1st thought. That’s a coin?
2nd thought. I’ve seen better fridge magnets
3rd thought. Why is there a dog humping a bird?

– Morocco Mole

Fresh from the pages of Reader Tips;

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) claims it is owed $11 billion in unpaid taxes by Canadian Corporations in 2014 alone. CRA estimates total unpaid taxes for 2014 were $26 billion. See, for example …
 
 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/canadian-corporations-owe-up-to-11b-in-taxes-1.5183181
 
In the above link 2 millennials try and unravel this dark secret about corporate tax avoidance. The female host talks about getting emails from CRA. They never email, but I diverge from the story.
 
The two biggest court cases regarding tax evasion (in Canada) are BMO and Cameco. CRA lost both decisions. In the case of Cameco, CRA claimed the company set up companies explicitly to avoid paying corporate tax in Canada (which is not a crime by the way). CRA called the scheme a “sham”. CRA claimed $2.2 billion in unpaid taxes.
 
What interested me about the Cameco case most was how it was reported in the media. If you Google “Cameco and CRA in court over taxes” most of the links are prior to the court decision and consist mainly of CRA claims and calls of unfairness by fair tax activists. Once the decision was made public there seems to be no follow up or discussion – until now where the CBC is regurgitating the CRA claims of widespread corporate tax avoidance in Canada. Here is the decision …
 
 https://decision.tcc-cci.gc.ca/tcc-cci/decisions/en/item/344951/index.do
 
The most relevant part of the testimony is where a former Cameco executive explains why Cameco set up overseas operations in the first place.
 
Q. What were your conclusions regarding how Cameco could minimize its tax expense?
 
A. Well, we had a choice which — you know, I had had opportunities before, comparable. The company Cameco had a choice to make. With these new opportunities, such as HEU and offshore purchases and such, we could continue to run the company Saskatchewan focused. Everyone would remain in Saskatoon. All of this material would be brought back in to Cameco Corp., the Canadian parent. It would be sold through them and all that activity would be as it had always been. Everything ran through Cameco. Then nothing really would have changed. I would have the same tax bill. The same items would be included in the tax calculation as it always had been, so nothing would have changed.
 
But then I’d turn around and say, “Well, from a cost reduction perspective, I haven’t done anything. What can the company do? What can Cameco do to change that?” And the idea came up to say, well, in particularly the HEU material, it’s Russian. It’s equivalent over the life of it to about 80 million pounds for Cameco, which is a very substantial uranium mine. It had no connection to Canada. Why bring it here, subject that uranium to Canadian tax when it never was from Canada in the first place?
 
So that started me down the road of saying, “All right. If you move the HEU material — or if you don’t move it. If you put the HEU material offshore so that it never, in the first place, becomes part of the Canadian company, if you make your third-party purchases other than that offshore for material that’s never part of Canada, all of that material, then, is not part of the Canadian tax system. So that was the start of it.”
 
Cameco set up a company in Switzerland to buy uranium from Russia so that it did not have to bring the Russian uranium back to Canada and pay Canadian taxes – perfectly legal. This means that CRA was in error – the taxes they claimed were owed were not in fact owed. But no one challenges CRA in the media when it comes to corporate taxes. No one will challenge the bogus $11 billion in unpaid taxes from 2014 alone.

Thanks to Steve from Rockwood for that.

Peter O’Donnell;

We live in strange times. There are a lot of crazy people out there, no doubt about that. Yet it remains demonstrably true that some of the craziest people are the leaders of our countries, the elites that are directing the herds lock-step towards unimaginable disasters that we can see are inevitable if we go much further (not that you or I are willingly going along, but you know what I mean).
 
Somehow, we have to call a halt to this. It’s tricky. How do you end the institutional madness of the high functioning and the random madness of the marginalized (which may be equal and opposite reactions to some middle ground reality) without becoming the new elitist totalitarians? Or are we forced to confront a stark choice, them or us?

