I know it’s just claptrap rhetoric from the left, but it should at least be sane, and make some sense.
“Stephen Harper’s friends will make even more money but future generations will be stuck with the clean-up,” newly minted socialist Thomas Mulcair said to his New Democrat Party kids, prior to even knowing what’s in the yet-to-be-announced federal budget for 2012.
“In this Conservative budget it seems that, once again, the well connected interests with the ear of the government will be the big winners and the middle class will be left out in the cold,” he added.
Yeah? Who are these supposedly “upper-class” “friends?”
First of all, nice rhetorical pivot from the “working families” rhetoric of the NDP past, to the class-warfare technique of Barack Obama and his “middle class” rhetoric. And well-connected? Please. Unions — the biggest special interest lobby group in all the land — owns Mulcair’s NDP.
Next, assuming Mulcair really means, by “friends,” the filthy CEOs of those awful private-sector companies: they are, what — 13 people who make up this group in Canada? Or to put it another way, 13 votes. And 13 campaign contributors, which I suspect is also eating away at Mulcair, simply on the basis that it’s “corporate” friends’ money. (Mulcair’s own and his own party’s rich, left-wing and often Marxist-sounding public-sector labor union bosses and their unwitting public-sector union membership’s cash and contributions in kind are all A-OK with Mulcair, I presume.)
And as it turns out, Harper’s CEO “friends” — all 13 of ’em — are prohibited by law from (a) voting more than once; and (b) contributing more than $1,100. So even if he budgeted to personally give them a million bucks each in the federal budget, that’s not a great investment of Harper’s political capital, or Canada’s taxpayer cash. Not a winning strategy on any account.
And the corporations they lead (private ones, and even the pretend ones like the socialist CBC) are prohibited by law from contributing to political parties, even though I would argue the CBC does seem to me to contribute in kind. It also ignores facts on the ground: that Liberals are the party that have, in recent history anyway, raised the most corporate cash by far — and Conservatives have proven to be precisely what Mulcair argues it isn’t: the party of his fabled “middle class.” But nice try trying to assume the role of “warrior for the middle class” à la Obama (see video!).
Also, it’s a fact that the Conservatives routinely raise twice as much cash from way more of the populace than the other parties, combined, every year. And most of those donations are well below the limit — most of them being just $5-200.
So to follow the logic (or, actually, the total lack thereof), Harper would risk losing millions of votes, and certainly the election, just to make nice with 13 “friends,” with a net loss of… everything he has worked for his entire life.
I realize Harper still supports the far-left, anti-conservative $1.1 billion-per-year state-owned CBC with taxpayer cash, an abomination of unspeakable stupidity itself — but he does have a Master’s degree in economics and he’s not literally insane. (Well maybe he is. That CBC seems to hate Harper and conservatives and certainly don’t come across as a solid voting block despite the payoff to them.)
Yeah, Mulcair’s “friends” argument is a pretty patently stupid argument. Yet the media don’t even remotely ask him to back it up with, I don’t know, facts, or even common sense.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
Contact Mr. Johannesen about this article using this form. Please refer to article's title.
FOLLOW @JoelJohannesen ON X!
- Say something. - Friday October 25, 2024 at 6:03 pm
- Keep going, or veer right - Monday August 26, 2024 at 4:30 pm
- Hey Joel, what is “progressive?” - Friday August 2, 2024 at 11:32 am
