Vancouver Secrets

Businesses like this could kill our BC economy

California does have a new business that is exploding… They even have a “weed” map now.

Nice to see entrepreneurs capitalizing on proposition 215. Unfortunately BC will see an impact to the provincial GDP – some estimate up to 8 billion is at stake.

How long before we see ads like this in the Georgia Straight?

We are a member based organization dedicated to the safe and lawful  provision of medical cannabis to our patient members.  Ethnobotanikal collective and our patient members invoke the full legal protection of Proposition 215 and SB 420.

We believe in the lawful and therapeutic consumption of cannabis as medicine.

We believe in a “closed circuit” organization which ensures that all our products are cultivated and distributed from within our own LOCAL membership pool.

We believe in promoting the well being of our patient members and pledge that all our products have been cultivated in a manner consistent with appropriate health and safety standards, ensuring their safe and therapeutic consumption.

We believe in delivering the medicine you need, where and when you need it!  Why risk transporting your medicine when we will assume that risk for you?

We’ll be paying for it soon.

HST isn’t the only thing that is set to bite us.

It seems that for some reason the workers of China are getting a wee bit cranky about the $1-2 a day they get paid. Suicides are up. Walk-outs are starting.

What can you buy that isn’t made in China these days? We’ll see inflation in the not too distant future as the slave wages increase.

June 7 (Bloomberg) — The moment that corporate executives from New York to Tokyo have dreaded has arrived: Chinese workers are demanding a raise.

It was great for company balance sheets while it lasted. Hundreds of millions were willing to toil for a dollar or two a day. The arrangement pumped up profits and made many a senior vice president look like a genius. Well, those days are over and the global economy won’t be the same.

Just ask Honda Motor Co., the subject of a recent walkout that shut down all of its production in China. The carmaker had to offer workers a 24 percent pay raise to get things back online. Consider this the vanguard of a Chinese we-won’t-work- for-peanuts movement and another reason to fret about inflation.

Higher wages won’t just become the norm because workers feel exploited. China will have no choice but to advocate big increases in compensation to keep the peace among its 1.3 billion people. Labor unrest is bubbling up as rarely before…

The story is here

photo credit: Robert Scoble

Greece Explained.

“Our country is weary of borrowing and spending and bailouts from Washington, D.C. so the American people deserve to know we are bailing out Greece and future Americans may be picking up the tab for as much as $50 billion in additional loan guarantees for the rest of Europe in the form of a bailout.

“Here’s how it works. The European Union’s members and the IMF recently pledged $145 billion in the Greek bailout. Forty billion dollars of that came from the International Monetary Fund. Since the United States pays 17 percent, we are the largest contributor to the IMF. American taxpayers are on the hook for $6.8 billion in loan guarantees from the IMF and it may just be a down payment.

“The EU this last weekend talked about a $1 trillion bailout plan that could put U.S. taxpayers on the hook for $50 billion in additional loan guarantees to bail out Europe.

“Look, the EU was formed to compete with the U.S.A., economically. It is simply not right to ask the people of the United States of America to provide loan guarantees to bail out an economic competitor in Europe. Nobody wants to see the EU fail, but we are not asking their help in New Jersey or California. They shouldn’t be asking our help with Portugal, Spain, or Greece.”

In other news..

Greece Considering Legal Action Against U.S. Banks for Crisis.

Biting the hand that feeds.

The HST – A Hideous Sales Tax Awaits

Get ready for the sledgehammer called HST.

Gordon Campbell’s HST, which blends the federal GST with the provincial sales tax (and applies it to pretty much all  goods and services) needs to be stopped.

It’s going to all but kill the housing market, force a sales declines onto already struggling retail and service businesses, and raise the cost of living from ridiculously high to prohibitively high.

And once Campbell figures out that the provinces revenues are in steep decline, you know he’ll do what any good Liberal would do… raise taxes again.

The real reason Campbell has decided to hammer us is the $1.5 Billion bonus (bribe) her gets from the Federal Government for doing so. This bonus allows him to hide a deficit, that at election time, he conveniently forgot to tell us about.

The Hideous Sales Tax expands taxes to everything we pay the Godawful Sales Tax on now.

The way they are trying to sell it to us, is telling us that merchants will pass along savings… which is compete Bullsh*t.  Notice how prices of gas and merchandise has dropped now the Canadian dollar is equal to US? We pay the equivalent of $4.50 for a US gallon – almost double what they do just across the border.

They advertise that home buyers purchasing homes under $400,000 will pay approximately the same as the current system… the bad news is that you can’t actually buy a house for $400,000 in the Vancouver area, or in any BC city a person could actually make a living in.