 
I have stared it down and I know, there has been no chance for reconciliation for a long time now. This is a whole generation or two perhaps into this cult of madness, and it does not surprise me that while the elites spiral helplessly out of control with their insane policies, individuals do the same thing at random in a variety of unpredictable ways. The orthodox view is that Breivik and the Quebec mosque shooter are the anomalies, madmen who are at odds with the values of the society. My view is that while our society went nuts at the top levels, these bottom feeders said to themselves, “hey, going nuts is the new normal, why don’t I go nuts too?”

 
So we end up chasing our tails because every attempted political response to restore order to the asylum inevitably attracts its share of nutbars from the fringes, and also requires that the general public would trust the unknown outsiders (people like you and me) with any sort of position of authority to replace the known if obviously demented authority figures we now face as our so-called superiors.

 
What is truth in this complicated situation? It’s like those Russian dolls, you open them up and find you have to do it again, and again. And then, what’s at the end of that? The question that is never asked contains the answer. For example, with the Trump – Russian collusion question, the question that is never asked is this: “Would it perhaps be a good thing for Trump to collude with Putin?” The assumption is made by both sides that it would be a bad thing, so the debate is about whether he has done it or not, but not whether he should do it. I say this because if Putin is opposed to the globalist agenda and is in favour of aggressive national sovereignty, then why not collude? We face shared enemies. I would collude with anyone who could help us throw off the yoke of the cultural Marxists. They know they are on borrowed time, that’s why they nervously look out the window every time they hear a protest has arisen, as there is what the lawyer might call consciousness of guilt. With the random violence of the unhinged, there is just an absence of proportion and the loss of hope. They think the only way out is to rampage. At the very least, we should all rampage together with a rational objective in mind. Shakespeare had it right, “or by opposing, end them” seems like the only way out of this death spiral.

 
And for those challenged by metaphor, I don’t mean end their lives. I mean end their access to power.

SDA regular Ken Kulak left a brilliant comment earlier that everyone should read:

There are many great comments above.
If I may add my two cents. No doubt some of you might think One Trick Kulak. While reading and listening to the material presented by Robert the thought occurred to me that I have seen this before, not literally, but on paper.
Not to brag or blow my horn, but I have close to 200 Russian history books in my library. Almost all are by recognized historians who are or were recognized authorities in their field of study. Some like Richard Pipes were advisors to governments during the cold war. I have read everyone of those books and parts of some more than once and have been used as background resource material for the four family history books I have written.
What has been happening in our universities across North America to stifle free speech and any opposing views to the entrenching of Marxism and seems to be escalating in intensity. Thank goodness there are a few brave warriors like Jordan Peterson and Lindsay Shepard and possibly others attempting to stem the flood.
However, the increasingly more open Marxist controlled events in our higher learning schools is not new. The same thing happened 100 years ago in Russia. What has and is happening in our schools has just been slower, more subtle, and thus more insidious in nature.
Prior to the Russian revolution there was a covert socialist/Marxist/Bolshevik presence in Russian universities. After Russia entered the Great War the agitation in the schools increased and became more overt in the late fall of 1916. When the February revolution broke out and was successful the radical left took over all the schools. Then, after the Bolshevik coup, the effort to expel any opposition by professors and students began, and by the spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks took direct control of the schools.
The troika that Lindsay experienced was the standard method of operation and control in the schools and enforced by the Komsomol under the direction of the education commissary.
So, what happened in Russia in a relatively short time frame has been happening here slowly over a couple of decades and basically come out into the open only recently.
Make no mistake, after they shut up Jordan and Lindsay they will get around to shutting us up. Bill M-103 and the federal refusal to help pay for summer student help unless you tick off the box expressing obedience to full on abortion is all a part of turning up the heat on the pot with the frog in it.

