The Barrie Examiner today had an interesting editorial "Duncan should know where the blame lies":
"July is waning and Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan is just now figuring out his Liberal government needs to spruce up its communications strategy.
It's not too little, too late, but it's close.Duncan says voters in this province don't realize the full extent of the tax breaks they have enjoyed for the nearly eight years Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Grits have ruled Ontario.
Income tax breaks, property tax grants for seniors and full-day kindergarten (daycare savings) are just three of 10 such benefits Duncan outlined for The Canadian Press this week.
The finance minister says this averages $355 per person, but the savings are a little hidden because they are only seen in bits and bites on our pay-cheques.
Instead, Duncan says Ontario voters have noticed the harmonized sales tax, and blamed the right-wing media for not telling the truth. He even compared the media here to Rupert Murdoch's bunch in Great Britain.
But the real truth is if the Liberals aren't adequately getting their message to Ontario voters, they only have themselves to blame.
Since when did any level of government in this country rely on the media to get its message across?
Prime Minister Stephen Harper certainly didn't in the last federal election. He probably wouldn't be PM today had he done so.
Why would Duncan, and by extension McGuinty, believe it's the media's job to spin the news their way? It is the media's job to question any government's agenda, policies and actions -- usually to a greater extent than the opposition parties.
Why? Because governments are in a position to take action on their agendas and policies. They can and do set laws.
The Liberals might also consider that one reason they have received bad press on the HST and high hydro rates is because Ontario residents don't like them.
Even if they are getting some tax breaks, they don't like paying 13% tax (HST) on more items they purchase than before -- even with the HST rebates the Liberals have offered.
What Duncan and the Liberals have done an inadequate job doing is explaining the benefits of the HST, how it will save businesses money and create more employment in the future.
Of course, it doesn't help that Conservative boss Tim Hudak has been politically pounding on the Liberals nearly every day this summer.
Taxes are too high, government spending is too high, there's too much waste in government, the average Ontario family is being screwed over by the Liberals, etc., etc., has been the message. And Hudak keeps banging that drum.
But if it's working -- and it appears to be, if the latest polls are accurate -- then that's the Liberals' fault too.
It's always tougher being the government than in opposition. Governments have to defend what they have done, and are doing -- while the opposition can just criticize and complain.
Hudak needs to do a little more than this now, with a provincial election looming on Oct. 6. But the Liberals have, to this point, done a poor job countering what the Tory leader has been saying, and promising.
Again, that's not the media's fault.
Perhaps McGuinty, Duncan and company are awaiting summer's end, when the real election campaign begins, and the finance minister was just letting off a little steam this week.
Surely he knows, however, where the real blame should fall."
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Ole Dunkin' probably yearns for the kind of fawning, deviously helpful, Liberal-friendly, Liberal-ass-kissing media which Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor enjoy in Niagara.
Jim Bradley's Liberalism has been on a permanent spin cycle in Niagara for thirty friggin' (as Liberal Joyce Morocco would say) years!!
Jim's political Liberal laundry is well-washed by his Liberal media acolytes - and Good Ole Jimmy always comes out clean!
If - as this editorial states - it is "the media's job to question any government's agenda, policies and actions -- usually to a greater extent than the opposition parties" - then this HAS NOT BEEN THE CASE IN NIAGARA!!
In Niagara, Jim Bradley is simply NOT MENTIONED in stories which may be possibly-Liberal-negative in nature.
Jim is mysteriously overlooked when it comes to media questions and criticism!
Jim Bradley can do no wrong in Niagara - even under the disgusting lying Liberal McGuinty's despotic majority rule!
Bradley's Liberal media buddies do their best to keep it that way.
And don't even ask about how easy of a ride Jim Bradley had when he was in opposition!
Since May, 2011, 26 patients have died in Niagara's C. difficile outbreak, in Bradley's own Liberal-monopoly-controlled hospitals, in Bradley's own backyard: dare you to find one comment about this horror from Liberal Jim Bradley!
It's as if Good Ole Jimmy's got nuttin' ta do wid it - wid any of it.
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