murraysovereign

Have things really gotten so bad, has the level of discourse really sunk so low that someone like Glenn Beck is now considered a "luminary"?

That's it!! An extra floor!! They'd number all the floors except the one they're working on. They could start in, like, a sub-basement, and then work their way up through the building, floor by floor. Nobody would know it was there, because all the elevators and stairways would skip that secret floor. Then, when they finished rigging that floor with the explosives, they'd go in that night and take everything from the floor immediately above and move it all down onto the now rigged floor. Nobody would notice anything because they'd perfectly recreate everybody's offices exactly as they were, and they'd re-do the elevators and the stairways so now the next floor up would be the secret floor, because it's vacant now after they moved everybody's offices and stuff down to the floor below. So then they could go to work rigging the next floor with explosives without anybody knowing. And then when they finished they'd go in at night and move all the offices from the next floor down onto the one they just rigged, and... Yeah, that would totally work!! I can't wait to hear that idea being included in the "truther" bullshit. In fact, it's probably already in there, but I'll be damned if I'm going to waste my time looking for it.

So the way I read the original story, this guy from GE is going to be the chair of an advisory committee, right? The panel has absolutely no legislative authority, no regulatory authority, no enforcement authority, in fact it has absolutely no authority at all on anything at all. So who cares? He hasn't been handed the keys to the treasury, he's chairing an advisory panel. These panels are little more than political window dressing, allowing those in positions of actual power to say "See - we're working on the problem. We've appointed a committee and we're waiting for their recommendations" while continuing to do, in fact, sweet bugger-all. Check back in a year or two and tell me how many - if any - of this committee's recommendations are ever actually implemented. I'm going to go out on a limb here and bet $10 on "zero". In other words - relax, this is a non-story.

Kirsty McColl was killed 10 years ago today. RIP Not a dance track, by any means, but still essential Christmas listening: [video:youtube]

Love the ending!!

...then only outlaws will have families.

Probably would have been, too, if they'd come into play a little earlier. But by the time they were operational the wheels were already coming off the Third Reich. I agree with FW - at $25-$30K a pop, these things are too expensive. It'd be cheaper to buy every Taliban and AlQueda fighter a $500 used car. The way those crazy bastards drive they'd all be dead by spring.

Ireland's problems derive almost entirely from their president's idiotic promise to back-stop the banks by guaranteeing all their loans. Should have just let 'em swing in the wind. Hard to do, politically, but it's not like the government are exactly being hailed as heros for taking the easy route. When you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't, you might as well be damned for taking the least ruinous path available to you.

I was thinking the same thing: "Target - where disproportionate numbers of obese people shop" At least. I hope that's a disproportionate sample group...?

I think they just want to sell you some gold, Bill. Or maybe they want you to sell your gold to them. It's hard to tell which, but I'm pretty sure they want to see gold changing hands. I'd guess they've figured out a way to make money off people buying and selling gold. It's just a guess, but I feel pretty sure on this one...

OK, one more time: Under the system that's used here, people at the lowest end of the income scale actually receive more in rebates than they spend in sales taxes. They actually benefit from it. Not only are they not paying income tax, and not paying any sales tax, but they're also receiving a slight increase in their income thanks to the rebate schedule. So they can go ahead and buy shoes for the kids with the sales tax credit $$ they receive from the government, or they can use that money to buy groceries (which aren't taxed, by the way). As far as cars go, you can exempt vehicles from the sales tax if they're more than, say, five years old. Hell, if you want to, you can make flights to France tax-exempt, so Mom can still take her kids to Provence for the summer. And country-club memberships could be tax-exempt, too, so they don't have to miss the spring Cotillion. It's not difficult to identify areas of particular importance to low-income families and provide relief through targeted exemptions. Those exemptions, coupled with the tax credit rebates, can be used not only to negate the impact of the sales tax, but to provide additional financial support to those families. So, to recap:

Up here, yes, they pay the tax at the till. But they receive a tax credit from Ottawa every three months, so they're not out of pocket over the year. If that isn't good enough for you, I'm sure you could establish some sort of exemption card they could present to the cashier, although in my experience the difficulty and expense of trying to administer such exemptions at the point of purchase is considerable, not to mention the potential for abuse/fraud at various levels. The tax rebate payments work pretty well up here - it's the one aspect of our taxation system that no-one seems to have any objection to. You can use the rebate any way you want - put it toward the rent, blow it at the track, spend it on groceries, buy shoes for the kids, get drunk, or put it aside in a college fund. What's wrong with that?

