Friday Free For All – Feb. 24th, 2017
Friday, February 24, 2017 @ 12:00 AM
Open the flood gate, it’s time for the Friday Free For All.
You pick the topic, but please, be respectful of each other, regardless of how much you may disagree with their opinion. Also, please keep comments brief and to the point. Long rambling submissions are often skipped over by others and fail to generate discussion.
There are three simple rules:
Keep it clean
Keep it legal
No Bullying
Comments
In the budget released on Feb. 21, 2017 the B.C. government is expecting a budget surplus of $295 million in the 2017/18 fiscal year. In this same 2017/18 fiscal year they are expecting the total provincial debt to increase by $3.1 billion, up to $69.7 billion.
They are expecting a budget surplus of $244 million in the 2018/19 fiscal year. In this same 2018/19 fiscal year they are expecting the total provincial debt to increase by $3.7 billion, up to $73.4 billion.
They are expecting a budget surplus of $223 million in the 2019/20 fiscal year. In this same 2019/20 fiscal year they are expecting the total provincial debt to increase by $4.2 billion, up to $77.6 billion.
(Second table at the following link:)
http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/PT/dmb/ref/debtSummary.pdf
When British Columbia first joined Canada in 1871, we were debt free as a province. Fast forward to 2001, and it took 130 years of successive, irresponsible, BC governments to grow our province’s debt to $33.6 Billion dollars. All of those governments, including the NDP, were responsible for growing that debt to $33.6 billion over those 130 years.
Cue the BC Liberals who managed to double our province’s debt in just 16 years. That’s right folks, what took 130 years to accumulate $33.6 billion dollars in debt, this BC Liberal government managed to double to $66.4 billion in just 16 short years.
ht tp://www.debtclock.ca/provincial-debtclocks/british-columbia/british-columbia-s-debt/
This BC Liberal Government has our province “drowning” under a load of debt that is increasing at an unprecedented rate. We have a choice; stand by and watch the BC Liberals govern our province into financial bankruptcy, or change our province’s future for the better, think about this when you go to the polls on May 9th.
ht tps://thetyee.ca/Views/2004/08/09/BCDebt/
Not telling the whole story is considered as distorted, biased or even fake information, especially in the Trump era the world finds itself in. But you are showing us that you have not learned anything from that and will not take an objective look at what is written about the current BC governing party, especially when it comes from the Tyee.
In case you did not know the history yourself and are relying solely on the Tyee’s version of it, one of the colony’s considerations when joining Canada was the inability of the colony to pay for infrastructure which was required to grow to attract people to the colony. They needed to borrow money – yes, borrow money even in those days – and knew it would be easier to do so if they had the support of a larger entity, such as Canada.
They could have joined the USA as well to link the lower 48 to Alaska.
So, when you say they did not owe any money, that is true. But they also could not grow to the extent they wanted to or needed to. It is likely also true that they were relatively debt free or even totally debt free (without my exploring this further to fact check that part) it is an alternate truth you are providing for the reader by addressing the fact that the change in their capacity to borrow was an important consideration in the decision to join.
Now, let us look at the math which you present.
To make it easy for those who are not math whizzes, take the 2001 figure of $33.6 million, halve it to $16.8 million and step the year back 16 years to 1985.
Do that for 7 more 16 year periods, each time halving the debt, you would get a debt of $131,250,000 in 1873. I realize the rates of change would be different for each year, but that is the average situation – a doubling of debt each 16 years.
See how easy it is to come up with fake news if one deals with people who do not understand something as simple as subtraction and division which I believe are covered at around mid elementary school level?
And, of course, no one questions it. That is the best part of the scam. ;-)
BC had good finances at the time of confederation. The main expense being the cariboo connector to Barkerville which cost less than a new car today. At the time the three colonies of BC joined together as one and negotiated confederation with Canada so long as Ottawa agreed to complete the trans continental railway, which was about a dozen years late. The whole thing was fixed though with the poison assassination of our governor (Seymore) and his replacement (Musgrave) hand picked by the Canadian Prime Minister to bring BC into Canada at all costs. The legislative debates of the time are fascinating in how accurate the viewpoints of the BC MLA’s were at the time of what confederation ment to BC. Especially the eccentric Amour deCosmos. Most weren’t convinced confederation was good for BC, but were tricked and deceived by Musgrave and were left trying to justify a bad deal to the electorate.
Gopg, thanks for clearing that mess up.
