After two long years listening to a government lie to our faces, an initiative petition, recall (which I maintain no politician wanted to succeed) and a referendum in which a new Premier also lied to us saying she wanted to give us a level playing field and all the spending would be equal, we won. Handily.
Many volunteers gave up personal time and suffered domestic problems yet they forged ahead. Seniors who had been die hard liberals all there lives reactivated themselves in opposition to the BC Liberals robbing them of there meager income.
The people were "mad as hell and weren't going to take it anymore." In spite of a huge infusion of cash by the only ones to benefit from this robbery, big business. In spite of threats by politicians and in particular the bird man of the legislature, in spite of out and out lies to us, we won.
And weeks before the count was official, the government started their spin on the results. Falcon claiming that he wouldn't take the PST off restaurant food. Christ, he's got to be stupid to say that,. Why? Because the question was, are you in favor of eliminating the HST and returning to the system that was used prior to July 1 2009?
Lies like his no doubt affected the outcome. And the big bribe by the premier after saying "it might look like we were trying to bribe the people" She offered to reduce the tax to 10% from 12%. People not following the situation too close may have been appeased by this but it is a total lie. If this robbery were to pass, the Feds would have control over all our taxes and if the feds did not want to reduce them we would be shit out of luck.
So my friends as I see it our next step is to pressure the liberals as hard as we can to turn this tax around. If that means another round of recall, so be it.
After getting this done once and for all, I will be turning to pressuring the governments to step in on the gas prices. I've about had it with those guys as well. We need to have a national organization that will keep the pressure up, not just make noises once in a while. We need to target the oil companies with boycotts.
We have all witnessed what has happened in the middle east and Egypt. And I am convinced that social media was the turning point for the average person fighting the dictators.
I wish to thank all the people of my crew for the valiant effort they put into everything we worked for prior to the referendum. (after the referendum I took a smaller role) I would also like to thank all those who sacrificed time and money to make this day possible. that would be 54.7 % of the voters who voted to get rid of this Tax. It's significant and in spite of BALDREY's ranting this Tax better be gone ASAP or else.
7 comments:
Bravo! This is the best news in a long time!
The BC people are so grateful to the HST team. The BC Liberals, have thieved from us, for over ten years.
To force the HST on the people during a recession, and Campbell stealing and selling our assets. The HST killing jobs and businesses. People losing their jobs, homes and vehicles, and we get a slap in the face, and have the HST Forced on us too.
However, it only took Harper, Campbell and Hansen 90 days, to force the HST on us, but it will take until 2013 to get rid of it? I don't buy it. That's just another dirty stall tactic.
The BC people will be owed, over three years of HST money, thieved from us. And, they have the damned gall to say, we have to pay Harper for stealing from us? The BC citizens signed no deal with the devil. Campbell and Hansen did.
The HST wasn't on Campbell and Hansen's radar, remember? Like, the BCR wasn't for sale either.
Harper had better take the, reward position as High Commissioner job, away from his partner in crime, Campbell. Shame on Harper. This country is rotten to the core with corruption. BC is the most corrupt province in Canada, because of the Campbell/Christy BC Liberals.
Great article. The main reason the Liberals and the Conservatives in Ottawa are going to drag their feet on pulling this tax is because they are scared shitless that we might ask for votes on other issues. Like the northern pipeline or private power ripoffs and so on. Watch now as they make this decision very costly for BCers just to prove that we cannot make our own decisions.
Frankly, it has been pretty well proven all over the world that the current paradigm doesn't work for us, so perhaps we are the only ones who can make the right decisions for BC. And if it happened here it would spread across Canada faster than a prairie fire.
Anon 11:48 AM Thanks and I'm sure the rest of the volunteers as well as FightHST.com folks appreciate your comment
Anon 4:47pm
"The BC people will be owed, over three years of HST money, thieved from us. And, they have the damned gall to say, we have to pay Harper for stealing from us? The BC citizens signed no deal with the devil. Campbell and Hansen did."
The problem with the government owing us what we have paid is that we will not be able to retrieve that money. On the upside they can't remove our meager rebates either until legislation is enacted.
Anon 7:55AM You are correcty in stating that a problem exists all over the world. Greece, Spain, and Ireland are about to (if they haven't already)go bankrupt. The EU is in big trouble. And if you look at the causes the main problem in each country is that when the taxes go up and people can't eak out a living they hit the underground economy. Greece is the classic example. As I have stated before, people are living in mansions and driving Mercedes but the government is broke.
But on the other side, BC has taken a page from Iceland. Just google them and see what they have done. They took control of their own taxes and have reversed their misfortunes. The mainstream media won't report on this so have a look and what you read will answer the question why governments don't want you to know about Iceland and their taxes.
Gary E: Can't agree that the main problem is the underground economy. The main problem is that big corporations own the government (take a look at the majority of liberal campaign contributions) and the media. Which has two results:
1. The sale of public assets like BC Rail to private corps like CN who contributed heavily to the Liberal party. Corruption can't get any plainer than that.
