No longer participating in the Demockery!

STV or no STV we have a Demockery that I will no longer partcipate in (except locally).

Until such time as the great re-jigging of what poses as democracy happens, an earthquake perhaps; All elections are illegitimate!

And now Iggy wants another one!

The HST Debate

It was with a sigh of relief that I read the comments between David Schreck and Kevin Milligan. Although they disagree on the points about the implementation regarding the HST the debate were informative and professional.

What I am slightly distressed at is that Kevin Milligan seems to believe that David Schreck's only job is to debate academically. Although Mr. Milligan's references provided useful as background material, Mr. Sschreck's points still stand: where is the readable evidence informing everyday (non-PhD) British Columbians?

As far as I can tell thus far the best points made to me--the non-PhD British Columbian--are made by David Schreck: we, British Columbians, have not been provided with reasonable evidence to support the HST (even if the RST/GST is not the greatest option either).

I'm will concede that, within academia, perhaps Mr. Schreck's arguments have fault, but this isn't the academe. Mr. Schreck's responsibilities rest to the population at large and not to the narrow (but useful) confines of the ivory tower. Mr. Milligan certainly helped me understand some of the details, but his scope is too narrow to rest my final decision on. In that regard, David Schreck seems to have made the best balance of it all.

And, so, I am left on the anti-HST side.

BCHydro a far bigger issue!!!

Unfortunately Bill you and your kind have seen fit to jump on the broken promises and HST bandwagon while ignoring the enormous looming cost and bankruptcy of BCHydro as a result of El Gordo's blindly stupid IPP policy. At least the HST will go back into the tax system at some point and well unfair will not be wasted.

Envision yourself along with Palmer, Smith and Baldry in front of Jon Steward taking a Jim Cramer style beating for failing to report on the impeding doubling of our power rates to pay for our power purchases from Cramer's Wall Street Pirates and the ensuing diaspora of our industry to the south and Alberta to enjoy cheap nuclear and solar power.

According to BC Hydro's 2009 annual report between 2008 and 2009, it increased its IPP purchases buying 609 gwh for $63 million or 10 cents a kwh. In the same report, it has owned up to contracting for 14,400 gwh for fiscal 2012 an increase of 6600 gwh over 2008. Projecting the current 10 cents a kwh to 2012 we see Hydro will require a 50% rate increase by 2012 changing it from one of North Americas lowest cost producers to one of its highest cost.

Altogether BCHydro has committed to buying $31 billion to buy 7200 Gwh of extremely expensive IPP power. Compare that to Alberta and Saskatchewan who have wisely decided not to tear up their landscape building windmills and run of river projects and are committed to far more environmentally friendly clean green nuclear power. Ontario Hydro recently received a bid for two 1.65 gigawatt Areva reactors costing 8 billion with a firm quote for all costs over 60 years for $24 billion. These reactors will produce in the area of 30000 gwh annually of high value always on baseload power compared to 7000 gwh of BCHydro's mostly spring, good year, low value river power. A quarter the power for three times the cost. Now there's Gordonomics.

These costs are for onesies and twosies reactor builds. Since nuclear is the only solution to global warming and peak oil, Westinghouse is anticipating mass producing reactors at costs of less than of less than 2 cents a kwh. Compare that to Gordo's 40 year buys at 12 cents.

Our energy minister with his high school diploma has indicated he will direct the engineers at BCUC to accept BCHydros additional 3000 gwh buy at 12 cents a kwh adding $360 million to BCHydro's annual cost requiring an additional 40% rate increase by 2014.

If you Neocon and Greenie nitwits that voted for Gordo and his fascist/Green party teams think there was a lot of people moving to Alberta during the NDP years, just wait for the exodus of all BC Business's and staff that use electricity to Alberta, Saskatchewan, Washington. Alaska and Montana. The only ones left will be Gordo and his group of BCLiberal party hacks with their Pirate Power fortunes and the remaining great unwashed as their servants. BCHydro and the province will be bankrupt.

Where is the justice?

Well your not going to find any justice in the Liberal camp as it is something the Campbell has little use for other than it helped him defeat the NDP as Clark has friends build a deck, and BC is never the same.
A vote for Liberals is a vote for corruption.
A vote for NDP is a vote for justice.
And governments often get in with the promise of no future taxes which at the time politicians give a guess of things to come. (I still can't help but wonder what those Rail emails said and who all was implicated and what was exactly said. And of course what other type of fraud and deceit was on the Liberal agenda. Because if Liberals get away with this which apparently Campbell has ,you can only imagine what else will transpire as there is no one to hold Campbell accountable as justice is put on hold.

