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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LPS5 who wrote (5552)	10/29/2003 2:05:39 PM
From: Gulo	Respond to of 13056

Liberty makes headway in Canada. A new political party to be called the Conservative Party of Canada is being formed by the merger of the pink small-c Progressive Conservatives with the populist Canadian Alliance. The remarkable thing is that the merger agreement specifies a number of policies that support individual freedom. The merger seems to have cancelled out some of the distasteful attributes of each partner. canadianalliance.ca Message 19412794 There have historically been two major parties in Canada - the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives. The Liberals are left-of-centre, and are essentially socialist authoritarian, although they have been forced to a more centrist position by current public mood. The "Progressive" Conservatives were a centrist-to-conservative party that resulted from a leftist shift of the ancient Conservative party, which helped form modern Canada. A decade or so ago, western Canada revolted against the then-governing Progressive Conservatives and formed a new party called the Reform Party. The Reformers were small-C conservatives with an agenda of democratic reform and fiscal conservatism. As a result of voter alienation with the current democratic structure of Canada, the Reformers had support from both social conservatives and libertarians in western Canada. Now that the two major parties were the Liberals and Reform; the agenda of the governing Liberals moved towards the center in reaction to popular Reform Party policies. The problem for libertarians was that the Reform Party support was largely limited to the less-populous western Canada, while the rump of the more-broadly national Progressive Conservatives suffered from both vote splitting with Reform and from the fact that the Liberals moved towards the center, limiting the size of the political spectrum the PCs could claim as their own. Reform tried to broaden their appeal by changing their name to the Canadian Alliance (originally meant to be the Canadian Conservative Alliance)and incorporating a few former PCs, but met with limited success. Small-c conservatives, libertarians and other small-government types realized that the only way to obtain widespread support would be to merge the two right-of-center parties. The recent ageement finally accomplishes that, with the added bonus that the statism of the PCs and the purported social conservatism of the Alliance have been largely eliminated from the new party. Prospects are looking up for one of the world's most politically naive welfare states. -g

To: LPS5 who wrote (5552)	2/7/2004 8:03:40 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Respond to of 13056

Town Can't Collect Lotto Loot Tax SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio, Jan. 20, 2004 Rebecca Jemison, who emerged as the true winner of last month's $162 million lottery drawing, is suddenly even richer. This Cleveland suburb is suddenly much poorer. South Euclid city officials were stunned to learn that they can't collect $1.4 million in income taxes from the winning Mega Millions ticket since the city charter wasn't updated to include lottery winnings as taxable income. "It's not a good day for the city," Mayor Georgine Welo said Monday. "We were all excited until we went to go for the money and learned that we are not entitled to it. We are very saddened by the news." [nice lesson - a government learns it is not "entitled" to tax money <g>] Rebecca Jemison took the lump sum payment option of the $162 million jackpot, walking away with $67 million. Now, she's $1.4 million richer. The news came at a bad time for South Euclid, which laid off six workers and made other cuts to help bring its $16.5 million budget down to $13 million, Welo said. The city had planed use the windfall to rehire some workers and improve parks and recreation programs. City Law Director Michael Lograsso said former Mayor John Kocevar's administration failed to act on a 1996 letter from the Regional Income Tax Agency advising the city to amend its charter if it wanted to tax lottery winnings. That year, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that in order for cities to collect the tax, they would have to specifically state "lottery winnings" as taxable income in their charters, Lograsso said. The tax mix-up is the latest plot twist in an unusually eventful lottery drawing. Days after the Dec. 30 drawing, another woman filed a police report saying she lost the winning ticket and was later found guilty of filing a false police report. cbsnews.com