Your Chance to Tell the Gov't What to do

Finance minister Jim Flaherty is asking Canadians what they'd like to see in the new budget the Conservative government will bring down at the end of January. He's had a web-based survey placed on the Finance Canada website.

The Government actually asking Canadians what they want?

After I got over my shock, and initial impulse to suggest they engage in an anatomical impossibility, I took full advantage of this opportunity to present the "Off the top of his head, Hamm172 economic recovery plan."

• instead of giving billions to the unrepentant automotive manufacturers and their unions to continue to squander in unprofitable activities I suggested a 100% tax credit for Canadians and businesses who make capital purchases of items partially or wholly manufactured in Canada.
  
• That led me to then suggest a complete dropping of the 5 year depreciation rules and allow for businesses to write off capital purchases in the year of the purchase, like many other countries that we compete with do.
  
• Divert the Billion dollars a year we annually piss down the CBC's drain to economic stimulus (like futher tax relief) and raise some more dough by selling off the CBC.
• Cut the GST to 0%.
• Fire all the civil servants in Indian Affairs (or whatever they call that dept. nowadays) and just divide the tax money squandered on their salaries and benefits (9 billion including money actually supposed to go to the first nations people) amongst the first nations people directly, without the gov't middlemen... Aboriginal Canadians are just like everyone else, they'll spend most of it in the economy just like you would.
  

Whups, battery on laptop dying. Quick get the the website and put in your two bits too!!!!

Boy that Global Warming Sure Sucks, eh?

Today's photo entry:

Dumbass Parents of the Year Award...

...goes to Heath and Deborah Campbell of Hunterdon County, N.J. who are upset the local ShopRite refused to put their son's name on a Birthday cake. They also have two daughters, one whose middle name is "Aryan Nation" and the other who's middle name is "Hitler".

Apparently the ShopRite has also in the past refused to decorate the Campbell's family birthday cakes with swastikas and other similiar stuff.

Surely hanging these monikers on their poor kids is a form of child abuse, don'tcha think?

What should the Government do?

OK, today the federal government admitted it’s a recession. So now what?

Over lunch today my friend Richard wanted to talk about what the government should be doing to fight off the worst effects of the newly acknowledged recession in Canada

I jokingly told him that while the “American Way” now seems to be a tendency to sue, the quintessential ‘Canadian Way,’ now seems to be a kneejerk reaction that “the government needs to do something.”

Governments can only act with money extorted from the economies that support them; any and all government actions bear a cost to their supporting economies. This is not only the direct monetary price, but also the wider de-energizing effect on everyone else who must continue to function in the economy that has been stripped of those dollars. Since I became a taxpayer I’ve had a selfish interest in curbing government spending. You and I bear the cost EVERY time an elected lawmaker feels the need to justify his or her existence to the electorate by the questionable accomplishment of passing some new law or regulation. Each time this happens I am quite personally offended and you should be too.

This ‘Canadian way’ has given us bloated government ministries that consume ridiculous portions of the funds they’ve been entrusted to administer. I give you as an example the fact that size and cost of the civilian civil service that supports the Canadian Armed Forces rivals the size and cost of the military itself. Our military infrastructure is nearly half a century obsolete, our Navy is virtually nonexistent, and our Jet fighters thirty years old. Or how about Indian and Northern Affairs (or whatever the hell Politically Correct designation it’s called by this year) which has a budget that is nearly the equal to Canada’s military? My parents have chosen to live in a ‘First Nations’ community and I’ve seen the squalor in which many people there must live. Yet the department’s salaries, pensions, and other benefits are the envy of the private sector. A third example is the relatively new bureaucracy which was created to consum- I mean, administer the GST. Yes, it does in fact consume a ridiculously large portion of the tax that it administers.

One major factor that has saved the North American nations from collapsing under suffocating levels of taxation to support their growing welfare states is the lucky geographical accident that blessed both Canada and the United States with unbelievably abundant natural wealth. Naturally our society’s various Green organizations, (themselves philosophically huge supporters of government intervention and regulation) have been perversely acting against their own self-interest by working to bar access to those natural resources for most of the last 40 years.

