statism watch

So Dwight Duncan’s argument to rationaliaze this scam is – ok, so what if we snuck this deal through under the radar of the Ontarian electorate (whom would have protested it had they known) – it’s a done deal now, and it would be besmirching our honour to go back on it. He’s completely begging the question of whether this this is even a severance. Ok, slick. You figure we’re stupid enough to buy that? Well, are we?

Flashback: HST ad campaign debuts in Ontario | Ont. deficit could linger for years: McGuinty | HST bill passes, 13% tax starts July 1 | Poll: HST equals Hated Sales Tax | Tories, Liberals, Bloc approve HST for Ontario and B.C. | Anti-HST protest at Ontario legislature spills onto Toronto streets | More HST debate fallout after Ontario Legislature sit-in | Liberals to support HST bill | Tory HST protest halts Ontario question period | Federal HST tax bill to be introduced, plays politics with law | Ontario Tories walk out to protest lack of hearings on HST | Contentious HST bill introduced in Ontario | Food under $4 to be HST-free, Ontario says | McGuinty says HST doubters exist in Liberal ranks | If passed, HST locked in through 2012 | New HST tax is fair, McGuinty says | Thousands rally against coming HST tax in BC | Flaherty offers taxpayer-funded bribe to adopt HST tax, holdout provinces demur | BC, like Ontario, moves to harmonize taxes | Ontario Liberals pressing to hide new ‘harmonized’ tax in prices | Ontario to merge GST, PST in ‘harmonized’ tax hike | EU approves free-trade talks with Canada | Canada expects EU free-trade talks soon: Stockwell Day | Harper, Sarkozy vow to work toward Canada-EU deal | CD Howe Institute backs Canada-EU deal, deep integration | Towards a new world order: Canada-EU trade proposal rivals scope of NAFTA

The Canadian Press
March 11, 2010

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan talks to reporters after tabling HST legislation on Nov. 16, 2009.

More than 1,250 Ontario tax collectors will get a severance package worth up to $45,000 each despite the fact they won’t be losing their jobs.

The move, part of the province’s plan to harmonize sales taxes with Ottawa, will see the provincial collectors become federal employees, triggering a payout critics said amounted to tens of thousands of dollars to change business cards.

The opposition parties said it shows how wrong-headed the HST is, but Premier Dalton McGuinty said the province is simply honouring an existing collective agreement.

“There’s an important part of our brand as a province, as a government, when we do business with each other and when we do business with the world, is that when we give you our word, our word is our word,” McGuinty said after an unrelated event in Listowel, Ont.

“I guess the alternative is we could introduce legislation in the house and say: ‘Look, you signed a deal and we signed a deal (but) it’s no longer convenient for us to respect that deal.’

“Where does that take you?”

Earlier this week, the Ministry of Revenue quietly announced the buyouts for more than 1,250 provincial collectors who will now work for Ottawa. It says the province had signed an agreement with the Canada Revenue Agency outlining “opportunities with the CRA for all Ontario government employees impacted by harmonization.”

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Related: IMF chief calls for quota-based global warming slush fund | EU considers general carbon tax | Gordon Brown’s plan for global bank tax ‘a step closer’ | Global Bank Insurance Levy Wins Support over Transaction Tax at Davos | Harper urges G20 to follow economic accords | Bankers unite against Barack Obama and Gordon Brown in call for world regulation | IMF warns against retreat from stimulus spending | Banks find gaping loophole in Obama financial reforms | Obama talking tough with banks | EU urged to adopt bank supertax | Obama ponders bank transaction levy to recoup bailout shortfalls | Explosive Leaked Emails Expose Treasury Secretary Geithner’s Deception in ‘Backdoor Bailout’ | Final Copenhagen Text Includes Global Transaction Tax | EU calls for tax on bank transactions | UK: Brown takes campaign for Tobin tax to Commonwealth | UK: Brown proposes global fund to kick-start Copenhagen climate change process | Flaherty, USA say no to global financial tax, yes to continued ’stimulus’ at G20 | Bernanke continues pressing for sweeping new powers for Fed | IMF chief wants global bank tax | G20 nations meet as protests flare on issue of international banking regulation | IMF approves $13bn gold sale to boost lending fund | China Set to Buy $50 Billion in IMF Notes | China calls anew for super-sovereign currency | No one talking about dumping dollar: China minister | China explores buying $50bn in IMF bonds | Chinese economists deem huge holding of US bonds “risky” as Geithner visits | A Bigger, Bolder Role Is Imagined For the IMF | UK PM reveals G20 plan to boost IMF by $1 trillion, hails new world order (again) | UN & IMF Back Agenda For Global Financial Dictatorship | IMF poised to print billions of dollars in ‘global quantitative easing’ | Gordon Brown seeks sweeping reforms to give IMF global ’surveillance role’ | IMF may need to “print money”, act as “world’s central bank” as crisis spreads | Globalists Exploit Financial Meltdown In Move Towards One World Currency | World needs new Bretton Woods, says Brown | IMF prescribes state regulation of ‘global financial order’ | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda | Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report

