income earned from non-dividend sources.
Special incentives and investment programs: All levels of government are hobbled by excessive grant giveaways and most of the companies that benefit from these programs have shareholders that simply don’t need handouts from the public. Great examples of this are the Canadian Magazine Fund and the Canadian Film and Video Tax Credit. Do we really need to give CTV and Quebecor hundreds of millions of dollars each year to produce what amounts to propaganda?
Of course, most of you who are intensely more familiar with tax policy would quickly jump on me and argue that many of these deductions are equal in the sense that small businesses and co-ops can make use of them as much as a large corporation can.
Unfortunately, most small businesses can’t even afford these expenses and rarely take a moment to spend any more than a couple of hundred dollars per year on the odd hockey game or taking a buddy to brunch. As someone who describes himself as a small business owner, I know this to be true.
All I’m suggesting is that we consider caps on these deductions and for some, look at ways to eliminate them all together as effective ways to shape social policy and reaction out of prudent fiscal measures. For example, now that we live in the digital age, why do we need to drive to meetings? Why don’t we just do more via Skype calls or by leveraging other video-conferencing tools?
In an ideal world, we address simply questions of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ by understanding that our tax system is excessively skewed to the benefit of those that own it: governments and the corporations that own them.
Simple modifications will improve financial liquidity for our governments and ensure that fairness is restored to average citizens. I think this is something we can all accept, possibly including those with #occupywallstreet.
Ultimately, any or all of these changes push the needle towards a flat tax, but that’s something best discussed in another article.
While it’s extremely unlikely that the Harperites will follow his advice, I fully agree that now is the time to open all books for any organization that receives (or received) public funds of any kind. If unions are being wrenched open – and I don’t see why they shouldn’t – then we have an opportunity to apply ‘what’s fair’ logic to the other organizations listed below:
Organizations like the bar, medical, engineering and other professional associations that members must join in order to practice in their fields
Private corporations that receive any form of subsidy paid by taxpayers
Private corporations that bid on any publicly financed contract
Any corporation or organization that exists for the purpose of influencing public policy, including lobbying firms and “think-tanks” not associated with public institutions, which have their own reporting requirements
Associations of corporations, businesses or individuals that by definition try to influence public policy and trade practices
Churches and religious organizations that raise funds for other than purely spiritual matters, including the operation of chartable, educational or public policy institutions
Any organization that can give charitable tax receipts for donations
I would add defense contractors and police organizations to the list, assuming the latter don’t already have to fully disclose details about spending activities (eg. G20 largesse) as part of annual budget reports.
It just makes perfect sense. If you want to hide and recede from public scrutiny, then stop milking the public teat. Stop accepting public funds.
If you want to get grants, subsidies or economic benefit of any kind, then accept the fact that the public has a RIGHT to see what you’ve earned, what you did with the money and decide if it was a good use of funds.
If we have this kind of openness, it’ll likely result in a significant reduction in the number of charities that have been set up simply to ensure a tax dodge for their creators and will go a long way to curbing the corruption that we’ve fomented in places like Montreal with programs like the Economic Action Plan.
The age of openness is upon us. Conservatives ramming this aggressive ideological agenda down the throats of left-of-centre organizations like unions and the CBC will only cause grief for themselves as Canadians demand more insight into the rest of the organizations that they are involved with.
