This Day In Snookland....The Ladder Puller-Uppers.

PoorPoorPitiful
SheVille


I think, perhaps, that Mr. Willcocks has a point or five:

Premier Christy Clark scores top marks for hypocrisy in explaining why British Columbians on disability benefits, and their children, should live in poverty.

Clark said this week that she knows the benefits, frozen since 2007, are too low. But British Columbia is just too poor to provide any increase. That will have to wait for some unknown future when it is “affordable,” she said....

{snippety doodle dandy}

...A single parent with one child on disability benefits in British Columbia - someone like Clark - receives $1,272 a month. That’s up to $570 for rent and $672 for everything else. They are expected to raise a child on $15,000 a year.

Increasing disability assistance rates after seven frozen years is impossible, Clark says. Not “affordable.”...

{snippety doodle dandier}

...But MLAs believe that they need up to $1,580 a month for a temporary second home in Victoria to use when the legislature is sitting.

That’s affordable.

They believe a pension plan that requires four dollars from taxpayers for every dollar paid by MLAs is affordable. The taxpayer contribution to fund the plan works out to an average $48,000 a year for each of the 85 MLAs...

{snippety doodle-dandiest}

...(And) Clark believes it’s perfectly affordable to have taxpayers contribute $76,000 a year to fund her pension...



I've said it before, and I'll say it again, treating those that need our help most like crap is not the British Columbia that I grew up in.

****

Of course, all of this is actually much worse than just the 'I've got mine Jack, so screw you (especially if your really poor)'  hypocrisy thing.

Why?

Well, because as Norm Farrell and others, including Mr. Mair and friends, have made clear it really is all about the cronies.

Put another way, we don't need to wait until 2046 for the LNG Sparkle Pony herd to arrive to save us all.

Instead, we could corral the cronies Ponies the are in our midst right now instead of letting them roam free.

Literally.

****

What is most galling about all of this 'belt-tightening-for-the-poor-while-we-get-ours-and-the-cronies-get-everything-else' bullshit is that it can really have a horrible lasting impact on the kids involved.

Again, back to Mr. Willcocks for his last point:

...(G)overnment-mandated poverty is especially devastating for children. It does lasting damage to their health, educational achievements and social adjustment, and damages their prospects in life. Raising the rates now will save money for taxpayers in future, improve their lives and build a stronger province...


Of course, cutting that public subsidy for private schools alone, even if it was only cut in half (from $300 million to $150 million annually), would make it immediately possible for us to really help those kids who need our help most.

Then again, pretty much none of those kids will ever be able to go to one of those private school anyway.

So...

Screw them and theirs.

Cause she and hers have theirs.

Right?


_______
The thing that sends me around the bend when I see/hear/read about how we have to cut public programs because that's the only way to get the government yoke off business' back so that it can fuel and supercharge the economy is that this entire neolib canard wrapped in think-tank rags is nothing more than a myth...The fact is that after a decade of this draconian shite under Gordon Campbell we were no better off than we were after the 1990's on every level quantifiable...And that quantification was actually done....By a group set up by Gordon Campbell...That group was called the 'Progress Board'...And when Ms. Clark became Premier one of the first things she did was kill it....But the Board's last report is still out there...
How to cut that p-school subsidy without starting a flood back into the public system?...More on that later...But here's a hint...'means-testing'...


.