I believe on of the main come-ons to our joining Canada was that the Dominion government agreed to take over the Crown Colony’s debt. So, yes, we did join Canada ‘debt-free’, and the accumulated debt we have provincially dates from 1871. There was one year during the Second World War when it actually went down. Direct debt was eliminated by WAC Bennett seven years after taking office in 1952, not by paying it off, but by transfers of it into various Crown Corporations and Authorities, after which it was held as ‘contingent liabilities’ GUARANTEED by the Provincial Government. This is similar to what occurs when you co-sign a loan for someone. The debt isn’t yours unless they default. By doing what Bennett did the government was much better able to manage debt because these various Crown owned agencies were able to use accrual accounting, the same as any private business uses. That’s the REAL problem with direct government debt. There is no proper mechanism to account for it in a business similar manner. And so we have, nationally, for instance, the National Debt being used as a ‘distributing agent’ to inject needed new money into the economy.
Eagleone-“BC had good finances at the time of confederation”.
Not true.
Eaglone-“At the time the three colonies of BC joined together”
Not true. The two colonies were British Columbia and Vancouver Island.
Eagleone-“the poison assassination of our governor (Seymore)”
Probably not true. By most accounts Seymour died from dysentery.
DI you are forgetting about the colony of Calidonia that was based out of Fort St James and covered the Central Interior of BC for a couple of years prior to amalgamation.
Also at the time of confederation BC was still benefiting from the gold rush and huge profits in wooden masts for sailing ships. The province was in the position to grow itself out of any debts it incurred for things like the Carriboo trail.
CNC has a really good book in their library on BC joining confederation. I think it’s called the Legislative Debates, BC joining Confederation. Fascinating discussions recorded by Hansard I think of the debates over joining Canada at the time.
It was an old book and they only had one and this was like 15 years ago that I read it… Not sure if they still have a copy anymore?
Not likely it would be Hansard, Eagle. BC didn’t have legislative debates recorded that way until fairly recently as a province, and I doubt there was any Hansard recordings of debates in the colonial legislature from those days. Probably from newspaper stories of the time, which were collected and organised as a type of scrapbook, and are available at the Provincial Archives.
I don’t believe ” (New) Caledonia” was ever a separate Crown colony, but an unofficial name for the north central part of the Interior when it was administered by the Hudson’s Bay Company.
And yet BC’s debt clock continues to tick!!!
ht tp://www.debtclock.ca/provincial-debtclocks/british-columbia/british-columbia-s-debt/
yes, as well, remember in 2001, a loaf of bread was $1.69. comparing numbers like your doing, is just a clear statement, that you fail to understand what time does to buying power.
And when a conservative minded government tries to act responsibly and imposes austerity, the left screams outrage.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
Alexander Fraser Tytler
When a conservative government, or any, for that matter, imposes austerity it is simply confirming that in its opinion ALL money belongs to the banks. That instead of being allowed and (well) rewarded for performing a public service in managing the community’s financial credit, the banks have been allowed to appropriate this credit as their own property.
This is akin to saying that you can’t get a seat in a theatre, or on a bus, or to some sports event, not because there are no more seats available, but because the ticket agent won’t issue any more tickets.
It elevates ‘money’ ~ which in essence is simply bookkeeping, because that’s all any money system ever is, a portable bookkeeping system ~ into something it can never really be. Not without some serious downside consequences, that is. It’s
an effort to make it a ‘commodity’ in its own right, which it clearly isn’t, never has been, nor ever can be. Money is simply ‘effective demand’ ~ not some absolute ‘measure of value’, which is wholly subjective in any case, and incapable of being measured that way.
What tripe! When a conservative government imposes austerity it is trying to live within its means. That’s it. Nothing more.
Good grief, where do you get this sh!t???
Dirtman, you make the same mistake that dooms us to having so-called ‘conservative’ governments being no more than ‘socialist’ governments in low gear. That may well be a great improvement over having them in high gear, but the end result is exactly the same. Physically, it is absolutely impossible to “live beyond your means”. Either what you need to live exists, or it doesn’t. If it does exist or can easily be created, then why should you be denied it for want of an OVERALL scarcity of money? And if it doesn’t exist or can’t be created, having money to buy it would be of no use to anyone.
Conservatives have a woeful ignorance of finance as it operates in the economy as a whole. They make the mistake of thinking that they can simply extrapolate what applies to each of us as individuals and this will also apply to the community or country as a whole. It doesn’t.
I guess you missed this quote from above:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
which explains why conservatives end up governing like ‘socialist’ governments in low gear.
I can only assume that you don’t know what “living beyond their means” means. Lots of people and most governments do that these days.
Yeah, why should I be denied a Lear Jet because of a scarcity of money. Wow, you certainly do have a convoluted view of reality.
Governments don’t have a revenue problem, they have a spending problem.