It is also quite different when a political leader deliberately misrepresents the state things are in all the time in office as accountability and transparency are only something the Liberals promised while deceit is what Liberal politicians provided.

Lets show Campbell how the system is supposed to work as Clark, the former NDP knows only to well. If you lie and try to cheat the people watch out because the media and Campbell are going to swoop down on your house and family while getting you to resign, all on the 6 O'Clock news.
What about the Liberals well the media appears to be tuned into all the blessed tax dollars that help Campbell pull off the facade while some say ah the NDP were naughty while the BC Liberals are corrupt.

Inglorious what?

I'm all for Tieleman's critique of the HST but maybe he should be concerned less with flash and more with substance. Has he even seen the movie Inglorious Basterds? I know the title is catchy but it represents the "good guys" in both Tarantino's film and the original. Is he really trying to tarnish the BC Liberals by comparing them to a guerilla team that fought the nazis? Or is there a deeper analogy...

Somehow I doubt it... stick to your arguments Bill and if you're feeling like getting all pop culture on us - make sure you double-check your references.

Lets Ask Iggy to Drop the HST

What do we have to lose, Harper?

apollyon, you stole my

apollyon, you stole my thunder, but good thunder is worth repeating:

... stick to your arguments Bill and if you're feeling like getting all pop culture on us - make sure you double-check your references.

Exactly! The Inglorious Basterds are the GOOD guys, Bill!!

Theorists support consumptions taxes, people don't

Bill says, "That means one-fifth of the total price of most goods and services is sales tax, discouraging consumers from spending money and creating jobs."

What it also promotes is widespread tax fraud with citizens supporting an underground economy and holding most government authorities in contempt. That culture of cheating spreads until it contaminates much of society, even the bureaucrats. There is a connection from that to the willingness of marginal citizens to hit the streets with firebombs.

A young person asked me recently, "How can the Liberals proceed with HST if three out of four people in BC are against it?" My only answer can be, "Campbell's Liberals don't give a damn."

At least the regular media has spoken out fairly unanimously. This provides a survey:

http://northerninsights.blogspot.com/2009/09/verdict-is-in-guilty-of-deceit.html

Truth, lies, mistakes and fraud

There's a lot of emotion about the conduct of our elected public employees over the last twenty years. Everybody seems to understand that the story has been very different from the realities for a long time.

The sources of information are varied, media, speeches, reports and articles by think tanks or committees. Political parties have platforms and manifestos. Special interest groups have beliefs and theories that support their own interests. There's a saying that a person will always hold whatever beliefs necessary to maintain his position, and hold them sincerely.

The nub of the thing seems to be the intention of the source. If someone believes something that isn't true, and talks it up, that's just a mistake, and not really actionable. If he knows it isn't true and talks it up he's a liar, and that is actionable, but the kind of action appropriate depends on the intention of the liar.

If he's just trying to avoid some kind of consequences, lying from fear, well that's another kind of mistake. It will cost him, and it should, when he's found out. People lose jobs, reputations families and friendships for this kind of thing, but it's basically just human weakness, and forgivable.

But when somebody lies in a calculated way, especially in conspiracy with others, in order to obtain benefits to which they would not be entitled otherwise, we call that fraud. That's a crime, and the consequences of that are quite different.

In our way of democracy, power rests in the crown, and in that way belongs to the people. The actual monarch doesn't hold title to crown land, for instance. It's a way of saying it's public property. It belongs to the people.

The same thing is true of political power. It's only held in trust by representatives of the people. As such, power and public property and tax money as well as everything that buys, are all real things belonging to the people and managed in trust to them by elected officials.

So the question becomes; did somebody lie to talk you into conferring on him or them a benefit, then loot that benefit based on the fact that the lie was believed?

It would be a very big thing to admit that we have been looted and defrauded in such a way. Hard to even believe and embarrassing to those who think they ought to have known better. And it would be hard to determine evidentially that the lie wasn't just a mistake, or plain stupidity. Or that the liar himself wasn't the victim of a similar lie from somebody else; just a dupe himself.

But if it could be done, if evidence of knowing fraud should come out, say something like destruction of evidence in a criminal fraud case, then fraud is a crime, and crimes should be treated as such things are always treated.

With a trial, and a judgement, and a sentence.

Keith Martin is a Liberal MP

Keith Martin is a Liberal MP who at one time was a Conservative MP. His op-ed in the TC Victoria, today Tuesday was pretty good. As I understand his position, the way to go would be to join the two taxes but exempt anything now exempt by either the PST or GST.