Daniel Hannan, The Telegraph
March 10, 2010

As predicted, the European Parliament has voted for a tax on financial transactions, to be levied directly by Brussels. The vote went through by 536 to 80: only my own group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, voted solidly against the measure, although we had some support from UKIP and its allies as well as two Danish liberals and two Portuguese conservatives.

Anyone wondering why David Cameron broke with the palaeo-federalist EPP need only look at its automatic support for such measures as this. With a handful of exceptions – such as those two heroes from our oldest ally - the Christian Democrats invariably vote for higher taxes, greater state intervention and Euro-corporatism. I do wish British journalists would stop lazily refering to the EPP as “Centre-Right”; the EPP itself angrily insists that it is “a party of the Centre”.

The Tobin Tax might well be vetoed by one or other of the national governments. But the campaign for pan-European taxation is only just beginning. This will be the big battleground of the next five years. It’s time for a European Tea Party.

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Flashback: Terence Corcoran: Ontario puts $10B in the wind | Ontario Premiere McGuinty heralds Samsung ‘green energy’ deal | ‘Green jobs’ are key to U.S., Canadian recovery: US Ambassador | Jim Prentice: Implement A ‘North American Climate Change Regime’ | Ont. gives green energy price guarantee | Climate Cops To Fine “Wasteful” Homeowners & Businesses | Obama targets US public with call for climate action | Obama to stake reputation on fast-tracked climate bill | Ontario unveils cap-and-trade legislation | NRTEE Carbon Market Panel is ‘Round Table on Socialist Planning’ | Climate panel presses for federal cap-and-trade system | U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy | U.N. Environment Head Wants Global Warming Tax | US Congress passes mandatory national service bill | Time to emulate Roosevelt’s New Deal and create green jobs | Terence Corcoran: Ontario’s green energy plan sneaks in feed-in taxes | New World Order Crony Gary Hart Calls for “Civic Duty” | US Democrats Introduce Public National Service Bills | Justin Trudeau introduces National Voluntary Service motion | Ontario joins continental WCI cap-and-trade scheme | B.C. carbon tax kicks in on Canada Day | They call it cap and trade, but it’s just another fuel tax | Quebec, Ontario sign historic climate pact | Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry ‘carbon ration cards’, say MPs | CEOs call for ‘aggressive’ action on climate change

Terence Corcoran, Financial Post
March 10, 2010

Despite bubbles, governments keep pumping air into alternative energy

That eerie hissing you hear may well be the air beginning to seep out of the green energy bubble. The sound is similar to the pfffffft and sshhhhsssssp noises we heard in the early days of the dot.com bubble collapse or the subprime mortgage meltdown. If you can’t hear it, you are not alone.

While investment analysts are telling their clients to get out of solar power firms and warning about the continuing risks in wind and bioenergy schemes, Ottawa and the provinces are on a mad populist stampede to throw billions of dollars at the green energy monster. The politicians don’t seem to be keeping up with the trends. “Don’t try to catch a falling knife,” warned J.P. Morgan this week in a report that told investors the market continues to fall out of the solar panel module market.

It downgraded a bunch of solar companies that have already been in a tailspin since the fist signs of a solar crash back in 2008.

Other alternative energy sectors are hitting walls. Jurisdictions with wind power regimes face continuing issues related to the fact that the wind often doesn’t blow much, turning investments in wind farms into cash-draining albatrosses. In Ontario, the 1,100 megawatts of built wind turbine capacity are often running a few megawatts at a time, and even on the best of days have trouble producing 150 megawatts.