That's an abbreviated version, essentially correct except it goes further than just production of goods. Anything a business purchases for business purposes, be it goods or services, is taxed, and the business pays the full HST. When that purchase is recorded, the amount of HST paid is posted on the books as a credit, basically an account receivable. When the business sells its goods or services, it collects HST from the customer, and that HST is posted on the books as an account payable. At the end of each reporting period - monthly or quarterly, usually - the two amounts are added together, and the business either remits the HST payable, or files for a credit if they paid out more tax than they collected. It's helped my business. Virtually everything we sell already had both provincial sales tax (7%) and GST (5%) applied to it, for a total of 12%. All we did was change the name to HST, so there's been virtually no change to the amount my customer pays at the till. So we haven`t seen the drop in sales that, for instance, restaurants have experienced due to having to charge the additional 7%. But in terms of my business finances, I can now claim back the former PST that formerly I had to absorb. For instance, one of my front desk computers crapped out this summer. Under the previous tax regime when I replaced that computer I would have claimed back the 5% GST, but would have had to absorb the 7% PST. But under the HST I was able to claim back the full amount. So a small part of my operating costs has been reduced - nothing huge, but there`s a quantifiable net benefit. Hooo boy, that`s a large question, with lots and lots of little answers. Certainly part of it is due to import duties, and while that`s the easiest cause to identify, there are plenty of others. Another reason is that Canada is a much smaller market than the US. The cost of building, stocking and running a distribution centre in Canada is about the same as building one in the US, but you`ve got something like 1/12 the market to spread those costs over. I recall a few years ago the North Face rep told me they sold as many down jackets on the island of Manhattan as in all of Canada. While that may have been an exaggeration it`s probably not too far off. The economies of scale that can be realized in a much larger, much denser population are significant. Some companies find it`s simply not worth the added cost of maintaining separate distribution, so they serve the Canadian market through their US warehouse - as is the case with LaSportiva. That means that every order of boots I bring in from LaSportiva is shipped from Colorado. In order to get those boots into the US, LaSportiva USA had to pay US import duties on them, which gets factored into their wholesale price (see the earlier discussion about businesses merely passing taxes on to the customer). The wholesale price I pay is the same as the wholesale price paid by a US-based retailer. But then those boots get loaded onto a truck and shipped to Canada. First of all that gets billed as international shipping, which is more expensive than domestic shipping. Then those boots hit the border, and I have to pay a brokerage firm to process all the paperwork to clear the boots across the border (ie, calculate the duty owing, pay it up front, and invoice me for it in turn, plus a fee-for-service based on a percentage of the value of the shipment). So in the end, even though LaSportiva charges me and the US retailer the same amount for those boots, by the time I receive them they`ve cost me about 21-22% more (18% duty, plus brokerage fees, plus international shipping costs). Another problem arises from currency exchange. Black Diamond is a good example - they bill me in Canadian dollars, but they`ve arrived at their Canadian price list by taking their US prices and applying an exchange rate that they`re comfortable with. Last year they set it at 15%, whereas the actual exchange rate ended up being in the 4% to 6% range, so every Camalot I bought cost me several dollars more than it would have if I`d been a US retailer. That`s a start...

Ummm.... you read the part about rebating the sales taxes back to people at the lower end of the income scale, didn't you? You understood that would mean they don't actually pay the sales tax, didn't you? In fact, that would mean that the wealthy would be paying those sales taxes for them. You got a problem with the wealthy paying taxes on behalf of the poor?

True - businesses claim back the sales taxes they pay on purchases made for business purposes. People like to wave that one around and complain that businesses aren't paying taxes. I've got news for you - businesses don't pay taxes. Never have, never will. Their customers pay those taxes. Businesses pass on the cost of their taxes to their customers in the form of higher prices, just like any other business expense. Higher wage cost = higher prices. Higher materials costs = higher prices. Higher rent = higher prices. Higher taxes = yep, higher prices. Sure, businesses remit a lot of taxes to the government, but they ultimately get that money from the customer - you. Just because there's no separate line item on the receipt telling you exactly how much tax has been blended into the price of the goods or services you bought, doesn't mean you're not paying it. I'm not arguing that this is right, or wrong. It just is. As for "loopholes" - have you looked at the income tax codes lately? The wealthy are able to dodge a Hell of a lot more income tax than sales tax.

