Kathleen Wynne's bizarre assault on Stephen Harper

Kathleen Wynne has been feuding with Stephen Harper, in part because he refuses to have the feds  collect the mandatory deductions for her new Ontario pension plan.  And why would he?  He is against expanding CPP mandatory deductions, favoring instead voluntary contributions, the  approach preferred by, for example, the employers of 2/3 of the private sector workforce.

Kelly McParland on Wynne's latest bizarro outburst:

Wynne’s latest effort is the suggestion that, had Harper been prime minister instead of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s national railway would never have been built.

... This is an odd statement, considering the considerable efforts Ottawa has put into convincing Ontario to get behind Energy East, the transcontinental pipeline that would move crude from Alberta and Saskatchewan to Saint John. It’s a truly national project, it would work to the benefit of the country as a whole, would create jobs and expand domestic refining activity ...

... Wynne and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard have issued a list of conditions they want met before they will deign to support the project.

... If Sir John A. had faced similar efforts to derail the railway over patently partisan provincial antics, the great project might indeed never have been completed. But it wouldn’t have been Ottawa’s fault, it would have been that of petty, narrow-minded premiers protecting their flanks at the expense of the country as a whole.

This an example of how the "loony left" earns its name.

BC Transit referendum - a big fat NO! to a new tax

Jordon Bateman, head of the BC office of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation and leader of the NO! campaign explains the huge victory to Ezra:



The referendum was non-binding but you can bet, given the 62/38 result, that politicians will feel bound by it anyway. 

Indians balking at transparency

Brian Lilley:

One of the biggest themes in politics right now is transparency, letting the taxpayers, the people who foot the bill, know where their money is being spent. Most politicians have accepted it but others continue to fight.

This week a group of Native leaders announced they would take the federal government to court to challenge the First Nations Financial Transparency Act.  ...

Here in BC the Legislative Assembly makes the law on financial accountability/transparency applicable to all municipalities, towns and cities in the province.  They are required to publicly account for every penny of taxpayers' money spent.  Also by law, they are required to publicly reveal the salaries of every public servant earning $75,000 or more (by name, alphabetically).  I'm sure this is also the case for every other municipality, town and city across the country.

As the provinces are for their municipalities, etc, the federal government is responsible for setting the rules for financial accounting on Indian Reserves. Chief Fox and others objecting to this (as "racist", no less) is absolutely asinine.  Their objections to financial transparency are beyond bizarre! (the only possible reason is that they have some very interesting things to hide).  What is also bizarre is that such laws haven't always been in place.

I doubt they have legal leg to stand on, but should their attempt to avoid accountability make it into court let's hope they don't draw some bone-head of a liberal judge who sympathizes with them.

Income splitting helps the poor, too

Lawrence Solomon:

Many left-leaning advocacy groups and some on the right criticize the federal government’s income-splitting proposal as sops for the rich that offer nothing to 85% of Canadian households.  To the contrary, the middle class and especially the poor would be profound beneficiaries of income splitting, along with society as a whole. ...

The family should be recognized for its fundamental role in wealth creation ...

Tory thinking compared with Putin's Russia

William Watson on Fin Min Flaherty's suggestion that the Tories might renege on PM Harper's income-splitting promise:

... The buzz is that the government may backtrack on its promise to introduce income-splitting once it has balanced the budget. 

... If the Tories do decide not to spend a couple of billion dollars establishing what most of their supporters do think of as fairness in the tax system, they need to come up with a better rationale than the one they’ve floated so far, which is the Liberal-technocratic one that in today’s labour market the skill shortage is so acute we mustn’t do anything that encourages skilled workers to withdraw ...

Don’t we know there’s a skill shortage (supposedly) and a productivity crisis (supposedly) and that, like our Olympic athletes, we all need to put our shoulder to the wheel for the Motherland?

Well, that may be how they do things in Putin’s Russia, where the leadership regards every Russian as one of Putin’s workers. But it’s not how we do things here. We’re not all Harper’s, or Flaherty’s, workers.

