Lethbridge MP Hillyer Keeps on Embarrassing Himself

It’s almost too painful to watch:

Here’s the video of him firing his air guns!

All of this isn’t too surprising considering his stellar performance during the last election campaign:

Herman Cain or Rick Perry?

Is anyone out there as utterly confused as I am by the Republican primary? I mean, really, if you had to choose, for whom would you tick a box, Herman Cain, the serial misogynist, or Rick Perry, the guy who let an innocent man die?

More seriously, how can either of these men be even considered by supporters of a mainstream party? Especially when neither Gary Johnson nor Ron Paul can get much traction?

The Republican Party makes me full of sad.

Dean Del Mastro is way out of line

Theological discussions are all well and good, but it is unbecoming of the MP to openly question and deride the faith of another MP, in this case Liberal Justin Trudeau.

Mr. Del Mastro, a Conservative, objected to Mr. Trudeau speaking at a Catholic school:

“If they are looking for a truly great speaker, who also happens to be Catholic, perhaps they might invite (Immigration) Minister Jason Kenney,” Del Mastro wrote on Oct. 12.

“Are there any tenets of the Catholic faith that Justin supports?”

That’s a nice rhetorical slight of hand. Mr. Del Mastro didn’t have to make any accusations or even have any proof the Mr. Trudeau is a bad Catholic; he just flipped it around, because – I guess – it must be just oh so obvious that Mr. Trudeau is a heretic.

This isn’t cool. Mr. Del Mastro owes Mr. Trudeay an apology. This is not the sort of behaviour that should be considered acceptable in a public servant.

A $1.6B Middle Finger

We get it, B.C. You’re ticked off at the Liberals and you want to punish them. The fact that you’re throwing common sense, rationality and self-interest out the window is beside the point. You want to stick it to deceitful politicians. I get that.

But I don’t get stabbing your fiscal stability in the neck.

If you do a quick search of The Politic (the search box is down at the bottom of the right hand column), you’ll see that I have a beef with the idea of a harmonized sales tax. I don’t like the fact that it conceals the source of each part of the tax (though this could be alleviated by having retailers display the taxes separately while keeping all the other wonderful aspects of the HST), but c’mon man, that’s no reason to throw a tantrum when Gordon Campbell dupes you (and I know about tantrums, though my three-year-old is more reasonable when I tell she can’t have a chocolate cookie).

Consumption taxes are good. They’re less distortionary than so many other taxes. They reduce transaction costs. And if you build in the right mechanisms, they’re a hella lot more fair. And, oh yeah, the B.C. HST did that. The reach of the sales tax was, arguably, further reaching than your beloved PST, but the rebates (read: money in your pocket) that would be issued would out-weigh the inconvenience of having to pay more at the cash.

But I get it. The Liberals went about the wrong way, and you just hate it when politicians lie to you. Of course, you don’t seem to mind when Bill Vander Zalm lies to you (though, if that’s the worst thing he’s ever done…), but at least he lets you get some self-righteous populous rage on. Not like those darned elites pretending like they know better than you… oh, wait.

And that’s the point, right? Fiscal sensibility, balanced budgets, economic security, a simplified and fair tax code… that’s all meaningless compared to sticking it to the man. Bra-vo.

So, do you realize how much you’re in the hole for? Did you really think about what will have to be done to switch back to your archaic, sentimental PST? Do you realize you owe the rest of us 1.6 freakin’ Billion dollars? It was mentioned on Twitter that 1.6 million people voted in this act of grandstanding referendum, so that’s $1000 per vote that you owe us.

And to the BC NDP and its supporters, what on earth have you done? Sure, the federal NDP recently ran a fiscally irresponsible campaign, but, damn, if thye didn’t build up the NDP brand like no one else. I think they actually made people forget what ruinous policies the NDP actually stands for. But you wouldn’t let that spoil your fun. The Liberals needed to suffer and you needed to prove your economic illiteracy. Are you, in fact, blind to the reality that you need to expand your tax base to fund all the goodies you want to buy? Do you not realize that the HST was, on balance, a fairer and more efficient way to achieve that?

And to BC voters, do you feel good? Are reveling in the pain Gordon Campbell is, no doubt, feeling as parades around London? Do you think that everything will just be fine, because you’ve slain the bogeyman that is the overbearing elites? Do you actually understand what you’ve done? No matter how good it feels to rebuke the public servants who think so little of you, you have just dealt a major blow to the province that, I assume, you love so dear.

So, yeah, that big ol’ middle finger you thrust in the face of the ruling Liberal party, you just shoved it in your own eye.

A State Funeral for Jack Layton

When the idea of holding a state funeral for Jack Layton was first proposed (or, at least, when I first heard about it), I didn’t have particularly strong feelings, one way or the other.

