Wednesday, March 11, 2009

George Smitherman's crappy Liberal ideas: disappointing and wrong on all levels

The National post wrote in "Make ours a Mercedes", Mar.12, 2009:

"The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation's (OLG) decision to give away 22 foreign-built Mercedes-Benz cars as contest prizes has raised an outcry in the province, with apparently no one more scandalized than provincial Infrastructure Minister George Smitherman.

"It's disappointing, it's disillusioning, it's wrong on all levels," he said. "It was a crappy decision." A chastened OLG has since released a self-flagellating statement that declared that the contest "should not have included foreign-made vehicles."

Given that Canada is a free-trading nation, we find the passionate protest confusing at best and disingenuous at worst. What happened to allowing trading partners to reap mutual gains by allowing each to produce the goods in which it has a comparative advantage?

In the case of Mercedes-Benzes, each one sold helps support not only those much vilified foreign workers, but also thousands of Canadians who work at Mercedes dealerships and offices here in Canada. Consider also that Mercedes' vehicles are manufactured with steel supplied by none other than ArcelorMittal Dofasco, a Hamilton, Ont.-based Canadian company, whose workers are surely at least as deserving of their paycheques as those toiling at Ontario's auto plants.

Perhaps the truly "crappy decision" here was to choose political posturing over economic common sense."

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Crappy, disappointing, disillusioning policies, which are wrong on all levels: hot-air-bag Smitherman isn't talking about his own recent bolshevized Green Energy Act, is he?? (where his government-agent Greenshirts can now search your home for energy offences...)

Or was George Diaper-Man referring to his failing 2004 Commitment to the Future of Medicare act, his other cock-up of disastrous medicare monopolism, when he was the Liberal's mad-dog health-minister?

What a flicking drama-queen this posturing populism-pusher is, with his BS feigned indignancy!!

Recently, St. Catharines Liberal MPP (and Transportation Minister) Jim Bradley just basked through several days of easy press, posing in photo-ops with his hybrid buses, bought by the St. Catharines transit system with provincial gas-tax money. Did anyone bother to ask Jim Bradley where his hybrid buses were made?

They are not fully "made" in Canada, either; yet in the St. Catharines Standard story, "Gas tax to pay for new 'green machines' ( Mar.7, 2009), reporter Matthew Van Dongen, the Standard's resident greenie writer, didn't bother to report where Bradley's buses were made. No need to embarrass Ontario's smarmy Liberals about their hypocritical protectionist stances, right?!

Despite Smitherman's blustery ministerial intereference, he notably doesn't specify which cars he DOES want as prizes, because (we can only hope) that would probably lead to lawsuits being launched against his Liberal government!

So: which cars will Smitherman now publicly endorse, and provide free advertising for, to the detriment of others??!

What a half-baked Liberal clown.

Voting Liberal - now that's a crappy decision.

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