Solidarity Forever
A Song by Ralph Chaplin
To Play Song Click Here
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one
For the Union makes us strong
Chorus
Solidarity forever, solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
For the Union makes us strong
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong
It is we who ploughed the prairies, built the cities where they trade
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid
Now we stand outcast and starving 'mid the wonders we have made
But the union makes us strong
All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone
We have laid the wide foundations, built it skyward stone by stone
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own
While the union makes us strong
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn
We can break their haughty power gain our freedom when we learn
That the Union makes us strong
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousandfold
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the Union makes us strong
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Solidarité Mes Frères Et Mes Soeurs
Paroles françaises: J. Baumgarten 1915
Nous engraissons le capital et ses usines
Enchaînés du matin au soir à la machine
Pour notre peine, des salaires de famine
Mais l'union nous rendra forts
Refrain
Solidarité mes frères et mes soeurs
Solidarité mes frères et mes soeurs
Solidarité mes frères et mes soeurs
Ensemble nous vaincrons
Mais si un jour nous arrêtons tous nos machines
Mais si un jour nous occupons tous nos usines
Puissants patrons vous ferez alors tristes mines
Car l'union nous rendra forts.
En combattant pour elle, la classe ouvrière
Apportera un ordre nouveau sur la terre
Au coude à coude restons unis, prolétaires
C'est l'union qui nous rend forts.
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Notes
Ralph Chaplin was a poet , artist, writer and organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World. He wrote this song in 1915 just six months before his fellow IWW songwriter Joe Hill was executed. It was to become the anthem of the American labour movement. It goes to the tune of the American Civil War song John Brown's Body. Ralph Chaplin said "I wanted a song to be full of revolutionary fervour and to have a chorus that was singing and defiant"
Thanks to Bernard Carney for permission to use his version of the song from his 1996 CD "Stand Together". Visit Bernard's website at http://bernardcarney.com/ |
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10 Q&A's on Canadian
Pension Income Splitting
Q.1 What is pension income splitting?
A.1 Beginning with 2007 income tax returns, Canadian residents will generally be able to allocate up to one-half of their income that qualifies for the existing pension income tax credit to their resident spouse (or common-law partner) for income tax purposes.
The amount allocated is deducted in determining the net income of the person who actually received the pension income, and it is included in computing the net income of the spouse or common-law partner. Pension splitting affects the calculation of income and tax payable for both persons, so they must both agree to the allocation in their tax returns for the year in question.
Q.2 Is it necessary to contact the payer of the pension?
A.2 Splitting eligible pension income does not have any effect on how or to whom the pension income is paid, so it does not involve the payer of the pension. Information slips will be prepared and sent to the recipient of the pension income in the same manner as previous years.
Q.3 Who qualifies for pension income splitting?
A.3 A pension recipient (pensioner) and his or her spouse or common-law partner can elect to split the pensioner's “eligible pension income” received in the year if:
• they are married or in a common-law partnership with each other in the year and are not, because of a breakdown in their marriage or common-law partnership, living separate and apart from each other at the end of the year and for a period of 90 days commencing in the year; and
• they are both resident in Canada on December 31; or
o if deceased in the year, resident in Canada on the date of death; or
o if bankrupt in the year, resident in Canada on December 31 of the calendar year in which the tax year (pre- or post-bankruptcy) ends.
Q.4 What is “eligible pension income”?
A.4 Eligible pension income is generally the total of the following amounts received by the pensioner in the year (these amounts also qualify for the pension income amount):
• the taxable part of annuity payments from a superannuation or pension fund or plan; and
• if received as a result of the death of a spouse or common-law partner, or if the pensioner is age 65 or older at the end of the year:
o annuity and registered retirement income fund (including life income fund) payments; and
o Registered Retirement Savings Plan annuity payments.
Note: Old Age Security and Canada or Quebec Pension Plan payments do not qualify. And, payments from an unfunded supplementary employee retirement plan (SERP) do not qualify .
Q.5 How do individuals elect to split eligible pension income?
A.5 The pensioner and spouse or common-law partner have to make a joint election in prescribed form with their income tax returns for the year on or before their filing due date (generally April 30 of the year following the tax year, or June 15 if self-employed). The new Form T1032, Joint Election to Split Pension Income, will be available by January 2008. The 2007 income tax return will include a new line for the pensioner to deduct the amount of pension allocated to the spouse or common-law partner. A new line will also be added for the spouse or common-law partner to report the allocated pension income.
Q.6 Who will claim the tax withheld at source from the eligible pension income?
A.6 The income tax that is withheld at source from the eligible pension income will have to be allocated from the pensioner to the spouse or common-law partner in the same proportion as the pension income is allocated.
Q.7 Will pension income splitting affect the pension income amount?