I still don’t have strong feelings about it, but, all in all, I think this was the right move. Right now, his impact on the nation cannot be questioned. There is wide-spread mourning, and it seems many Canadians felt a sort of connection to the man. A state funeral is quite appropriate.

Goodbye, Jack

Jack Layton has lost his battle with cancer. As a nation, we are less for the loss.  My prayers are with his family, large and small.

Warren Kinsella, Member of Parliament?

If you live in the Toronto area, Warren Kinsella may be coming to a riding near you.

Kinsella recently reaffirmed his intent to run for Parliament on behalf of the Liberal Party in the next federal election.

Readers of The Politic know that Kinsella is our dear friend. Two years ago, he launched our continuing Meet the Players series with a tour de force interview.

All of us will follow Kinsella’s campaign with great interest. And one/some/many of us actually hope he wins.

Tie goes to the governor

I generally don’t try to declare winners or losers of political debates (well, not winners – I’ll regularly call out the losers). I know that my metric for judging these things will be different than many people’s, and I know that the leaders aren’t necessarily looking to “win”, they’re looking to advance some sort of campaign strategy. Nonetheless, a few days removed from the English debate, if I have to call a winner (which, I guess, I don’t), I’m giving it to the Prime Minister.

Each leader got some good points in. Each leader had a chunk taken out once or twice (or, occasionally, just looked silly). I wouldn’t say that Harper got in the best shots. but I think he emerged from the debate in the best spot.

Much has been written, including by our friend Richard, suggesting Stephen Harper “won” the debate because he came off as the most Prime Ministerial (is that even a word?). While I agree with that, I think the calm demeanour he wore brought more than just an air of Prime Ministerialship.

The other three leaders spent much time attacking Mr. Harper. Of course, they did. He’s the Prime Minister, he’s in the lead, they need to take him down. But through all of the attacks, Mr. Haprer stayed calm and stayed on point. This coolness had the effect of slightly diminishing the other three. They attacked and attacked, and the got nothing out of him. They made him look like the big dog, all the while appearing as chihuahuas.

A while back, my friend Max Fawcett suggested that there is a lack of stars in our political ranks. In many ways, the three opposition leaders lived down to that observation. Don’t get me wrong, I have a decent level of respect for them, and I think they all did fairly well in the debate, but through this dynamic of three wanna be Davids trying with all their might to take down Goliath – and failing – they undermined their own stature. If one of them – specifically, Mr. Ignatieff – had been able to attack Mr. Harper, score some points and then build off of that to advance their vision (and, no, raising the corporate tax rate is not a vision), they would have come off much better.

Still, this was no great win for Mr. Harper. It wasn’t a real win at all; it was just survival. He was fine, but he wasn’t spectacular. He protected his ground, but I can’t say he advanced very much. But, since he’s the Prime Minister, and since he’s in the lead, he wins any such stalemate.

Hypocritical or Flip Flopping? Take Your Pick…

Ivison points out that the Liberal party has launch its own set of campaign attack ads to counter the Conservative’s attack ads:

The Grits released two new television ads Friday, with the tagline: “Is this your Canada or Harper’s?”

One takes aim at the Conservative government’s decision to sole source the new generation of fighter jets, at a cost of $16-billion. The other targets the government’s move to reduce corporate taxes.

Except of course it was the Liberal Party of Canada that first signed onto the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program in 2002.

In addition to that history lesson lets see what the Liberal Party had to say in 2008  about corporate tax cuts:

“We will accelerate and deepen the currently planned corporate tax cuts, reducing the general corporate tax rate by an additional one per cent within four years. That means the federal corporate tax rate in Canada will be only 14 per cent by the 2012.” – Liberal press release, June 19, 2008

Public Funding for Political Parties

The Conservative Party will make campaign finance a central pillar of its reelection platform in the next federal election, which observers expect this coming spring or fall.

Under the Conservatives’ plan, political parties will retain the power to issue tax receipts to individual donors. Political parties will also remain entitled to receive reimbursements for authorized campaign expenditures. But gone will be the direct subsidies that grant political parties roughly $2 for every vote they get at the polls.

That strikes me as not only fair and reasonable, but also quite right. I think it’s a winner.

If there is a compelling reason to disagree with the Conservative Party on campaign finance, I cannot think of it, particularly given how well Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the point here:

I think we’ve been pretty clear that we don’t think there’s really strong justification for this direct subsidy to parties. … Our view is that there is a role for some public finance, but it has got to be tied to a party’s own efforts, or to the willingness of voters to actually contribute this money.

It remains to be seen, though, whether the rest of the Conservative Party’s platform will earn my similarly enthusiastic support.

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