The Rintrah Perspective

Politics is a game where everyone thinks they are above average.

Harper thinks he offers “change” for Canadians. What he is offering to do is re-open the Same-Sex Marriage debate which would not bring a change to something new but to an old-world line of thinking. He is also offering to cut the GST which is a venture back in time to Chretien who vowed to cut it and a leap back to before the Mulroney Conservatives were in office when it did not yet exist. Change for Harper is not to move to something new but a Quantum Leap back to a time when things were broken and needed fixing.

Change for Harper is also pocket change. His proposal for cutting the GST works out to $400 a person. But that is to misunderstand how the GST works. To say that this will save all Canadians $400 is a mistake. $400/person only happens if everyone spends the exact same amount in a year. A cut in the GST will not really be seen by those in the lower income brackets. Cutting the GST will hurt the government’s ability to provide services to Canadians and that would affect the lower-income bracketed families more than the upper-end. So the GST cut saves the poor nothing yet costs them vital services. That is not a change I would want.

Paul Martin is saying that there is some sort of threat to National unity. That threat is politicians (in my opinion). The Liberals did some pretty shady things. The Conservatives yell at them. And the BQ says “See both those guys are screwing us, let’s get the funk out of here.” The interesting thing here is that Harper does not see the comparison between the Same-Sex Marriage issue and Quebec sovereignty. In both cases the issue will never be dropped. All sides will fight and fight and fight. There will be referendums and polls, Supreme Court rulings, laws, revoked laws, notwithstanding clauses and, just to make it a tie, Harper should pull out the War Measures Act and round up all the gays and then make them watch heterosexual pr0n until they are straight. Harper won’t quit fighting the gay-marriage thing and neither will the BQ and PQ quit fighting for separatism.

But Paul Martin knows how to keep a country together. Simply by keeping government as long has he did is somewhat meaningful. So Martin too is above average. But not so much as the Green Party. The Greens will be fighting for the earth and not throwing wet portions of it. The Greens are better than throwing fecal matter at the other parties.

But so far the only party that I have seen to make promises that actually look like they will help Canada and Canadians is the NDP. Rather than using tax cuts why not invest in education. Education would at least help the stupid but it would also help Canada become less stupid as a whole. And then, maybe, the Conservatives would disappear. And that is why conservatives do not vote for the NDP.

So far our choices are:

1. Less than $400
2. Lessened threat to a Unified Canada
3. Less Mud slinging
4. Keep taxes and raise education

To me the choice is obvious but we have another hundred years worth of dirty laundry to air out.