2. Putting corporate profits above public interest like introducing the HST, like introducing Private Power, like giving away the power from Kemano, like allowing foreign fish farms to ruin the fishing economy on the coast for no other reason than campaign contributions, like supporting legislation which will benefit only private companies while in government and then quitting government and joining the company you lobbied for. Like shifting the tax burden from rich corporations to poor and middle class BCers.
The underground economy is only a symptom of the global disease. And in the case of British Columbia, the BC Bud economy is in a large part holding the province from bankruptcy. I'm not cheering for the gangs who run it, just saying that if we had a progressive government or even a real voice in government instead of voting for sociopathic liars like Gordo, pot would be legalized and taxed. Use wouldn't go up as has been demonstrated by Holland and Portugal, but policing and prison costs would go way down.
No, the underground economy isn't the problem because the real crooks live right at the top. They always have and they always will until we have participatory democracy, just like we finally got to vote on the HST. I'm not saying they are the apes in 'Planet of the Apes' (original version) but they sure as hell look just like them.
Gary E: I too follow Iceland (loosely) and what they did was have a referendum on whether they should be responsible for the debts of the private bankers which were passed off to them - just as the fraudulent derivatives of Wall Street banks in the US were passed off to American tax payers. (which is what started this whole global fiasco) The difference was that the Icelanders had a vote and (twice) rejected paying those debts. Many of those bankers are now in jail or charged with fraud in Iceland. Ya gotta love the Icelanders. Wish Ireland would go the same way. Pretty sure Greece would if it hadn't turned into a police state. Because; and this is the point, they don't have a vote like we had. And we don't have vote a like Iceland has or things would radically change for the better here.
We got one small victory, and our own government is going to punish us financially for it in an effort to make sure that we never try to manage our own future again. The corporate controlled msm will support the current government paradigm because they are in bed together - the government gives large corporations what they want in exchange for a piece of the pie in the form of political donations and plum jobs when they leave government. Corporate media is dying though, because people prefer to read blogs from intelligent people with no ulterior motive. Print media will die, but people will still watch corporate news on the tv. Many of them will watch it with a cynical eye though, so that will too will change as soon as the blogoshpere gets past youtube and finds their own media for digital representation. The only way to stop it is to regress in time to the age when corporate media controlled the world a la Ely Bernays, but that ain't gonna happen. Or they could use Orwellian 'newspeak' to largely shut down the freedom of intellectual expression on the Internet, but that ain't gonna happen either because there would finally be a revolution if it did. And because the oligarchy knows and controls many 'alternate' sites to allow people to vent without doing any harm. But I know from experience that one can be 86ed from many sites for voicing real ideas which actually threaten the current shell game.
Things will never change until the voters get the right to make their own decisions. As you said, the current 'representative democracy' model is failing all over the world. It is failing because 'neocons' and 'neoliberals' have introduced a whole new paradigm of greed into national governments. They call it Globalism, but we know it as higher taxes and increased poverty worldwide. It is particularly evident in the BC lumber industry. These are early days for real democracy, but as I said once it starts in just a few places, it will spread like a prairie fire. Will we be better for it? Well, it would certainly help humanity grow intellectually and economically to change our current out-dated system of (non) democracy. Everywhere real democracy tries to grow by advancing health care and free education through university and giving a direct vote to the people and returning the profits of the resources back to the people who live there, rich capitalists are there to prevent it by mostly illegal means. This they get away with because it is relatively easy to corrupt or assassinate a government, but it would be a whole hell of a lot more difficult to corrupt or assassinate a whole population bent on their own best interests. Could I the recommend the book 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man' by John Perkins?
The current political paradigm is old, corrupt, and inefficient, and if we don't introduce change through education and real democracy this province and this country will be relegated to poverty and despair. It is already happening. Sorry for going on at such length.
For those who may be confused I believe the above post was from a comment I made on facebook.
So just to be clear Anon6:56PM, I aian't sy the underground economy was the problem. Sorry if you misunderstood. What I meant was that governments wh give in to big business demands for a free ride pretty much reducing their taxes to nothing are the problem. When they reduce those taxes for business and put the burden on those who can't afford it, as they did in BC they create a situation where people will barter and sell privately. Even going so far for example to say, sell a vehicle for $1000 and claim it sold for $500. Or as is the case in Greece selling homes for $300,000 and claiming $150,000 thus creating an underground economy where the proper taxes are not paid and the government can't afford their programs so they jack up the taxes again on the poor and middle class thus creating a Catch 22. More taxes more cheating. And the parties in power can't see it. They are blinded by the money they receive by big business. They want to stay in power and money is power.
So, I agree with you that the underground economy is not the cause. It is big business and government. And I am well aware of the marijuana situation in BC and the reasons for this stupid outlawing of a medicinal herb that was outlawed in the '20's after fierce lobbying by Randolph Hearst and the Dunlop family. I have even written about it here on this blog.
Finally, it is my firm beleif that if this province was to return to independent MLA,s as they had in the first couple of elections in the 1850's, a collection of independents that elected a leader amongst themselves we wouldn't wind up with control freak dictators like I allege Campbell was.
Post a Comment