Posted on by David Drucker

Did We Move Here Too Late?

All of the news­cast­ers are pre­dict­ing a win for Stephen Harp­er and the Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty. He’s mak­ing a final cam­paign stop in Wind­sor, Ontario, which up to now every­one had assumed was not winnable (that’s in Par­lia­ment seats, I guess). I sup­pose it would be the equiv­a­lent of Bush mak­ing a final cam­paign stop in New York City or Boston.

Some con­ser­v­a­tive Cana­di­an blog­gers empha­sized the fact that Harp­er is not Bush-lite when you ignore the scary Lib­er­al attack ads that say he is. Nev­er­the­less, I have to admit that his con­stant rep­e­ti­tion of tax cuts has me very wor­ried. That’s what got Bush in the first time around. I have to believe that Cana­di­ans are not so eas­i­ly swayed by some wad of cash waved at them that they’ll have to spend at Wal­mart. Need­less to say, I don’t buy it, and if I ever actu­al­ly got a wad of cash as some­thing I did­n’t pay on tax­es, I’d nev­er spend it at Wal­mart. (In fact, I’m proud to say that I’ve nev­er set foot in a Wal­mart and don’t ever plan to, unless dragged in by force.) If Harp­er starts to do the kinds of things that Bush did, you can bet I’ll be join­ing oth­ers in a move to get him kicked out via anoth­er elec­tion as soon as pos­si­ble. Pow­er here is not as con­cen­trat­ed into the Exec­u­tive Branch the way it has become in the US (Exec­u­tive Branch? Let’s call a spade a spade: For all intents and pur­pos­es, the ‘Exec­u­tive’ in the US is a Dic­ta­tor, sur­round­ed by Mil­i­tary Regalia and pro­pa­gan­da mer­chants.) There’s a long road that Cana­da would have to trav­el down before we reached the lev­el of cor­rup­tion, fas­cism, reli­gious extrem­ism and mil­i­tarism that defines the US today.

I sub­scribe to some local events cal­en­dars, so events in dark green appear as if by mag­ic on my iCal win­dow. Yes­ter­day I noticed that Dar­ren Bare­foot is host­ing a ‘Drown your Elec­tion Sor­rows’ par­ty at the Library Square Pub­lic House tomor­row. That’s a heck of a way to find out who’s ahead in the polls. As Dar­ren put it: “I believe local elec­tion cov­er­age won’t start until 8:00pm, but you may want to get a head start on your wail­ing and gnash­ing of teeth.” If I weren’t going to be at a Game­lan rehearsal (now Mon­days and Tues­days every week until our con­cert in Feb­ru­ary — ouch!) I’d be there. Not being able to vote on this makes me feel almost as help­less as I felt in the last two stolen US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.

5 Replies to “Did We Move Here Too Late?”

  3. Tax­es pay for things that I val­ue. They pay for health care, mass tran­sit, the salaries of police­men and fire­fight­ers. They pay for the upkeep of pub­lic parks, pub­lic libraries, the inspec­tion of meat so that we don’t get BSE and hope­ful­ly stop the spread of Avian flu. They pay for art fes­ti­vals and bor­der patrols and prison reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grams. It’s not masochism. It’s know­ing what hap­pens when polti­cians start cut­ting tax­es to get elect­ed over and over again, and mil­lions suf­fer the con­se­quences. I know the real face of tax cuts: It’s New Orleans after the the lev­ees broke because the tax­es that would have paid for main­tain­ing them were cut.

  4. Wrong, David.

    In New Orleans, it was­n’t that there was­n’t enough mon­ey, it was that it was wast­ed on projects that had noth­ing to do with flood con­trol, and the per­sons who designed and built the lev­ees were incom­pe­tent.

    When you say you oppose “tax cuts”, you’re not say­ing you val­ue all the things you claim you do. What you’re say­ing is YOU, David Druck­er, are too stingy to put your mon­ey where your mouth is, instead you would rather have some­one else pay two, four, ten, even twen­ty times as much as you do for these things, sim­ply because they work hard­er than you do.

  5. Frank, you’re say­ing that rich guys deserve tax cuts because they work hard.

    I went to look at your blog to see what kind of job you have, to see if you are one of these hard­work­ing blokes who has to pay for the rest of the lazy ass­es.

    Guess what? You don’t have a blog. Or you have one but refused to sign off with your blog so no one could read about you.

    So you’re jump­ing to some con­clu­sion about David and oth­ers who oppose tax cuts, yet you’re hid­ing your own iden­ti­ty. David has been quite hon­est.

    I think David is too nice to reply to a troll.

    So, Frank, is it fun to go around anony­mous­ly attack­ing peo­ple who present anoth­er point of view dif­fer­ent from yours? Are you an exec­u­tive who works 80-hour weeks for your wife and kids? How many hours do you work a week? Do you do phys­i­cal labour? Have you ever been injured on the job? If you had a men­tal­ly retard­ed or severe­ly dis­abled child, pro­vid­ed you did­n’t abort the child, how do you want that child to live after you and your wife are dead?

    Give us some con­text for this bit­ter­ness.

    Bet­ter yet, why don’t you go off to lis­ten to your dem­a­gogues? You’re just repeat­ing the same old self­ish con­ser­v­a­tive shit that peo­ple who don’t think for the long-term always repeat. That’s why you only addressed the New Orleans part of what David said. You have no solu­tions for the oth­er things that are paid for with our tax­es.

    There’s a place that’s per­fect for you, Frank. No tax­es, no gov­ern­ment con­trol over your life, noth­ing.

    Soma­lia ring a bell?

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