How we do things here is that we establish a fair tax system that raises the revenues we need to pay for basic services  .... And then we let people make their own decisions about the relative worth of making an extra dollar of market income versus tending to their own or their family’s needs.  In particular, we don’t have a policy that says, even implicitly, a woman’s place is in the labour market combating the skill shortage.

Strengthening families by increasing their options has been core Conservative social policy from square one. And tax policy that encourages people to raise families is one way (besides immigration) to help sustain our economic growth. It is also a step towards an effective alternative to unaffordable "progressive" programs like national universal daycare.

If Stephen Harper fails to keep his income-splitting promise it will be at the Conservatives' peril. While no serious Conservative supporter would waste his vote on any other party, many, like me, would simply withhold their vote and stop donations if betrayed on this.

The CBC and The Economist promote green huxster's "report" on BC carbon tax

University of Ottawa professor Stewart Elgie founded an organization called "Sustainable Prosperity",  "a national green economy think tank/do tank ... in the pursuit of a greener, more competitive Canadian economy."   [Note that Preston Manning is listed as a steering committee member.]

Sustainable Prosperity recently published Prof Elgie's upbeat "report" on BC's carbon tax - "An Environmental (and Economic)Success Story" promoted first by the CBC and yesterday by The Economist.

Given Elgie's green activist orientation it behooves one to read his report with some skepticism as it is likely to be tainted with substantial confirmation bias (and worse).  Both Elgie and his report are critiqued by Hilary:

Ottawa based Stewart Elgie – not unlike IPCC-nik and recently elected British Columbia Green Party MLA, Andrew Weaver – has a history of putting advocacy carts ahead of evidence horses. ...

And here's a commenter on The Economist piece:

... BC per capita energy use has been declining since 1978. The post CTax rate of decline is actually been SLOWER than the 2000-2007 trend (the CTax was announced and introduced in 2008)for the package of CTaxed goods, and most of the individual commodities in the package. ...

... BC's economy has always been less carbon-intensive than the rest of Canada's (due to its large hydro resource and two of the most densly populated major urban areas in the country) But comparisons of BC's fossil carbon energy usage and the rest of Canada's show that BC's relative advantage was much better every year from 2002 through 2007 than any year after the CTax was introduced.  ...

... Second, over 85% of the post-Ctax reduction in BC energy use was reductions in industrial energy use. This reflected the historically unprecedented shrinkage of BC's forest products and paper manufacturing sectors ...

... the driver of post-2007 energy demand reduction in BC has been de-industrialization. Manufacturing employment in BC has fallen 26% since the CTax was introduced, while the Cdn national average has been a 15% decline.  ... etc.

BC's revenue neutral (Not!) carbon tax

Willis Eschenbach's fourth of a four part series taking a comprehensive look at the "British Utopia" carbon tax:

... The first cost to me in this is the cost to common sense. Making energy more expensive is going in exactly the wrong direction. Forcing people to pay more for energy makes no sense at all. I want to see energy get CHEAPER, not more expensive. I cannot put this too strongly:

Cheap energy is the salvation of the poor ... This means that anyone advocating policies that add to the price of energy is actively harming the poor ...  slowing economic development in the parts of the planet that need it most.

... The second cost involves the concept of a “revenue neutral” tax. ... To understand the problem with this, let me try to disambiguate two concepts—“revenue neutral” taxes, and “sin” taxes. ... the more just and equitable the revenue-neutral sin tax is, the less it will affect behavior. In other words, in order for a revenue-neutral sin tax to be effective, it needs to be unfair …

... The third cost is one of fairness, and this one has huge ramifications. Children I know all over the world have a clear sense of what’s not fair. Despite being revenue-neutral, which the BC plan demonstrably is, the plan is far from fair.

... The fourth cost is the cost to the poor. I give them their own category because the poor are hit the hardest by rising energy costs.

The fifth cost is the tax on the tax. Of course, the Government of Canada gets to charge the Goods and Service Tax (GST) ...

The sixth cost is the overhead. You can’t run a complex program like a carbon-based energy tax without lots of paper pushers.

The seventh cost is the pensions. Every person taking your tax money today and faithfully giving it back to you tomorrow in blessed revenue neutrality will be taking your tax money for thirty years after they retire and not giving back a dime.

