The Rants of Issachar

I decided to separate out my criticism of the Liberals and the political subsidies out from my other post on this little fiasco in parliament.

The opposition was threatening to topple the government over it's attempt to kill the political subsidies. What on earth is the opposition thinking? And by opposition I mean the Liberals.

What line precisely are you going to use to justify this as your issue to go to the wall over? Here's the few that I can think of:

We need to be paid millions out of tax revenue to make up for the fact that we can't get paid off by big business and big labour anymore.

We can't convince enough people to give us $1.95, so we need to force people to donate by taking it out taxes.

The new donation limits mean that we can't get our funding from a few rich donors, and people with normal incomes don't want to give us money, so again we need to take it out of taxes.

More likely they'll bleat on about how evil Harper is just trying to hurt them, while completely ignoring the fact that if a political party has to force people to give money, that is a problem all by itself.

Let's not kid ourselves. The Prime Minister is obviously aware that this move will seriously hurt the Liberals. But it will also save 30 million dollars every single year. That makes it a good thing. The fact is that the Liberals are against it because it will hurt the Liberal party, and not for any other reason. I won't be surprised if the opposition votes this motion down when it comes up, nor will I blame them. But I'm disgusted that they were willing to risk another election over this.

The very idea that tax revenue should be diverted from any department, (health, education, defense, the arts, you name it), to subsidize a political party's war chest is disgusting.