kimmy

Persecuted Christian in Indiana arrested after allowing Jesus to take the wheel and running over motorcyclist. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2700967/Woman-mowed-motorcyclist-God-told-let-drive-car.html -k

Texas court persecutes Christian family who decided that they didn't need to educate their nine children because they were going to be Raptured. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/11/texas-court-rules-against-homeschoolers-who-expected-rapture-and-stopped-teaching-kids/ -k

I don't particularly care that it become embedded in our culture, I just want to spend a couple of hours in a universe where anything can happen. To me, what Star Wars had that a great deal of other science fiction doesn't have is a feeling of infinite possiblity and a feeling of "why the heck not?" With other science fiction movies, I often feel like they're set in a science-fiction setting but not actually telling a science fiction story... with a few minor changes it could just as easily be set in World War 2 or Victorian England. I am Groot -k

Ironically, August, you've once again provided an example of why that comparison is apt. -k

Apologies for not getting back to this sooner. Responding to this thread takes more time and effort than most of the stuff going on on the forum, so it's not something I usually have time for on week-nights. I do understand the difference between credits and deductions, and I have been intermixing the two carelessly. In regard to the "costs of doing business", I suspect those are often inflated and abused. Personally in my experience with small businessmen-- and I know a few-- I see the company credit card being whipped out to pay for drinks that aren't exactly "business meetings" and the company truck being used to haul around a boat and ATVs and snowmobiles that certainly aren't being used for business purposes. I doubt that the giant corporations that do business in Canada are inherently more honest, and I suspect they have a far broader array of opportunities and accounting expertise at their disposal when it comes to turning profits into expenses. There are large corporations in Canada and elsewhere that pay almost non-existent tax, and they can't all be losing money every year. I don't know what tricks they are using to do so. If I did know how to do it, I would have a much more lucrative career. The CMA article I linked earlier mentions Starbucks has been operating for 14 years in the UK with revenues of over 3 billion pounds, and has paid a grand total of 8.6 million pounds in that time, including no tax at all in the past 3 years. How? Are they buying their coffee beans for $140/pound from a wholly-owned Swiss holdings company? Paying millions of pounds to "management companies" based in the Cayman Islands? I don't know. I do know it's wrong. One of the articles I looked at in the past week mentioned that when the CRA does do audits, they find "mistakes" about 44% of the time and that the amount they recover is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. There might be a point of diminishing returns when hiring more auditors wouldn't be generate a financial return, but I don't see a reason to assume we're there yet. One of the recurring comments in a number of these articles involving offshore scams is that the CRA just doesn't have enough resources to investigate all these files. And leaving aside the question of revenue brought back in, deterrence should be a major consideration. A high probability of getting caught is crucial to creating an effective deterrent. The other aspect of an effective deterrent is to have devastating consequences to being caught. If you're on the board of directors and you're talking about trying this holding company in Barbados scheme, you shouldn't be approaching this with an outlook that it's an "acceptable business risk". You should be thinking "if this doesn't work, the shareholders will have our heads" or "we might end up in jail". If the consequences are such that it's "an acceptable business risk", then the consequences just aren't severe enough. Whatever he might have done doesn't appear to be adequate. A lobby-group's website isn't really the best place to get an unbiased reading on the extent of the problem. I don't think that the inconvenience to a small group is reason enough to justify giving up on pursuing the vast amounts of money lost to tax evaders using overseas tax havens. And just because in this instance it was implemented in a clumsy way doesn't mean that the idea itself is bad. -k

I don't see this as a big problem. Don't we usually make an effort to respect this kind of request? For example if a strip search is to be performed on a female suspect, don't they generally have a female officer perform the search? Or allow a female patient to request that a female nurse be present during an examination? -k

I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie, and the the number of times I see comparisons to Star Wars in reviews is a big reason why. "Sci-fi hasn't been this much fun since Star Wars." I think it's interesting or maybe hilarious that of all the properties in the Marvel Universe to choose from, they picked this bunch of dorks. The Hulk and Iron Man and Thor and Captain America and so-on all have some amount of name recognition. But only comic-book geeks had heard of "The Guardians of the Galaxy" prior to the movie. -k

I only know two things about Buddy Rich. This: And this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE#t=158s -k

Wrong, Gost. Nobody would like to nail the Obama administration more than the House Republicans. That the House Committee didn't find any wrongdoing by the administration is more like Wiley Coyote investigating the Roadrunner and finding no wrondoing. -k