Dirtman, how, after ten long years of Depression in the 1930’s when people everywhere were told a whole bunch of things that clearly needed doing couldn’t be done because there’s no money, (even though all the men and materials and knowledge to do them existed, and in many cases sat idle all through that time), did we suddenly find all that long missing money to go to war against Hitler? Where was it hiding? Who we’d take it off to go fight that war? The rich? Not hardly, most, if not all of the rich were a whole lot richer at war’s end than they were at its beginning. And so were most other people, financially speaking, that is.
How did we manage to take all the best producers, and put them into uniform for six years of war, where, in a purely economic sense, they produced absolutely nothing, yet we fed, clothed, sheltered, educated, medicated and entertained them all through that period, when, in the ten years previously we’d been telling those same people the only way they could have any share of the unsaleable glut of goods that it was then possible to make, was for them to make that unsaleable glut even greater?
And Dirtman, I DO know what “living beyond your means” means. As an individual, it is something I’ve always avoided. Many others haven’t, and it’s always come back to haunt them.
But what individuals do and what governments do are two different things. While it’s certainly prudent for any government to always manage in a fiscally responsible manner, ‘austerity’ is simply a manifestation of what I said it was. A tacit admission that ‘money’ belongs to the banks, and its only by their permission we’re allowed to use it.
Government living beyond their means is no different that persons living beyond their means. Our provincial government is doing that, so is the federal government and the American government and Portugal and Greece and on and on. It’s a house of cards. It can’t go on indefinitely, any more than you could spend beyond your means indefinitely, and anything that can’t go on, won’t go on.
It most certainly CAN go on indefinitely, Dirtman. This is not to say it should, only that it CAN. Any sovereign government has a power individuals do not have. Whether or not they have assigned it, as most have, to their central banks, they are still ‘self-financing’ internally. We, as individuals, can only GET money. Governments, like banks, can actually MAKE it.
Sounds like the Zimbabwe school of economics, and we know how that turned out. Or Weimar Germany. It most certainly cannot go on forever. Twenty trillion and counting of debt in the US, and that’s only the feds, the states are in deep doo-doo as well.
Well, ask yourself this. To whom is this debt owed? And just how can it be paid?
Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany were examples of what happens when governments abuse the power they have to create money. In the first instance to replace ‘currency’ as the basis of credit, as all good commies do, of which Mugabe was one, and did with ‘administration’ ~ his; and the second because printing money was the only way Germany could meet its post WW I reparation payments. They tried to export to pay the bills obligated by the Treaty of Versailles, but the Allied powers wouldn’t receive them. That’s what got them into the war in the first place ~ trying, as every nation tries to do, export more than it imports.
the tyee. hahaha. the breitbart of the left.
I presented factual debt numbers and dates. Instead of attacking sources, try refuting the facts I presented; namely, in 16 years, the BC Liberals have accumulate the same amount of debt it took other governments 130 years to accumulate. No? Can’t refute that fact? So lets pass all that debt onto our children, laugh all you want because this is one big joke, right mtnloverxtreme.
As has been pointed out many times in the past your “research” is once again found to be lacking in a major way.
The link you posted from the Tyee is an opinion piece written by someone who views the world through an orange haze. The difference between a fact based article and an opinion piece can be huge. Facts that contradict the point that the author is trying to make in an opinion piece are often ignored- but no neede to tell you that as it is your raison d’etre when you post here.
Many of the other articles from your “research” seem to be collected based solely by the headline and when people actually take the time to read the full story find that it does not support your arguement.
I challenged you a while ago to find something positive to say about the ndp and their platform in the coming election as opposed to the constsnt stream of negativity. That is assuming that they have a platform.
I have noticed the last couple of days that there are two people that are getting more tv time than the leader(?)of the party….Carol James and Adrian Dix. Real smart move to push them out front as a reminder why the party has been stuck in opposition for the past two decades.
So you are saying the debt numbers and dates (years) I posted were wrong? Please point out the errors and falsehoods contained in my first comment about provincial debt sparrow.
Refer to gopg2015’s 2:54 AM comment. I have a meeting shortly so will leave it at that as it shows how narrow minded your comments tend to be.
Just like to call out the grocery stores for their deceiving ways of pricing. Sure would be great to see some real price legislation brought in to bring fairness to the consumer.
Same thing at all the grocery stores, save for Costco… They price produce by the pound at the shelf and then by the kg at the till and on the invoice. Then to confuse things even more they have some low priced oranges or apples for example and then the higher priced ones that look the same, but cost twice as much.