The eighth cost is the rent-seekers. These include folks like Sustainable Canada and other organizations for whom this is a grant-raising bonanza. ... They produce nothing useful, they are a dead weight on society, but they come right along with the tax, they mate for life.

The ninth cost is the cost of tax avoidance/evasion. ...under any definition there are several costs in this arena of what might be called creative responses to the BC tax.

The tenth cost is the hours people will spend filling out the paperwork.

The eleventh cost is official hypocrisy. One surprising thing I found out in researching this is that the good burghers of BC have fields containing evil natural gas …  and even more coal ...

The twelfth cost is officials denying inconvenient reality. The so-called “fugitive emissions” (meaning leaks) of methane are a big issue with the radical left who would like to end fracking (and civilization as well, apparently).

Corruption in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) + nitwit mayors and useless media

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) is holding its annual conference in Vancouver this year.  This is the conference attended by Mayors and municipal staff to share ideas (collude) on stuff like, you know, "green" plans, "sustainability" initiatives and "climate change" strategies (aka wasting wads of cash ripped off from taxpayers).   Ezra Levant describes it as a lobby group that received $550 million in taxpayer funds from the federal government. 

Ezra also pointed out in this segment how and why corrupt thugs from FCM blacklisted a Montreal contractor from its tradeshow for having the temerity to advocate more efficient, open and honest tendering of municipal acquisition contracts:



And where's the Media Party?  One wonders whether or not this FCM corruption was a topic of discussion at the conference, at least informally among attendees.   Also, was the corruption in Quebec discussed?  There's real corruption in the FCM and real corruption in Quebec municipalities, so you might think the media would give their reporters an assignment to ask some relevant questions.   Well, there was no sign of it on my local CTV news last night.  The one and only topic they saw fit to cover was: "Rob Ford criticism bubbles up at Canadian mayors’ conference".  [The mayors were all atwitter, like giddy schoolgirls sharing hot gossip.  Note that one scumbag mayor, Frank Leonard of Saanich, BC, skated close to slander by suggesting Ford should be in jail.]   A worthless media sinks farther into irrelevance.

Steyn and Hannity discuss the "fiscal cliff"

P*ssing on the poor - Calif. Teachers' video pushes class warfare

This animated video fairy tale (narrated by Ed Asner) purporting to "explain poverty" has one segment depicting a rich fat cat peeing on the less fortunate. Classy!  Obama will be proud.



[From The Blaze]

CO2 (and carbon taxes) in perspective

British Columbia's Climate Action Plan perpetrated by Gordon Campbell in co-operation with Arnold Schwartzenager and others a few years back is still running full-speed-ahead.  It's full of junk science and climate alarmism.

"A lie makes Obamacare legal"

Mark Steyn:

... "The United States is the only Western nation in which our rulers invoke the Constitution for the purpose of overriding it – or, at any rate, torturing its language beyond repair."

... Like Nelson contemplating the Danish fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen, the Chief Justice held the telescope to his blind eye and declared, "I see no ships."

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but a handful of judges rule that it's a rare breed of elk, then all's well.  The Chief Justice, on the other hand, looks, quacks and walks like the Queen in Alice In Wonderland: "Sentence first – verdict afterwards."

... in attempting to pass off a confiscatory penalty as a legitimate tax, Roberts inflicts damage on the most basic legal principles.

... quibbling over whose pretzel argument is more ingeniously twisted – the government's or the court's – is to debate, in Samuel Johnson's words, the precedence between a louse and a flea. ...

[...]

US Supremes uphold Obamacare

Obama said "the individual mandate IS NOT A TAX":



Supreme Court says: "It's a Tax"

Romney says: "I'll repeal it!"

Class warfare

Peter Foster:

... Economically challenged populism is on the march and President Barack Obama is demonizing the rich, with the help of the super rich, notably his buddy Warren Buffett. This all comes within the context of renewed hand wringing  about “inequality,” which raised its envious head this week north of the border, where a poll claimed that most Canadians favoured soaking the wealthy.