Imagine – a tax of only an average year’s salary for the privileged of buying a home!???

So Gordie, if you are determined to take the next step in the tax-rape of BC taxpayers, here’s an idea to make it more like a molesting:

Drop provincial sales tax to 5% and make HST 10%… it may stand a chance.

Or, better yet, kill provincial income tax and up it to 15% overall – you’d have a much better chance of acceptance, and maybe a small hope of stopping the recall movement, and staying in power.

I know.. the chances of a tax ever going down in BC are about as likely as me buying a Smart Car.

Oh, and by the way Gordie – now you’ve awoken the political dead…. He’s Back!!!

Go here to stop the HST.

photo credit: Rich Anderson

Tortious Interference – Mighty Big Words From The Unemployed

From D.C. Douglas – the (former) Geico voice-over guy:

Four things need clarifying. 1) Please DO NOT call GEICO. If you read the blog carefully, you’ll see I hold no animosity toward them, only FreedomWorks. 2) Some readers seem to miss the fact that I did apologize for my words. Please read carefully. 3) I was NOT the gecko or the main vo tag announcer. That was a conflation by Matt Kibbe. 4) Comments have been closed because the server can’t handle it, man. Please go here to enjoy a debate: HuffingtonPost Article.

This video explains why Mr. Douglas would leave such a message… and reflects the fear of the left on the rise of middle America.

Here’s his video if you want to understand where he is coming from. All part of the Obama campaign to crush the tea party.

Here’s hoping for a start of a movement within Canada’s silent majority.

(Yes, I just finished my taxes )

Not sure what it will take before we speak out against the HST, the carbon tax, the environmental fees, the hidden taxes… and start demanding a downsizing of government. Living costs that are 40% more than the US haven’t seemed to get any reaction.

They bank on the belief that Canadians never met a tax they don’t like.

California Completely Misses The Point

As California continues to melt down, an article today in the Oakland Tribune forecasts the challenge (tax revenue) and completely forgets where the money actually comes from.

They point out the welfare will need to be cut, along with schools, and state workers…

Enrollment in California classrooms could swell, public colleges may further limit enrollment and raise student fees, state workers could face another year of furloughs, and the poor may stop receiving welfare unless Schwarzenegger and lawmakers agree to raise revenue.

Since February, California has made nearly $60 billion in adjustments to its annual spending plan. That has come in the form of cuts to education and social service programs, temporary hikes in the sales and income taxes, an increase in the vehicle license fee and one-time infusions of cash from the federal stimulus package.

The stimulus funding and temporary taxes will begin to end at the end of 2010, leaving less revenue for the second half of the fiscal year that will begin in July. Compounding California’s problem are lawsuits that have reversed several of this year’s budget decisions, contributing to a $6 billion deficit in the current fiscal year.

The state also has been unable to adopt prison and health care cuts it passed in the last budget.

Here’s a novel idea:

Make the state friendly to business and people who pay taxes. Raise tax revenue by allowing people to make money. Profits = Jobs = Tax Revenue.

Creating a climate for growth is the only way out – increasing taxes and relying on handouts will only continue the death spiral.

The liberal idea that you can tax  or spend your way out of a financial crisis has really paid off so far.

If they want to be genius, all they need to do is rid themselves of the laws that kill business, cut social spending and lower taxes… it will bring people and business back to the state and the tax revenue they so dearly need.

In BC, we have a government that is following California down this road… HST will be a killer, along with the new taxes we’ll be blessed with after the Winter Olympics. (No one has an inkling of how much the games will actually cost us.) Health care is already being rationed and as it increases in percentage of our budget spending, it will continue to rapidly decline.

The statistics for B.C. are daunting: Promised surpluses turned into record deficits; over 40,000 private sector jobs disappeared; exports fell by 25 per cent; and the number of EI recipients more than doubled.

If BC hopes to avoid the same fate as California, maybe now would be a good time to use the HST introduction to kill off personal income tax. Or to bring in a flat tax? At minimum, lower the provincial sales tax rate to counter the punishing effects HST will have on all the new items that will be taxed.

It may even save the Campbell Liberals from extinction.

The only reason they are introducing HST is the bribe that comes along with it… this one-time payment from the Federal Government is short sighted and will prove to cost more than they can imagine.

2010 should be the year of jobs, not taxes. Unfortunately, we are blessed with left-wing policies that ignore where the money comes from.

Daniel Hollinger at Hollinger International has links to articles on school reform