I noticed Seperstore is really bad for rushing through the groceries while they have one bagging their own, and everything gets run through at the higher produce price. Almost every bill from that store has a mistake that needs correcting. I have even had $30 items on my bill that I hadn’t purchased. It’s do bad at that place only using the self checkout is the way to go. Save On however will give you the item for free if the mistake adds up to $10 or more, but still just as bad when it comes to wrong pricing on the produce.
A lot of confusion could be removed simply by legislating that all prices at the till should be in the same unit messier as the pricing at the store shelf where purchase decisions are made. Having to do conversion mathematics at the till is simply deceptive on the part of the retailers.
Darn auto correct. I like messier, but not when it’s messing with my unit of measure. lol and ditto for so and do.
Also superstore has the annoying habit of having a very large font for a price, but in the very very small print it tells you that is IF you buy multiples of that item otherwise the price is usually quite a bit higher. We boycotted superstore over 4 years ago for an issue over getting a deposit back on something and haven’t been back there since. I am sure our lack of business isn’t hurting their bottom line, but as a consumer, it is the only thing I can control. More people need to make a stand when they see something deceptive and don’t just shrug and accept it. I check every receipt we get from whichever grocery store we are shopping at and if I see a mistake, I don’t care how small it is, I will take it back in and straighten it out. It is the principle of it.
Yes another deceptive practice by Superstore. It’s just low and disrespectful of their customers IMO.
So you look at the big number, the one that most older people are still used to … the price in lbs.
The prices are actually marked in both $/kg and $/pound.
When you look at a package of fresh meat, the actual tag is in $/kg and the weight is shown in kg.
In the deli counter the price is shown in $/100 gm.
I call your comment “fake news”, distorted and biased reporting.
The whole thiing would be simplified if the Canadians would understand that places like Germany and France use the old word “pound” and call half a kilo, 500 grams, a pound instead of the hard conversion of 454 grams per pound.
Get used to it.
If yu think that you have otherwise been scammed by the store, take it to the customer service counter and they will correct any mistake.
Or simply go shopping somewhere else.
I will agree that the adoption by Canada of the metric system has been very poor. The system is reverting back to imperial in house construction as well. It seems to be consumer driven and authorities like building inspection are allowing it. It will never change when that happens.
gopg2015, you don’t have to be rude in your reply. One can quite simply state facts without being condescending.
I have found that Superstore’s tills make mistakes quite often in my weekly shops. I make a point of taking a minute when I get to my car to review the receipt so that I don’t have to drive back to Superstore to correct a big mistake.
I personally would never boycott Superstore over a mistake because I will simply not give all my business to Save On Foods because of how expensive their groceries are. I figure that I save about $50-$75 on a Superstore shop when I spent about $250 than I would spend at Save On. That’s a very large difference in prices.
Simple solution is they should price right. The deception should be illegal. Pick a unit messure and stick with it. I mostly shop at Costco now… No games with the pricing. I think they do it to make it harder to track input issues at the check out counter and it’s just disrespectful of their customers IMO.
The real problem is my wife just doesn’t care. If she does the shopping it gets expensive. It pays to have her shop at Costco and buy everything bulk rather than get nickel and filmed to death at places like Superstore and Save On.
Its not the errors in my grocery bill that bothers me. Its the profit that Loblaw’s have made in the past year which is $57 billion. They care ripping us off on every item that they have in their store. Why are they allowed such large profit on our food bill.
Cheers
$57 billion profit? Where did you pull that number out of and did it hurt?
The market cap of the whole company is just over $28b with a yield of 1.464% so not exactly a superstar or superstore.
If they made twice market cap in profit I am going to buy with both fists come Monday morning but I think it is more a case of the manure fumes getting to you:D
this morning posts shows some cant follow instructions
Friday Free For All.
You pick the topic, but please, be respectful of each other, regardless of how much you may disagree with their opinion. Also, ((((please keep comments brief))) and to the point. ((Long rambling submissions are often skipped over)) by others and fail to generate discussion.
There are three ((simple rules)):
Keep it clean
Keep it legal
No Bullying
What is wrong when people skip over a comment? I do not care.
I am not about to dumb down a comment for those who wish everything to be instantaneous and to a grade 4 reading level instead of the normal grade 8 standard and I do not expect other to do that either.
Just look at the tweets people put out … 150 characters and it stirs up a lot of controversy partly because it is typically cryptic can results in different people getting different interpretations of the message.
Again gopg2015, you don’t have to be condescending. Do you like speaking to people that way?
Goood morning everyone.. have a excellent Friday. :)
Everybody still sleeping??? soooo quiet on here.. Only 8 comments
The CBC reality check team in an article in 2013 stated the following.
