Saturday, September 05, 2009

Harper: We need to raise taxes

Among the lies currently being peddled on Conservative.ca is the tired assertion that Michael Ignatieff plans to raise taxes. The Conservative spinners base this false assertion on an out of context answer to a hypothetical question; they know full well he plans to do nothing of the sort.

Well, every time they push that lie, I plan to post this video to remind them that, if we wanted to, we could also take one selected bit of a Harper quote and spin it as Harper saying he's going to raise taxes. And what's more, Conservative smear merchants, we have video.

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16 comments:

Kirbycairo said...

You know what I find funny about all of this BCer is that a few years ago it would have been political suicide for a leader to say that they would have to run a deficit if the economy tanked. (Even though once a taxation year begins a government can fall into deficit without even intending to because of the nature of a national tax and spend system.) And if Dion had said that the country would fall unavoidably into a deficit Harper would have gone crazy with a frenzy of criticism. And some provinces even had to repeal laws prohibiting deficit spending.
Now taxation is the kind of poison pill. Yet there may come a time when they have no choice just like the deficit spending.
So it goes.

Anonymous said...

All the Conservatives need to do to counter your post is publish the Liberals Red Book. Talk about lies.
Which Red Book? Take your pick.

Jeff said...

kirby,

Indeed. Actually, Dion did at one point during the campaign say a temporary deficit might be necessary to deal with the recession. Harper and the media attacked him savaged until he recanted. And then Harper went on to run a huge deficit.

pk,

And once you're done boring people with details of what the Liberals did or didn't do 10 years ago, I'll post the Conservative platforms from the last two elections, and detail the long list of broken promises that are recent history. And we'll see what people care more about.

Anonymous said...

My point exactly. Politicians make promises all the time. Very few are kept no matter which party is in power.

By the way, we still haven't heard anything at all that Ignatieff would have done different than Harper concerning the recession. Why is that?

Gauntlet said...

First, it's this "we don't have to take Stephen Harper out of context," then showing a video that takes him out of context.

Today it's, hey, not only am I willing to take Harper out of context, I'm willing to take him way more out of context than the other guys are doing.

Well I for one am offended. If you're going to take the view that you'll do whatever it takes to win, no matter how underhanded, and you'll exceed your enemy in deviousness at every turn, I expect you to at least lie to me about it like you were doing before.

MERBOY said...

I love when Conservatives complain that the Liberals aren't releasing their platform before an actual election call... right... and what would happen if the Liberals did release a really smart platform way in advance... how much would that document influence and increase the likelihood of a perfect response platform from the Conservatives.

Barcs said...

merboy, that is exactly why they should release it.

Should the tories steal it. the liberals can claim credit for the ideas.

Withholding those ideas until you are in power shows you are not in it for the country... you are in it for the country but only for the rewards of office.

If the liberals were truly as altruistic as they claim they would be throwing out all kinds of good ideas to help better Canada for canadians. Instead they merely criticize the current government... Are the liberals part of government? or merely a lobby group to criticize like the green party?

Harbles said...

I am last to be defending Cons but slippery slope with potentially out of context quote. please post source link with 30 sec. video before and after 5 word sound byte (with pitch change fx).
You know ...for the kids.

lyrical said...

What's wrong with increasing taxes on luxury items? The Conservative govt. in Alberta just removed the liquor taxes they put on in the spring. Now they're going to make big cuts to health care and education - same with the neo-Libs in BC.

Why do we have a Prime Minister that doesn't like, or apparently need, taxes?
Illogical...does...not...compute.

Greg said...

Well, governing is about making choices. Eventually, stuff has to be paid for. We can cut expenditures (Afghanistan?, health?, transfers to the provinces?) or we have to raise taxes. Look at the trouble the U.S. is in because they have convinced themselves that all taxes are bad taxes (as a famous Canadian once said). I hope to God we don't fall into that same trap.

Gene Rayburn said...

PK sounds worried...

Gene Rayburn said...

and bitter...

Ted Betts said...

To me, the biggest difference between iggy and Harper on taxes is that Harper has, in fact, actually raised taxes before, on a number of occasions, and Iggy has not. Something Conservatives and the media like to ignore.

The first thing they in office was raise income taxes. Then of course the broken promise on income trusts, taxing senoirs tens of millions of dollars.very little discussed is Harper's new carbon "charge" (the bureacrats have been forbidden to call it a tax) in his environmental plans.

Harper, the tax and borrow and spend spend spend conservative.

Jeff said...

Jason,

Did you read the post before teeing off? I didn't hide the fact that I was taking Harper out of context. I didn't lie and say "hey, look, Harper wants to raise taxes and here's proof."

The whole point of the post was that if the Conservatives want to take Ignatieff out of context here, look, we can do that too. So maybe the Conservatives shouldn't be stupid and should stick to reality.

So I, for one, am offended by your comment.

Harbles,

In the full clip he's saying he won't ever be in a situation where he needs to raise taxes.

My point, which I made clear in the preamble, was that its easy to take anyone out of context, so maybe the Conservatives should stop doing it because there's plenty of material to work with on the Cons too.

MERBOY said...

Barcs said...

"If the liberals were truly as altruistic as they claim they would be throwing out all kinds of good ideas to help better Canada for canadians. Instead they merely criticize the current government... Are the liberals part of government? or merely a lobby group to criticize like the green party?"

Right because if the Liberals started spewing ideas right and left you know the "works well with others" Harper would immediately take notice and adopt some of their ideas... also... if I flap my arms fast enough I'm sure I could fly.

Jeff said...

If the liberals were truly as altruistic as they claim they would be throwing out all kinds of good ideas to help better Canada for canadians

You mean like a proposal for EI reform? You see, we tried that sort of thing. The Conservatives refused to offer a counter-proposal, deliberately misrepresented the proposal to the public, dragooned the public service to create an artificially inflated cost estimate, and lied about it.

The Liberals tried to work with Harper. Harper doesn't want to work with anyone. He can't be trusted. So we're done with him.