Canadian income tax law requires that all people over the age of 71 must take payments from their registered pension plan.
Lorraine Michael is over the age of 71 and so she is collecting her pension from the House of Assembly. She's earned it. She's got every right to receive it.
Michael is also collecting her full salary as a member of the House of Assembly. The Telegram's James McLeod broke the story last winter. Michael said two things about it. First, she felt she was entitled to even more money because she was doing extra work in the House of Assembly as the de facto leader of the third party. Second, Michael told CBC she had to double dip because that's what the law said she had to do.
Well, no, it doesn't really.
Showing posts with label Budget 2016. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Budget 2016. Show all posts
06 June 2016
16 May 2016
Responsible Government #nlpoli
Many of you may not have heard of Jerry Dean until this past week.
Jerry is from Botwood. Last fall the people on Exploits district elected him as their member in the House of Assembly. He's been a around the block a bit. His official biography says he worked for Abitibi for 30 years and since 1997 he's been active on his town council and in some volunteer groups.
Last week Jerry said something in the House of Assembly that got some folks upset on Twitter. That helped get him some media attention - here's the TransCon and CBC versions - and so the fellow has been getting a bit of a rough ride.
Jerry is from Botwood. Last fall the people on Exploits district elected him as their member in the House of Assembly. He's been a around the block a bit. His official biography says he worked for Abitibi for 30 years and since 1997 he's been active on his town council and in some volunteer groups.
Last week Jerry said something in the House of Assembly that got some folks upset on Twitter. That helped get him some media attention - here's the TransCon and CBC versions - and so the fellow has been getting a bit of a rough ride.
09 May 2016
Choices and values: ideologically-driven nonsense versus reality #nlpoli
Memorial University history professor Robert Sweeny discovered something recent. he discovered that the finance minister's budget speech and the Estimates contained two different sets of numbers.
Hot on the trail of this discrepancy, Sweeny delved deeper. He clacked out a really long account - even by SRBP standards - of his search for the truth. Then the folks at theindependent.ca posted the whole thing including a very big table documenting how some parts of the government were getting less money and others were getting more.
There was only one conclusion. Well, only one for Sweeny. This was all part of a vast international conspiracy. "Cathy Bennett, the fast-food millionaire, has
pulled a fast one on the public," concluded Sweeney. "The finance minister is either incompetent or
dishonest—take your choice—but she most definitely must be held accountable, as
too must Premier Ball. The very quality of our democracy depends on it."
If the quality of our democracy depends on the melodramatic twaddle Sweeny is peddling, then we are royally shagged.
Hot on the trail of this discrepancy, Sweeny delved deeper. He clacked out a really long account - even by SRBP standards - of his search for the truth. Then the folks at theindependent.ca posted the whole thing including a very big table documenting how some parts of the government were getting less money and others were getting more.
If the quality of our democracy depends on the melodramatic twaddle Sweeny is peddling, then we are royally shagged.
08 May 2016
Measuring Thick: either or edition #nlpoli
While Des Whelan was clacking out his column for Saturday's Telegram one of the editors - Brian Jones - came at the government's financial mess from another direction the day before.
In the bizarro world of local politics, people think that Des Whelan and the business crowd are on the Right while Jones and his friends in the NDP and the public sector unions are the Left. Nothing could be further from the truth, as some famous politician once said.
"Bennett and Ball’s first tough decision was straightforward," wrote Jones. "It was to determine who is more important: the people of this province, or the credit-rating agencies in New York?"
It's telling that Jones sees it as a choice of one or the other. It's also revealing that he found it hard to watch what Jones described as "trolls, Liberal diehards and people secretly ashamed of having voted for Ball spout predictable putdowns."
What was his example of a put-down? “'What’s your solution?' they demand, as if any and all alternative suggestions are automatically unrealistic and impossible."
If that is an insult, poor Jones isn't going to want to read any further.
In the bizarro world of local politics, people think that Des Whelan and the business crowd are on the Right while Jones and his friends in the NDP and the public sector unions are the Left. Nothing could be further from the truth, as some famous politician once said.
"Bennett and Ball’s first tough decision was straightforward," wrote Jones. "It was to determine who is more important: the people of this province, or the credit-rating agencies in New York?"
It's telling that Jones sees it as a choice of one or the other. It's also revealing that he found it hard to watch what Jones described as "trolls, Liberal diehards and people secretly ashamed of having voted for Ball spout predictable putdowns."
What was his example of a put-down? “'What’s your solution?' they demand, as if any and all alternative suggestions are automatically unrealistic and impossible."
If that is an insult, poor Jones isn't going to want to read any further.
05 May 2016
The other side of the hill - choices and values 2 #nlpoli
Wednesday's post - Choices and values - came from the perspective of someone outside the echo chamber of politics in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Ordinary voters - who mostly do not work for the government - don't feel like the pain from this budget is shared fairly by all. They just don't believe any assurances that everyone else will feel comparable pain in the future.
But on the other side of the hill, the politicians have a perspective that we shouldn't ignore either.
Ordinary voters - who mostly do not work for the government - don't feel like the pain from this budget is shared fairly by all. They just don't believe any assurances that everyone else will feel comparable pain in the future.
But on the other side of the hill, the politicians have a perspective that we shouldn't ignore either.
04 May 2016
Choices and values #nlpoli
Gerry Rogers, a New Democrat member of the House of Assembly, got a bit enthusiastic on Twitter the other night about "building [a] budget fr[om] set of values/priorities," as if that wasn't what every budget is.
David Easton, the American political scientist, described politics as "the authoritative allocation of values." A budget is the way the government puts its financial resources to work to accomplish its goals. The budget is a visible symbol of the political system at work. it shows you what the politicians think is most important. The budget shows you what the politicians value.