From 1991 to 2001 during the NDP’s term in power, BC had a net gain of 126000 people coming to BC from other Provinces.
During the Liberal time in Government from 2001 to 2012 BC had a net gain of only 54,510 people from other Provinces.
It seems that we could also be looking at a new wave of out migration from 2012 going forward.
So the reality check conclusion is that the idea that all these people left the Province when the NDP came to power is bogus, and nothing more than spin.
Sooooo. Are we going to hear this lame lament again during this election, or will the Liberals try to stick to the facts??
We should know fairly quickly.
Reread again, you missed this part from the CBC article
“According to Statistics Canada, from January 1998 to December 2001 the number of people who left B.C. for other provinces outnumbered Canadians moving to B.C. by about 50,000.
Those final years of the NDP government were the worst four years for outmigration in more than two decades for B.C.”
It takes a few years for the policies of government to affect migration from other provinces for work purposes. Socreds had a healthy economy going regardless of their scandals and the NDP rode the wave at the start. And BC had a very healthy welfare system compared to the rest of Canada in the early 90s bringing in a lot of people which that was shut down by Harcourt, you don’t remember the speech about “vagrants” and welfare cheats? With over 10% of the population on welfare, in 97 they lowered the rates and brought in BC Benefits which Dix said brought down child poverty (they forced those with children over 12 to go to work as one of the measures). The caucus asked for an increase in rates but Glen Clark said no as it will raise the deficit
Just wow. What a grown-up comment.
I’ll say!
here here!
Just for Ataloss.
From October 2014 in Queensland, the average grid electricity use of solar homes started to exceed the average use of people without solar power and stayed higher for the at least the next 18 months (when this story appeared).
In other words, subsidized solar panels could mean that the people who pay the subsidies use less electricity than the people who get the subsidy and the panels. It also means the poor, who can’t pay for panels, have to go without more often.
ht tp://joannenova.com.au/2017/02/solar-homes-use-more-grid-electricity-than-non-solar-homes/
Stop looking in the rear view mirror . Sun Metals Zinc refinery is going solar in Australia with an unsubsidized solar plant because the heavily subsidized coal fired power plant that was proposed can’t complete . Sun metals is not alone . It comes down to money always . Even gas and nuclear cant compete with the Suns free delivery system . It’s a little like buys a top of the line foam mattress being delivered free from Wayfair.ca at half the price of local retailers . Imagine a 125 lbs king size mattress from the states delivered to the north for free. Btw sun metals is Korean owned company . Their provider is first solar . Both great companies .
There’s more bad news for you fossil burning enthusiasts ! The first all electric taxi company sporting luxury EVs (tesla) will begin chauffeuring at the same price as regular taxis in and around Kelowna today . Current Taxi company today’s Canadian first . How can they do that ? The question will soon asked of other taxi companies . How can you compete with the all electrics ? The answer is , they won’t be able too . Keep your eye on the money . For the story try castanet .
Australia energy mix
ht tp://www.iea.org/stats/WebGraphs/AUSTRALI4.pdf
world energy mix
ht tp://www.iea.org/stats/WebGraphs/WORLD4.pdf
Here is someone making money off solar.
ht tps://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/20/short-selling-skeptic-cashing-in-on-solar-company-collapses/
The fact that each and every Tesla purchase is subsidized by thousands of taxpayer dollars certainly doesn’t hurt them.
ht tp://www.iea.org/stats/WebGraphs/WORLD4.pdf
Yup, despite hundreds of billions in government money, Geothermal/solar/wind is only at 1.3%. That should tell you something.
And about Australia:
———————–
South Australia, with 40% renewables, is lucky this has been a mild summer.*
Welcome to your load-shedding future:
Rolling blackouts ordered in Adelaide as city swelters
Widespread power blackouts were imposed across Adelaide and parts of South Australia with heatwave conditions forcing authorities to impose load shedding.
About 40,000 properties were without electricity supplies for about 30 minutes because of what SA Power Networks said was a direction by the Australian Energy Market Regulator. — The Australian
ht tp://joannenova.com.au/2017/02/rolling-blackouts-in-sa-in-40c-heat/
———————–
It’s not just that renewables muck up the electricity supply (with frequency and instability issues), they also drive a pike through the energy market. These are two separate disruptors. We’ve seen inexplicable spikes in power prices in SA in seasons when it shouldn’t happen, but this might be a new form of volatility. Wind power produced 900MW earlier in the day, but that fell to below 100MW within 6 hours (which is not that usual, see the post yesterday for the graph). The problem, apparently, was that no one thought it was worth turning on their generators?
