Dismay expressed by real estate agents earlier this week over proposed changes to property taxes on P.E.I. was the result of a misunderstanding, the P.E.I. Real Estate Association says.

Association president Danny Moase told CBC News on Thursday that after meeting with provincial Treasurer Wes Sheridan, he is now comfortable with the proposed changes.

The amendments would adjust the assessed value of a home when it is sold to something Sheridan described as market value. Sheridan has since clarified that does not mean what the house sold for, but instead is based on an assessment of market value made by the province.

"It was a misunderstanding regarding terminology," Moase said.

"If you buy a house for 150,000, you're not going to pay taxes on 150,000. People are going to know when they're buying a home what they're going to be paying for taxes."

Moase said the real estate association is now comfortable with the proposed changes to the Real Property Assessment Act.

Oh really - so now the market value of my house is set by a bureaucrat? Oh yea - I feel fine now.

The larger point remains - as we move into a time when the base of the pyramid shrinks - and the bills come due - something is going to have to give on the tax and spend front.

The Goose, the middle class, that pay the taxes, can only lay so many Golden Eggs. But they don't have the votes to change anything.

An American author and broadcaster claims Canadian border officials questioned her about whether she would discuss the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games at a speaking engagement Wednesday evening in Vancouver.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now , a radio and television show aired by public and college broadcasters across North America, was entering Canada around 6 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday evening, set to speak at the Vancouver Public Library in an event co-ordinated by a campus radio station at Simon Fraser University.

“When I handed our passports over the border guard, they told us to pull over. We had to go over to the border facility. And they started asking me questions about what I was going to be speaking about. I was totally taken aback. They wanted to see my notes,” Ms. Goodman told the Globe Thursday, recalling the encounter.

What is going on here?

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Dubai shook investor confidence across the Persian Gulf after its proposal to delay debt payments risked triggering the biggest sovereign default since Argentina in 2001.

The cost of protecting government notes from Abu Dhabi to Bahrain rose, extending the steepest increase since February as Dubai World, with $59 billion of liabilities, sought a “standstill” agreement from creditors. Its debt includes $3.52 billion of bonds due Dec. 14 from property unit Nakheel PJSC. Dubai credit-default swaps climbed 90 basis points to 530 after yesterday increasing the most since they began trading in January, CMA Datavision prices showed.

“There is nothing investors dislike more than this kind of event,” said Norval Loftus, the head of convertible bonds and Islamic debt at Matrix Group Ltd. in London, which manages $2.5 billion of assets including Dubai credits. “The worst-case scenario will of course be involuntary restructuring on the Nakheel security that brings into question the entire nature of the sovereign support for various borrowers in the region.”

Dubai World’s assets range from stakes in Las Vegas casino company MGM Mirage to London-traded bank Standard Chartered Plc and luxury retailer Barneys New York through asset-management firm Istithmar PJSC. The Dubai government’s attempt to reschedule debt triggered declines in stocks worldwide that had been rebounding from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Great Depression did not start in 1929 after the market crash, but in 1931 after the collapse of the Creditanstalt Bank in Austria. http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2009/03/1931.html

This was the double dip event that took all of the remaining cushion and hope.

Dubai has that feel to it at well. British banks are 40 Billion exposed as well and are among the weakest. It was the run of Sterling after Creditanstalt and the run on the banks that was the next event.

Broadcasters are about to experience the equivalent of the Big Bang, warns Akamai Technologies CEO Paul Sagan, a broadcast and cable veteran whose company facilitates more than one-fifth of the world's Web traffic.

The ability to match high-def TV picture quality with Internet interactivity is creating a sea change for online video that will begin rippling through the television industry in 2010. Only TV station owners that leap to the new arena, playing the strength of their hyper-local connections, will survive.

"The dominos are going to fall. The television industry is going to feel the impact of the Internet that music and print have suffered through," Sagan told MediaPost. "It will change everything about television production, distribution, advertising -- where revenues come from and how wealth is created."

