Une chef syndicale californienne menace la législature

Décidément, les syndicats des employés gouvernementaux en mènent très large en Californie.

On a déja discuté du fait qu'ils sont les principaux lobbyistes de la dernière décennie dans le Golden State.

Et comme l'état Californien est au bord du gouffre, et doit sabrer ses dépenses (grâce en bonne partie aux grasses rémunérations et pensions dorées des employés gouvernementaux), les syndicats montent aux barricades.

On voit ici une chef syndicale du SEIU menacer ouvertement les législateurs californiens.

Elle s'écrie: 'on vous a aidés à obtenir vos postes, alors n'oubliez pas que l'on peut vous les faire perdre'.

Ma réponse: tout politicien acceptant des faveurs de quelque groupe d'intérêt que ce soit ne mérite pas son poste.

Donc, ce serait une excellente chose que les politiciens corrompus en question soient évincés.

Espérons que cette vidéo sera très largement diffusée, surtout en Californie, afin que les contribuables se rendent compte des abus grossiers survenant avec leurs fonds.

Éditorial sur le 'Tea Party' québécois dans le National Post

...qui met le doigt sur le noeud du problème à mon avis.

Via le National Post:

Editorial: Lessons for Quebec's Tea Party

Posted: April 13, 2010, 11:45 AM by Ron Nurwisah

Canadian politics, quebec

Quebec's personal taxes, already among the highest in the country, are about to go higher still. So it is little wonder that the province has given birth to its own version of the U.S. Tea Party movement. On Sunday, as many as 50,000 members of the "Cols rouges" -- the Red Collar movement -- marched from the Plains of Abraham to the Quebec National Assembly to protest recently announced hikes to the provincial sales tax, fuel tax, health tax, government electricity rates, and others.

We agree that taxes are too high, but -- especially in Quebec --- public services are also too lavish and benefits too rich. Until protestors also become advocates for smaller government and leaner entitlements, their fight against higher taxes will fail.

We are in no way arguing for higher taxes. Middle-and Upper-class Canadians already are forking over somewhere between 40% and 60% of their income -- depending on how high their income is -- to feed three levels of government. Income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, not to mention gas-guzzler taxes and property-transfer levies, inheritance taxes, capital gains and a host of other tolls, duties, tariffs and charges make Canadians among the most heavily taxed individuals in the developed world.

Still, the truth of the matter is that there is a major disconnect in many Canadians' minds when it comes to public services. Too many of us want our "free" benefits to continue, yet balk at tax increases. It's as if we believe governments can manufacture revenues from thin air, when the truth is they have no money they do not extract from current taxpayers -- or from future taxpayers in the form of accumulated public debts.

This dichotomy was evident among the protestors Sunday in Quebec City. Few, if any, were demanding an end to free health care, free university and college and Quebec's heavily subsidized $7-a-day day care. Instead, they chanted for the provincial government to clean up its own spending first before raising gasoline taxes by four cents a litre, or the provincial sales tax to 15%, or user fees for health care to as much as $450 per person per year.

This is a pipe dream. Governments simply aren't capable of becoming much more efficient than they already are; the score of failed efforts at streamlining government in the past 30 years are proof of that. Taxpayers struggling under onerous public obligations have only two choices, get used to higher levies every year, a la Quebec example, or learn to lower their demands for public services.

La bulle immobilière canadienne sur le seuil d'imploser?

Plus, un jeu boni: trouvez si la maison de Vancouver sur la photo est une piquerie ou un manoir de 1 000 000$!!

Via le blogue de Mike Shedlock:

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Crack Shack or Mansion Game

Can you distinguish a Crack Shack from a million dollar Vancouver Mansion?

What will $1 million buy in Vancouver, Canada - A Crack Shack or a Mansion?

You make the call.



I got 10 out of 16 correct.

Please click here to play Vancouver Crack Shack Or Mansion.

Canada For Sale Listings Hit Record High

Inquiring minds note Canadian homes for sale hits record in March

The number of re-sale houses on the market in Canada hit a record in March, with the new supply helping ease price pressures in the market, the Canadian Real Estate Association said.

Some 97,663 properties were listed for sale on the Multiple Listing Service in March, that’s 20% higher than the previous March record set in 2008, CREA said.

A total of 233,402 new listings have come on stream since the beginning of the year, and that’s more than any other first quarter on record, it said.

The association said that while demand remains strong, there are signs the market is cooling off from the record-setting pace of the fourth quarter.

That is exactly how the bust started in the US: record units for sale with demand still strong. A few short months later demand collapsed while supply soared.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

La citation du jour (3)

The ultimate step will come when we accept that government should not only prohibit unhealthy activities but actually requirehealthy behaviour. The forced calisthenics Winston endures in the novel 1984 happily remain just as unthinkable today as they were in Orwell’s time, but should we scoff smugly at the idea that one day, taxpayers frustrated with an ever-growing fiscal burden might think that salvation lies in dragging fat men onto treadmills? If they do, how long before people wonder how we ever got along in a world where such things were seen as a matter of private, individual choice?

-Adam Allouba

La citation du jour (2)

« Si le syndicalisme est aussi bon qu'on le prétend, pourquoi employer la force pour garder les moutons dans la bergerie? »

-Brigitte Pellerin

George Harrison: The Taxman

Article datant de 2001 sur la chanson 'The Taxman' des Beatles, écrite par George Harrison.

NB. Je n'arrive pas à inclure le lien du vidéo de la chanson mais il fonctionne dans l'article original.

Via le QL:

Montréal, December 8, 2001 / No 94

WORD FOR WORD THE QUIET BEATLE... AND THE TAXMAN (Gilles Guenette) George Harrison died of cancer at the age of 58 last November in Los Angeles. Best known for his work as lead guitarist for The Beatles, the "quiet Beatle", as many will remember him, is the brain behind such hits as "Here comes the sun," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Something," "I Me Mine," and "Taxman." Earlier songs were "just any words I could think of," he once said in an interview. The more autobiographical one came much later, during his Post-Beatles solo career. But if one song, in his Fab Four area, is auto- biographical, it's perhaps "Taxman" from the Revolver album. George Harrison composed "Taxman," with a little help from his friend John Lennon, in 1966, after The Beatles took a closer look at what they owed Her Majesty's tax collectors. "Taxman was [written] when I first realized that even though we had started earning money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes. It was and still is typical," said Harrison in a 1980 interview. As our way of remembering Mr. Harrison, QL offers this anti-tax anthem, written when Britain had a 95% top tax rate – thus, the lyrics "one for you, nineteen for me". G. G.

T A X M A N Let me tell you how it will beThere's one for you, nineteen for me'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman Should five per cent appear too smallBe thankful I don't take it all'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman If you drive a car, I'll tax the streetIf you try to sit, I'll tax your seatIf you get too cold, I'll tax the heatIf you take a walk, I'll tax your feetTaxman 'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman Don't ask me what I want it for(ha ha Mr. Wilson)If you don't want to pay some more(ha ha Mr. Heath)'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman Now my advice for those who dieDeclare the pennies on your eyes'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman And you're working for no one but me.

La citation du jour

Mises often said that ideas are more powerful than armies. In the end, governments cannot manage ideas and are even rendered powerless by them.

-Lew Rockwell