“Where Being Conservative Means You'll Need To Keep It Secret.”
Is it a Crack Shack Or a Mansion:
A sorry statement on the reality of Vancouver housing prices…
You are playing Part 2 of the Crack Shack or Mansion game.
The game features real Vancouver real estate listings, as of April 21st, 2010.
Can you tell the difference between a crack shack and a Vancouver, BC mansion, listed for one or two million dollars?
This bud’s for you! Interesting article on how much BC stands to lose from our “illegal” agriculture.
Wonder where all the money goes? On the bright side, they could follow California, legalize it, and charge HST. Deficit solved.
British Columbia’s cannabis activists and law enforcement officials are bracing themselves for a political earthquake that’s set to hit California this fall when voters head to the polls to legalize marijuana. Vancouver-based activists fear BC‘s bud industry could be wiped out if California opens the door on pot decriminalization.
“We’ve got to protect our pre-eminent position by legalizing now,” said Marc Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture and “BC‘s prince of pot.”
Speaking from his magazine office on Hastings Street, Emery said BC‘s marijuana industry could only compete with a possible pot haven in California if the province legalizes cannabis within the first two years of any such move south of the border.
If California legalizes, the demands for BC marijuana at $2,400 a pound will greatly diminish, said Emery, who faces a five-year jail term in the U.S. for drug trafficking and distributing cannabis seeds over the Internet.
According to Emery, the homegrown market will evaporate if Canadian pot users flock to California for cheap, high-quality cannabis that could be available for as little as $10 per ounce, compared to the current rate of $200 in Vancouver.
Should BC also decriminalize pot, Emery said the provincial economy could benefit from industry innovation focused on developing high-quality cannabis strains.
The BC marijuana industry is estimated at $5 to $8 billion and, if decriminalized, presents significant taxable revenue. William Austin, a BC Marijuana Party activist who phones MPs as part of the anti-prohibition drive, said the province and law enforcers are failing to see the bigger picture.
“The black market won’t go away but [legalization] will be a significant hit and it will allow the police to actually focus on more dangerous things like people-trafficking or weapons smuggling,” said Austin.
Yet, if California voters legalized marijuana, the impact on BC police would change little in the short term since pot “causes a considerable problem for law enforcement,” said RCMP Sergeant Dave Goddard. “It’s still going to be illegal here in Canada,” he said.
If other U.S. states such as Washington and Oregon legalize cannabis, Staff Sgt. Goddard said the impact would eventually be felt in Vancouver. “It would certainly reduce the market for BC bud and it would certainly have a domino effect here,” he said. “But we won’t be seeing that for some time.”
The California Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act would allow the recreational use of up to 28 grams of weed for adults over 21 and cultivation of up to 25 square feet of plant per household. It would be illegal to smoke in public, in the presence of minors, or on school grounds. Driving under the influence of pot would remain prohibited.
If cannabis becomes legal in California, the state will take ownership of an industry with an estimated value of $14 billion, which would help its bankrupt government plug a deficit of $42 billion in 2009.
Source. 
photo credit: themadpothead
photo credit: WorldWideMotorcycles
Just got back from my friendly ICBC insurance broker, where I went to get BC insurance on my motorcycle.
I drive it a few times a month – and have owned it for 10 years.
Knowing BC insurance rates are ridiculous, I opted for liability only (the minimum required). After all, how much damage can I do with a motorbike?
The rate for 1 year- $1,200!?!
I can drop it for those winter months you don’t normally use the bike to save money… the rate goes up to $120/month.
So, as I can’t drive my car and motorbike at the same time, you’d think they’d give me a break. No such luck.
For a comparison of how far out of wack ICBC is, hop over to a national insurer in the US. Use an American zip code (try 33333 – Florida).
I have been paying $150 per year.
It’s time BC residents start asking questions of ICBC, and why a monopoly would overcharge by so much.
Something is terribly wrong.
I think it has do do with engine size, and as I have a bike that’s over 1000 cc’s, they charge me a lot more. Unfortunately, motor size in inversely proportional to risk. Anyone with a 1000-1600 cc motot os most likely older, and has years of driving experience… less risk.
Makes no sense, but ICBC is a monopoly and there is no reasoning with these bureaucrats.
Not sure what it takes to get BC residents to revolt against this monopoly and allow free enterprise into the province. ICBC needs to be shut down.
Amazing. BC has a tea party. When you have a government that resorts to lying to get elected, and then proceeds to add even more taxes on the people, there is a limit to how far you can actually go. Even in BC.
The recent news the Premier Gordon Campbell won’t seek reelection is also good news.
“I recognize today that people are pretty — they are very upset in fact,” said Campbell in an interview with Keith Baldrey for Global TV. “They think they were misled with regard to the HST initiative that we undertook.”
“I still think it was the right decision to make,” Campbell continued. “We all knew that we would be hit hard politically as a result of that decision. It was not a comfortable decision to make. So I understand why people are upset. I don’t underestimate how upset people are and the anger that people feel about it.”
Gordon, you lied about the BC deficit to get elected. Now to overcome that lie, you take a bribe to punish BC residents with the HST (BC gets $1.5 billion from the federal government to do the HST). It also means a $1.9 billion tax shift from industry to BC families.. or $1,700 in higher taxes for a family of four.