Traditional content producers and distributors that are among Akamai's deep client base are in peril; their audiences are rapidly migrating to the Internet. Too many broadcasters are obsessing about cannibalizing their content instead of using the efficiency and convenience of interactivity to expand their local power base.

While increasing numbers of TV stations are going online with real-time and on-demand local news, sports and other live events, they do not have the interactive online advertising in place to fully monetize their content. Some major broadcasters are aggregating their digital spectrum for long-term lease to outside businesses. Or they are creating a virtual DVR-styled content service in order to prevent the Feds from reclaiming it for the national broadband initiative. Many TV broadcasters are paralyzed by debt or a rigid mindset, unable to convert online.

I would expand on this - they not only do not have the advertising set up but they lack a coherent plan. This is not simply a move from air to web. It is a mindset revolution.

Their programming has to have a strong social attraction - content on it's own will not be enough. This is why KETC is experimenting with Gearing Up - where they work with the many communities of kids who participate in the First Robotics world. And why KETC has pioneered true social engagement where it has helped facilitate the establishment of local networks of support to help people get through the economic crisis. Why KETC is training kids to use video to tell local stories.

What no one has dealt with yet are the organizational and cost issues of the revolution.

Many claim rightly that there is not the revenue in the new yet to cover the costs of the old.

This is the Newspaper Issue - so long as all the legacy work and costs are in place the costs are too high. No new process starts with the revenues to pay for the old.

So what to do?

I am starting to think that station managers need to split their organizations into two parts. Today the new hides in bits and pieces throughout the old. Make a new organization that is all about the new and put the best person in charge. Work out what it has to achieve and how to measure.

At the same time make a coherent organization out of the old. Do your costs cutting here. Make this organization as efficient as possible. In a way Greenfield it - do not accept any assumptions about "we always have done it this way".

Now you have a portfolio of the new and the old. Both will have to perform. Resources in the end will have to move over time to the new.

If you do not do this, then the inertia of the old and the power of the old will drain from the new.

It's the GM SUV and Truck issue. "We make most of our money from SUV's and Trucks" So this is where the attention and the power resides. The future gets to die.

A P.E.I. government plan to cap property tax for as long as a residence remains in the hands of one owner is bad policy, says a tax economist from Trent University.

Harry Kitchen met with Provincial Treasurer Wes Sheridan in July when he was here on behalf of the Federation of P.E.I. Municipalities to discuss several issues.

Under the new system introduced Tuesday, homeowners' property taxes will be capped at their 2007 assessment level. Any increases will be indexed to P.E.I.'s consumer price index.

But when the home is sold the property tax will be re-assessed based on market value. This will likely cause a sharp increase in the taxes for the new owner. Kitchen said for property tax to work properly it has to be fair.

"The properties that are not capped are paying proportionately more in taxes, property taxes, for the local services, than the properties that are capped," Kitchen told CBC News Wednesday.

"This just seems to me you are treating similar or identical properties in an unfair way."

Sheridan has argued that the difference between the current assessed value and the proposed market value on P.E.I. is only about four per cent.

But Kitchen noted the longer a person holds on to their home, the more unfair the system becomes. Keeping your home for 40 years would likely lead to a huge increase in taxes for whoever buys it from you, and probably would depress the price you could get for it.

Kitchen said a similar approach has been used in some jurisdictions in the United States, and people have taken advantage of the unfair structure. Homeowners with capped taxes lobbied for more or better services, knowing they would pay proportionally less for those services than their neighbours.

I think that this will be "gamed" as well - one commenter asked if you price the property way below market and also sell a painting for a lot of money would this get around this - thinking the same myself. Get a cheap place and a very expensive lawn tractor?

There has to be equity in taxation - the taxes are meant to be to fund the general good and therefore have to be levied on the general population.

They also has to be a balance between what people can afford and what they pay.

We have seen this in the credit crunch. Most people can no longer borrow any more. Many Have to start paying back.

The same will apply to government.