A.7 The pensioner will be able to claim whichever amount is less: $2,000 or the amount of his or her eligible pension income after excluding amounts allocated to his or her spouse or common-law partner.
The spouse or common-law partner will be able to claim whichever amount is less: $2,000 or the amount of his or her pension income that is eligible for the pension income amount, including the allocated pension income.
Note: A pension that qualifies for the pension income amount in the hands of the pensioner does not necessarily qualify for the pension income amount in the spouse or common-law partner's hands because eligibility can depend on age (see Q.4).
Q.8 Does pension splitting affect the Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) credit, Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB), and other federal or provincial benefits and tax credits?
A.8 Allocating pension income to a spouse or common-law partner reduces the pensioner's net income and increases the spouse or common-law partner's net income. As a result, benefits and tax credits that are calculated based on the total of the net incomes of both spouses or common-law partners—such as the GST/HST credit, CCTB, and related provincial or territorial benefits—will not change as a result of pension splitting.
However, pension splitting will affect any tax credits and benefits that are calculated using one individual's net income, such as the age amount, the spouse or common-law partner amount, and the repayment of Old Age Security benefits.
Q.9 If pensioners intend to split pension income when filing their returns, can they ask for a reduction of tax being withheld from the eligible pension income during the year?
A.9 The CRA cannot approve a reduction of tax withheld at source based on an election to split pension income.
Q.10 If pensioners intend to make this election when filing their 2007 returns, can they reduce their instalment payments?
A.10 Many individuals, including pensioners, are required to pay tax by instalments, and the CRA issues instalment reminders to them indicating the amounts to be paid by each instalment due date. However, as an alternative to paying the amounts shown on the reminders, instalment payments can instead be made based on either the individual's prior-year net tax owing and CPP payable, or his or her estimated current-year net tax owing and CPP payable.
Under the current-year option, an individual can estimate his or her current-year net tax owing for 2007 based on the intention to split pension income. However, if the instalment payments are insufficient, instalment interest may be charged. More information about instalment payments and instalment interest charges is available in Pamphlet P110, Paying Your Income Tax by Instalments.
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An Old Man’s Last Stand
When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a small hospital near Tampa, Florida, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.
Later, when the nurses were going through his meager possessions, They found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.
One nurse took her copy to Missouri . The old man's sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas edition of the News Magazine of the St. Louis Association for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based on his simple, but eloquent, poem.
And this little old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this " anonymous" poem winging across the Internet.
Crabby Old Man
What do you see nurses? ..What do you see?
What are you thinking.....when you're looking at me?
A crabby old man, ...not very wise,
Uncertain of habit .......with faraway eyes?
Who dribbles his food.......and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice....."I do wish you'd try!"
Who seems not to notice .the things that you do.
And forever is losing .......... A sock or shoe?
Who, resisting or not...........lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding .... The long day to fill?
Is that what you're thinking? Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse......you're not looking at me.
I'll tell you who I am .......... As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, .....as I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of Ten.......with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters .......who love one another
A young boy of Sixteen ..with wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now. .......a lover he'll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty ......my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows......that I promised to keep.
At Twenty-Five, now .......... I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide .... And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty ....... My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other ........ With ties that should last.
At Forty, my young sons ...have grown and are gone,
But my woman's beside me.......to see I don't mourn.
At Fifty, once more, ......... Babies play 'round my knee,
Again, we know children ..... My loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me ............... My wife is now dead.
I look at the future ...............I shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing......young of their own.
And I think of the years....... And the love that I've known.
I'm now an old man.........and nature is cruel.
Tis jest to make old age ......look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles..........grace and vigor, depart.
There is now a stone........where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass ..... A young guy still dwells,
And now and again .......my battered heart swells
I remember the joys........... I remember the pain.
And I'm loving and living.............life over again.
I think of the years ..all too few......gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact........that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people ..........open and see..
Not a crabby old man. Look closer....see........ME!!
Remember this poem when you next meet an older person who you might brush aside without looking at the young soul within.....we will all, one day, be there, too!
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To flash, or not to flash,
for cops?
No evidence' that charge of flashing beams to
warn of speed traps is illegal driving practice
Jim Kenzie
Special to the Star
Jan 26, 2008
I'm a huge supporter of the police, but you wonder who counsels them on public relations.
They wonder why the driving public often does not co-operate with them, when they pull stunts like they did March 24 last year.
Brad Diamond, producer of TSN's Motoring 2008 (full disclosure: I appear on this show) lives near Broadview and Danforth Aves. Every Saturday morning he goes out for his usual four-buck coffee.
On this day he was driving westbound on the Prince Edward Viaduct, which connects Danforth Avenue and Bloor Street across the Don Valley. He spotted a radar trap nailing eastbound drivers, and passed it at approximately 49.999 km/h. It's there all the time so it was no surprise to him.