Let’s hope a sufficient number of Canadians will seize the warnings that the likes of Ken and Jordan Peterson and Mark Steyn have been proffering for years. The sheeple are likely too far gone with the “Progressive” indoctrination to wake up though.

“Don’t worry, everyone. Putin has been rendered impotent by the raising of Pride flags at city halls across the country.” – Rob H.

The children are our future…

The best thing I ever did for my kids’ education is getting her out of the Saskatoon Public School System(SPSS). She now attends a Charter School in the Phoenix area, and it truly is apples and oranges compared to the SPSS. She was an ‘A’ student her entire life until she came to Arizona.
In Arizona she got a swift kick in the butt her first year, especially in math and English. Now I’m happy to say she is achieving A’s again because of a lot of hard work. It was a “swift kick in the butt” because the students at her school are at least 1 year(probably 2 years) ahead of the kids in the same grade (8) in the SPSS, especially in Math and English. Furthermore, they use “traditional” teaching methods including phonics, word and sentence structures, essay writing for English. In math they must memorize math formulas and tables; and, they are not allowed to use calculators. I believe that using calculators in Saskatchewan elementary schools is gravely hurting the students, but I digress.
At my daughter’s school they don’t bother with the “new and improved” teaching methods, they regularly fail students, hand-out zeros, they shame students that under achieve. On top of that, they spend next to NO CLASS TIME on frivolous escapades such as art, music and so on. Those things you must do on your own time, by joining clubs before and after school( you must be passing all classes to qualify). Finally, they recognize achievement, as the top math student in 2011-12 received a full scholarship to ASU for her first year; a grade 8 student! All of that said, the most significant difference is they will kick a student out of the school if they cannot “keep up” to make room for someone who can. This is quite different from the SPSS’s ‘race to the bottom’.
I reckon if my kid returned to the SPSS she would have to be moved-up at least one or two grade levels. The SPSS is an embarrassment, and the expectations for the students is embarrassing. If your kids are in this school system, they are being robbed of a decent education. Get them out somehow! Unfortunately, I didn’t know how little was actually being taught to my kids in the SPSS relative to other students abroad; but I am glad to now see the truth of things. I suspect most kids graduating from the SPSS will not be able to compete abroad because of the poor quality of education they are receiving; and, my kid was at an ‘achieving’ school, which makes it all the more shocking.
Finally, I always was suspicious of the SPSS because of the unavoidable comparison between my kid’s academic education and her athletics. In past years I’ve said at sda that “the teachers at school never challenge my kid nearly as much as her softball and basketball coaches who demand perfection, and accept no excuses”. Well, I’ll tell you what; I can now say that my kid is challenged as much, if not more at the Ward Traditional Academy in Tempe than she is by her club team basketball coach. And that is saying quite a bit, considering the ramp-up in athletic competition is at least a factor of 2X more competitive than what she was used to in Saskatchewan.