Shady actually has a very relevant point here. This is on the company, of course, but it's also on the BC government. Their own inspectors gave this company 5 warnings about the state of their tailings pond, and nothing happened. If the government won't enforce the findings of its own regulatory arm, then the system is busted. The buck has to stop somewhere, and that should be somewhere in Victoria. And yes, that should raise major questions about the Northern Gateway project. What good are their much-ballyhooed "209 conditions" if the government can't or won't enforce them? -k

How you concluded that I'm saying the government has a claim on 100% of profits is simply beyond me. You said it's "implied", but you must be working from a pretty messed up definition of "implied" if you think anything I wrote "implies" that the government is entitled to 100% of profits. It's such a goofy assertion that I still can't get over it. Tax deductions are indeed a gift. The government has a right to levy taxes. The method and rate varies. If you're allowed to pay lower taxes than your neighbor for some reason-- Tim donated to charities, Tim is caring for his sick grandmother, Tim is paying tuition for his kid, whatever-- you've received a gift from the government. Sometimes government generosity is warranted. It makes sense for the government to give tax breaks for people to pursue things that help society as a whole-- caring for dependents, obtaining education, and so on. When we're being generous to businesses and corporations, we should definitely be sure that society as a whole is receiving some benefit from it. We don't have enough revenue to do the things we as a nation have decided are important-- funding our military, funding education, paying interest on public debt, prosecuting tax cheats, for example-- and taxes should go up. Since corporations have benefited from drastic tax reductions recently, reversing some of these tax reductions is the obvious place to start. I'd suggest a good starting point might be giving the CRA adequate staff and implementing extremely serious financial penalties would be good starting points. Cameco Uranium is clearly not concerned about going to court with CRA over this; they appear to view losing the court case as an acceptable business risk. The penalties should be severe enough to make it an unacceptable business risk. I actually support what you're suggesting in regard to public pension plans, but I disagree with the idea that we can't move forward on anything until everything Tim (or anybody else) objects to has been resolved. In regard to the Conservatives trying to deal with this particular tax loophole: can you point me at anything I can read on what they're proposing? I've seen a couple of different articles recently about how pursuing wealthy tax dodgers is actually bad for the little guy; most of it involved whining about class warfare and tortured logic about how rich-guys would react if their tax havens were taken away. It came across as ideologically driven pro-rich-guy propaganda. I think one was at WSJ, and the other was at Townhall. Neither mentioned the issue you've raised, though. Given that there's now people trying to spin things to undermine public support for anti-tax evasion measures, I have to take what you're saying with a grain of salt. But yes, I'm pretty sure that there must be a way to attack tax-dodgers without harrassing people trying to make a living abroad. I don't think I stated any rules. And I don't think I suggested that the sheer number of Canadians employed was the only important criterion. I suggested that trying to save a few bucks by offshoring work is a false economy. It's not a question of a construction contractor vs a work-gang of hobos with shovels, it's a question of a Canadian contractor vs a foreign one. If there's no Canadian supplier who can provide the required services, or if the cost differential is too high, then there's no choice in the matter. But when there is choice, then strong consideration should be given to the benefits of keeping contracts within Canada. -k

It's hard to choose, but I have been on kind of a southern rock kick lately, so I think my choice might be original-vintage Lynyrd Skynyrd. Hard to narrow it down to 3 songs, but they would open up with something like Call Me The Breeze or Things Goin' On, and finish with Simple Man and Free Bird. Free Bird isn't even really one of my favorite Skynyrd songs, but to see the guitar jam performed live would be amazing. On a completely different note, Iron Maiden performing Powerslave, Number of the Beast, and Run To The Hills would probably cause my brain to melt from pure epicness. Then there's Pink Floyd... listening to the "live" disc of the Ummagumma record gives an idea how incredible it might have been to see them live in a small venue before they hit it big... -k

The Republican-led House Intelligence committee concludes that there was no wrongdoing by the administration. -k