This is a common concern regarding consumption taxes of all kinds, and it appears legit on the face of it. But think about it: when "poor folks" buy shoes, they're getting them at WalMart for $20, VAT @ 22% = $4.40; when "the rich" buy shoes, they're buying ManoloBlablablas for $400, $500, $600 and more per pair. VAT @ 22% on $500 shoes = $110. When "poor folks" buy cars, they're buying 2nd- or 3rd-hand used cars for $500, VAT = $110; when "the rich" buy cars, they're buying Porsches or Jags or Caddies, or vintage collector cars, or monster "Death Star" SUV things, VAT @ 22% on a $100,000 vehicle comes to $22,000. Tell me again who's paying more? Also, there are ways of softening the blow for those at the lower end of the income scale. Our HST structure includes rebates for those at the lowest income levels, meaning they effectively pay no sales tax at all. It's a sliding scale, so as your income increases your rebate is reduced, until one day you find that the rebates aren't coming anymore. By that time you're making enough that the sales tax is affordable. Hell, I feel like I'm doing OK personally, but somehow I still qualify for small rebates that are deposited directly into my bank account quarterly. In general, I prefer consumption taxes over income taxes any day. Taxes are a disincentive - want people to smoke less, raise tobacco taxes. Want people to drink less, raise alcohol taxes. Want people to work harder, save more money, invest more - reduce their income taxes, and recoup that revenue with consumption taxes. In other words, go ahead and penalize me for spending my money, but don't penalize me for earning it. You want all those jobs to stop migrating to China? Right now you're taxing the earnings of all US-based companies, and all their employees. Those companies have to pay their employees more, simply because a chunk of their pay disappears before they even see it. In order to stretch what's left, they then spend their take-home pay on products made in China by companies that don't have to pay those income taxes. What if those products could be built in the US again, by companies and individuals that don't see their earnings being taxed at the source? By replacing income taxes with a VAT, you ensure that those Chinese imports are being taxed at the same rate as domestic products. The Chinese will still enjoy some degree of advantage due to their colossal labour supply, but at least you won't be deliberately building that advantage into your economy via your taxation policies. As long as it's designed with adequate protection for the lowest income-earners by way of rebates or something of that sort, I'm all for it. Cue JayB in 3... 2... 1...

Also just past the 125th anniversary of the completion of the CPR - November 7. Great-grandfather was a contractor, laid the roadbed through Craigallachie where the last spike was driven. Also did the Big Hill from Field to Lake Louise.When you drive the Trans-Canada past the Spiral Tunnels you're basically driving over his original roadbed: imagine fully-loaded freights screaming down that grade with brakes smoking, must have been a terrifying ride. Grandmother was adamant he's in the photo of the Last Spike, looking over Van Horne's right shoulder. Apparently his own logbooks show he was working a few miles further up the line, but who knows, maybe he slipped away for a couple of hours and didn't tell anyone. I've seen other photos, and that sure looks like him. [video:youtube]

Specifics may be different, but the basics of road funding aren't markedly different on either side of the border. The majority of the costs are paid for by all taxpayers, regardless of how they get around, and the majority of the construction and maintenance costs are due to the physical demands of cars and trucks, not bikes. That's the basic situation in both countries, unless roads in the US are entirely paid for solely by direct user fees - is that what you're saying?

Bikes vs Cars - who pays? "People who don't drive much -- including most true bike zealots -- significantly subsidize those who drive a lot. And in any kilometre-by-kilometre comparison of city residents who travel exclusively by one mode or the other, drivers tend to pay less than their real costs, while riders pay more."

Shepherds in the BC interior leave donkeys with their flocks to protect them from wolves. Apparently donkeys have a serious hate on for wolves, and the wolves are scared shitless of them. Maybe cows have got the same thing going for bears.

Relics of the 90s, every one (well, except Avril: she didn't last long enough to qualify as a relic). Besides, what do any of them have to do with art? Now, Justin Bieber, on the other hand... that's an artist! But seriously, I couldn't care less if Quaid wants to stay, but refugee status? That's pretty weak... It's not like being a delusion nutcase in the US makes you part of a persecuted minority.

WTF???

If dolphins were really so smart, they could get out of those tuna nets.

and Stawamus Chief Provincial Park gets larger I believe this is a direct result of the land-owner's decision to clear-cut the Malamute a few years ago. All's well that ends well...

But wait - there's more!!