SA has enough generation (if only it was running), but when the crunch came, the market failed:
ht tp://joannenova.com.au/2017/02/south-australian-electricity-is-coming-your-way/
——————-
Smell the desperation
Here in Oz, political lives are in turmoil. Suddenly “load shedding” is the topic de jour, and there are hit lists of suburbs in the firing line. It’s a long list. Welcome to your green future.
The language is ramping up. The SA state government is talking of a “dramatic intervention in the electricity market”.
ht tp://joannenova.com.au/2017/02/its-that-bad-talk-of-declaring-emergencies-and-nationalizing-south-australian-electricity/
To paraphrase Rex Murphy’s column in the National Post today, while people in Ontario decide whether to eat or pay their energy bills, people who buy $150K Teslas enjoy a $14K rebate cheque/subsidy from the government.
If you want a textbook example of a green energy boondoggle, look no further than Ontari-owe.
DM look at what is happening today . Joanne Nova is a fossil financed denier reposting old news as if it were current . It is not . If you want to be current look at the deployments . Solardaily.com , winddaily.com . Keep your eye on the money .
On an ironic note . I think it was last year when tesla gave the unlimited mileage guarantee to even taxi fleets that I said ” likely the first time most of you will sit in a tesla will be in a taxi ” and pesto . Just wait till the taxi fleets take delivery of their newly minted model 3 . There are many taxi fleets on reserve . Think that Current Taxi will go unnoticed ? Think again .
Ataloss why oh why do you never give out any information about your free energy system? Hey maybe you secretly short sell solar.
As usual, Ataloss resorts to an ad hominem. Joanne Nova is paid by fossil fuels and therefore everything she says is wrong!!!
No, Ataloss, she isn’t. For 17 years as a public figure, she spoke out about the need to address the global warming threat – until one day she took the trouble to actually look at the science, the evidence. Once she saw that, she switched sides and began speaking out against the scam.
ht ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgMZegvtXB0
Her blog is financed by donations from her followers.
ht tp://joannenova.com.au/about/donations/
Occasionally she has to make a special appeal.
And she makes sure whatever she posts is backed up by fact. You should try that someday.
It’s not surprising that Tesla would be able to give such a guarantee. It’s not only the buyers who benefit by $thousands of taxpayer subsidies, it’s also the company itself that gets huge subsidies directly from the US government. When they first started selling their cars they were charging $100,000, but had to raise price because they couldn’t make it at that rate. Even at $125,000 they were losing money, and then the Obama administration started massive subsidies to electric vehicles like Fisker (went broke anyway) and Tesla. Shortly thereafter Tesla’s price dropped to $75,000 so that gives you some idea of how much taxpayer money they get.
Don’t get me wrong, the car is fine. It’s the subsidy I’m opposed to.
To paraphrase Rex Murphy’s column in the National Post today, while people in Ontario decide whether to eat or pay their energy bills, people who buy $150K Teslas enjoy a $14K rebate cheque/subsidy from the government. If you want a textbook example of a green energy boondoggle, look no further than Ontario-Owe.
===========================
Not sure what folks are paying in BC for energy costs these days, but last year here in Ottawa I paid $1,015 for natural gas for the year and $2,374 for hydro for the year. That’s a total cost of $3,389 for the year or about $280 a month for both services.
That’s for a three person household, not really paying attention to doing laundry during non-peak hours, running the air conditioner over the summer, having the pool pump running during the summer for a number of hours every day, etc.
I do agree that giving rebate cheques for people spending that kind of dough on a Tesla is ridiculous. I was actually considering going with a hybrid for one of our next vehicles, but it doesn’t qualify so I’m not going to pay the premium. The gas option would be fine and likely save me money over the time we would own the vehicle. I’m also not going to apologize for the way that the provincial government here has managed their green energy plan. It’s pretty much been a catastrophe. I think that’s an issue with mismanagement though. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to do a good job of moving towards alternative energy sources. Surely if we are smart enough to figure out the science, we can be smart enough to figure out ways to increase the adoption rates.
That isn’t a rebate that Tesla buyers get, it’s a subsidy from government.
Don’t know what you mean by this:
“Surely if we are smart enough to figure out the science, we can be smart enough to figure out ways to increase the adoption rates.”
Putting the well known left wing bias of the CBC aside, how many people were working people vs. how many came to take advantage of our generous social services and nice Vancouver weather?
Good question RS, and the answer is; most people came to BC during the 1990’s for the new jobs that were being created by the NDP.
ht tp://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/archive/budget97/bcleads.gif
I’m supposed to believe NDP government propaganda from 1997? Tell you what, I’ll believe this when you start believing BC Libs news releases.
Ummm… the source of the information I linked to is from the BC Government’s Archives, how can historic fact be propaganda?