Nonsense. It implies nothing of the sort. I have no idea how you could have obtained that conclusion from what I wrote. Canada is a club and we all pay membership dues. Anybody who's getting discounted membership is getting a gift. We give these gifts for 2 main reasons: to assist people with reduced ability to pay, or to encourage behavior that's of benefit to the club at large. We have a basic personal exemption and lower marginal tax-rates for individuals with lesser ability to pay. We offer tax credits for things like raising children and tuition fees and charitable donations, because they benefit the larger society. Corporations with reduced ability to pay also pay less tax. In terms of corporate behaviour we'd like to encourage, we tend to look at primarily employing people or engaging in activities that benefit the country. We'll subsidize operation of this railroad line or construction of this pipeline or research into this medical condition or environmental problem, because the importance to the country goes beyond the raw economic incentives. And I'm not opposed to providing tax gifts to either individuals or corporations providing they're actually doing something that benefits the country. In the past decade the corporate tax rate has been cut in half, not for any specific activity, but based on the assumption that it would create jobs. Has it? Have we gotten our money's worth? What if instead of cutting the corporate tax rate, we had left the corporate tax rate the same but cut payroll taxes and provided tax credits for each employee? Let's get back to this thought in a moment. Because he's the most brazen, shameless public spokesman for this kind of thinking. But in the case of the financial system, we tried the non-regulation thing and the results were a complete disaster. Is that based on any actual analysis, or is just the opinion of the cranks down at townhall.com? So earlier you said you wouldn't object to higher capital gains taxes or tax increases for the higher tax brackets once the "spending problem" is addressed, and now you're saying that the government can never actually be finished addressing the "spending problem". Is that about the size of it? You'll support tax increases after February 30, basically? We're already in the situation you describe: not enough money to spend on things we'd like to do, money being cut from things we need to do, and decisions about priorities are apparently being made based on who has the most effective lobby. This is good? This is how you think things should be? Here's one, in an article from the Certified Public Accountants of Canada magazine: http://www.cpacanada.ca/en/cpamagazine/Articles/a-corporate-tax-to-grind Cameco, a Canadian uranium company with revenues of $2.3 billion a year, has a subsidiary company in Switzerland. Cameco has a long term contract to sell this subsidiary company uranium at the price of $10/pound. Their Swiss subsidiary sells it on the world market at the going rate of about $140/pound, and the profit is taxed in Switzerland at a tax-haven rate. Here's some of the CBC reporting on this issue. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/tax-evasion-sophisticated-scam-revealed-by-cbc-hidden-camera-1.1874067 http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/10/02/CBC-investigation-finds-officials-advising-to-avoid-taxes-offshore/UPI-91351380753446/ Oh. Going after wealthy tax dodgers is just another assault on the middle class? I'm not moving the goalposts. Availability of legal loopholes, lack of enforcement, and the inability of the laws and courts to keep pace with ever-advancing accounting shenanigans are all facets of the same basic problem. It's easy for the rich and the corporations to dodge social responsibility. Well you've managed to concoct a pretty ridiculous example to make your point. Allow me to present a more reasonable one. The Canadian government is taking bids for some aircraft maintenance. A firm in Vancouver makes a bid for $1 million for the contract, and a firm just across the border in Bellingham bids $900,000. I assume your view is that the chance for the government to save $100,000 is all that matters? -k

Around here, you can usually identify which people on the reserve are Band Council members because they've got brand new pickup trucks on the driveway. But the chief of the Coquitlam band-- population 81, 35 residents-- has taken it to a whole new level: http://globalnews.ca/news/1486024/documents-show-coquitlam-first-nations-chief-was-paid-nearly-a-million-dollars-in-salary/ It's no wonder the feds pushed for financial disclosure rules, and it's no wonder the aboriginal bands resisted it. -k