Davenport said: “I’m going to head off The Phantom here, who doubtless will show up shortly with some rant about how this is all FEMA’s fault.”
You really are DENSE woman. FEMA, while it is a clusterfrig of titanic proportions, could not cause this much misery on its own. Although they FAILED to have emergency generators at key fuel distribution points (read gas stations) and although they FAILED to have any kind of plan to move food and fuel to the affected areas, and although they FAILED to even have a forward based supply of bottled water and ran out last Friday, even these gold plated MORONS couldn’t have frigged things up this badly alone.
Do you want to know why the power is STILL off on Long Island, Davenport? Read this here: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Sandy-LIPA-Outages-Power-Long-Island-Defense-Military-178115341.html
In it you will find reference to a report from 2006, SIX YEARS AGO, which found that Long Island Power Authority had not done the basic maintenance required to secure the power grid from weather damage. The maintenance they’re talking about here is tree cutting mostly, and replacing bad power poles.
I lived in New York in the 1990’s. I could have written that report. The f-ing power went off every time it snowed because they didn’t cut trees and the trees ripped the lines down. They also didn’t plow the roads, but that’s a story for another day.
You want to know why they don’t cut the f-ing trees Davenport? It isn’t because they are stupid, it isn’t because they don’t know, it isn’t because private enterprise is inherently corrupt, it isn’t even because union workers are a bunch of rent-seeking layabouts. Its because every time they go to cut down a tree, some local Greenies get up a petition or a court order to make them stop. So they stop. So the trees break and knock down the power lines. Same thing all over the North East until you get up into snow country, where even the f-ing tree huggers know better.
Well -this- time it all came home to roost the same day, and every overhanging branch from New Jersey to Connecticut took out a line.
But don’t get me wrong, there’s a ton of corruption and scamming going on too. Paying off inspectors, hockey tickets for town council, that sort of thing. That’s why all those flooded switching stations were within reach of a flood in the first place, because the money to move them was skimmed off by graft. That’s why FEMA didn’t have any forward located stuff, because it all either vanished or was never there to start with except on paper.
But now that there’s been a disaster the LIPA wankers are screaming for crews. And they aren’t getting them. You know why Davenport? Because volunteer crews from as far away as Florida showed up Monday -before- the storm and cooled their heels until Friday, didn’t get any assignments because they WERE NOT UNION, and then those volunteer crews went the hell back home.
And FEMA didn’t say jack about it, did they? Nor did anyone else. One phone call from Barack “The Golfer” Obama to the head of the union could have fixed that. Just one, single phone call. Didn’t get made, did it? He made a speech on Wednesday and then flew to Vegas.
Some of the people displaced by the flooding are still in tents. FEMA is supposed to find or make housing for these people, its been a week and a half now, and they are in tents. Looked out the window today? Its cold. People are going to -die- in tents this time of year. It is reported today that some of these cold tent dwelling people started calling the news media, and the FEMA types running the camps started confiscating cameras and refusing to charge up cell phones. No power, they said.
The only organizations in this whole farce that showed up like they meant it have been churches. Not seeing much of that covered in the MSM are we?
But the crowning touch Davenport, the cherry on top of it all that just makes it all the more outrageous and mind numbing is that New Yorkers voted for MORE of it on Tuesday. More graft. More incompetence. More better and bigger Big Government. Gimme my Obama phone.
Say, d’ya think LIPA and ConEd will be laying off because of Obamacare? I bet they will. I bet they lay of a thousand guys right before January first.
I prophesy this: until people like YOU, Davenport, stop actively sabotaging everyone who’s trying to make our civilization work, there’s going to be ever-increasing numbers of people dying of exposure in tents waiting for help from Big Brother that never comes. I also predict that the ones who survive are going to be p1ssed.
As my parting shot, I want you to think about Toronto for a second.
Did you know that thanks to the Liberal Party of Ontario and -decades- of stunning stupidity, there are two (2) main power lines that come in to downtown? Yep. Both running at the edge of melting most of the time. And did you know that most of your power comes from far away places like Nanticoke, Darlington and Bruce? Did you know that outside of Pickering there is no generation in the GTA at all?
Did you know that gas stations almost never have an emergency generator, even around Toronto?
I want you to think about Toronto after two solid weeks with no power. In November. Nice eh? Now try February. Hope you stocked up. On insulin. ‘Cause there won’t be any.
And remember. YOU voted for this. You did. Not me. I voted to fix it, you voted for the stupid short sighted @ssh0les who broke it.
You don’t even know how close to the edge you are, yet you argue with me for telling you. Wake the hell up and LEARN something before Bad Things happen.

Bravo.

Jeff K.

