With his popularity rating at record lows (recent polls put it at around 26%, on par with Hollande), his capital city burning and the populists he defeated during his stunning electoral victory last year making serious electoral inroads, French President Emmanuel Macron finally caved, and on Tuesday ordered a six month suspension of planned ‘fuel taxes’ which spurred widespread and destructive protests across France over the past three weeks.
After reportedly weighing declaring a state of emergency that would have cleared the way for an unprecedented crackdown on dissent, Macron decided that such measures would only intensify the popular opposition to his government. And according to Reuters, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has declared a suspension of the staggeringly unpopular tax.
h/t Robert of Ottawa
Six months? He will bring the crippling tax back in six months hoping that people will have cooled down enough for him to get away with the tax fraud.
Hopefully the French people have figured it out that the carbon taxes are designed to ultimately drastically reduce their standard of living back to subsistence level. Canadians still think living in caves and eating grass would be cool.
Ken, they don’t need to wait 6 months to know Macron’s claims are bullshit. He said the tax increases were to provide funds to fight climate change and yet he warns that when he suspends the tax he will also have to make cuts to social programs. It’s pretty transparent that it was a tax grab.
No … what Macron has promised to do is mount his own counter-revolutionary measures … I.e. slash public benefits. See … this all comes down to the takers -vs- the makers. The vast majority of the French people are takers. They LOVE taking free shit from the government, but they HATE paying for it. So, in the end, Macron will have backed-down the gold-vest mobs with the promise of more gold … from some other guy. Oh … and he will remind the French people of just how much they NEED African migrants to do the jobs, they just won’t do (because they’re … too white).
They will never learn but it is always rewarding to watch them rediscover it. If he cuts services there will be riots. If he imposes taxes there will be riots.
Three obvious quotes come to mind:
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
“Burn baby burn”
I suspect the French government is as up to its eyeballs in debt as every other western government, because people like their free stuff. They either get this tax, or another tax, or borrow money that their grandchildren will pay the interest on. If the government taxes the people they will riot, if the government tries to cut spending they will riot. If they don’t cut spending, their children will riot when presented with the bill. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.
Watched the Wind Bag testimony yesterday. Just as Macron and other lefties you can tell when they are lying because their lips are moving.
Just in case anyone was wondering, you can get a yellow safety vest from amazon.ca for about $16. Free delivery if you’re a prime subscriber.
There is a big disconnect in France. They love their entitlements but don’t like paying for them. I’m sure if Macron cancelled spending programs the protests would continue, just with another color of vest – probably red.
If there is one thing the world can count on it is the ongoing mismanagement of Euro affairs for decades. They have shown an ingrained inability to govern themselves.
Trump is the first president since WW I that has actually questioned the assumption that the USA would bail the Euros out. Simpering Canada has always kowtowed to these people.
It’s all a matter of perspective. There have been certain family lines that have prospered in good times, and far more so in bad times. The Medicis, Aldobrandinis, Borgias, Colonnas, Conti, Breakspears, Orsinis, Farneses, Somaglias, to name a few, and to a lesser extent the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Fords, Bushes, etc.
The Roman Catholic Church has also done amazingly well.
The people, not so much.
Those farthest away from the influence of Roman Catholicism have fared the best.
The certain ones that have “prospered in bad times” like the people who make the riot paraphernalia, the yellowish- green protest vests and soon the new red ones. Why are they a must? The person is just a walking target.
The riots are not going to stop in my opinion. There is too much squandering in governments. Debts should be paid back and limited. People should not be bought with their own money.
Trudeau better take heed. He and dumb libs have been spreading this green scam long enough. Stop with the travel, hotel expenses, pricy gourmet meals, souvenirs and overall pure junk and garbage. They live in the lap of luxury then fight and insult the peopleskind for more continually.
stupid people can always be bought with their own money.
It is telling that the people are still capable of rising up, and as usual it begins with the unions. But of course, they see Macron as the problem, and the solution being to pacify them by finding ways to tax others who are less likely to riot.
If only they’d instead head off to the universities and round up the Jesuits, they’d get real and long-lasting results. These are the evil men who indoctrinate students with communism, and screen out intelligent but morally flawed men to become the next generation of judges, politicians, media personalities, and diplomats.
Expelling the Jesuits was the solution every nation in Europe, as well as the Orient eventually arrived at. It takes that long for the people to realize that they are not good men, nor are they Christian, but rather they are treasonous, seditious, and poisonous to a free citizenry.
I was taught by the Jesuits at a boys school that will remain unnamed. What I learned about Jesuit priests is that they are all assholes and some of them are gay pedophiles as well. I never liked any of them and I am pretty sure they didn’t like me either. I am no longer catholic, thank god.
I would venture to say that any Jesuit that’s made it to the fourth vow is certainly a pedophile. These guys are literally Satan worshippers. I actually mean that.
LITERALLY.