Despite the fundamental lack of economic justification for alternative energy, governments keep pumping air into the bubbles. They blew a small fortune on ethanol programs that didn’t quite work out, so now they’re betting vast sums on aggressive campaigns to create green industries using some of the most regressive interventionist methods known to economics.

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This is the Soros plan. And of course, the IMF will happily operate this immense capital pool. Really nothing to do with global warming, of course, that’s just the pretext. It’s unlikely the money will even ever go towards ‘fixing’ the environment, as though a tax could ever accomplish this in the first place. Remember how the American banks simply appropriated the bailout funds and put them towards buying up and merging with their smaller competitors? It’s outright theft. And the end that these globalizing institutions have in sight is the creation of a new layer of global governance, with centralized taxation and currency control headed up by the IMF and the World Bank. It doesn’t seem as though they particularly care how they get the funding for this – recent months have seen separate proposals for a ‘Tobin tax’ on all financial transactions at Copenhagen and elsewhere, a global bank insurance levy, and now this idea of a direct ‘IMF tax’ on the GDP of nations. Ever since Copenhagen fell through (in large part because African states could see the proposed economic colonization a mile away, and they didn’t want to go that route), the globalist clique has backed off for a while, but now the renewed push is on to get the international community to capitulate, and there is an implicit threat involved now. Hand over power, or more countries fall. (Economist Max Keiser has exposed how Iceland was taken down by derivatives (skip to the second video), and it’s all over the news how Goldman Sachs wrecked Greece.)

Flashback: EU considers general carbon tax | Leaked UN Documents Reveal Plan For “Green World Order” By 2012 | Davos: Global climate fund threatens aid to developing world, campaigner warns | Davos 2010: George Soros warns gold is now the ‘ultimate bubble’, calls for IMF to handle climate fund | Copenhagen Accord Establishes Global Government Framework | Canada part of Copenhagen climate deal | Final Copenhagen Text Includes Global Transaction Tax | World leaders push for climate deal | UN Chief: We Will Impose Global Governance | Copenhagen climate summit releases draft final text | IMF could fund climate adaptation: Soros | Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak | Bombshell UN Climate Documents Reveal Planned “End Run” Around National Sovereignty | Canada agrees to contribute to $10-billion climate change fund | UK: Brown proposes global fund to kick-start Copenhagen climate change process | Leaked G20 Documents Shed Light on Global Carbon Tax | Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance’ | Czech President: Copenhagen to be ‘Largest tax increase in world history’ | Friends of the Earth attacks carbon trading as banker scam | Oil Companies Support Global Warming Alarmists, Not Skeptics | Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth sequel stresses spiritual argument on climate, downgrades CO2 threat | EU agrees to pay developing countries ‘climate aid’ to pass Copenhagen | Copenhagen’s Plans for a New ‘Government’ are Scary | Copenhagen, carbon, and the global corporate agenda | Lord Nicholas Stern: The world’s future is being decided this weekend | Thatcher science adviser: Copenhagen goal is world government | German Scientists Call for ‘World Climate Bank’ | G8 Summit: Rich nations to pay green tab | US Congress Passes the 1,200-page Climate Bill that it was not allowed to read | Climate Cops To Fine “Wasteful” Homeowners & Businesses | Obama targets US public with call for climate action | Obama to stake reputation on fast-tracked climate bill | The great carbon credit con: Why are we paying the Third World to poison its environment? | Ontario unveils cap-and-trade legislation | Economic stabilization may rely on carbon economy, economist says | Climate panel presses for federal cap-and-trade system | NRTEE Carbon Market Panel is ‘Round Table on Socialist Planning’ | Obama, Gore, tied to Chicago carbon exchange | U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy | U.N. Environment Head Wants Global Warming Tax | Time to emulate Roosevelt’s New Deal and create green jobs | EU calls for global carbon trading system to fight climate change

The Associated Press
March 8, 2010

Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga, left, and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, right, take part in a panel discussion at the University of Nairobi in Nairobi, Kenya, Monday, March 8, 2010.(AP Photo/Khalil Senosi)

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The head of the International Monetary Fund on Monday proposed a plan for the world’s governments to pool together to raise money needed to adapt to climate change, a rare step for an organization that normally does not develop environmental policies.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the Fund is concerned about the huge amount of funding needed and the effect that will have on the global economy. He added that the proposal may help efforts to reach a binding agreement on climate change later this year.