Recently my wife and I were in New York. We spent just two days there and I urge anyone who has the chance to visit. It is a remarkable place.
We went to the 9-11 memorial site. (They discourage the term ground zero) We had to get a pass at a storefront 3 blocks away as the site is not yet finished. We had 45 minutes to spare before our time to enter the site so we walked a few blocks and found St. Pauls church. (Trinity church on google maps ????)
Inside there were 5 tables of different people with some sort of story to tell. I cannot remember the other 4.
Fabrizio Bivona was a first responder that survived the attacks. He wrote a book about that day called Gone but Not Forgotten
We did not buy it at the time but ordered it after we got home. I cannot read for more than a few minutes at a time. I thought I was well read and educated on the events of 9-11 but I was not. In this book are stories and images I have never seen or experienced.
Please check out his site and story. Maybe I am biased, having met the man. And after visiting the site it changes how you view the day.
He wrote the book and for 5 years he only offered it to other first responders around the country. Only after numerous firemen told him he had to let other people read it did he release to the general public,
A more humble man I have never met. I am now in the process of sharing his story to family, friends and co-workers.
SDA is none of these, but from the posts of many here I have read, this book would be of interest. Thanks for the time, and the bandwidth, for this.

My pleasure.
911 USA Hope

“Makes you wonder how Europe would have turned out if Hitler hadn’t been such an a&&ho?e. Some of these countries need a good conquering.”

Kate and SDA deserve loads of credit on this story and dozens of other stories covered on Sun News.
Huge number of SDA fans at Sun News. It is required reading.

I try to use my power only for good.

Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent thinks so. But SDA regular ‘nv53’ has a very different take:

“The gap between the rich and the rest of us has reached 1920 levels.”
“We asked Canadians for their views on whether the growing gap between the rich and everyone else is a problem and the response is conclusive.”
Note the irresponsible juxtaposition of “the rich” and “the rest of us” or “everyone else”, as if there is a 1% class earning millions and a 99% class earning slave wages. This is an appeal to envy, to the thoughtless desire for the unearned by some of the lower specimens of humanity, and nothing more.
Incomes fall on a smooth curve with one peak in what we call the “middle income” range – not two. There is no “gap”. That is, there is no income level that no one earns but that a few above and many below do.
Income inequality is not a problem per se. Every individual is different – How’s that for “diversity”? They differ in their intelligence, their skills, their ambitions, their choices, and their luck, and undoubtedly many other characteristics.
In a free market capitalist economy, there should be a fairly standard distribution of incomes. Government intervention in the economy can make it difficult for businesses to operate and create jobs properly. Most social policy, including the “social programs” that Broadbent calls for more of, has this unfortunate result. In many cases, that’s the goal – to make things more difficult for business. Many of the phony “human rights” cases at the kangaroo courts fall into this category. Persons at the upper income level often have extra ways to look after themselves, and may well have “connections”. The vast majority do not, and they take the brunt of the assault on business that derives from irresponsible government spending and regulation, among other policies. The anti-capitalists will generally favour the policies that fill up the rosters for social programs, rather than allow job creation.
The nations that are much closer to having a 1% class and a 99% class are those that have adopted the vicious, immoral socialist ideology of Ed Broadbent: North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and the former Soviet Union. In those nations, a small parasitical elite that takes power, seized and maintained by violence, has a high standard of living while the average person suffers through being exploited. How often do Ed Broadbent and his ilk speak out against injustices like these?
As for his poll, I’d like to see the actual questions it asked. I’ve answered phone polls over the years and a lot depends on the wording of a question. Often, I can barely begin to explain my stance on an issue given the multiple choice options. It’s easy to ask questions that appeal to the envy of thoughtless people. I suspect there’s a 95% probability that’s what Broadbent’s poll has done.

