Haven’t been back since the coop was deliberately bankrupted. No plans to.

Is there more context for this?

It didn’t cost “us” anything. Citizens aren’t respsible for the Fed govt’s spending, deficit, or debt. Private individuals and companies don’t pay it. Taxes never need to be raised to run surpluses to “pay off the debt”.

The money spent on elections or anything else is received by private individuals and firms, and they go on to spend it on other things. Some of it is returned in taxes.

If the govt were to run austere spending and high taxes, producing enough surpluses to pay off the debt…how much money would remain in private hands? ZERO!

Something to keep in mind any time someone complains about how expensive elections or other useful govt spending is.

Why is the cost a concern? It mostly goes to low income temp workers. Even a general election is a microscopic component of govt spending. Democracy and elections should be among the highest spending priorities.

If you want to complain about spending, complain about something wasteful, like $60B in annual subsidies for the US-owned oil industry that produces 70% of AB oil. Shave that by 1% and you’d pay for every by-election since 1867

Sounds good to me.

Totally agree about electoral reforms of most kinds.

Sadly the NDP has drifted far from their socialist root, and doesn’t really talk about any kind of major reform to capitalism. They offer a lot of marginal policy change, but don’t talk about alternatives that would reverse the 50 year trend. When Mulcair was leader, h3me wanted to eliminate the federal deficit.

I think everyone can get behind interprovincial trade. Not much else that’s positive in there. Build pipelines faster, and double down on the fraud of carbon-capture. Nothing about any systemic changes that will help Canadians find housing or secure stable, increasing incomes. Nothing about shifting the share of economic growth from capital to workers. The inflation adjusted incomes of Canadians have be flat since the 1970s, and we are much less secure and have inferior services like health and education.

there’s a saying “if it can be done, you can afford it”…it means that money is never the problem for currency-issuing entities, like “Europe”. They always have enough Euros.

What is needed are the resources to do the thing - labour, material, organization.

A state can gently steer the resources using money as an inducement. Or it can just do it with power and laws.

Of course, creating Euros in this way means that the Euros aren’t being created in the same way they are now - which is by paying them to those who already hold Euro bonds, and that makes them upset, and that’s why it will take a while to happen.

Ax the Ax the Tax

Sounds good to me. No point leaving a bunch of open senate seats for some future govt to fill.

I look forward to Trudeau’s many non-partisan senators to blocking a future attempt by Poilievre to bypass the charter of rights using the notwithstanding clause federally. The senate would be right to reject that when conservatives try to advance attacks on whatever marginalized group they want blame for their own failings (probably transgendered people).

The senate would be right to reject that.

family farms are a tiny part of the ag industry. In the US it was under 10%. The image of a pastoral low-intensity 19th century family farm has been drilled into peoples’ minds by food industry advertising for 100 years. People like that image but it’s not real.

Ag is big business. Loans and leases for land, equipment, inputs, most of the labour isn’t from the business operator.

There’s probably under 10k family farms in Canada that would be impacted by a transfer to family and they can easily be exempted, it’s chump change for tax revenue.

“cures” involving immunosuppression have been around for a long time. It’s not a good outcome for most, the side effects of immunosuppression are worse than taking insulin.

The main patient discussed uses immunosuppression but later in the article they discuss some progress that doesn’t involve halting the immune system. That’s the potential breakthrough.

the increases they’re asking for probably don’t make up for the high inflation in the recent past. Particularly if inflation, as measured for consumers at that income level, doesn’t stay at 2% or less for the next 4 years.

Candyman…candyman…cand-…nah

China, India have tiny attempts and smaller successes at influence compared to the thousands of corporate lobbyists that meet with Canadian politicians every year.

What about the influence of the construction industry? Property developers outright own provincial and municipal politics in Ontario. Big tech?

Oil?!?

How about all the huge military and consulting companies that place 50% of the labour in govt workplaces and suck a 25% margin off each one?

Most of those aren’t domestically owned either.

enjoy the recessions that come with balanced budgets and surpluses… everyone will be sending in extra taxes to balance that budget.

The Canadian govt is the primary creator of Canadian dollars.

When the federal govt runs a deficit of say $1B, that’s a surplus of $1B in the private sector. $1B more spent into industry than collected in taxes. Good times for the private sector.

When the federal govt runs a surplus of $1B, that is a deficit of $1B in the private sector. $1B more collected in taxes than spent. This is an absolute disaster for the economy.

When you consider the above, you can see how ridiculous it is for the federal govt to run a balanced budget or surplus. A balanced budget is a strongly recessionary position, choking off economic growth in the private sector.

instead of a long complicated process to pre-empt corruption, just have an automatic and detailed post-award review for corruption. Corruption discovered in the review is referred for criminal prosecution.

After the first 500 or so corporate CEOs and executives are jailed, the rest will get the point. Offer your best price, compete with your competitors, sell your offer on its merits in the open bid, and stay away from the bid evaluators and other potential or actual bidders.

it’s to stop attempts to leave and commit terrorism from lawless jurisdictions. I think it’s fairly new and related to the short period of time when ISIS held territory in Syria & Iraq. Odd to see it used for the US, but why not.

from every possible thing that can happen to you while smoking…

cancer while smoking COVID while smoking caught in fascist riots while smoking hit by bus while smoking bear attack while smoking container dropped from a plane while smoking etc

Smoking puts you out in the world which increases a lot of risks you wouldn’t otherwise have.