Strauss-Kahn proposed that countries adopt a quota system similar to the one the Fund uses to raise its own money, which could bring in money faster than proposals to increase carbon taxes or other fundraising methods. He only provided a broad outline of the plan, as the organization will release a paper within 10 days with full details. It is unclear how the proposal will be received.

The IMF raises funds from its 185 members mainly through a quota system that is based broadly on each country’s economic size. The United States is currently the largest shareholder.

“We all know that (carbon taxes and other fundraising methods) will take time and we don’t have this time. So we need something which looks like an interim solution, which will bridge the gap between now and the time when those carbon taxes will be big enough to solve the problem,” Strauss-Kahn said. “And that is exactly what the IMF proposal is dealing with.”

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Iceland has spanked the global central banks that engineered the crisis it now suffers from. As covered here, Icelanders are justified in their anger. It remains to be seen how Iceland is spanked in turn. Iceland, apparently, will not bow to IMF debt slavery, it has not yet been pacified in the way that some developing nations have been. The consequences will reverberate throughout the economic system. One of the most interesting questions to be resolved is whether or not Iceland will be able to survive outside of the nascent ‘new world order‘ should the IMF and the EU treat it as a pariah state. Will new local economies and trans-border trade arise outside of the centrally controlled economic system? Will barter trade in local resources short circuit any future banking tax or carbon taxation for this region? Wish them luck, and stay tuned.

Flashback: Icelanders to vote no on debt deal | Iceland stares into Icesave abyss | EU executive recommends fast-track membership for Iceland | No solution in dispute over Iceland deposits | Iceland sets date for Icesave vote | Iceland says IMF aid likely delayed | Iceland blocks central bank debt repayment deal | Icelandic parliament rolls over, votes for EU membership | Iceland to be fast-tracked into the EU | Iceland’s government collapses | In Iceland, the heat is on | Police fire pepper spray at Iceland protesters | Icelanders storm central bank in protest | Iceland inflation soars to 17.1% | 5 injured during protest in Iceland over economic meltdown

Gudjon Helgason,Sylvia Hui, The Associated Press
March 6, 2010

By overwhelming margin, voters turn down repaying Netherlands and UK for Internet bank failure

A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest against a government referendum in Reykjavik. Iceland’s voters on Saturday resoundingly rejected a $5.3 billion plan to pay off Britain and the Netherlands for debts spawned by the collapse of an Icelandic Internet bank, according to initial results. (Bob Strong/Reuters)

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND—Iceland’s voters on Saturday resoundingly rejected a $5.3 billion plan to pay off Britain and the Netherlands for debts spawned by the collapse of an Icelandic Internet bank, according to initial results.

Results returned from around 74,150 ballots counted so far in a country of about 320,000 showed that 93 per cent of voters said “no” in the referendum, compared to just 1.6 per cent who said “yes.”

The referendum results are indicative of how angry many Icelanders are as the tiny island nation struggles to recover from a deep recession. The global financial crisis wreaked political and economic havoc on Iceland, as its banks collapsed within the space of a week in October 2008 and its currency, the krona, plummeted. The Icelandic government was the first to fall as a result of the meltdown. [Ed. Note: This was no systemic, blame-free crisis. It was engineered by criminals working in the Icelandic banking system.]

Icelanders were deciding whether to approve the payment of $3.5 billion to Britain and $1.8 billion to the Netherlands as compensation for funds that those governments paid to around 340,000 of their citizens who had accounts with the collapsed bank Icesave, an Icelandic Internet bank that offered high interest rates before it failed along with its parent, Landsbanki.

“This result is no surprise,” Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said. “Now we must turn to the task of finishing the negotiations on Icesave.”

The debt owed to Britain and the Netherlands is a small sum compared to the massive amounts spent to rescue other victims of the global meltdown — $182.5 billion was paid out to keep U.S. insurance giant American International Group Inc. alive — but many taxpayers in the country say they can’t afford to pay it.

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Bank tax, carbon tax – the globalists don’t care, as long as they can bring some kind of fraudulent global tax in – piecemeal and region by region if need be.