Oops, just noticed that I didn't finish my last post. What I was going to say: And regarding tax breaks and grants being tied to employment in Canada: since the rationale presented to the public for providing grants and tax breaks for corporations has always been that it will create jobs in Canada, it should be a no-brainer to link tax breaks and other government largesse to actual jobs created. So hypothetically we could be talking about any asset that would presumably hold its value and that a lender would accept as collateral? The choice of housing is because it's something most people buy sooner or later anyway, as opposed to the assumption that housing will grow in value? I certainly agree, but why are tuition fees rising so rapidly? Granted this has not exploded to the extent it has in the US, but even here they're rising much faster than income. Do you think that when folks like Romney get on stage and start talking about how they're going to get rid of job killing regulations, that they're talking about kitchen waste or spotted owls? He'd probably like people to think that's the kind of regulations he'd get rid of, but what he's actually talking about is getting rid of Frank-Dodd and other regulation of the financial industry. What makes you think that spending is the problem? In the 1990s Paul Martin balanced the budget by attacking the spending side, cutting transfers to the provinces and leaving the provinces to hack money out of education and healthcare, and public employees at federal and provincial levels were laid off left and right. And they had many years of surpluses. And along comes Harper and decides it's time for tax cuts, and we've had deficits since. Now, I realize that the economic collapse in 2008 was a big factor in falling revenue for a time, and that temporary spending on economic stimulus was likewise a factor in the deficits, but even since then we have had a structural deficit. Has the Harper government been that sloppy about increasing structural spending, or have the tax cuts been the real problem in our turn from surplus to deficit? If spending's the problem, what are they spending it on? Certainly not education... To me it looks like the spending problem had already been fixed earlier, and that the problem is now on the revenue side, not the spending side. Here's your big chance to convince me I'm wrong. I'm all for helping third-worlders, but not at the expense of creating more poverty here in Canada. If we can create jobs for Filipinos by buying their t-shirts, that's awesome. But if we're creating jobs for Filipinos by bringing them to Canada and stacking them 10-deep in a crappy apartment so that they can pour double-doubles at minimum wage, then that's not so awesome. I don't believe Canadian policy should be designed to create global equality by reducing the standard of living for Canadian workers to 3rd-world levels. Well that last bit is just happy-poop. It might sound good, but they can't enforce it. As for the rest, like I said: the CBC did some interesting investigative reporting last year on the subject of how rich people and corporations avoid taxes. They got all kinds of interesting advice from tax advisors (many of them former CRA people, noitch) who showed them all kinds of loopholes. Maybe you need to find your business a better accountant? I'm skeptical. And, if you have very limited resources to chase cheats, what's a better return on your investment? No, the kind of thinking you're describing is what the English would call "penny-wise, pound-foolish." Money that stays in the country gets spent again and again and gets taxed again and again. But spend that money outside the country, and it's gone. It's out of the economy. You're not getting tax revenue from it later. And you're going to spend more money later on social assistance for Canadian workers who don't have jobs because their company's contract got offshored. Mark Cuban was talking last week about companies that dodge US taxes by moving abroad. He said he wasn't going to own their stock. Someone told him that he should support it because it's increasing shareholder value. His response was that the supposed increase in shareholder value comes out of peoples' tax dollars anyway, because the costs don't leave the system. Now, maybe if that was coming from some dirty hippy like me, it would be easy to dismiss. But coming from a guy with The Cube's business credentials, it should merit some sober reflection. -k

One of the most pervasive myths about Monsanto is that they have designed seeds that will grow sterile crops so that farmers will have to buy seed every year instead of saving seeds. But Monsanto isn't selling such seeds, and neither is anybody else. And the overwhelming majority of farmers in developed nations buy their seed from commercial suppliers rather than using saved seed anyway. It's not because their crops produce sterile seed, it's because commercial suppliers sell seed that produces more consistent and higher yield. -k

Obviously this chunk of metal wouldn't have been retrieved from the wreckage and celebrated if it had looked like anything other than a religious symbol. I think their objection to the "9/11 cross" being part of the 9/11 memorial is that its sheer size dominates over everything else and gives the impression that the memorial is endorsing Christianity. I agree that this wasn't a smart case to pursue. Not necessarily because it doesn't have merit, but because it was a no-win situation. They appear petty and vindictive by going to court over this, and if they'd won they make people mad at atheists. -k

I'll have to look into this further. Conventional thinking would say that lending institutions will operate close to the reserve ratio simply because if they don't, they're not making as much money as they could be. The premise that perpetually rising housing prices are the way to distribute wealth is (to borrow a word from Jason Kenney) shambolic. It's a Ponzi scheme. Canadian universities have increased tuition as fast as the law will let them, as the government decreases its share of the cost of post secondary. Increased student borrowing is the only way this can continue. US examples, but very relevant in Canada. Unless you have a very short or very selective memory, you'll recall that "let's get rid of these job-killing regulations!" and "let's reduce the capital gains tax!" were key planks of the Conservative platform, at least up to the meltdown of 2008 when those ideas became electoral kryptonite and were scrubbed from the Conservative dictionary. And there are plenty of Canadians who'll vote for those slogans once they're brought back out of retirement, too. People like yourself, for example. I don't think there's anybody on the forum who's spilled more ink advocating for deregulation than yourself. How do you feel about capital gains taxes? I recall that there are some here on the MLW who think cutting capital gains taxes is a great idea. How about the estate tax? So while those particular buttholes are American, the ideas they were touting were mainstream politics here in Canada up until a few years back, and they could well return, and they'll have their supporters when they do. Also, I'm curious as to why you suddenly want to limit the scope of the discussion to Canada. A couple of posts back you were all fired up about thinking beyond arbitrary lines on the map. We working-class slobs in Canada face pretty much the same challenges as our counterparts in the United States and other advanced economies, which is that the rules are heavily tilted in favor of the capital class. And in less advanced countries, things will be even more tilted. False. Erroneous. American examples might get far more press (for reasons that aren't very flattering to Canadian media) but Canadian corporations of all sizes certainly do avoid taxes by (for example) setting up corporate offices in Barbados. Are you familiar with Petro-Canada's vast oil interests in Barbados? Are you aware of Loblaw's immense grocery operations in Barbados? Me neither... but they (and a thousand other Canadian companies) dodge taxes by having corporate offices in Barbados and reporting earnings there that they should be reporting here. CBC did some undercover reporting last year where they had investigators go around to various tax advisors posing as businessmen or wealthy individuals. They found a myriad of opportunities for rich-guys to hide their money from the CRA. They even put up an interactive website so that lowly slobs like me could play tax shell games at home. Regarding contracts: if the work has to be done, then it should be done by Canadian employees instead of foreigners. Saving tax money by hiring government contracts outside the country is a false economy. And regarding tax breaks and grants being tied to employment in Canada -k

