Good Ideas Need Not Apply

When Jim Flaherty says that the $900 million a year (out of $250 billion planned budget) to bring in an RESP deduction will the fiscal plans of the government, it sounds like he’s more like a finance ministry bureaucrat than a democratically elected representative anymore. He’s more concerned about what a mid-level bean counter cares about rather than what the average people who pay for this budget care about. That disturbs me a little.
One wonder if that is the same bumph that he was fed over capital gains. It’s interesting how the language is very similar. We can’t see how it might not result in extraordinary loss because of how it could be expanded and so on and so forth. This is what these bureaucrats have gotten him to think, even though, as we know, the capital gains tax has only been around for 40 or 50 years. Somehow we managed to pull along before that. We won two world wars and beat the Depression without it.
The contrary can be said about the capital gains tax. It may have robbed generations of real and sustained economic growth built on ever more cutting edge and high technological advances that make life easier for us all and give us ever better products and services at far less cost and without inflation.
This is what the Conservatives got elected for. They got elected to make people’s lives easier, less tax-burdened, make their standard of living better and perhaps see a future generation have a better chance next time for college education, for instance.
That’s what I think this RESP provision can do and frankly I think that Dan McTeague deserves congratulations and we should be finding a way to accommodate this. What would be a great way of sending a bi-partisan message that it can be done. Maybe we could start today.
Why not reduce the payment on the debt? To me, $900 million now that would make it easier for people to go to university is more important than $900 million now on the debt. The return on the long run for us all would be far greater than simply paying down a cold slab of debt.
And comes the ridiculous fact that the NDP was one of the three parties who supported Mr. McTeague’s private member bill on RESP’s, even now as their finance critic says that making RESP contributions tax deductible would mainly benefit upper income Canadians. Mr. Mulcaire would have by far preferred to see some "real action" to help families. He’s right. On the face of it, it’s people who have money to put into these programs that are going to actually benefit from them. It’s better than nothing, but it would not have been his first choice. Hmm. Oh well. I guess that explains it. Fascinating. Unfortunately, the NDP support, as well as the Bloc’s, does make this seem less sincere. I have no doubt, though, that Dan McTeague is sincere and I really think that some of our MPs should be thinking twice about this. Except we know that under our Constitution, it’s now impossible for MPs to think for themselves. Constitutional conventions don’t allow them to actually think. My mistake.
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Electric pickle juice. The comeback of George Herbert Walker Bush in golf with Millie as his caddy. At one point, he’s so dedicated to getting the right shot, he strips naked from the waist down to get into a water hazard. Very wrinkled buns. I have a truly wild dream life.
What about celebrity rugs? Rugs that have your favourite sports star or logo or such on it. I’m sure someone’s thought of it already.
I dream in colour too.
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Soledad O’Brien v. Geraldine Ferraro. What part does race have in this election? It should seem to me that when you get 61% of the vote and you’re a black American in a state like Mississippi, even if the black population is heavy in the Democractic party there, it’s a remarkable statement of non-racial preference and success amongst the white population of Mr. Obama. Geraldine Ferraro was trying to sincerely point this out, even though she is a Clinton supporter.
Ms. O’Brien, however, started her discussion of exit polls in the state and saying it was all about race. Why isn’t she facing discipline from CNN? Why aren’t Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson picketing CNN Headquarters? Oops! They haven’t said anything about Ferraro either. She has been put on the rack by every commentator around for saying something I thought was far more understandable and explicable than Ms. O’Brien.
Not that I’m that said about Ms. Ferraro leaving the Clinton campaign.
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One of the most hillarious graphic names I’ve seen in a while comes from Janet Whitman’s article in the National Post about the Spitzer scandal. One of the first to blog about the scandal after the NYT broke the news on its website was Henry Blodgett, a former internet stock analyst who lost his job at Merrill Lynch after Spitzer’s research probe uncovered that he emailed critical comments about the stocks of companies he was researching. A blogger named Blodgett.
As for the seven social sins, yes they are not quite as radical and socialist as some people were trying to make out, but no, they don’t add to the value of the original deadly sins. Those were quite good enough for the last 2000 years. We didn’t need an addition or an annex. This schedule, in particular, is ephemeral. We don’t expect the ephemeral from the eternal. It’s unbalanced and confusing and subjective and will lead to false controversy. Not a good step for the Catholic church, but not fatal to my faith in it.
Whatever happened to the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule? They were good enough too. Put them with the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Virtues, the Three Graces and plain old-fashioned generosity and it was all good enough.