Graphic Source Earl Mardle

Thinking about Rupert Murdoch – Google Fuss, the shrinking of the Washington Post to only DC, The fudging of news paper circulation numbers, the collapse of the consumer economy are all signs of the conflict and the stress of the old system. Concurrently we are way beyond a few early adopters in the new. I see the growth of web based platforms for accessing media of all types, the explosion of devices to add content, the early sucess of new models such as Huffington, iTunes, Politico, Hulu, YouTube – this feels even beyond Supporters mobilize as much of the new – while not fully formed is already mainstream in usage.

Where are we along this line?

Above the line we appear to be in the Conflict Zone. Murdoch and the vitriol from the established media folks is the signal that tells me that we are here.

On the consumer/user/formerly audience front – a decisive shift to the web has taken place.

As Clay Shirky suggests, the new business model is not here yet. But one thing is for sure, old media is going broke. In Canada Canwest cannot even give a TV station away!

Maybe the new needs the utter collapse of the old in its market to get a hold financially?

What if in your town, there was no Newspaper or TV station at all? Then the new would get a foothold I think.

With the old growth cleared, what happens? New growth that was blocked by the old grows in its place.

We have been waiting maybe for the wrong thing to happen. We have hoped for the new model. But so long as the old canopy is blocking the light, the new and tender cannot grow.

So long as the Dinosaurs were about, the mammals were going no where.

So with the new nearly ready and the people ready – we wait for the fire and the then open space. 2011 is my bet.

A new plan for property taxes on P.E.I. will cost homebuyers a lot of money, say real estate agents.

Provincial Treasurer Wes Sheridan called the change good news for Islanders. (CBC)

The changes, announced in the legislature Tuesday, follow a two-year freeze on Island property taxes, brought in when the current Liberal government was elected in 2007. That freeze is being lifted next year. Tax increases are now being tied to the P.E.I. Consumer Price Index.

"This is virtually a good news story right across the board where people can now see very transparently how their assessments are going to go up," said Provincial Treasurer Wes Sheridan.

But those controlled increases will only apply until the home is sold, at which time the taxes could go up substantially.

That's because after a home is purchased, the taxes would be based on the market value, which is often much higher than the assessed value.

Real estate agent Steve Yoston says in many cases that will result in a big hit for people buying a house.

"It will have a huge effect," said Yoston.

"Personally, with our home, that would put the taxes up by over $100 per month for a new buyer. And it would make it that much harder to find someone to buy our house because they'd have to be able to afford 100 more dollars per month."

Joel Ives, who sits on the executive of the P.E.I. Real Estate Association, said the changes will have a negative effect on unsuspecting Islanders.

"It's just going to come and hit the everyday person right in their pocketbook after they find the house that they want to buy," said Ives.

Sheridan said the system will remain transparent, because property tax bills will include both the assessed value and market value for all residential properties. Homeowners will be able to appeal either figure to the tax department.

Bills with the two taxable values will go out in the spring.

Property tax based on a value on your house - without any link to what you can afford - with the power to evict you should you not pay is not a "good" tax any way.

For years it has had the effect of pushing the elderly out of their homes as their fixed incomes could not cope with rising assessments.

The new plan for PEI will have all sorts of consequences.

It will drive people from away away - just as the Province is seeking to attract more people to offset our demographics. Being unique to PEI, it will bias people from away to other jurisdictions. Is this the intent? I doubt it but have people planning this thought of this? I doubt it.

It will freeze the property market on PEI. We all know that we all buy a bit more house than we can afford - especially at the lower end of the market - the new house buyer. Every penny counts. When property tax approaches your mortgage payment something is out of wack. Has this been modeled? I doubt it.

So what you ask? When do many people have to sell? Divorce, loss of a job, death in the family. Major life events cause many people to sell. What if they cannot now because of the freeze?

What are the major reasons for not paying property taxes? Major life events again. So the Province now can evict you for becoming a widow, losing your job or getting ill. Wow that is going to play well at the ballot box. Did any thought go into this? I doubt it.

The two really bad aspects of property tax is that they are not based on income or ability to pay and that the penalty of foreclosure is too steep a social price to pay.

