that governments get in trouble, not when they do terrible things, but when they do completely reasonable things
Income Trusts INCOME Trusts
They're not called CAPITAL GAINS Trusts, are they?
People are idiots.
Something else to consider is that distributions in the post-2011 trust world will be taxed more lightly than they are now. Most trust payouts are currently taxed as income, but after 2011 they'll be treated as dividends and thus benefit from the soon-to-be-improved dividend tax credit. According to Mr. Levant, the trust analyst, people who own trusts in non-registered accounts could end up with the same after-tax income from trusts after 2011 as they have now. Those who hold trusts in registered accounts will likely face reduced distributions, however.
One last thing to consider if you're of a mind to make a clean break with income trusts is that nothing has changed in the near term in terms of receiving cash every month or quarter. “It's not like trusts are disappearing — they're going to be around for another four years,” CIBC's Mr. Rubin said. “There are a lot of distributions still to be paid.”
B.C.'s declining mountain caribou population needs help, but a controversial recommendation to kill off its predators has environmentalists' heads spinning.
Mountain caribou populations in B.C.'s interior wet-forest belt have declined by 50 per cent over the last 10 years, prompting the provincial Conservation Data Centre to add the species to its endangered red-list. There are currently 18 subpopulations of mountain caribou, many of which are herds with less than 75 animals.
An team of mountain caribou experts recently produced a report identifying recovery options for the species, including further protection of caribou habitat from logging, cutting back on recreational activities (snowmobiling, heli-skiing, backcountry-skiing and resorts), and moving caribou from smaller herds to larger herds.
The report also suggests killing known mountain caribou predators - black bears, cougars and wolves and their more typical prey, moose and deer - in caribou-inhabited regions, a suggestion that isn't sitting well with local environmentalists.
"The way to deal with predators is to stop blaming them, and instead restrict the logging of low elevation caribou habitat. As clear-cuts decrease, so will the deer, moose and their predators," says Andy Miller, Western Canada Wilderness Committee wildlife biologist, adding the predators are simply following their natural prey to as they move into cleared areas.
Only man must be predator! All other predators will be crushed!
Rev. Ted Haggard said Friday he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a male prostitute. But the influential Christian evangelist insisted he threw the drugs away and never had sex with the man.
Rev. Haggard, who as president of the National Association of Evangelicals wielded influence on Capitol Hill and condemned both gay marriage and homosexuality, resigned on Thursday after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed that he had many drug-fuelled trysts with Haggard.
ahahahahahaha
ahhhhahahahahahahahahaahaha
hilarious
To paraphase Jon Stewart, as I recollect after the governor of New Jersey (who had vetoed gay marriage) came out as gay.
"when is everyone going to realize, the guys who are most against homosexuals... they're ALL GAY"
Less than 24 hours after he was fired from the pulpit of the evangelical megachurch he founded, Rev. Ted Haggard confessed to his followers Sunday that he was guilty of sexual immorality.
In a letter that was read to the congregation of the New Life Church by another clergyman, Rev. Haggard apologized for his acts and requested forgiveness.
"I am so sorry for the circumstances that have caused shame and embarrassment for all of you," he said, adding that he had confused the situation by giving inconsistent remarks to reporters denying the scandal.
"The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. ..."
The global seafood industry will collapse by mid-century if current fishing trends continue unabated, an international team of ecologists and other scientists has found.
...
“There is an end in sight, and it's within our lifetime,” said lead author Boris Worm, of Dalhousie University in Halifax.
“If we were to continue exactly what we've been doing over the last 50 years for the next 50 years, 100 per cent of seafood will be collapsed. ... And this includes everything from mussels to cod and swordfish.”
About 29 per cent of worldwide seafood species has already reached a “collapsed” state, where catches of that variety have declined to less than 10 per cent of average fishing output. At that level, populations start losing the ability to multiply.
Things that suck: - ocean mining (industrial fishing) - fish mining ("aquaculture") - food mining (industrial farming) - tree mining (industrial forestry) - fuel mining (the oil industry) - mining mining
Global warming could devastate the world economy on a scale we haven't seen since the world wars and the Great Depression, a major report by a British economist says.
Sir Nicholas Stern, the report's author and a senior government economist, said unchecked global warming could shrink the global economy by 20 per cent -- and cost a whopping $7 trillion in lost output.
One wonders how Canada and the US are going to wiggle out of this one.
War in Iraq and opposition to global climate change are a great pair because the logic for one cancels the logic of the other; you'd have to be insane to believe them both simultaneously.
Assertion: We had to pre-emptively attack Iraq because we must act immediately on the slightest suspicion of danger, even when the evidence is weak and world consensus is lacking, plus which the British (including Tony Blair) thought Iraq had WMD too.
So ok, when there is a slight risk to the US and no evidence and world opposition, immediate action must be taken. Hundreds of billions spent. Thousands dead.
Assertion: We must not act on global climate change even though there is a massive pre-ponderance of evidence, and essentially total world consensus, and plus the British (including Tony Blair) think it is one of the most serious issues we face.
So ok, when there is massive risk to the US, and massive evidence and world consensus, we must do nothing. Plus which, to do something might cost, err, a few tens of billions of dollars, and zero people would die.
As if Saturday's storm wasn't bad enough -- it knocked out power to an estimated 122,500 Long Islanders and disrupted rail service in Queens -- more weather worries are expected Sunday. More high winds are expected to keep knocking out power lines, officials said.
"The good news is we didn't get whacked all at once," said Long Island Power Authority chairman Richard Kessel Saturday. "The bad news is we're going to continue to see outages."
Though the highest recorded wind gust was just 40 mph in Poughkeepsie on Sunday, Lipton estimated that winds reached 60 mph in more mountainous terrain.
Rain totaled 3.02 inches in Rhinebeck, 3.32 inches in Kingston and 4.64 inches in Ashokan, Lipton said.
The severity of outages could have been due, in part, to the fact the ground was already saturated, Lipton said. Trees fall much more easily when the ground is saturated, he said.
"It was a series of gust and gales that just kept coming. ... They just kept strafing the region," said Tesoro of the high winds.
Customers in mountainous areas or those whose outage is an isolated case may still be without power this morning, Tesoro said, though most should expect to have their power restored.
About 38,000 customers were without power Sunday across New York's upstate region. Major outages were also reported on Long Island.
Heavy snow in northern British Columbia downed power lines Saturday, leaving about 15,000 people without electricity around Smithers, Burns Lake and Fort St. James.
PS How wonderful is it they managed to get Smithers and Burns Lake in the same sentence?
posted by Richard at 22:52 /
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Syriana
Watched Syriana. It was good, except the entire Iran / CLI subplot seemed to have no purpose.
As a side note, it's not very often you hear a movie mention Mossadegh, let alone mention him in a positive light.
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