... This week, a poll carried out for the Broadbent Institute, a new left-wing Canadian emotion tank, declared that 71% of Canadians fret about inequality, while more than three-quarters want heavier taxation of the rich. According to an introduction on the website of the new institute, named for the former federal NDP leader and perennial class warrior, Mr. Broadbent avers that “For some time now, Canadians have been told that citizenship means no more than individuals pursuing their own self-interest.” He quotes no source for this nonsensical assertion, but then lefties get most of their moralistic highs from tilting at windmills.

Warren Buffett's tax-avoidance plans

And what does he stand to gain from Obama's cancellation of Keystone XL?  That among other things about Buffett's phony "tax-the-rich" mantra:

A setback for Obama's class warfare campaign

Never mind Warren Buffett's secretary:

How embarrassing this must be for President Obama ...

... A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share. ...

[Via]

Economics 101 for "Occupiers"

"... One of Barack Obama's great gifts is the ability to say things that are absolutely absurd and make them sound not only plausible but inspiring… it's ludicrous but it's very clever ludicrousness."

Also: MYTHICAL INJUSTICE

[via]

Ilegal dope vs tobacco - mixed messages (and lying scumbag politicians)

Today the Supreme Court of Canada ruled (unanimously) that Vancouver's "supervised drug injection" site ('Insite') can stay open:

To force the site to close “would have been to prevent injection drug users from accessing the health services offered by Insite, threatening the health and indeed the lives of potential clients,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in the ruling. 

It thereby constitutes a limit on the section 7 charter rights of drug addicts - life, liberty and the security of person.

So the Supremes ruled that enabling illicit dopers is good for their health, life, liberty and security.

Then we have another class of (legal) users - smokers, who have been attacked mercilessly and kicked while they're down.  In BC the health minister is now threatening smokers with another kick - forcing them to pay higher health fees:

“Some people, in B.C. about 14 per cent of the population, continue to smoke and they’re going to cost more,” de Jong said in an interview. “Maybe they should contribute more.”

Civil liberties and ethics experts think it's a crappy idea, primarily on "slippery slope" grounds. As far as I know, no one wondered if it might be unenforceable.

Also, Minister De Jong neglected to point out that the government is already taxing smokers to death:

The province collected $682 million from tobacco taxation in the 2009-10 fiscal year, $708 million in 2008-09 and $692 million in 2007-08.

That probably more than covers additional health costs. And I'm sure that De Jong would prefer that no one mentioned any studies like this one in the New England Journal of Medicine which found:

... In our study, lifetime costs for smokers can be calculated as $72,700 among men and $94,700 among women, and lifetime costs among nonsmokers can be calculated as $83,400 and $111,000, respectively. This amounts to lifetime costs for nonsmokers that are higher by 15 percent among men and 18 percent among women.

Altogether this spells "CASH GRAB" from (and harassment of) smokers to offset the cost of enabling dopers.

BC funding quit-smoking therapy

Predictably, doctors think it's just great.  But not everybody's happy about it, because quit-smoking schemes are:
 

notoriously ineffective.
notoriously ineffective and costly.
and, how come the gov't doesn't fund diabetes treatment?

Where's the medical justice?

Warren Buffett's taxes

Greg Mankiw (NYT):

I was disappointed to hear the President tonight raise the canard about Warren Buffett's allegedly low tax rate.  The story is, at the very least, deeply misleading.  I addressed the issue several years ago in this column:

...billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett said that rich guys like him weren’t paying enough. Mr. Buffett asserted that his taxes last year equaled only 17.7 percent of his taxable income, compared with about 30 percent for his receptionist.

... part of the answer is that Mr. Buffett’s income is made up largely of dividends and capital gains, which are taxed at only 15 percent. By contrast, many other top earners pay the maximum ordinary income tax rate of 35 percent on their salaries, bonuses and business income.

... Another piece of the puzzle is that Mr. Buffett’s tax burden is larger than it first appears, because he is a major shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway. ... The corporate tax would undoubtedly loom large if the C.B.O. were to calculate Mr. Buffett’s effective tax rate.

Also, since Obama claims his main concerns are "jobs, jobs, jobs" perhaps he and Mr. Buffett should give their estimates of how many more people Berkshire Hathaway and its subsidiaries (not to mention every other business in America) would be hiring once those tax rates are jacked up.