Of course, like most concerned citizens, he has often wondered: if radar is supposed to be a traffic safety measure, why would they run it on a bright sunny Saturday morning, on a three-lanes-each-way bridge, with excellent visibility in all directions, without a single intersection, store, home, school or in fact much human activity at all?
Surely, there are more dangerous places they could be trying to slow people down?
Let alone more important public safety initiatives the police could be doing?
Can you say "fishing hole," boys and girls?
Okay, so speeding is speeding, and speeding is against the law everywhere. But seriously.
As any concerned citizen would do if he knew someone was possibly going to break a law – especially if he knew the cops were lying in wait at the potential scene of the crime – Diamond flicked his headlights at oncoming traffic.
As you would. And as you would, most of the oncoming traffic did slow down.
Now, still assuming, perhaps naively, that slowing traffic down to make the roads safer is the objective of radar (it never works, but that's a story for another day), you'd think the cops would be happy that Diamond was assisting in their cause.
You'd think they'd want everybody flashing their headlights, all the time. Who'd take a chance at speeding then?
But no, stationed at the west end of the bridge were a couple more cruisers, pulling people like Diamond over for warning people about the radar trap.
$110 and no points.
I checked the Highway Traffic Act (HTA). I could find no reference to radar speed traps at all, let alone anything about it being illegal to warn other drivers about them. After all, traffic reporters and some websites even announce their locations.
The ticket said the offence was "flashing head beams" in contravention of the HTA, section 169.
Never mind that I have been in the car game for more than 30 years and have never heard the term "head beams."
I checked section 169 and nowhere does it mention radar traps in there.
Sgt. Cam Woolley of the Ontario Provincial Police told me that this law was put in place a few years ago to prevent "civilian" vehicles from impersonating emergency vehicles, notably tow trucks trying to bully their way through traffic to be first on the scene of a wreck.
Nothing at all about radar.
What's more, Diamond's Chevy Tahoe was not producing "alternating"' flashes of light. "Alternating" means one, then the other (just like police cars and other emergency vehicles can do), not both on/both off.
Not only was there no harm, there was no foul.
In our legal system, the legislature passes the laws, the police enforce them. It is not up to the police to make up their own laws – that's what they call a police state.
If the legislature decided in its collective wisdom to make warning of radar speed traps illegal, how hard would it be to pass an unambiguous law to that effect?
I can even help: "It is unlawful to warn other drivers about upcoming radar speed traps; never mind that they don't improve traffic safety."
Okay, the legislature might choose different wording.
The fact is, the legislature has not chosen to pass a law like this, or anything remotely like it.
If Diamond had been standing on the sidewalk holding a neon sign reading, WARNING! RADAR AHEAD!', there would have been nothing the cops could have done.
Needless to say, he decided to fight the ticket.
He contacted the prosecutor, saying the law in question had nothing at all to do with what he allegedly had done, but she said they were going to proceed with the court case.
Okay then, Jan. 10 it would be.
I had a 30-page script ready to go as Diamond's representative. (My dad, who was a lawyer, would have been proud of me. I hope.)
At traffic court, you first present yourself to the prosecutor, who asks how you're going to plead. You'd think anyone who didn't just pay the ticket in the first place and who had shown up at 9 a.m. to fight it would plead not guilty, but some didn't.
You also may have the option of pleading guilty to a lesser charge, which the first case of the morning did.
We were about fourth on the docket.
The prosecutor called Diamond to the bench, asked his name, read the charge, and asked how he pleaded.
"Not guilty, your worship,"' he responded.
Then the prosecutor said, "The police officer has no evidence in this case, your worship."'
"Case dismissed,"' said the justice of the peace.
WHAT? The police officer has "no evidence"? If he had no evidence, why the heck did he lay the charge in the first place?
The fact is, he had no law upon which to base the charge, because Diamond had not done anything illegal.
They assume that you will assume you had in fact done something illegal, fork over your cash, and they smile all the way to the bank.
Now, dad always said that in court, you take a win any way you can. But we were disappointed not to take it to trial so as to set a precedent against this little Buford T. Justice scam by the Toronto Police.
Someone more paranoid than me might suspect they did not want it to go to trial for that very reason, so as not to put their scurrilous behaviour on the trailer for all time.
Now, maybe the "no evidence"' gambit is traffic court shorthand for "the cop didn't show up." But usually with fishing holes, they expect a certain number of people to fight the tickets and schedule the cop for court duty.
I guess we'll never know.
I don't blame the individual cop here, although some of them are clearly overzealous in their pursuit of tickets, quotas, or whatever other pressures they face from their superiors.
But I think it is disgusting that police management sends cops out there to lie in wait to ticket unsuspecting law-abiding citizens when they have to know that what they're ticketing them for is not against the law.
And if they didn't know that before, they sure do now.
Toronto Star |
