What on earth is our Minister of Finance doing and saying on the world stage? More to the point, who let him out? Seriously!Harper is playing for the sympathy vote by saying he's losing sleep over the economy:
`I'm kept up at night by the state of the global economy and, frankly, by the extent to which I can't do anything about it," Harper said in an interview with Business News Network aired Friday.
(Well, actually, if you read what he said carefully, he's really losing sleep over the fact that he cannot 'control' the situation, which fits, and that I'm sure keeps our PM pacing at night. )
While Flaherty is sleeping like a baby. Is he worried? Naw. No problem. You see, many, many years ago, things were worse, much worse. In fact, our ancestors had so much more to contend with, that we should...um...just suck it up?
Canadians may think they have it rough today, but federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says people should realize this is a “relatively ... mild recession” posing “relatively mild challenges” compared to hardships such as disease and poverty faced by early immigrants.
Whhaat? I guess because we beat that whole scurvy thing, how bad could it be really?
“Most people in Canada came from other places, including the United Kingdom. Most of them came on boats. Most of them came with nothing,” Mr. Flaherty said. “Many ... died because of disease while they were travelling to Canada. We commemorate that in various places in Canada.
“Relatively speaking, this is a mild economic recession. These are relatively mild challenges for us,” the Finance Minister said. “We will come out of this strongly.”
Are you kidding me? This is what we present to the world, the Old World. What the hell was he trying to do, evoke the bad old days when people fled Europe? Teach the Europeans a bit of history? Is he completely mad?
You know, it's been one thing to witness the idiocy of this government at home, but I cringe every time I know these buffoons are going to go on to the world stage to actually speak. The only person I trusted not to sound too idiotic was Emerson. I don't like him, but he at least understood the world.
We've had MacKay fawning over Rice, Bernier losing NATO documents, Day in Afghanistan praising progress while archaic laws are being passed and now Flaherty assuring the world that all will be well in Canada because we come from hearty white, European stock!
I'm not even going to go through what Harper has said and done, but let's just say that truth is not high on the man's list
Honest to gawd Canadians, it's time to wake up from the reverie! I don't understand why so many have been fooled for so long, but it's seriously time to stop the kidding around. I want grown ups at the table.
Is that too much to ask?
8 comments:
Read your first link, and all I can say is...Who is Amanda Lang?
The Harper/Flaherty approach to this recession is scary. It's like they read the first chapter and threw the rest of the book away.
Government's role in fighting a major recession is to use the good credit of the nation's citizens/taxpayers to borrow money that it can then inject into the economy to restore some measure of liquidity.
They never got to the second chapter - What Government Is Supposed To Do With That Money. They don't understand that the government is supposed to be spending that money, not giving handouts to provinces, municipalities and every guy with a cottage; not shoveling it out into meaningless, modest tax cuts.
Government is supposed to "invest" that money in projects that will stimulate the economy AND pay a return to the country and its people in the decades to come while they're repaying the debt. You need the all-important return on investment to offset, at least in part, the additional tax burden the public will have to carry.
Harper is okay with the money part but he's terrified about having to spend it himself, having to invest it. So he's giving that authority, that responsibility away to others.
A fundamental goal of stimulus spending is to create "new" economic activity. If City A had plans to put in new sewer lines next year and I hand them a cheque for stimulus spending, I'm simply having the federal government subsidize the municipal government for spending that was to happen anyway. That's money wasted that can't be directed into "new" economic activity. Because it was going ahead anyway, there's no stimulus whatsoever to it. It was going to happen anyway. Not one new contract was let, not one new worker was hired. No stimulus, just debt.
Giving a cottage owner a couple of hundred bucks toward putting a new deck on the place isn't much better. There's no "return" on that investment. The Canadian taxpayers won't realize any benefit out of it for ten or twenty years down the road.
The Brookings Institute did an excellent paper on why the way in which government spends stimulus money is every bit as important as the money itself. If the spending isn't focused, it's merely squandered for a very limited, very short lived impact.
When it comes to this sort of spending, Harper/Flaherty are ideologically constipated. Their incompetence is breathtaking. To my great disappointment, the Liberal Party leader let them get away with it. Our country and our people will pay very dearly for that for a very long time.
Its a scary time for any political party in power.
Honest to gawd Canadians, it's time to wake up from the reverie! I don't understand why so many have been fooled..
About as comfortable as a beating, eh, KNB?
It's like they read the first chapter and threw the rest of the book away.
I liked what Bob Rae apparently said at the million dollar fund raiser the other night -- "Michael has written more books then the entire Conservative caucus has read"...I lol'd
Sounds like Little Jim is not living in the 21st Century. No wonder we're in such a mess. It's true, & we now have even more proof after what we've been hearing from some of his Ministers lately (Goodyear & Lunney on Creationsism, Moore on trying to decimate the CBC, Kenney on Galloway (go away freedom of speech), & the long gun registry bill AGAIN, just to name a few) - Harper & his thugs ARE taking us back to The Dark Ages.
Hmmm....so Dim Jim, because you say they didn't have shoes then means we shouldn't have shoes now?
For all the hardships, they had something we don't have under your party's control - a future.
You were just on RDI. They showed the entire new Grit Girl ad and followed up with an image of your blog post with the soccer player.
Way to go dude
Really? What was the story?
Exposure is always good, but I'm really glad that GritGirl is getting out there.
Odd they would choose an English blog, non? I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth though!
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