Very well said Bailey ,as always

but these people don`t care about subverting the courts or the truth or the people,it`s all just money and the power to transfer the resources to their corporate backers and they hold all the cards,I mean do you really think the white collar cops will ever move against them?look at how campbell &co. have bottled up the basi,virk trial.this is a serious game of hardball that being played and i am absolutely certain by the time the citizens of bc wake up to that fact it will all be over.

You're absolutely right about BC Hydro, Seth...

But I don't know how to stop it, other than getting rid of these Liberal bastards. However, there is something concrete that can be done to stop them and their HST. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of being upset about what these guys pull and being unable to do anything about it. They don't care what we say. The HST battle, however, we can win and force them to listen. And after all these years and all the terrible things they've done to my province, I need to focus on something that I can win. If the Initiative battle won't do it, then we'll move on to recall....

How about a contest?

You know, where the best ideas of how to encourage the premier to step down and maybe take a few of his party favorites with him like, Hanson and Coleman for a start.

The price could be a special weekend in one of our beautiful hotels, and a tour maybe and don't forget that extra dry bottle of wine with a delicious meal cooked up near the water front.
These industries will all be adversely affected by the HST, so it only makes sense to me it wouldn't hurt to be involved. Restaurants are already hurting, as the stats are out people are eating more at home to help reduce the recessionary blues. It will hurt these Industries double hard as its like a drowning man and you throw him and rock instead of a live safer and watch him go under.

And if its the Initiative battle or recall I'll join that to.

AND DPL

I have watched the Liberals jump back and forth from Conservatives camps to Liberals camps more in BC than anywhere else.

I said the NDP where more the middle, while the middle was more to the far right. Former NDP leader takes a seat in Federal Liberal cabinet while Liberal MP takes a Federal seat in Conservative cabinet then comes on home and then gets a job with provincial Liberals.
Coincidence? Or do the parties have that much in common? That to, as big industry makes it impression on our local and federal mps. Now all citizens have to figure out is how to get their government to pay attention to the people who hired them to do a job and not those surrounding our politicians looking for favors while favors are exchanged. That isn't working.

The Unions and what can be said about them but its big business as usual and its down to the business of keeping it just like that.

And Campbells Its My Party, so Cry If you want to, isn't going to win him many points.

So a few donations from Industry is a little price to pay to contribute to a contest as its their very survival that is in jepordy. Did you know restarant business along with other small business has been the fastest growing industry in BC and is responsible for the largest employment growth in BC?

"How About 50 Way to Lose A Premier"

It was on the hit list remember, 50 Ways to Lose a Lover, like you would need that many. With the premier, l don't know I think he has crazy glued himself to the job.

The Elite don't care

The elite don't care about the HST. Many senior politicians, bureaucrats and business sorts that I know have always been able to off-load personal costs to others. Senior politicians and bureaucrats ensure many of their own expenditures are funded through the public purse. Many business people have their companies pick up their entertainment tabs. Although at one time Revenue Canada (CRA) cared about these kind of benefits, their policing process in recent years has become much more lax.

For those that do pay for restaurant meals and entertainment, HST is only chump change.

What you should do

No point making a game of getting Gordo out, because he has several "get out of jail" cards stashed away.

Instead take the time to actually talk to some of your ignorant friends; explain what is at stake when they vote or refuse to vote!
That is the ticket.

what's so wrong with the TVA?

a 19.6% TVA in France - c'est pas si mal Bill, when you consider the services that all people in France enjoy - from health care, education, transportation and culture! all that and , en plus!- a bottle of fine wine is a fraction of the price in British Columbia.
Europe, and France in particular is looking more attractive every day.....

HST

The HST increase will be less of a cost increase to a typical family than the GST decrease

I hope if your complaining about the HST you also promoted the GST decrease

The HST is far more efficient for businesses and will help out our struggling manufacturing industry

What struggling manufacturing industry?

four out of five jobs in BC are in the service industry and more than a quarter of GDP comes from the 'goods' sector; Small Business, not manufacturing, is what drives BC and the HST is going to hurt that sector BIG time.

If you had wanted a heathy manufacturing sector in this province you should have been booing while Gordon Campbell frittered it away and stood still while it was sold stateside.

IF you've been following the debate, you should know that efficiency argument is a crock as well.

See the new Fight HST You Tube video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RsRLFv6jC8&videos=Sj0JIb51zJ0

FYI

It was announced today on the radio that by 2011 provincial revenue from post-secondary tuition will surpass income taxes collected from businesses. Add the tax shift from business to consumer via the HST and one must conclude that the BC Liberals are totally out to lunch. They are looking more incompetent everyday, and the sooner they get voted off the island, the better.