Mind you, how can I possibly convince someone who goes by the alias of a paranoid King of The Hill cartoon character named Dale Dribble?
That whooshing sound was my post going right over your head Peeps.
That comment is to laugh at. I saw them come, many came for welfare.
Huh, they must have all walked past your house single file with you looking out the window, hey Griz?
Don’t you people have anything better to talk about than politics? There are more important issues like how bad the Canucks are and how many calories are in a caramel machiato?
Or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Yes Sergio, but hard to let people who post that things weren’t so bad during the NDP BS go unchecked.
Enjoy living in one of the best provinces in Canada folks.
I was disappointed to see that 250 News didn’t have a story on the School District/Board finally having a policy in place to deal with threats to schools.
I really wanted to comment that it is unbelievable that there wasn’t one in place already. Can the School District/Board really say that a policy to respond to threats in schools wasn’t necessary until the clown threat? Did they not have something place after all the school shootings in Canada, the US and Great Britain?
Even without all the school shootings, threats, etc. the School District/Board should have had a blanket policy for all schools on what to do in the event of an emergency. Something that they could give to the first responders so that each one of those groups would know what to do and where the children would be found in the schools.
Time to switch things up with this School Board, I would say and I hope that our new Superintendent and her Assistant Superintendents will bring change in a good way to the District.
There was and is procedures in place. The were revised.
The procedures in place were certainly not a standardized policy. Each school had different procedures that were followed.
Lots of activity around the hwy 16, Bear road, Westgate intersection. Surveying, Hydro people with one lines, geodetic surveying. With the amount of traffic already at that intersection and now with more housing development and a hotel being constructed, there will be a big change.
I see trump is starting to control the media…. getting ugly down in the ole USA
i see he wants to have the biggest nuclear power in the world.
this guy is just plain nuts and power hungry.he must be impeached.
blaming the press now for being the opposition. only communist countries have no free press.
Control the media?
Bwahahaha!
No, just fighting back.
“They are collectively… at war with the president, because their little egos are bruised and they have been exposed. And they’re waging this battle by focusing in on superfluous non-important issues, citing unnamed sources, and the press has called this president every name in the book.”
ht tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cDcnD4-Zdo
Barring main media from the White House briefing… following in Putins footsteps….
So by doing that he has the media under his control????
Watch CNN for a while and you will see they are far from an unbiased press.
They deserve all the shuning they get. They are a joke of an organization. Not because Trump thinks so, it’s because I have watched hours of their swill.
Be careful what you read , listen to or watch . You become what you read , hear and see . in the end , you are intittled to your own opinion but not your own facts .
CNN is nothing but a CIA globalist front operation.
Of course Donald Trump gets his news from only the most trusted and reliable sources, like Fox News.
ht tp://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-sweden-happened-last-night-based-on-debunked-fox-news-report-a7589031.html
This idiot will not read his daily intelligence briefings, instead relies on Fox News to get his information on international affairs! What a complete joke this poor excuse of a man is!
The same side which parades fake statistics saying “One in four women are raped on American college campuses” even though that’s an abhorrent lie we’ve addressed to the point of annoyance (and boredom), is the same side which shoves its dense head into the Islamic sand instead of stopping Muslim rape. Muslim migrants are raping European ladies. Some are begging for the men in their lives to help them since their governments are allowing it to happen. Feminists have ignored the plight of European women and opted instead to complain about Trump taking away their rights while wearing pink pussy hats. You can’t make this sh!t up. Also, those feminists can’t find any actual policy which threatens their rights.
ht tp://louderwithcrowder.com/nigel-farage-media-come-bro-sweden-rape-capital-europe/
“Sweden’s capital was plunged into chaos Monday as police were forced to fire at rioters after a violence erupted in an area described as high risk. The terrifying scenes took place just hours after the country’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven slammed Donald Trump for claiming Sweden was in crisis as a result of its liberal refugee policy.”
ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN and Colbert all made a big deal of Trump’s Swedish gaffe. Not one of them mentioned that riot. Trump was right about what’s happening there, the only thing he got wrong was his “last night” comment.
A recent survey revealed that the majority of Americans trust Trump more than the media, because they are largely dishonest.
They also won’t report on the wave of pedaphillia arrests by the Trump justice department in the last two weeks.
Over 1500 arrests in the space of two weeks is huge. One of the pedaphile rings in Texas had over 240 people arrested. They are working on closing up the CIA/Mossad deep state blackmail through child prostitution rings that give the deep state its power. Starting from the fringes they are working their way towards the top using testimony and cooperation from these early busts to fry those at the top. Between this noose tightening and Trumps anti human trafficking executive orders, and his plans to dismantle the transnational drug cartels that work with the CIA, and his asking for the CIA removal from operations in Syria… It’s civil war with the deep state and their globalist corporate media to be sure.
