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.
ROFLMAO
What kind of masochistic idiot “worries” about tax cuts?
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.
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.
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?