Flashback: Leaked UN Documents Reveal Plan For “Green World Order” By 2012 | French Carbon Tax Law Struck Down | Copenhagen climate summit: plan for EU to police countries’ emissions | Copenhagen Accord Establishes Global Government Framework | Final Copenhagen Text Includes Global Transaction Tax | IMF could fund climate adaptation: Soros | UK energy smart meter roll-out is outlined | UK: Brown proposes global fund to kick-start Copenhagen climate change process | Leaked G20 Documents Shed Light on Global Carbon Tax | Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance’ | Czech President: Copenhagen to be ‘Largest tax increase in world history’ | Friends of the Earth attacks carbon trading as banker scam | Oil Companies Support Global Warming Alarmists, Not Skeptics | Copenhagen, carbon, and the global corporate agenda | Sarkozy launches carbon tax to help ’save the human race’ | Ontario unveils cap-and-trade legislation | Google PowerMeter to track home energy usage in Toronto test drive | NRTEE Carbon Market Panel is ‘Round Table on Socialist Planning’ | Climate panel presses for federal cap-and-trade system | U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy | U.N. Environment Head Wants Global Warming Tax | Ontario joins continental WCI cap-and-trade scheme | B.C. carbon tax kicks in on Canada Day | They call it cap and trade, but it’s just another fuel tax | Quebec, Ontario sign historic climate pact | Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry ‘carbon ration cards’, say MPs | CEOs call for ‘aggressive’ action on climate change

BBC News
March 5, 2010

The European Commission is planning an EU-wide minimum tax on carbon as part of the EU’s green energy agenda – but the UK opposes such a move.

The minimum tax would apply to fuel, natural gas and coal.

The EU’s new Taxation Commissioner, Algirdas Semeta, is working to revise the EU’s existing Energy Taxation Directive, his spokeswoman said.

Carbon taxes already exist in EU members Sweden, Finland and Denmark. In France the idea is being hotly debated.

Responding to the EU plan on Thursday a UK government spokeswoman said: “We do not support the idea of a mandatory pan-European carbon tax.

“The existing Energy Taxation Directive gives member states the flexibility to introduce a carbon tax if they wish.

“We believe that member states are best placed to choose the policy tools for achieving their climate change objectives.”

In Brussels earlier this week, Commissioner Semeta said the adoption of carbon taxes “on a larger, European scale seems desirable, as they would undoubtedly encourage innovation to strengthen energy efficiency and environmental protection“.

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It’s incredibly disturbing how effective the psychological trauma of 9/11 has been in convincing formerly rational adult populations of the need to go to war, the need to allow the government to surveill them and tend to their every need, lest the terror overtake society. The flight-or-flight instinct of an individual threatened with physical violence has been manipulated on a social level, and now, people simply dissociate when faced with yet another uncomfortable fact and accept their town councils calmly announcing that their garbage bins now all have spy chips installed. It’s insane. Oh, and wait your turn, Toronto (and presumably, other major Canadian cities – send in your clippings). You’ve got these bins and the chips as well, as was mentioned ever so fleetingly in this Globe and Mail article. But, you know, pay no mind to what’s happening to your culture: Bin Brother loves you.

Flashback: UK: Garbage spies alarm neighbourhood | Toronto: New bin regime spawns new rules, confusion for avid recyclers | Trash search doesn’t violate privacy rights, says top court | London Police Encourage Citizens To Inform on Neighbour’s Garbage | UK Slips New Garbage Bin Taxes into Climate Bill | Garbage piles up in Toronto as new garbage bin scheme fails to deliver | Supreme Court set to consider privacy rights | Toronto Mayor David Miller hails new taxes on water, trash | Toronto’s New Garbage Tracking Bins Delayed for Many | Top court to decide whether trash is private | Toronto Mayor delays garbage tax grab for twelve months | Garbage bin fee hike possible before new RFID bins even hit the kerb | ‘Environmental volunteers’ will be encouraged to spy on their neighbours | Microchip bin tax scheme to go ahead despite failures | Toronto Residents Furious Over RFID Garbage Bins | The monster (blue bin) that ate downtown | Bin Brother is watching you

Steve Doughty, The Daily Mail
March 5, 2010

The growing threat of a stealth tax on the rubbish we throw away was exposed by startling figures yesterday.

More than 2.5 million homes now have wheelie bins fitted with microchips to weigh their contents.

This is an increase of nearly two-thirds in just a year. The bins, which can be electronically identified and weighed, are designed for ‘pay-as-you-throw’ rubbish tax schemes.

