In my last post I was discussing the upcoming election & the present sponsorship scandal & I may have seemed a bit flippant.
To clarify I should say that I don’t believe that all politicians are necessarily corrupt.
My point was that any political party taking power in this country or any other country is not going to turn out to be perfect & squeaky clean. No matter what good intentions a party has there are always going to be those who may be a small minority within the party or the government bureaucracy who see nothing wrong with using the system & their positions of power to help out their friends & supporters. This is how some people happen to view government that it is as a way to line their own pockets or the pockets of their friends & supporters.
Well the issue as I see it is not just whether or not the Conservatives under Stephen Harper are more trust worthy when it comes to spending the tax-payers money but that we shouldn't get side-tracked by this scandal & vote into power a party which may have an extreme right-wing agenda backed by Neo-conservatives & the Religious Right.
Due to all the hype surrounding this scandal I believe the electorate is left in a bit of a quandary about whom they can trust.
I should say I am not a big fan of Paul Martin especially after seeing a documentary on the Shipping Line which he owns. It seems when he was a cabinet minister in Chretien’s government he helped draft a bill to put a stop to Canadian companies from flying “flags of convenience ”he made sure there was one exception so that the ships in his company could still be registered off-shore & thereby be excluded from Canadian shipping & labour regulations.
So who should we vote for “the Devil we know or the Devil we don’t”.
What the electorate needs to decide is whether they want to put into power the New Improved Conservatives who are in my view far too similar in their policies & agenda to Bush’s Republicans. I fear what these New Conservatives will do when & if they come into power.
Of course if they come into power with a minority government this may help to control the more radical members of their party.
Anyway trying to discuss politics is like wandering through a mine-field. Someone is bound to get offended.
-----------
GORD.
To clarify I should say that I don’t believe that all politicians are necessarily corrupt.
My point was that any political party taking power in this country or any other country is not going to turn out to be perfect & squeaky clean. No matter what good intentions a party has there are always going to be those who may be a small minority within the party or the government bureaucracy who see nothing wrong with using the system & their positions of power to help out their friends & supporters. This is how some people happen to view government that it is as a way to line their own pockets or the pockets of their friends & supporters.
Well the issue as I see it is not just whether or not the Conservatives under Stephen Harper are more trust worthy when it comes to spending the tax-payers money but that we shouldn't get side-tracked by this scandal & vote into power a party which may have an extreme right-wing agenda backed by Neo-conservatives & the Religious Right.
Due to all the hype surrounding this scandal I believe the electorate is left in a bit of a quandary about whom they can trust.
I should say I am not a big fan of Paul Martin especially after seeing a documentary on the Shipping Line which he owns. It seems when he was a cabinet minister in Chretien’s government he helped draft a bill to put a stop to Canadian companies from flying “flags of convenience ”he made sure there was one exception so that the ships in his company could still be registered off-shore & thereby be excluded from Canadian shipping & labour regulations.
So who should we vote for “the Devil we know or the Devil we don’t”.
What the electorate needs to decide is whether they want to put into power the New Improved Conservatives who are in my view far too similar in their policies & agenda to Bush’s Republicans. I fear what these New Conservatives will do when & if they come into power.
Of course if they come into power with a minority government this may help to control the more radical members of their party.
Anyway trying to discuss politics is like wandering through a mine-field. Someone is bound to get offended.
-----------
GORD.
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