BH, did you see the Swedish riots the other day? Probably not. Tool.
Dirtman… by barring certain media he doesn’t like is a violation of the USA freedom of speech..
So when Obama barred FOX News he was violating USA freedom of speech?
Not at all, freedom of speech doesn’t mean he has to let them in, they’re free to say what they like.
You make no sense.
It use to be back in the day the press secretary would sit down with a handful of newspaper publishers once a week to discuss politics. It was an elite group for an informal discussion to discuss what was making news at the time. By the limited size of the group it excluded many media outlets but no one complained because they seen it for what it was an informal get together between the press secretary and a small round table of guests.
Fast forward to today and press secretary Spicer wanted to bring back that tradition with a gathering of reporters into his office, which was of limit space and thus invite. A way to discuss the weeks agenda with like minded reporters. This in no way limits these reporters from official press briefings. To say it is a violation of free speech is nothing but uninformed hyperbole.
“My statement as to what’s happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden,” he said.
He got the story wrong….partly, thea part about “last night”. As for what’s happening in Sweden…
Forty years after the Swedish parliament unanimously decided to change the formerly homogenous Sweden into a multicultural country, violent crime has increased by 300% and rapes by 1,472%.
Sweden is now number two on the global list of rape countries. According to a survey from 2010, Sweden, with 53.2 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants, is surpassed only by tiny Lesotho in Southern Africa, with 91.6 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants.
ht tps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5195/sweden-rape
Here are some Homo sapiens with variations that you can use your paintbrush on . The largest foreign born populations in Sweden come from Finland, Iraq, Poland, Iran, former Yugoslavia and Syria.
The internet radio station Granskning Sverige called the mainstream newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen to ask why they had described the perpetrators as “Swedish men” when they actually were Somalis without Swedish citizenship. They were hugely offended when asked if they felt any responsibility to warn Swedish women to stay away from certain men. One journalist asked why that should be their responsibility.
Over the past 10-15 years, immigrants have mainly come from Muslim countries such as Iraq, Syria and Somalia. Might this mass influx explain Sweden’s rape explosion? It is difficult to give a precise answer, because Swedish law forbids registration based on people’s ancestry or religion. One possible explanation is that, on average, people from the Middle East have a vastly different view of women and sex than Scandinavians have. And despite the attempts by the Swedish establishment to convince the population that everyone setting foot on Swedish soil becomes exactly like those who have lived here for dozens of generations, facts point in an altogether different direction.
Michael Hess, a local politician from Sweden Democrat Party, encouraged Swedish journalists to get acquainted with Islam’s view of women, in connection with the many rapes that took place in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the “Arab Spring”. Hess wrote, “When will you journalists realize that it is deeply rooted in Islam’s culture to rape and brutalize women who refuse to comply with Islamic teachings. There is a strong connection between rapes in Sweden and the number of immigrants from MENA-countries [Middle East and North Africa].”
For many years, Michael Hess lived in Muslim countries, and he is well acquainted with Islam and its view of women. During his trial, he provided evidence of how sharia law deals with rape, and statistics to indicate that Muslims are vastly overrepresented among perpetrators of rape in Sweden. However, the court decided that facts were irrelevant:
A 1996 report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention reached the conclusion that immigrants from North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia) were 23 times as likely to commit rape as Swedish men. The figures for men from Iraq, Bulgaria and Romania were, respectively, 20, 18 and 18. Men from the rest of Africa were 16 times more prone to commit rape; and men from Iran, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, 10 times as prone as Swedish men.
In cases of gang rape, culprits and victims are most often young and in almost every case, the perpetrators are of immigrant background, mostly from Muslim countries. In an astounding number of cases, the Swedish courts have demonstrated sympathy for the rapists. Several times the courts have acquitted suspects who have claimed that the girl wanted sex with six, seven or eight men.
If you had gone to the link, you would have seen all this and more. But you don’t want to know the truth, do you Ataloss?
Get a grip buddy , you’re frothing at the mouth . Sweden is a long way away and they’ve got Lisebit Salander . No worries.
Riiiight. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
It can never happen here, right?
“Democracy extends the sphere of personal independence; socialism confines it. Democracy values each man at his highest; socialism makes of each man an agent, an instrument, a number. Democracy and socialism have but one thing in common—equality. But note well the difference. Democracy aims at equality in liberty. Socialism desires equality in constraint and in servitude.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
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