Under such schemes – which are likely to be hugely unpopular – families who put out more waste will pay higher taxes to their local council.

Disclosure of the rapid spread of chipped bins followed the announcement this week of the first council to bring in a bin tax. Bristol City is presenting its scheme as a reward for recyclers, with cash payments to homes that leave out less rubbish.

The spread of chipped bins marks the revival of a tax idea that the Government appeared to have abandoned last year.

Gordon Brown promised to ditch bin taxes in the spring of 2008, at a point when the unpopularity among voters of fortnightly collections, strict bin rules, and the threat of pay-as-you-throw was at its height.

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The Greek deficit is 12.7% of GDP. Imagine the billions central banks are making off of payments on their debt. On the debts of all countries. This is never spoken of – we know who the debtors are – who are the creditors? And it’s a complete scam to blame ‘capitalism’ for this. National central banks print money and loan it to their treasuries at interest.If they experience outflows of capital via international trade, the IMF creates ‘SDRs’, artificially generated credit, and loans it to national central banks at interest. And the effective controllers of the IMF? The finance ministers of the largest nation states, themselves bankers. It’s a front corporation managed by the largest banks and hedge funds in the world on the model of a massive ponzi scheme, and that’s fraud, that’s taxation without representation, not free-market capitalism.

Flashback: Athen’s coffers to run dry in two weeks, more cracks appear in Eurozone | Man who broke the Bank of England, George Soros, ‘at centre of hedge funds plot to cash in on fall of the euro’ | Goldman role in Greek crisis probed | Greek workers stage general strike | How EU Countries Cooked Books Using Derivatives | Goldman Sachs Helped Greece Obscure Debt Through Currency Swaps | Collapse of the euro is ‘inevitable’: Bailing out the Greek economy futile, says French banking chief | Euro currency union shows strains | Stimulating our way into debt crises | EU leaders reach secret Greek bailout deal | Will Greece set off ‘global debt bomb’? | EU cautions Greece about its deficit | Could Greece drag down Europe? | ‘Significant chance’ of second financial crisis, warns World Economic Forum | A world awash in debt

Helena Smith, The Guardian
March 3, 2010

Budget cuts to appease eurozone agreed after cabinet meeting, about €4.8bn to be raised to help cash-strapped country

Greeks were told today that they faced seeing their country go bankrupt unless they accepted more austerity measures, as the prime minister ignored public outrage and pushed ahead with a radical new package of budgetary reforms.

The draconian measures, unveiled after an emergency cabinet meeting, were essential for the debt-plagued country’s “survival and economy”, said George Papandreou over protests against his policies.

Financial markets, including the FTSE100 in London, rose on the news as analysts predicted Greece now had more chance of raising money on the bond markets to meet its budget shortfalls.

“We have done what we need to do. We are now justifiably expecting EU solidarity. Europe has a historic responsibility,” said the socialist leader.

The measures, the third set in as many months, are expected to raise an extra ¤4.8bn for the cash-strapped country – deemed crucial if Greece is to meet its target of reducing its massive public deficit by 4% this year.

Papandreou, who will hold talks with the German chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Friday, has come under unprecedented pressure from the EU to adopt the tougher policies. The new measures include further cuts in civil servants’ annual pay through a 30% reduction of bonuses traditionally handed out at Easter and Christmas; a 2% hike in VAT, from the current 19%; higher taxes on alcohol, tobacco and luxury goods, including cars and yachts, and a freeze on state-funded pensions.

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Nice research. See? We need to keep the Post around for stuff like this, their crossword, and Terry Corcoran’s columns. Buy one on occasion. (You can always tear out the Barbara Kay to wrap fish in.)