The good news is that the Bill Vander Zalm petition to repeal the HST has passed the 500,000 signature mark, with 7 weeks to go.
The petition has achieved the 10% Elections BC threshold in 56 out of a total of 85 ridings across the province. 34 ridings have reached the Fight HST internal threshold of 15% of registered voters or more.
“What is really exciting about this report is the big jump in signatures in both Vancouver and Burnaby this week. We were a little slow getting started in those ridings, but they are catching up quickly, with signature gathering in those regions keeping pace with all other regions now,” said Chris Delaney, Fight HST lead organizer.
With just over 8 weeks left to go in the 13 week signature gathering campaign, Delaney says the Fight HST petition is poised to hit the 500,000 signature mark, equivalent to over 1/3 of all the voters who voted in the last provincial election.
“This is the largest sample of public opinion ever done in the history of BC. It shows a deep, pervasive and across the board rejection of the government’s policy to implement the HST. It has become much more than just a legal petition to repeal the HST. It has become a referendum on the tax and the government that gave it to us,” Delaney explained.
Fight HST leader, Bill Vander Zalm, says it’s time for the government to act.
“We are calling on Premier Campbell and Finance Minister Hansen to publicly announce they will repeal the HST right now. There can no longer be any purpose to continuing with a tax that nobody wants, and which the government has just admitted it won’t even pay itself when it comes to government purchases. How many more voters do they have to hear from before they will do the right thing and get rid of this tax?” Vander Zalm asked.
The campaign also weighed in on the government’s recently released HST list with Vander Zalm saying it simply doesn’t tell the truth as there are more than 30 items “missing in action.”
“We spent some time reviewing the list and have determined it is totally bogus,” Vander Zalm said in a release. “The government has, once again, deliberately tried to mislead the public when it comes to the HST. They just can’t seem to ever tell the truth.”
Vander Zalm said the list excludes almost all services that will now have HST applied to them.
“They left out items such as catering, computer repair services, consulting services, commercial leases, fishing charters, home appraisals, investment counseling, limousine rentals, skiing and even parking fees,” he said.
If you’ve been watching our Canucks in the playoffs, you had to notice those two green guys. The Green Men who mock opposing players as they sit in the penalty box, became infamous after their gyrating performance for penalized Nashville Predators became a YouTube classic last December.
They have their own Facebook page here, The Green Guys Behind The Canucks Penalty Box, with over 45,000 friends (a little more than all of Moose Jaw).
The Green Men were revealed by the Vancouver Sun as British Columbia Institute of Technology students Ryan Sullivan and Adam Forsythe, whose Green Men alter-egos go by Sully and Force.
The inspiration, according to Sully in an interview with Nucks Misconduct:
After watching an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” which is where the Greenman originates from, we both looked at each other and I do believe we actually yelled “Eureka” at the same time. It was a little weird, but we knew it was fate. We knew we had to become Greenmen and go to a Canucks game. As for hesitations, there was a few … I mean we aren’t really wearing anything so that was a concern… and the first game we went to, it was about minus-5, so as we walked from our car to GM Place, it was quite tempting to bail out. I’m sure glad we didn’t though!
You can read more about the Green Men on the Canucks’ Web site.
The dust kicked up into the atmosphere after a big enough nuclear blast could offer enough protection from sunlight to reverse the effects of global warming. Of course, it could also plunge us into a new ice age if too much sunlight is blocked.
Author: John Hawley
Text: If we do not do enough to thwart Global Warming, and the oceans start to rise, could we use the effects of Nuclear Winter to offset global warming? Of course we would have to be careful about radiation and radioactive contamination by using the cleanest possible nuclear devices.
Response #: 1 of 2
Author: Mark Fernau
Text: This is a good question, but fortunately you do not have to use nuclear bombs to put the dust and particles in the atmosphere. The idea is to reflect sunlight back to space and you could do this by putting lots of sulfur particles into the atmosphere. You do not need dust from nuclear explosions, you could just use rockets or supersonic transports or whatever to get the sulfate particles up to the correct height in the atmosphere.
The real problem with this is not nuclear winter and radiation, it is that the human race would be playing G What happens if you miscalculate and put too much reflecting material into the atmosphere and send the Earth not only into nuclear winter but into an ice age? I am not sure I would want to risk it. Another idea I like is to have every one in the world paint their roofs and driveways white. Much easier than the first approach although more complicated because of all the clouds and stuff that would be in the way to mess up your calculation of how much white is needed. Cheers,
Response #: 2 of 2
Author: Don Libby
Text: Actually, some scientists (e.g. Reid Bryson at the University of Wisconsin) believe that there is sufficient dust in the atmosphere already to effectively counter any global warming effect from C02. Since the “nuclear winter” effect is due to the huge clouds of debris thrown up into the atmosphere, we could think of all the dust that has already (and is still being) thrown up by less drastic human and natural activities as providing some of this sheltering effect. Good thinking, a global parasol might be helpful. I wonder if we could not provide the shade with less potential harm than nuclear explosions would cause, such as putting a huge tarpaulin into earth orbit to create a solar eclipse.
Food for thought. It may not be as bad as they want us to believe.
