mathjax

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Welcome new voters; here is what you missed in the past 20 years

Welcome new voters, I understand  you are part of the reason the Liberals won this election.

If you are new to this country and you thought that Stephen Harper was a mean old White guy, that's understandable.  


It's easier for politicians to promise than deliver. No matter where you are from that's just a fact of life like death and taxes. 

While you were convinced that Liberals were going to deliver "real change" - preempting Obama's playbook with some fancy new buzzwords, that expectation and reality rarely meet.  How's that hopey-changey thing going for Obama? He's been able to deliver a fraction of what he promised; still Guantanamo remains...

In case you are just joining us, Stephen Harper replaced a Liberal to become the PM. And the Liberals he replaced were:



PM Paul Martin who promised to "fix healthcare for a generation".
Instead he off-loaded the debts onto the provinces and proclaimed a federal balanced budget.  Stephen Harper promised a 6% year over year increase to health transfers and delivered it.   The best quote about Liberals from the article above is (from 2005) :

If there's an interest group or constituency the Liberals haven't tried to appease in the last 10 days, it's only because they haven't thought of them yet.
Maybe that's the problem. The Liberals seem to think there isn't a political problem in the world that can't be solved by throwing money at it. Our money.
Sounds strangely like divisive politics doesn't it?

And don't forget the sponsorship scandal, where Liberals carried out manila envelopes full of taxpayer money for loyal servants of the party. We never got to the depths of how much was paid for "work" that wasn't verified. 


And before him was PM Jean Chretien.  He famously promised to scrap the GST as an election promise. How's that GST-scrappy thing working out for you?  He also promised to stop a helicopter contract worth C$5.8 billion for 50 helicopters.  In the end, the federal government paid around $500 million to get out of that contract.  And Chretien forced a no-compete Challenger contract that cost taxpayers for Liberal fundraisers.

That is how we got to Stephen Harper in the first place. 

So I guess my point is this; it's all great to get enthused about a real change in Ottawa and it's really nice to dream of a better tomorrow when you see great ideals like this:






But the recent history demonstrates Liberals exploit emotional responses to get the votes they need. They are very good at emotional content-less politics with meaningless platitudes like "tomorrow can always be better". Of course it can but that's one of three options and that outcome is uncertain.  And they will promise things they don't realize they can't deliver; and that's a very big problem because they end up as lies told to manipulate you in the first place.  But they don't care because it gets them elected. Delivering on what they promise is less realistic, it's easy to talk smack it's harder to make that change a reality.

And it's great to support positive change. But you may soon wake up to the reality that they are just as lock-step with corporations as the Conservatives were. And then you end up feeling something like this:



Let's hope the "new Liberals" live up to what they promised....

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