Tuesday, September 9, 2008

The Green Shift


Another day of vapidity. The Conservatives posted an ad on their website, which showed a puffin (behind Dion's ear above) shitting on him -- Really! -- as it flew by. Harper has apologized. Good, I guess.

In the meanwhile, Dion has a new website, which pushes him as a nice guy ("not rich"), and the papers speculate that his "music of English" statement (see Revelations post below) was sympathetic. (Sure it's sympathetic. Hell, it's almost pandering: when did
you last hear a francophone talking about the music of "the beautiful language" --- English???)

The Liberals announced today that they will reinstate the Court Challenges programme, which (before the Tories eliminated it) used to fund constitutional challenges brought by private citizens against the government. A very worthy idea. (Even Sarah Palin could get behind that, right -- private citizens suing the Government at Government expense? Don't tell her that's how we got gay marriage though.) I hope it is followed by promises of reinstating the cultural programmes recently cut by the Tories. But look: this is not really a nation-sized story. How many people are going to be swayed by the Court Challenges programme, which they have likely never heard about?

I don't get why the Liberals are not campaigning on their Green Shift programme. Yesterday, Harper told the Huangs that it is a revenue grab. (See the Harper in BC post below.) This is nonsense: the promise is to legislate revenue neutrality. For each dollar gained from the carbon tax, the proposed legislation will say one must be cut somewhere else. The Shift cuts personal income tax and taxes carbon emissions instead -- at $40 per tonne, I think. Well: isn't that a good idea? Why are the Grits acting embarrassed about it?

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