Flashback: Obama hails stimulus plan, warns of layoffs | Stimulating our way into debt crises | The Federal Reserve as Giant Counterfeiter | IMF warns against retreat from stimulus spending | No new stimulus, economy ’stabilized’: Harper | Can’t say if federal stimulus is working: watchdog | Liberals call stimulus numbers ‘fiction’ | Flaherty, USA say no to global financial tax, yes to continued ’stimulus’ at G20 | G20 to pledge continued ’stimulus’, examine international reserve fund | Aspiring government economists must reveal views on stimulus plan | The Keynesian quagmire | Carney says G20 must stay the course on stimulus | G20 agrees to continue economic stimulus measures; Geithner shops international reserve accord | Former NY governor Spitzer: Federal Reserve is ‘a Ponzi scheme, an inside job’ | Budget officer ‘can’t tell’ if stimulus plan working | G8 leaders see no early end to stimulus | Flaherty looks for way to end stimulus | Harper lays out stimulus spending in progress report | Economist Warns Fed Will Bring About Zimbabwe Style Hyperinflation | Stimulus needed now, Bank of Canada says | Obama signs stimulus bill | Congressman warns unread ’stimulus’ bill will prolong agony | US Congress reaches deal on economic stimulus package | Pass stimulus or watch out, Obama warns | $12B for infrastructure forms key pillar of stimulus package | Brace for a big, ‘comprehensive’ budget: Harper | Transport Minister Baird calls for dramatic action on stimulus package | Obama calls for ‘dramatic action’ on stimulus package | The ugly spectre of ‘new Keynesianism’ and the self-appointed Guardians | Maybe we should look at Zimbabwe before trying to print our way out of a money crisis | Britain to introduce massive stimulus package | Deficits ‘essential,’ Harper says | A New World Financial Order: It Better Work This Time | Flaherty lauds Keynesian global ‘economic stimulus’ strategies | Who are the Architects of Economic Collapse? | The Bush gang’s parting gift: a final, frantic looting of public wealth | Wanted: a new financial order | World needs new Bretton Woods, says Brown | Why Paulson’s Plan is a Fraud | Congressman Ron Paul: Bailout Will Destroy Dollar, World Economy | Congressman Ron Paul Schools Fed Chairman Bernanke on the Bailout Plan

David Akin, The National Post
February 23, 2010

Since they were re-elected in October, 2008, the federal Conservatives have rolled out 3,229 press releases from government departments, agencies, and Crown corporations which announce funding commitments of various sizes for various regions. We maintain a database of information contained in those releases and here’s the latest tallies from that database. A chart summarizing the number of releases by the province in which the spending was announced and the total dollars committed in those releases is at the left. Here’s some of the trends:

• Nearly one in three of those spending announcements is made by ministers who were in the province of Quebec when they made the announcement. A total of 966 press releases carry a placeline in that province. The funding commitments outlined in those releases total $13.3 billion, most of which, but not all, will be spent in the province.
• Just 11 of those releases carry a placeline in Nunavut where spending commitments worth a total of $108 million have been rolled out. That’s the fewest number of releases by province or territory.

• Combined, the 3,229 releases tout spending commitments of $75 billion. Some of that is new money, some is old money, some is re-announced money. But in every case, the government is issuing a a release to call attention to and, one assumes, win political credit for spending money.

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The Guardian actually reports that “The summit on Thursday is shaping up as a piece of political manoeuvring by the Democrats rather than a genuine attempt by Obama to secure bipartisan support for health reform.” Republicans have been challenged to post their own suggestions, and the administration, says The Guardian, is counting on them not doing this in the three day time frame before the meeting this Thursday in order to paint them as obstructionist. Tricky, tricky.

Flashback: Barack Obama healthcare bill passes vital US Senate vote | House of Representatives passes Obama healthcare legislation | Obama tries to save health-care overhaul on primetime broadcast | Canadian defends anti-medicare ad | ABC Turns Programming Over To Government to Promote State Healthcare Agenda

CBC News
February 22, 2010

U.S. President Barack Obama has unveiled a new compromise health-care plan that attempts to bridge the differences between the stalled House and Senate bills.

The proposal, posted on the White House website on Monday, would not include a publicly run insurance plan, but would allow the government to cap health insurance premiums “if a rate increase is unreasonable and unjustified.”

It would also require most Americans to carry health insurance coverage and bar insurance companies from denying coverage to people with medical problems or charging them more.

The proposal claims it will insure more than 31 million Americans who cannot afford health insurance and reduce the U.S. deficit over the next 10 years by $100 billion.

The plan would also scale back a Senate-proposed tax on high-cost health insurance plans objected to by House Democrats and labour unions, but will include a Medicare payroll tax increase on upper-income earners.

The plan would also eliminate what has become known as the “Cornhusker Kickback” — a controversial deal that would have exempted the state of Nebraska of having to pay its share of Medicaid expansion.

Instead, the federal government will provide additional financing to all states for the expansion of Medicaid.

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