Friday, June 12, 2009

(Video) Stephen Harper: "We need to raise taxes"

As I mentioned earlier I watched question period in person twice this week, for the first time since a little guy from Shawinigan was in the PMO and a dynamic finance minister from Windsor was poised one day to paint the country red. It's always fun to catch QP in person to see the little things you miss on TV, like Diane Ablonczy playing Brickbreaker on her BlackBerry while colleague Lisa Raitt fought for her political life a few seats over.

Since I got there early each day I was also there for member's statements, and between the speeches about oceans and bake sales, I was surprised to see the Conservatives still using at least two statements each day to accuse Michael Ignatieff of wanting to raise taxes. They're butchering the quote and taking it out of context, of course, as he wants to do no such thing. But they persist in using this attack in statements, and outside the house in speeches and on the Web.

I'm surprised, because Stephen Harper also gave a similar quote that can easily be abused in the same way they're abusing Ignatieff's. And unlike the Conservatives, with Harper we have video. And as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

So, as long as context has no value to the Conservative Party, I ask them why does Stephen Harper want to raise taxes? What taxes does he want to raise? By how much? When?

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems to me that using the Conservatives' intellectual dishonesty to justify re-playing Harper's "raise taxes" clip over and over makes you no better than them. I know that you are just joking around, but I think there is a real danger when political partisans start justifying dirty politics by reference to the dirty politics of their political opponents.

Jeff said...

Devin, I think that'd be fair if I was trying to put forward that he actually wants to raise taxes, rather than taking the time to explicitly point out that I'm not. I'm clearly doing it tongue and cheek to make a point, they're trying to deceive Canadians.

Not to mention the fact I'm a mere blogger and they're elected members of parliament, but whatev.

Jeff said...

Sometimes the only way to deal with a bully is to sock 'em one. Saying "please leave me alone" seems to be ineffective.