It’s time for Harper to do something about the CBC. No more excuses, Mr. Harper — being nice to the Left doesn’t inspire them to be fairer or more honest. The CBC simply sees it as a sign of weakness and they slant the news even more to disparage anyone who refuses to submit to “progressive” ideology. Mr. Harper, you have to understand that these people think like sociopaths — they have no sense of justice or moral conscience, they will only respond to power.
Firstly, the CBC is violating its diversity mandate as a taxpayer funded institution by only embracing the point of view of the Left and being Partisan to the NDP or Liberals, for example. As such, the CBC is a political lobby organization, not a news organization.
Either the CBC gives fair representation of the diversity of views and news items covering the broad political spectrum of Canadian opinion, or they should be taken over by the Government as an official Government voicebox. Or alternatively, the CBC should be sold and privatized.
I have no problem if they are taken over as an official Government voicebox either — reflecting the policies of the Government of the day — because then at least Canadians will know who the CBC is speaking for (there is no hidden agenda). Or if they instead follow their diversity mandate and reflect the political voices of all Canadians — I have no problem with that either. Or if they privatize instead — I have no problem with that either.
But the CBC does NONE of the above legitimate options — they pretend to be an arms-length Government media institution, financed by all Canadians, but they only represent one political voice: the Canadian Left. And in election time (which seems to be all the time these days) they are unashamedly Partisan against conservatives. In effect, the largest media org in Canada gives free election advertising to any Party that opposes Conservatives, hence breaching election finance laws by misappropriating taxpayer money for the pet personal political lobbying of CBC bureaucrats.
Don’t be afraid to do the right thing, Mr. Harper — they will call you a “Nazi” anyway, no matter what you do. Don’t let name-calling and smears stop you from doing the right thing.
BTW, anybody see the CBC report on election fraud in the U.S.? It focused on alleged fraud by Republicans only — not a word about the Obama/Acorn scam. The CBC does not represent political diversity at any level — Nationally or Internationally — it is clearly a Left lobby organization that has little to do with objective journalism.
Why should Canadians have to pay for that? Freedom of the press and media is guaranteed under our Charter and the CBC violates that freedom by allowing only one voice although all taxpayers are forced to fund it.
Originally posted by Ricardo here.

Long time reader “Shaken”, via email;

As our journalists continue to cast themselves under a self-made asteroid, hundreds of thousands of small investors find themselves on a ledge, wondering which version of The Truth is the one that will inform their retirement or educational fund management decisions. Reporting in the mainstream financial press of late has been at best like a ride on the vomit comet: Greece soon to default; ECB funds a bailout; oops not quite – actually China is our white knight; not so fast – the Greeks cannot agree to terms… On and on it goes.
Can anyone be surprised then when the Al Gore’s invention glows red hot with rumor and speculation as a worried public experiences daily cognitive disconnects while trying to reconcile what their lying eyes see and or read from the professional financial journalists?
Is it any wonder, then, that in such a climate of fear, deliberate disinformation, misdirection, obfuscation and even plain lying that blog posts such as this one become viral within hours of publication?
When one reads through this blog post, pieces seem to fall into place, and otherwise paradoxical events and statements begin to form into a cohesive and logical pattern. Believability ensues. Caring relationships ensure rapid dissemination.
Millions of people around the globe stand ready to do what our professional journalists have forgotten to do, or have otherwise been convinced not to do: be one of us looking out for each other.
Perhaps the blog post to which this note refers is merely the speculation if an intelligent and well meaning individual that has been swept up in the milieu of anxiety which grips us all ever tighter each day, but that us beside the point. The point is, this post went viral as though cycled in a Swiss particle accelerator, evidencing the appetite of the public for reliable information, an appetite no longer satisfied by journalists.
The veracity of the rumor will soon be established or dismissed. Reading it through, one cannot but help sense that there may just be a tinge of truth to the rumor, especially as it has a large degree of congruence with the latest musings at established and credible blogs such as Mish’s and Zerohedge.
If this rumor turns out to be true, and the MSM has once more been scooped by the humble blogosphere, it will be perhaps the nearest of the near misses – the biggest story in the lives of many today, unreported, either by malfeasance, or incompetence. Or both.

Related – Among European nations, debt-ridden Greece is most exposed to Iranian oil disruption.