PayUsOurMoneyDown(RightNow)Ville
Yesterday, I suggested, based on comments made by British Columbia Finance Minister Colin Hansen at the time, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was withholding $500 million dollars of the HST Bribe that he owes us.
Well.
In his follow-up, in-depth piece in The Tyee Will McMcMartin reminded us that just last September Mr. Hansen stated, in no uncertain terms, that the decisions on how the bribe would be paid were completely up to him and his.
So.
Which is it Mr. Hansen?
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Why is this important?
Well, because, as Mr. McMartin makes clear using Mr. Hansen's own numbers, the deferral will cost us at least $75 million in interest charges alone.
Thus, if Mr. Hansen, or anyone else in the government of Mr. Gordon Campbell, had a hand in this deferral for later politial gain (ie. so that the future arrival of the $500 million suddenly, magically decreases the deficit just before the next election) it means that they just screwed over the citizenry of British Columbia.
It also means that they did it on purpose, with malice-aforethought, for no good reason at all.
Therefore, an action such as this would not be a mere 'mistake' due to ineptitude.
Instead, in my opinion at least, it would be nothing short of treason committed against all the people of this province.*
No matter who they voted for.
OK?
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*Or, put another way, the money lost for no good reason at all could have been used to fully fund 15 programs like the single, solitary small-scale early intervention program for autistic children that was axed by the government of Gordon Campbell last fall due to, apparenly, a lack of funds that kept it from being applied univerally and 'equitably'.
And thanks to our good friend KootCoot for bringing Mr. McMartin's Tyee piece to our attention; our initial post was based on an earlier Tyee piece by Andrew MacLeod.
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6 comments:
To Heckfire with you Spam-Above!
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(#103 since the great eating of the comments by Haloscream)
NDP Finance Critic Bruce Ralston said the BC Liberals and the Harper Conservatives have been cooperating during the last few years to juggle transactions to suit political purposes. For example, the low estimate for security costs stayed in place long after everyone knew it was false. But, admitting truth was inconvenient for Campbell's prevaricators.
By implication of what Ralson said, it is unclear that we are truly getting and EXTRA $1.6 billion as HST transition. That might simply rename transfer payments that would be coming here anyway.
So Ross, when littler e. is paid $25 a week allowance, it can be allocated however you wish but it would still be $25 a week.
Sheesh Norman, that is very disturbing.
Were you on the blogger call with Mr. Ralston?
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Yeah, I appreciate being able to toss a few questions at those guys. They told me they are willing to repeat conversations with bloggers and participation would be open to all political stripes. I think readership of alternative media is growing so that all politicians should be talking to online writers.
Most hacks prefer to expose themselves to carefully controlled situations with select audiences so conferencing with bloggers is new ground for them. Ralston said at the end that he thought some of the questions were better than what he gets from commercial media.
I wrote about the experience here:
http://northerninsights.blogspot.com/2010/03/nincompoops-gather-dress-unknown.html
Thanks Norman!
Will link up.
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