Great Moments In Socialism

What do they think, they're California?

Geez, never saw that coming. It is - sadly - what needs to happen in many places. It's the only type of thing that people will understand. On a positive note, it will give the unionized, over-payed and under-worked civil servants there lots of time off to protest.

finally the Pnzi scheme has more takers tan makers - but will they learn??????????????

Occam, did you mean to type "Pwnzi Scheme", because that's what people who buy into one wind up as: pwned.

When told about the plight of Acharnes, Obama exclaimed, "How can they possibly be out of money? They still have checks, don't they?"

The Thatcher Rule will kick-in soonest and hardest for the public-sector unions. Now that it's becomming common knowledge that the general taxpayers actually have more votes than the unions (although not as well whipped), the unholy alliance between unions and politicians is done. The public-sector unions will devolve to the same relevance as the so-called sovereigntists of Quebec; no seats at the table, no one listening.

The sad part of this story is that in Canada all levels of government spend like drunken sailors and look to the next level to provide assistance for their extravagences. You would think that with daily headlines of financial woe in the EU and US that they would learn...

And there goes Quebec - tuition freeze, free tuition, close nuke power plant AND they are already a "Have Not" province like Ontario.

"The sad part of this story is that in Canada all levels of government spend like drunken sailors"

Hey dude, that is a terrible thing to say.

Drunken sailors work formats spend theories own money.

Fred, you write like a drunken sailor, methinks.

The Total Public Debt of Ottawa is around 3-4 Trillion, Ontario 300-400B, Quebec 400 plus Billion. Then we have all the air head Municipal Governments spending like drunken swine on their pet ego projects. There is only one taxpayer and 3 levels of government. Taxs in Canada now consume more of the average Canadian Families annual budget than Food, Clothing and Housing combined. Taxes have risen over 1800% since 1961. The size of government is killing us and taking food out of our mouths. The amount of regulation, rules and laws in Canada is equal to a stack of paper over 10 stories high. The cost to shuffle all that paper from union desk to union desk is over 100B a year. We need a tax revolt....

Municipal Governments spending like drunken swine...

I think Municipal Governments are required to have balanced budgets.

I won't slag on Canada because they are way more financially sound than the US government.

This is non-news unless "basic services" is defined. If "basic services" include the water supply, police, fire, library, schools, etc, then there wouldn't seem to be much of a problem. But if "basic services" includes little more than the mayor's salary, then somebody has a big problem.

Looks like bankruptcy does work as a brake on government the same as a private company.

Its just that all the private companies have to be bankrupt first. Then when there's nobody left to steal from, -then- government goes bankrupt.

"Fred, you write like a drunken sailor, methinks.

Posted by: glasnost at September 23, 2012 7:39 PM"

Correct.

A Chivas afternoon and autocorrect turned on.

glasnost "I think Municipal Governments are required to have balanced budgets."

Not in Canada. In Alberta their borrowing is restricted but still can be substantial. The normal course of business is to budget for break even and borrow for capital projects.

Sounds like Detroit.. must have the same budget officers.

"...stop providing anything other than basic services..." Ideal, in my world.

It only takes one pin to pull a grenade, than the chaos starts.

It’s like this.

Saturday morning about 7am, we went to town (Calgary) there is about 100 to 200 meters of road that, whoever that is, was going to pave over some older pavement.

Just follow this for a few seconds.

They spread the black sticky stuff on that part of the road to get it ready for paving, the workers dutifully told motorists to stop and slow on the other side of the sign. Did not explain “slow”. As you can imagine slow is a relative term.
However they waited and waited the whole damn day for the asphalt, one would think.

Came back at about 5 in the afternoon and the same thing was going on. Exactly as at 7 in the morning.

Going hiking this morning, a not surprise, nothing was done, the sticky stuff became less so, getting mostly stuck to the bottom of the cars that run over it.

So you have about 10-15 people working overtime on Saturday and accomplishing exactly nothing.

The local governments are extremely lucky that Alberta is swimming in dough. If there was no oil this situation would be worse than California’s.

You see all the local governments have to do for their pet project to go forth, is complain to the “journalists” that the provincial government is not supplying enough dough. That is all they have to do for the dough start rolling in.

Politicians must be the lowest bottomfeeders in the entire universe.

Chekhov wrote a play “On the bottom” (may have different name in english), might want to check that out.

Coming to a town near you.

If they're not going to do anything, they should fire some people. Employees excessive to the need. But that's probably against Greek law.

and so it begins...

Lev:
How many times have we all seen some kind of version of that scene. My conclusion;
1) the workers do what they are told. Not their fault.
2) the foreman can only work with the resources provided him. Not his fault.
3) Superintendant: Well it is actually his fault but the deputy minister is away on holidays so he won't find out.
4) The Minister: Not really sure what those numbers mean on the report. I guess it takes 48 hours to get hot asphalt toa patch site just like the Deputy Minister said.
5) Premier: It is actually his fault for not firing the Minister for running his budget over.

Poor effort but my point is there is little accountability as most people administering the money have no idea of how the real world works. I am sick and tired of 'officials' blaming their inaction on unions.

Municipalities are definately the worst spenders in Canada at least.

ct,
it is actually nobody's fault.

Remember, we live in no fault society.

So we just pay, they do what they do, when they decide to do, how to do.

If you went to reeducation camp in your place of work, you would know that. In case your company is too small to pay for reeducation, you have missed the no fault clause.

Agree that the workers and some others up to a point where they take orders have no say when, how, why.

I quit a well paying job in engineering business, because was not kept busy. Don't understand the part that you (not you personally, figure of speach) pretend to work and they pay you.

I do agree with you though on 1, 2, 3.

When it comes to the provincial government, it really has no say as long as the "journalists" demand more money for waste.

Phil,

there is no dogma as much as you would like it.

During the reign of Klein they the bureaucrats were absolutely forced to change their spending wants. Klein managed the wealth admirably. The only blemish was when he gave nurses the big raise, bad move.

The thing is that you don’t know much of anything about this. What you read today and your links are just that, the “journalists” like fascists change the story to suit their tastes.

In fact Klein was the most careful about spending money, he made Alberta deficit and debt free.

Then came the steady Eddy, the closet socialist and started the whole deficit rolling all over again.

Today’s premier is continuation of steady Eddy. Socialist policies are taking the province down.
I know this stuff because I was here when these things happened, you may have read opinions, I know the facts.

As mentioned before, you don’t know much of anything so it is difficult to have a dialog.