Having never actually voted for Stephen Harper's Conservative Party, it feels weird to actually be disappointed in them. Having said that, I guess I should explain why I have yet to cast a ballot for them.As you've probably figured out by now, I inherently distrust social conservatives. Not only are they usually superstitious fools with a Jesus fetish, they don't pass the minimum threshold test of conservatism: favoring a smaller government and local control of most matters. If you agree with the proposition that the federal government has any business at all in the personal conduct of citizens that aren't bothering anyone else, I refuse to recognize you as a conservative.
You might be able to make an acceptable (if completely wrong) conservative argument that local government has a place in personal behaviour, but if you think that federal politicians do, you're little more than a liberal who doesn't know how to have fun.
Some history about the Conservative Party of Canada might be necessary for my foreign readers here. The modern Conservatives are essentially an outgrowth of the wildly incompetent Canadian Alliance. The Alliance was once headed by a guy named Stockwell Day, who was so stupid it was actually frightening.
When he was in the Alberta government, Day said that if defense lawyers like Lorne Goddard defend people accused of possessing child pornography, they must enjoy kiddie porn, too. That statement cost the taxpayers of Alberta $792,064 when Goddard sued Day. If civil courts were empowered to strip natural born Canadians of the citizenship, I would have supported the deportation of Stockwell Day to fucking Chad as part of the Goddard v. Day judgement. Instead he was allowed to head a major federal party.
On the first day of the 2000 federal election campaign, Day stayed home because the writ was dropped on a Sunday. Jesus, it appears, wanted him to be prime minister, but not all that badly. The following day, he appeared on a televangelist show called 100 Huntley Street and opined about the world only being 5,000 years old. Terrified, I voted for Joe Clark.
Then Stephen Harper returned from the dead and merged the Canadian Alliance with the Progressive Conservative Party, which I was pretty enthusiastic about, since I believe in the scientific fact that the governing Liberals are criminal swine.
As Canada was getting ready to go to the polls in the summer of 2004, several Conservative candidates started shooting off their mouths about abortion and gay marriage, which is political suicide with people like me. Harper did virtually nothing to shut his morons up and lost my confidence completely.
In the 2005-06 campaign, Harper lost me on economic issues. He promised to give every Canadian family $1,200 of my money to hire a goddamned babysitter, which is hardly a conservative idea. Then he vowed to cut the hated Goods and Services Tax from 7% to 5%.
If you're a traditional conservative, you much prefer consumption taxes to income taxes. Sane conservatives will always cut the latter as opposed to the former because income taxes punish production and inhibit growth, while consumption taxes raise fortunes in government revenue without hurting growth.
The only thing I distrust more than social conservatism is economic populism, so I voted for Sinclair Stevens' Progressive Canadian Party, which only nominated candidates in 16 of Canada's 308 ridings. Despite my lack of support, Harper became the 22nd prime minister of Canada.
I was worried once he named Jim Flaherty as his minister of finance. Flaherty held that office in Ontario, and managed to rack up pretty impressive levels of debt for a conservative. Once in power in Ottawa, Harper and Flaherty were dumb enough to actually keep their moronically populist promises about babysitters and consumption taxes
I was actually fully prepared to vote for the Tories based entirely on Afghanistan. I thought at the time that Canada had a duty to everything we realistically coul to win there. NATO is after all a mutual defense treaty. When the Liberals demanded a parliamentary vote of the mission - which, by the way, they never subjected themselves to when Chretien and Martin put us there in the first place - I was ready to put aside my reservations and vote for Harper over something I thought was important.
But Harper unconditionally surrendered to a born loser like Stephane Dion and vowed to withdraw by 2011. This freed me of my last my last possible reason for ever voting Conservative ever. If I want unprincipled whores to run this country, it's much easier to sit back and let the Liberals do it. In fact, if you vote for Stephen Harper, you probably like child pornography.
But let's get to the money, shall we?
When the criminal enterprise known as the Chretien and Martin governments was finally put to sleep in January of 2006, Canada had a $13 billion surplus. When the world ended in September of last year, that surplus was already gone because Harper and Jim Flaherty made the eminently conservative move of promising to pay for babysitters and hockey sticks. They also cut a consumption tax that did nothing for the economy, while costing the government a fortune in revenue.
