Harper is a very big problem

A couple of snippets about Harper:

• "Since 2006, Harper has cut funding for women’s advocacy by 43 per cent, shut 12 out of 16 Status of Women offices in Canada and eliminated funding of legal voices for women and minority groups, including the National Association of Women and the Law and the Courts Challenges Program. "

• "Harper decorated the government lobby in parliament with photos of just himself, instead of the traditional portraits of former Prime Ministers."

• Harper has tried (and failed) four times to create a law that would allow the government to obtain private information from internet providers without a warrant.

• "In 2007, Harper cut $1.2 Billion in spending for the establishment of quality national childcare. However, he never kept his promise to cut the $1.4 billion in tax breaks he gives to oil companies." 

• During the G20 summit in Toronto more than a thousand people were arrested. Less than a hundred were actually charged with a crime. The others.... well... they were just being pesky I guess.

• Herpy is tough on crime! He'll double the 5 billion dollars we spend on the prison system, despite the fact that crime in Canada is falling for a decade.

• Harpster reinterpreted the meaning of child soldier (he thinks they belong to their 'national military') so that Canada can no longer recognize the vast majority of child soldiers as being child soldiers.

• Harp has cut Canadian aid to Africa in half. Choosing instead to use aid as a tool for improving relations with middle income countries which now receive an 80% portion. But wait, he gets better, he actually froze all aid in 2010.

• There are close to 100 First Nations communities in Canada that have unsafe drinking water. Herpie doesn't think that clean water is a right, and did not allocate any new funding to solve the problem in the 2011 budget

• Harper is actually the love child of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. They mixed their sperm together so they wouldn't know who the real father is and Gm'd their sperms to produce babies with no trace of the vestigial organ known as the human heart. (not intended to be a factual statement)

• Every spring Hearp prorogues parliament so he can retreat back to the prairies where he lays 2 million egg sacs beneath the soil. (not intended to be a factual statement)

Sources for (most of) these can be found at ShitHarperDid.ca

Vancouver has lowest corporate tax rates in the world

A few of my old friends from UBC have been shaking up politics in Vancouver, an old haunt of mine, at their online news source, The Mainlander. It is fantastic stuff.

In their latest article, Nate Crompton writes that Vancouver politicians are continuing to ignore social problems in favor of pro-business policies. For one, Vancouver  has lowest corporate tax rate in the world which includes frequent reductions in taxes for condo development. Amidst the growing problems of homelessness and drug addiction, Vancouver is also seeking a clearly counterproductive anti-poor flat tax regime. Additionally, the once considered progressive mayor, Gregor Robertson, has reneged on his commitment to build social housing in of the newly built Olympic Village project.

Catch all the Vancouver civic scandal at

My newest all-encompassing silver bullet for Development

Tax reform.

Yup, that's it.

Governments that have efficient, working tax systems will be held more accountable for their actions. They are likely to be more participatory for the fact that people are concerned with where their money is going. They will be more responsible to the citizenry because the people are the major revenue stream.

Let's takes a skeptical view of governments - say we label them large, inefficient public corporations. One could argue that they are inherently self interested organizations. (If we begin from this premise we need not rely on altruism.) If a government effectively views the health, education and well being of citizens as a profitable long term investment for its own benefit - for the benefit of the government - incentives are in order and Development is bound to take place

Governments often tap into other revenue sources outside income tax, sources that, towards development, are benign at best and devastating at worst. Rent from extractive industries, or simply from big businesses like MNC, distortive duties, bribery, and untied aid are all markedly worse than revenue from good ol' income tax. Here's a li'l stat I just found from the OECD.

In Africa as a whole, non-resource related revenue increased by less than 1% of GDP over 25 years.

As of right now I have not done any research into the subject beyond that quote. I am putting forward this theory as fresh from my mind ( It likely has a huge literature already that I have somehow missed). Tax systems as indicators, as determiners, as silver bullets.

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I'm not sure if anyone really knows how to impel effectiveness in governments. I say we can start by putting money into tax systems and a participatory framework surrounding them.

(I was expecting a response about how gov'ts can abuse people through taxation...)