In their hour-long show on CBC Monday night, Premier Dwight Ball and finance minister Cathy Bennett talked about their values a lot. You might have had to listen to find them buried under a bit of bureaucratic jargon but they are there. You'll also have to look past false choices, as in Bennett's claim on Monday that the only alternative to the levy was "some type of [additional] cuts, and that wasn't something at this particular point that we thought made sense."
David Easton, the American political scientist, described politics as "the authoritative allocation of values." A budget is the way the government puts its financial resources to work to accomplish its goals. The budget is a visible symbol of the political system at work. it shows you what the politicians think is most important. The budget shows you what the politicians value.
In their hour-long show on CBC Monday night, Premier Dwight Ball and finance minister Cathy Bennett talked about their values a lot. You might have had to listen to find them buried under a bit of bureaucratic jargon but they are there. You'll also have to look past false choices, as in Bennett's claim on Monday that the only alternative to the levy was "some type of [additional] cuts, and that wasn't something at this particular point that we thought made sense."
02 May 2016
A cut too far #nlpoli
There's a scene in the movie A Bridge too far where the British soldiers are trying to push down a road as part of a major attack on the Germans in September 1944.
The whole plan was built, according to the movie, around dropping parachute troops at key bridges and then having ground troops charge along a single road. The soldiers on the ground had 48 hours to get to the last of the airborne soldiers, who were at Arnhem. They didn't make it, hence the idea that the plan always involved going one bridge too far.
There are wrecks everywhere and the dead are everywhere after the first clash in the campaign. As soldiers clear the way and take away the wounded, one officer looks up at another who is sitting on a scout car. How do the generals expect them to keep up the pace under these conditions, the fellow asks looking up. The fellow sitting on the armoured car has his binoculars and is scanning the road ahead. J.O.E Vandeleur, played by Michael Caine, looks down at his cousin, Giles, and says:
The whole plan was built, according to the movie, around dropping parachute troops at key bridges and then having ground troops charge along a single road. The soldiers on the ground had 48 hours to get to the last of the airborne soldiers, who were at Arnhem. They didn't make it, hence the idea that the plan always involved going one bridge too far.
There are wrecks everywhere and the dead are everywhere after the first clash in the campaign. As soldiers clear the way and take away the wounded, one officer looks up at another who is sitting on a scout car. How do the generals expect them to keep up the pace under these conditions, the fellow asks looking up. The fellow sitting on the armoured car has his binoculars and is scanning the road ahead. J.O.E Vandeleur, played by Michael Caine, looks down at his cousin, Giles, and says:
"You don't know the worst. This bit we're on now?"
"Yes," says Giles, quizzically.
"It's the wide part."
27 April 2016
Winston Churchill and taxes (revised and updated) #nlpoli
"For a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." Winston Churchill.
People don't like the massive jump in taxes and the creation of new fees and charges like the levy. They pass this around as their statement of protest.
Three things to know about the quote, besides the fact that Cathy Bennett used it in the budget debate last year to argue against a hike in the HST:
26 April 2016
MQO poll shows big Liberal slide #nlpoli
Just for the fun of comparison, here's the CRA polling results for a year covering the last time the provincial government saw a change of party and the new crowd introduced a killer budget no one expected.
The Conservatives dropped from 55 points in November 2003 to 33 points in May of the next year.
They only climbed out of the hole by abandoning their austerity program and launching a costly jihad against Ottawa.
Delivering a bad budget is one thing. Delivering a bad budget very badly is something else entirely.
That's why, As bad as the polling numbers are for the Liberals in MQO's April 2016 poll, there is nothing in it that's surprising to anyone paying attention to local politics.
The Conservatives dropped from 55 points in November 2003 to 33 points in May of the next year.
They only climbed out of the hole by abandoning their austerity program and launching a costly jihad against Ottawa.
Delivering a bad budget is one thing. Delivering a bad budget very badly is something else entirely.
That's why, As bad as the polling numbers are for the Liberals in MQO's April 2016 poll, there is nothing in it that's surprising to anyone paying attention to local politics.
18 April 2016
The Austerity Budget Pantomime #nlpoli
According to the Oxford dictionary, financial austerity means "difficult economic conditions created by government measures to reduce public expenditure."
Reduce government spending.
Three key words.
The most important is reduce, meaning to lower or to lessen.
Keep that in mind.
Reduce government spending.
Three key words.
The most important is reduce, meaning to lower or to lessen.
Keep that in mind.
15 April 2016
The Rasputisa and the 2016 Budget #nlpoli
The speech finance minister Cathy Bennett read in the House of Assembly on Thursday was as horrible as the reaction most of the province have been having to it.
That's not surprising given that the entire budget communications program was the product of precisely the same folks who delivered repeated political and policy disasters for the former Conservative administration. And if that wasn't bad enough, everyone - the Liberals included - picked the anniversary of the Titanic disaster to deliver a very hard budget.
To get a sense of the problems with Thursday's budget, take a look at two fine examples of just how politically tone deaf the speech was.
The first one: "As our Premier has said, knee-jerk reactions have created mistakes that, unfortunately, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are paying for now."
Bennett's speech writer didn't give an example so folks will likely fill in their own.
That's not surprising given that the entire budget communications program was the product of precisely the same folks who delivered repeated political and policy disasters for the former Conservative administration. And if that wasn't bad enough, everyone - the Liberals included - picked the anniversary of the Titanic disaster to deliver a very hard budget.
To get a sense of the problems with Thursday's budget, take a look at two fine examples of just how politically tone deaf the speech was.
The first one: "As our Premier has said, knee-jerk reactions have created mistakes that, unfortunately, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are paying for now."
Bennett's speech writer didn't give an example so folks will likely fill in their own.
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