Every institution in a fractional reserve system works close to its reserve limit, so the money supply actually fluctuates very little. The institutions still have to get capital out of capital holders to make it happen. (Remember "Mortgage Backed Securities"?) It's a great facilitator for borrowing and lending, but it does nothing to remedy the situation we're talking about. Making it easier for people to borrow and expanding the amount of debt people can carry may not be such a great thing for the average citizen. The direct effect of giving more people access to mortgages was the housing bubble. The direct effect of expanding access to student loans has been skyrocketing tuition fees. Our fractional reserve system accelerates the pace at which the super-rich can increase their wealth. If our monetary system provided a remedy to the expanding power of capital, as you suggest, the rich wouldn't stand for it. But they're pretty darned pleased with the way it works. Well that's the $64 dollar question, isn't it. For starters I wish people would stop electing politicians who are working against their interests, like that butthole who keeps proposing that the Capital Gains tax be reduced to zero, or that other butthole who kept saying "let's get rid of these job-killing regulations!" and promising to repeal the estate tax. I also think that improving the tax code to eliminate a lot of the tax deductions that advantage the rich without any particular benefit to the public at large would be a good idea. Likewise, crack down on those who shuffle their money out of the country to avoid taxation. Likewise, corporations who use various kinds of hijinks to get out of paying taxes. Countries like Ireland and Holland that help companies scam the tax system in other countries should be pressured to get their shit together or face economic sanction. I also think that tax breaks and grants to corporations should be linked to actual job creation. Perhaps government contracts should also be tied to jobs. In regard to taxes punishing the businesses we want to encourage... businesses only start paying taxes when they're profitable. That's not all the thoughts I have, but it's all the time I have right now. I will get back to this later. -k

Maybe not a good ambassador for atheists... but why do guys who shows up at campuses or street-corners telling people they're going to "Hell" deserve any courtesy? Watch the video of this guy, then watch some videos of "Shawn The Baptist", and tell me who's the real f*-up. -k

The changes that are being introduced won't erode public safety. They're not going to make our gun laws "lax". Getting rid of ATTs, for example, won't harm public safety. There's no plausible argument you could present to explain how ATTs reduce gun crime. Why have ATTs? They're just a time-wasting hoop for legal gun owners to jump through that criminals completely ignore. -k

The money supply is fixed. It's fixed by the M1 money supply (ie, the cash and bonds issued by the central bank) and the required reserve ratio (ie, rules specifying that the banks must have enough cash to meet some percentage of their deposits. If you disagree with my premise regarding the increasing value of capital and the decreasing value of labor, how do you explain that even though productivity is higher than ever before, the income of most workers has remained stagnant and the only people seeing their income grow are the very richest? First off, I don't recall that I've ever argued for income equality. And I don't think that we send our elected officials to Ottawa to make decisions based on what's best for Filipinos or Bangladeshis or whoever else. Until such time as those people are paying costs of living and taxation comparable to those in Canada, those lines on the map aren't arbitrary. Seems to me that we only hear this plea to "think of the poor Filipinos!" when companies are trying to defend their offshoring/outsourcing practices. I don't object to the accumulation of wealth in and of itself. I'm trying my hardest to accumulate a little wealth while I still can. But there has to be some balance. As I said before, I worry about a future where the value of labor continues to erode, while wealth draws more wealth to itself like a magnet. The table is becoming too tilted. -k

I know how the fractional reserve system works. And the only part of the system that the phrase "creating money from nothing" accurately describes is the part where the central bank issues cash and bonds. The rest is just an abstraction that facilitates and simplifies the process which is, as it has always been, people who need money trying to borrow it from the people who have it. The value of labor is shrinking, and the power of having capital is only growing as our financial system becomes more and more tailor to meet the interests of the most powerful financial entities. The economy is growing, but most peoples' income is stagnant and the only people seeing real gains are those at the very top. -k