This is the kind of idea that can balloon into a 7% pay cut kind of reaction from every home owner on PEI. Remember that?

There is no doubt that the Province needs more tax revenue - find a way to get it from a link to people's ability to pay.

There is no reason to believe that the PEI economy will inflate in the next 3 years to keep up with the inflation in house prices over the last 10 years.

Put the thinking caps back on folks.

Among other things, it’s clear from history; when complex societies overshoot their resource bases and decline, one of the things that consistently happens is that centralized economic arrangements fall apart, long distance trade declines sharply, and the vast majority of what we now call consumer goods get made at home, or very close to home. Now of course that violates some of the conventional wisdom that governs economic decisions these days; centralized economic arrangements are thought to yield economies of scale that make them more profitable by definition than decentralized local arrangements.

When history conflicts with theory, though, it’s not history that’s wrong, so a second look at the conventional wisdom is in order. The economies of scale and resulting profits of centralized economic arrangements don’t happen by themselves. They depend, among other things, on transportation infrastructure. This doesn’t happen by itself, either; it happens because governments pay for it, for purposes of their own. The Roman roads that made the tightly integrated Roman economy possible, for example, and the interstate highway system that does the same thing for America, were not produced by entrepreneurs; they were created by central governments for military purposes. (The legislation that launched the interstate system in the US, for example, was pushed by the Department of Defense, which wrestled with transportation bottlenecks all through the Second World War.)

Government programs of this kind subsidize economic centralization. The same thing is true of other requirements for centralization – for example, the maintenance of public order, so that shipments of consumer goods can get from one side of the country to the other without being looted. Governments don’t establish police forces and defend their borders for the purpose of allowing businesses to ship goods safely over long distances, but businesses profit mightily from these indirect subsidies nonetheless.

When civilizations come unglued, in turn, all these indirect subsidies for economic centralization go away. Roads are no longer maintained, harbors silt up, bandits infest the countryside, migrant nations invade and carve out chunks of territory for their own, and so on. Centralization stops being profitable, because the indirect subsidies that make it profitable aren’t there any more.

Ugo Bardi has written a very readable summary of how this process unfolded in one of the best documented cases, the fall of the Roman Empire. The end of Rome was a process of radical relocalization, and the result was the Middle Ages. The Roman Empire handled defense by putting huge linear fortifications along its frontiers; the Middle Ages replaced this with fortifications around every city and baronial hall. The Roman Empire was a political unity where decisions affecting every person within its borders were made by bureaucrats in Rome. Medieval Europe was the antithesis of this, a patchwork of independent feudal kingdoms the size of a Roman province, which were internally divided into self-governing fiefs, those into still smaller fiefs, and so on, to the point that a single village with a fortified manor house could be an autonomous political unit with its own laws and the recognized right to wage war on its neighbors.

The same process of radical decentralization affected the economy as well. The Roman economy was just as centralized as the Roman polity; in major industries such as pottery, mass production at huge regional factories was the order of the day, and the products were shipped out via sea and land for anything up to a thousand miles to the end user. That came to a screeching halt when the roads weren’t repaired any more, the Mediterranean became pirate heaven, and too many of the end users were getting dispossessed, and often dismembered as well, by invading Visigoths. The economic system that evolved to fill the void left by Rome’s implosion was thus every bit as relocalized as a feudal barony, and for exactly the same reasons.

This stunningly clear piece then digs into the connection between a large economy based on easy communication - what we know now - and a hyper local one.

Greer talks about why Guilds then are essential - how they worked - and why a hyper local economy needs them.

This exceptional image of the time of year and of the time of Fred and my lives is by my good buddy Fred First who lives in deepest rural West Virginia.

Fred has this "eye" - I skim the natural world - But Fred sees this kind of beauty all the time.

This image captures also my life right now. The end is in sight but I feel full of light. Nothing gets the juices going as the certainty that there is little time left.

Maybe this is why "Youth is wasted on the Young"? For when I was 20, I was immortal.

The days are long but life is short.