Just like Herpes, that carbon tax will come back in increments and in disguise. When the ghouls want to rob your grave before you are in it, they will keep coming until they get it …. or …. you can do what smarter rebellions did … kill them.
Somehow, I think that is coming … and it had better hurry.
Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!
Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite! Guillotine!
All pretty funny except people had to die fighting against yet another tax grab by an out of touch, lefty political asshole.
I’m sure they’ll be very appreciative as they bury their loved ones that Msr. Macaroon lowered the price of fuel.
Frankly, he should follow them into the dirt.
People dying as a result of “out of touch, lefty political assholes” is par for the course. A hundred million so far….and growing. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
200 million is a much more accurate #
Rioting gets results! Sounds like the results are only half assed though…logical conclusion is that more rioting is required.
Coming to a country near you soon?
I wonder if yellow vest sales are on the rise in Canada?
It looks like the message got through when signs reading “We cut off heads for less than this” began appearing, and I wonder what what our very own Dauphin’s perspective might be on this (especially given his well-demonstrated Frenchness), now that the French carbon tax (per the Paris accord) est tout fini.
One also might be inclined to wonder if this historically successful approach could merit a closer look in the Western Hemisphere but, unlike our French friends, other countries may lack significant hands-on experience in the head-trimming of terminally narcissistic high-spending worthless Dauphins.
Still…
They’ve gone back to the frog and the pot of warm water story hoping they can still catch everyone in a slow boil. But Soros isn’t getting any younger at 88 and his patience is on the wane. He wants to see real movement towards the new world order now so expect to see the Left increase their appetite for using violence to enforce compliance. Four died in France to get 6 months but I think the price to stop the Left’s totalitarian madness could end up being a lot more. Blood always seems to be the price of Freedom.
Now you getting at the crux of the matter. George’s evil face is behind much of this, as is the Fruitfly guy and fat Al.
Maybe instead of rioting these hooligans could have made better choices at the ballot, assuming they’re old enough to vote.
We elect charlatans, then bitch when they lie to us; then we re-elect them. This is no excuse though for property damage.
I wonder what our threshold for public demonstrations (non-violent please) is. Is it $2.17/litre C$, what the French pay now?
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/France/gasoline_prices/
I fear ours is much higher. I think out climate taxing, gender neutral fiscal onion peelers can get us to $3 or even $4/litre.
Rather than riot I implore my fellow Canadians – vote these taxaction bums out as soon as possible to avoid national disaster.
Pretty tough when they almost all lie to you. Then comes a time.
Same solution, refuse to vote for liars. Maybe some politician will make an electoral “contract” with the voters as Mike Harris did successfully.
Assuming they’re all liars and the apathy that accompanies that sentiment keeps corrupt progressives in power over us.
Unless both political options are controlled by the same people. This is a tried-and-true technique of control known as the Hegelian Dialectic.
Its kryptonite is if the people realize they’ve been played. Thankfully for the puppetmasters, they have control of the media to continuously divide the people amongst themselves so that they never peek behind the curtain.
Macron was easily the best choice. Imperfect, but the rest were poison.
You know this how?
unDork, yer opinion is worth less than nothing. You are uninformed and illiterate on so many levels and topics, one has to wonder if you are compromised with mental illness!!!!
Sounds more like a temporary truce. I suppose it depends on what’s really going on. Is it just the fuel taxes or were the fuel taxes the final straw and the riots are about grievances and resentments that have built up over time. If it’s the latter then it’s not over . In France, 70-80% of those polled support the yellow vests…that’s not good news for the political/chattering class. Citizens may finally have had enough of the authoritarians.
I think the UK is the next flash point if the millions of people who voted for Brexit get screwed over by the political class. There’s similar demographics between French yellow vests and pro-Brexit voters. Ditto for Italian populists and the US MAGAs.
If right and left populists unite against the political and chattering class , look out.
Once the kops start putting on the yellow vests, it tends to be the beginning of the end for the Regime.
The last ex-dictator of Romania (whose name escapes me) learned that the hard way…
Yep. Police pay taxes too.
Had to look up the spelling of Ceausescu but he was an actual dictator. I doubt things will go that far in europe/UK.
Oh please. The people are the authoritarians. They want free stuff and someone else to pay for them.
unDork, hollande was spending 10,000 euros a month on his personal hair trimmer, and macaroni is spending about the same on another useless something or other. These elitists dickheads do not know personal restraint , and that is a large part of the problem. That is why Trump was elected, why macaroni was elected, and why the new Italian leader got in. They are also seeing a rise in populism in Spain. The people are getting fed up with people who tell others to “have less” while they spent like drunken sailors. Oh, and another thing we don’t like, is stupid A-holes like you, who are too stupid to “git it”!!!