A year later, the deficit stands at approximately $55 billion, which is not as insane as the Bush-Obama deficits, but still the biggest in my country's history. Comparing the budget of the United States to any other country is a futile exercise, since I'm not even sure that Americans even know how to count anymore. By the way, $55 billion is an estimate, and it assumes that Flaherty isn't wrong or lying, which are two things that happen to stand out on his resume.
Harper and Flaherty, facing the most helpless Liberal opposition in memory, took a long, hard look at the numbers ... and decided to lie. It actually astonishes me that anyone who knows how many fingers and toes they have takes these assholes seriously.
If you believe these goons, you believe that life is going to so wonderful as we come out of the worst economy in 70 years that we'll just grow our way out of a $55 billion deficit. No tax increases or spending cuts will be necessary. That's a fine theory, with only fact standing in its way - it's never happened before, absent a war that ruins every other major economy on earth.
In this morning's Toronto Sun, Greg Weston - perhaps the only employee of Sun Media who isn't a high functioning autistic - puts together the nickles and dimes that put the lie to Flaherty's insane statements.
If you think you just magically grow your way out of numbers like that, you might be the newest graduate of the George W. Bush School of Economics.* The first $6 billion of this year's red-ink extravaganza actually came from the Harper government's cutting taxes and over-spending last year even before the economic crash. It will still be there next year.
* Revenue from personal income taxes, the government's largest source of cash, is expected to drop by almost $9 billion this year. A large part of that lost loot is the result of personal tax cuts the Conservatives have promised not to touch, no matter what happens to the economy.
* Corporate taxes are also on track to nosedive $6 billion this year, much of it from various business incentives that don't depend on the economy.
* The increased costs of Employment Insurance program payouts are expected to reach $6 billion this year. Part of that is due to the soaring numbers of Canadians out of work since the recession hit, but $2.7 billion is from enhanced benefits and other enrichments to the program that will be politically difficult to cancel even in a recovery.
* The government estimates federal payments to other levels of government will rise more than $4 billion this year for health care, social programs, regional equalization and support for cities, all of which the Conservatives have promised not to cut in future.
* Despite the recession, the public service grew by 4.1% last year, and even more the year before. It helps to explain part of why government operating expenses are up a whopping $3.3 billion this year. Good luck cutting the bureaucracy down the road, no matter what happens to the economy.
* The cost of Old Age Security will rise by about $2 billion this year -- and each year for many more years to come -- as Boomers turn seniors.
Basically the only thing the Conservatives have going for them in the next election is that the Liberals are addicted to the same lies the Tories are spinning. Not only are Iggy and the Stooges spinning the same fantasy that Harper and Flaherty are, they're promising all kinds of new and wonderful spending.
And that's how Harper wins another minority government. He'll blanket the country with ads that essentially say "Stephen Harper: Proudly Lying Only to Canadians for the Last 40 Years As Michael Ignatieff Been Spreading Worldwide Horseshit."
My views on the relative merits of the Conservatives and Liberals became an issue over at the great Jay Currie's place lately*. One of his readers made what might be the strangest comment I've ever seen.
okay okay…so skippy always leaves one slightly tumescent but skippy neverFirstly, I resent lack of capitalization. It's the Marquis de Skippy, thank you very much. And I apologize for aggravating John's allergy to vulva.
takes the long view..skippy never balances economic necessity against political
necessity…as though a million here or there figures nowtimes…..we’re talking
policy here skippy..easily reducible debt versus the same old mob reassuming the
reins of power…
so let’s throw the mob a pittance but never forget our aim is true…
if the marquis de skippy could ever frame a sentence without a vulva
appearing even obliquely i’d be amazed…
Mr. Begley also seems to misunderstand what conservatism is about. The last time I checked, it wasn't about the necessity of the federal government to pay for babysitters and hockey equipment. Not only are those not conservative policies, they're more than a t of liberalism.
I also know something that John doesn't appear to. The hardest things in the world to kill are popular spending programs. The supposedly conservative Republicans can't even reign in the spending on Social Security and Medicare, lest they actually get murdered.
The Conservative government is engaging in the riskiest election strategy that I've ever seen. They're actually betting that the Liberals are so pathetic, and the voters are so ignorant, that their demonstrable lies aren't going to matter.
The saddest thing is that they're probably right.
* Some of the biggest conservative blogs in my country absolutely fucking love me. The only problem is that their readers seem to be of another opinion, at least where I'm concerned.
And you know what? I'm actually fine with that. I would much rather have the ear of the opinion makers in the Canadian blogosphere than play to the cheap seats myself.
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