Harper: ‘I don’t believe that any taxes are good taxes’

It was pure coincidence. Sorry to 'Fidel' for biting on his style. I tried to change to another name but the site would not let me, I would have taken something else had I known. Fiidel Castro (with 2 i's) is my log-in name on other sites and on Xbox live. I just happen to be personally interested in Castro and the Cuban Revolution. 

Stephen Harper is basically a living, breathing stereotype.  

These Conservatives are really starting to piss me off.  They're fucked up on the economy and they have run us into debt.  And what have they done that is good.  I was at least hoping that they might pass lots of anti-crime legislation before they get turfed out of office but they're not even doing that save for raising the age of consent, which, IMO was long overdue.  The only point in having a Conservative government once and awhile is to restore the balance and crack down on criminals but they're not even doing that.

Still, to build from stereotype to another, is there any taxes that the NDP opposes.  I mean if the Conservatives had their way, taxes would be extremely low and our social safety net would be provided by way of charitable organizations.  But on the flip side, is their any sign of progress in our party since Alexa's bizarre comment on taxing rich people making over $60,000 a year?  Could the NDP at least propose a significant tax cut in some area...?

Unfortunately the insinuations here that suggest Manitoba is some standalone nation with federal powers of taxation and an exception to the top-down neoliberal program emanating from Ottawa are anywhere from misleading to blatantly false to say the least. NAFTA curbs provincial governments ability to expand public services and compete with larger provincial economies on things like corporate and other tax rates. Some babblers wear rose tinted glasses when it comes to Liberal and Tory parties having done their worst for this country while in power in Ottawa, which is always and never an exception to that 140 year-old rule.

Contrary to what certain babblers would have us believe, it was Canada's recent Liberal governments as well as the Tories which are the root cause for the neoliberal baloney falling down around everyone's ears in this Puerto Rico North today. Today's bad national economy has nothing to do with Gary Doer or even the NDP in Ottawa. This recession is nation-wide as it was in the 1980s and spilling over into the 90s when the NDP had to guide Ontario out of that federal policy induced economic crisis. 

And continuing with the topic of dicussion at hand, lowering taxes in a time of recession is politically conservative and tending along a USian Herbert Hoover style of ensuring Canada's economy is starved of fuel and will provide a double whammy as there are concerns about the lag time between the Harper-Liberals so-called stimulus package and whenver that kicks in some time too late to be effective. There is little difference between tax cutting Harpers and the tax-cutting Liberal Party propping them up today with 79 confidence votes in Parliament since 2006.

What an idiot, does he even know how his salary is paid -the part that doesn't come directly from vested interests that is?  If he ever gets his wish maybe we can all just ignore all the rules and regs they keep trying to impose on us and maybe just fire the lot of them, permanently. 

Read Linda McQuaig's "All You Can Eat" , if you haven't, for an excellent analysis of just that.  In brief, she proposes that the strength we had in that shared understanding of government was the recreation of "the commons" and that there has been a systematic effort to destroy our confidence in government because that works against the interests of the those who would profit fromour labour. 

This is not the first time Harper has demonstrated his idiocy and hopefully it won't be the last, with that statement he reveals how little respect he has for the Canada that was created by those who shared a sense of community and worked to enhance that community. 

Thread drift.  St.John's, Newfoundland, incredible public buildings. I love Newfoundland.

Apparently corporations agree with Harper, they have started to refuse to pay their municipal tax bills, here in BC, because of the "poor economy". Not that some weren't before though either, it is a continuing trend.

This "economic meltdown" has lots of pluses for corporations actually. One would almost think it manufactured even, it has so many.

Big Daddy wrote:

Still, to build from stereotype to another, is there any taxes that the NDP opposes.  I mean if the Conservatives had their way, taxes would be extremely low and our social safety net would be provided by way of charitable organizations.  But on the flip side, is their any sign of progress in our party since Alexa's bizarre comment on taxing rich people making over $60,000 a year?  Could the NDP at least propose a significant tax cut in some area...?

I'm pretty sure that, with the possible exception of the increase on the beer tax they supposedly backed in the last B.C. election(and did they actually back that, btw, or was it just a Campbell Liberal accusation meant to scare off the literal "Joe Six-Pack" types from voting Dipper?)the NDP opposes consumption taxes on food and other necessities.  Taxing consumption rather than income has always been a "small-c conservative" idea, and it the most regressive form of taxation imaginable.

god, sometimes it's so embarrassing to have him represent our country on a global scale.

You'll never go broke criticizing taxes.  It's as easy as complaining about rain (which we also need, but don't always love).

I tend to think of taxes as being like my food bill.  I expect to have a food bill.  I value food and want good food.  But I don't mind if my food bill is lower this year than it was last year.

I would hope that if taxes go down it's due to greater efficiencies, or economies of scale, rather than by axing.  Cutting things we need is a bit like lowering your food bill by not buying any vegetables.