I've said all this to point out that I fear the cost of Government action. It's a stretch for me to be willing to consider it, so that's why I feel odd directing attention at something Financial Post editor Diane Francis wrote today.

Diane Francis thinks she knows what the government should be doing, and I'd suggest that her column in today's Financial Post is worth a look.

Today I heard her in a radio interview and to my surprise, this fiscally conservative writer was advocating massive public/private partnerships to re-finance the stalled half-dozen or so refinery projects in the Alberta Industrial Heartland near Edmonton. She also wanted to include all the recently suspended new Oilsands projects in Northern Alberta. The suspension of these projects, which would have created billions of dollars of new wealth for the economy, was forced by the nearly worldwide credit drought kicked off of course, by Frannie Mae & Freddy Mac-enabled Subprime Mortgage debacle. This is the time, she said, for the Prime Minister to act.

I’ve been reading Diane’s columns on and off ever since 1990, when I had to suffer through a two-year involuntary subscription to McLeans magazine, (no- don’t ask). She’s about as good an example of common-sense, fiscal conservative thought that Eastern Canada can provide, and I think her idea is worth consideration. It certainly seems better than NDP leader Jack Layton’s vague plan to engage in a huge nation-wide Rooseveltesque road and bridges make-work program and the no-doubt additional new bureaucracy to support it.

The PM speaks.

Prime Minister Harper addressed the nation this evening, calling the hopeful and oh-so-socialist Lib/NDP/Bloc troika "undemocratic" for their attempt to circumvent the last election and steal power. He also listed out most of the measures the government is taking to stimulate the economy, throwing back into the opposition's faces their claims that the government was 'doing nothing.'


I also find it VERY interesting that despite two days of upward movement on the American Stock exchanges Canada's TSX has continued to drop, more on Tuesday than in any single day since black Monday, in October of 1987.

Did Not Vote for Coalition Government

I never voted for this. Neither did you.

The last federal election campaign was run by all three major federal parties on their individual party platforms, none of which included forming a coalition of the losers to steal power from the winner. As I recall, The Conservatives and Liberals were both hoping to form the government, and the NDP wanted to become the official opposition.

No, we didn’t vote for this. Small wonder that so many Canadians are incensed by this undemocratic attempt to seize power.

Yesterday a radio station poll by talk-radio station 630 CHED showed virtually no support for the Liberal/NDP/Bloc Quebecois troika of usurpers. Small wonder, CHED broadcasts in the Conservative western province of Alberta; but the brand new Nationwide facebook group, “Canadians Against A Coalition Government" has gathered 50,000 members in only a few days.

Nope. No mention of a coalition, nor are such staggering ‘frankensteins’ a part of Canadian Parliamentary tradition. Nor does Canadian Parliamentary tradition include the seizure of power from a minority government without an election. In fact, past governments have been soundly punished by the electorate at the polls for ‘exceeding their mandates’ when they chose to sharply deviate from the campaign platforms which won them their elections.

Today I listened to an NDP MP claim his Liberal/NDP/Bloc troika has the support of over 60% of the voters. Lies! The voters they claim as theirs did not vote for a coalition.

Yes, a majority of voters did not vote for the Conservatives. But by that same logic, AN EVEN LARGER MAJORITY DID NOT VOTE LIBERAL, and a larger yet majority did not vote for the NDP or Bloc Quebecois. By comparison, the largest block of voters voted for the Conservatives to lead the country. If they are defeated in a non-confidence vote in Parliament there should be an election. That’s the Canadian way.

I sincerely hope our Liberal-appointed Governor General, Monique Jean, does the right thing when Prime Minister Stephen Harper asks her to dissolve parliament and announce a new election. Let the last election's loser run on platform of Coalition government. Then we voters can punish the Liberals and NDP for this attempt to bypass the democratic process, as they so obviously deserve.