Tax Breaks, Tax Breaks, Rolly Polly Tax Breaks

Most of the leadership candidates, if not all, are promising tax breaks...tax breaks everywhere!

Jim Dinning was going to give a tax break to under 30 year olds but then changed his mind for some reason. Shouldn't have changed...I like guys who stick to their guns but whatever...it was flawed from the beginning but if you are going to bring it up stick to it, don't change on the fly...not yet anyhow.

Ed Stelmach today is saying that he wants to give a tax break to seniors...flawed, flawed policy but he better stick with it...he threw it out there.

We, as a government, removed Seniors from paying health care premiums...another flawed policy.

And here is why I think this is the case.

If you want to give a tax break, you should do so on the basis of what one pays on their income tax. There are some stinking rich under 30 year olds and there are some stinking rich seniors. Why should they be eliminated from paying a certain amount of taxes just because they fall into a certain age bracket? Should it not be the case that if you make a certain amount of money you get taxed a certain amount?

Same with the Health care premium thing. There are some wicked wealthy seniors out there who are not paying health care premiums but probably use the system far more than anybody under the age of 65. So would it not be better if everybody under a certain amount of income is relieved of paying premiums rather than an age? Grouping people by age and deciding what they pay based on their age is kind of ridiculous.

Instead of discriminating based on age, discriminate based on what you make. It is the Canadian way! I think a better option would be to say...if you make less than x amount, you do not have to pay premiums. If you make more...ding ding, pay up.

Instead of giving an under 30 year old a tax break how about we say that if you make under x amount (maybe 30K or something) you don't have to pay nearly as much tax.

But that was the way we had it before wasn't it? And then we moved to the flat tax...I like the flat tax, so how can we make the two work.

I think you just have to raise exemptions and the like. I know I am making this sound like an awfully simple way of doing it, but it is just my opinion on these policies. And I only pick Jim and Ed because they are the only two I thought of this morning...I am sure the other candidates fail or succeed in their own ways...the policies mentioned are what I thought of right off the top.

So that is how I think our tax policies should work in this province...don't be classifying tax payers based on age but rather do so based on income. And you may want to throw some incentives in there for students or something, but this is just my quick idea for now.

Go ahead, pick it apart...that is why I bring it up.

Two More Years of Pain and Wasted Public $’s

I originally wasn’t going to post this story, but the rage and annoyance has been building since the spring and today it exploded.

Back in the late 60’s there wasn’t a lot of entertainment options for Canadians. If you had a TV the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was status quo. I wasn’t alive then and I’m not going to pretend to know, but I will make an assumption… Canadians didn’t know any better, they had spent 30 years listening to publicly funded radio, why not embrace publicly funded television. Without the CBC many Canadians wouldn’t have had any broadcasting options.

You know what else was standard operating procedure in the late 60’s… Otis Redding was sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay, Simon and Garfunkel were getting busy with Mrs. Robinson, Trudeau was Prime Minister, Led Zepplin was putting out their first album, Americans and the Soviets were racing for space, Nixon was President, Stan Mikita was the NHL’s MVP.

As Bob Dylan penned, ironically in the 60’s, the times they are a changin’!

Let me begin by saying that the CBC has NEVER served a purpose in my life except for one thing, and one thing alone… Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC). Well, maybe two, that Log Driver’s Waltz cartoon that they broadcast to take up time between programs was pretty sweet. Without HNIC the CBC is dead to me!

My above average discontent with the CBC first started during the 2006 stanley cup playoffs, Bob Cole and Harry Neale are arguably the most useless announcers in the history of the NHL. They excel in lacking the ability to form complete comprehendible intelligent sentences.

You know what was a mainstay for CBC in the late 60’s? Bob Cole.

Dumb and Dumber have to go, the gig is up. Seriously, give them an office job and get Jim Houston the call up… give ANYONE the call up. I chose to watch playoff hockey on NBC, without the glowing puck thank you very much, just so my head didn’t explode listening to the idiot twins on CBC.

They’re back… Bob Cole and Harry Neale will again provide play-by-play for HNIC. That’s the thing with publicly funded Canadian corporations… they refuse to listen to the public (unless you live in Toronto, aka the centre of the universe) and they refuse to change and grow to compete with other corporations… IT'S BULLSHIT!

Today I took a look at the HNIC schedule… particularly the high definition (HD) broadcast schedule. If you haven’t watched a sporting event in HD you are missing out… it’s like watching a completely different game. I figured that considering the Oilers came in 2nd overall last year and the Flames the year before… Canada’s two best teams over the past two seasons, the CBC would embrace that record and show a couple of Flames and Oilers games in HD. Well, they are showing 3 Oilers games in HD (one of which is against Toronto), 3 Flames games in HD (one of which is against Toronto)… I know what you want to know, how many Maple Leaf games are going to be broadcast in HD? 24.

The Maple Leafs didn’t even make the playoffs last year. The last time they won a Stanley Cup was in 1967.

Hey, 1967, around the same time HNIC and Bob Cole came into play… here’s an idea, since Leaf fans are all about curses, quit broadcasting the Maple Leafs, get rid of Bob Cole and MAYBE Toronto might have a chance at not sucking ass!

Crown corporations are only necessary when there is no other option to provide a service for citizens. In 1967 there were no broadcasting options… in the 21st Century there is nothing but options!

I can’t wait for this to happen… finally, the end of HNIC being Hockey Night in Toronto and the end of the CBC. It’s 2006, not 1967!

Political Trickery?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20061002/bs_ibd_ibd/2006102issues01