I’m too well off to riot, it’s no fun burning a luxury automobile in the street if you might have to pay for it. Little known fact is that Europe has a lot more poor people than North America, the poorest US state has less poverty than your average European country. I assume most of the French rioters rent their homes and barely live paycheque to paycheque. The comfortably bourgeois middle class does not riot so Canada is still a long way off from this kind of thing, too rich. Give it a little time though, it’s plain to see, even for potheads, that the aristocracy intends to steadily lower our standard of living.
Things might change when house-heating becomes unaffordable via a deliberate self-imposed tax in a country with winters as long and as cold as Canada’s.
Even the pot-heads might eventually notice the lack of thermal comfort given the limited heating potential of the average doobie…
Bruce, the pot heads will definitely notice once they get straight and can’t afford their pot and heat:-)))
What the “gilets jaunes” need to do to finish the job is march on the COP24 in Poland and denounce the Global Warming/Climate Change fraud. The planet needs to be saved from the zealots now gathered and celebrating in Katowice.
I’m surprised that Macaroon doesn’t copy Turdeau and say I’ll give you the money back at tax time. So 70% of you will pay 500 euros a year in carbon tax but will get back 550 euros at income tax time. The rich will not get a refund.
Before I get flamed to death, I am not supporting this, just wondering why Macaroon didn’t try it.
Joe, think King Louis XIV gave back taxes to the less fortunate? https://french-king-louis-xiv.weebly.com/controlled-taxes-and-government-spending.html
“…In order to obtain this money he would raise taxes constantly. Louis had Jean Baptiste Colbert as one of his most important collaborators. Jean mainly controlled finance. He pushed his own ideas and was the person the king always went to. Despite him being in charge to help with finances France pushed farther into debt. It all traces back to wars that Louis put France through and the money it took to raise an army. It did not help that Louis lost most of these wars. He just kept taxing the people even though they had no more money left to give for taxes.” Seems taxing people into oblivion has been going on in France for a very long time. Of course we know what happened to Louis XVI a few generations later… The Euro-rich aren’t charities. They are the royal high born anointed ones deserving of all conferred to them by the peasant populace.
Martin, Thanks, I like your answer.
It made me wonder is Turdeau any different from Louis XIV? Mr Sunny Ways and the Sun King. Both love to dress up. Both believe themselves members of the privileged class.
The difference is that Louis XIV had an IQ above room temperature. Now Louis XVI was another matter.
Maybe the French are smarter than Canadians and would figure out that the numbers do not add up. I don’t see how any half intelligent person could take the Liberal scam seriously.
Half intelligent people don’t take it seriously. Unfortunately, in this country, half intelligent people are overwhelmed by total morons.
you referring to unDork????and it’s ilk????
Hopefully Canadians will figure it out, but I doubt it
As an example let’s take Jerry Dias, president of Unifor. He, and his union, campaigned for higher income taxes, higher business taxes, higher CO2 taxes, higher electricity costs, and lots more government regulation. The citizens of Oshawa voted NDP in the last election. GM listened. And pulled the plug on Oshawa. Yes there may have been more reasons for the pull out, but many of those are still related to the higher tax, higher regulation campaigning of Unifor.
And then there is the comment, GM only cares for shareholders. Well Liberals, NDP, unionists, and most Canadians don’t realize that pension plans are now the biggest shareholders.
The media – which tends to be strongly leftist, doesn’t realize this other.
I could never and still cannot figure out or even *find out* why in gawds name didnt/dont unions go the ‘share in the ownership of the company’ route. get THEMSELVES on the board, get a PERSONAL stake in the wellbeing of the company.
mebbe they have a distaste for all that hard work planning and managing and instead just want to leap to the part about
getting the paycheque.
fcuk em. fcuk unionboy, fcuk GM, fcuk oshawa for REFUSING to diversify and instead ‘stay the course, daooon rock da boat kip it a company town. yep yep yep.’
Twenty years of brainwashing and propaganda to advance an agenda.
This portrayal of the protests as some kind of anti-tax uprising for freedom is bullshit. There are plenty of scum demanding higher minimum wage, earlier retirement, etc. They should have been shot.
Shooting them would have provoked a backlash that would have ended with Macron and his gilf in the same shape as Mussolini and Claretta Petacci at the end of WW2. Macron could (possibly) count on the Legion Etranger, and some of the security police. But the paratroopers would side with Les Citoyens, and would fuck Macron and a few of his minions up pretty bad. The rest would scatter like cockroaches. Cops learn to sit down and shut the fuck up pretty quick when the Peoples’ Paramilitaries start paying their homes a visit. Right or wrong, you fuck with the people at your peril. You can (as in the case of Stalin) occasionally get away with it. Mostly (like Ceausescu, Musso, and Gadaffi) you get shot a bunch of times in the face and then publicly gutted like a fish.
History is a very cruel teacher if you don’t bother showing up to class.
The police and the Okhrana secret police in Russia discovered that in March 1917 when the mobs stormed the police stations or shot or hung police they caught on the streets. When a certain level of anger by a society is reached….