It's funnee - in a YOWZERS kinda way - how no-one at the St.Catharines Standard can be bothered to corner Liberal MPP Jim Bradley (the Savant of Secord Dr.) and ask Good Ole Jimmy to explain why gasoline prices are so high ($1.41 as of May 12) in St.Catharines!No-one today from the local LiberalButtlickerSociety is asking Jim Bradley why he hasn't reintroduced the gas price-control laws which Bradley and Dalton McGuinty were agitating for when they were in opposition! No one is asking Good Ole Jimmy to 'splain why his Liberals increased the price of gas with their HST.
Magically, this has nothin' to do with Jimmy or the other Grit doofus, Kimmy Craitor!! Liberals now tell us that there's nothing they can do - yet this is the exact opposite of what Dalton McGuinty and Jim Bradley were saying in opposition!!
Back then, Bradley blathered constantly with unsubstantiated allegations of collusion and price-fixing.
Now - magically - nobody in the Niagara press seems to remember those years of Liberal lies and sanctimonious posturing from Jim Bradley and McLiar!! In Nov. 1999, while in opposition, Bradley even cooked up a predatory gas-price bill - yet, after eight duplicitous years of Liberal majority government, where is Bradley's private member's bill today?!!
Why, it's as if the BradleyAsslickSociety at the St.Catharines Standard has never even seen the Nov.19, 1999 edition of their own newspaper!!
Why, it's as if - magically - that was some other Jim Bradley which the St.Catharines Standard was happily promoting in 1999!!
Frankly, ain't this all just amazing!? That was all just utter Bradley bullshit !!
We now have confirmed that Jimmy and McGuinty were "mindlessly grandstanding" back then - and that's according to Dwight Duncan!!
McGuinty's Liberal liars could lower the HST - but don't count on any Niagara GritButtLicking reporter bothering to ask Jimmy or Kimmy about that.
*
Showing posts with label gasoline prices. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gasoline prices. Show all posts
Friday, May 13, 2011
McGuinty and Chretien-era Liberals did nothing to "control" gas prices
It was grrrreat to read Don Fraser's front-page story in the May 12, 2011 St.Catharines Standard "Squeezed by record pump prices", where absolutely no mention was made of the local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, nor of Bradley's personal role in helping extenuate today's "record pump prices"! Yep: it's as if Good Ole Jimmy never had anything to do with any of this!!!
Now, it's as if Ole Jimbo had never written any price-control bills in the past - and then conveniently forgot about them for the last eight years!!
Now, it's as if Jim Bradley and Dalton McGuinty had never said that they could - and would, if elected - bring in laws to... umm... stop all the "gouging", all the "ripping-off", all the "price-fixing", all the "collusion" that was supposedly going on.
Yep: read the Standard today and it's as if the Liberals had never fraudulently presented themselves as 'controllers of gasoline prices' !!
[The St. Catharines Standard sure doesn't want you to remember any of that!! After all, why would the St.Catharines Standard - whose motto oughtta be " Happily doing Jim's political laundry since '77 " - want to remind the proletariat about Jim Bradley's Liberal lies and deceptions about controlling the price of gasoline?!?]
There's no need to remind loyal Liberal voters about JimBoyBradley's track record of smarmy lies and hypocrisy!!
Yeah: Jim Bradley - the Liberal liar from St.Catharines - along with that other gas-hole scumbag McGuinty - outright conned voters into believing that the Liberals would "control" gas prices. The St.Catharines Standard merrily went along with that narrative back then; yet today, there's not a damn word about the Liberals' past deceit on this very issue.
Today, there's nothin' from the St.Catharines Standard about how a sanctimonious Jim Bradley, at Queen's Park on May 4, 1999, had goaded the Conservatives to "pass my bill" about helping control gas prices.
Today, no-one from the St.Catharines Standard has bothered to recall for readers what specifically was in Bradley's private-member's bill.
Today, no-one from the Standard has asked Jim Bradley why his bill was never reintroduced and passed during the last eight years of McGuinty's Liberal majority.
What bias.
And of course, when real investigative reporting fails in this Standard report, who else do they turn to for gassy filler than Dan McTeague, the Liberal MP who was thankfully finally booted out of office when that disgusting Liberal Ignatieff was walloped in the May 2 election.
Reporter Fraser didn't explain to readers - and didn't bother to actually contact and ask McTeague to explain - why McTeague, for all his years in a Liberal majority federal government - also DID NOTHING to "control" oil prices!
Didn't McTeague also try to pass some kind of gas price control bill at the federal level?
OOPS! Why would the Standard want people to know about that, eh?!!! hee hee!
Yet: here's McTeague, like a bad penny, unquestioningly now being used as a source!
The St.Catharines Standard - mysteriously (ha ha !) - also fails to mention, or to ask McTeague about, the role which former St.Catharines federal Liberal MP Walt Lastewka played in quashing his own Liberal colleague McTeague's gas price control bill!!
Say what??!!
Why should the local Liberal-lovin' proletariat wanna know 'bout that?!? The St.Catharines Standard really doesn't want to mention any of this! The locals don't need to know the direct roles which Liberals such as Jim Bradley, Walt Lastewka, and Dalton McGuinty played in creating today's "record pump prices"!
Then, in a May 13 St.Catharines Standard story ("Ottawa to investigate high gasoline prices" by Jonathan Jenkins) that same old Liberal, Gas-Tank McTeague, blames in particular the federal GST for higher gas prices, telling us it 'goes up lockstep with the price'.
No challenge was made by the reporter, who should have asked: say, there, Danny Boy, what "GST" is there in Ontario? Isn't it specifically the "HST" which you should be talking about? In particular - McGUINTY'S newly-implemented Liberal 8% tax-gouge on gasoline????????????!!!!!!!?!
Doesn't McGuinty's new 8% tax-grab on gas 'go up in lockstep with the price' ?!!
Astoundingly, Jenkins didn't bother to ask Liberal McTeague whether his Liberal buddy McGUINTY'S taxes had anything to do with the high price of gas!!!
And - of course - no one from the St.Catharines Standard will bother to recall for readers that Lastewka's Liberals also had called for 'investigations' into gas-price fixing by the Competition Bureau. Back then this was seen as a brave and heroic deed! Now, when Clement does the same, massageboy Jackoff Layton's dippers deride that as "inadequate" - without quite saying what exactly they would do!
And finally, let's not forget: when Chretien-era Liberal Lastewka was telling us that there was no evidence of any price fixing, Liberal MP Dan McTeague was also Lastewka's Liberal colleague at the time.
*
Fast forward to Oct.16, 2014, to a strange St.Catharines Standard editorial headed "Let's relish this rare drop in fuel prices", written by Peter Epp.
Reading this weirdo editorial, it's like Epp doesn't know any of the previous gasoline-price-voodoo which Ontario's Liberals were practicing!
Epp whines on about how gas prices are falling in Canada, and are "at five-year lows" (eg "as low as $1.14 in some parts of Ontario" on Wed. Oct. 15, 2014)
Epp calls it "a classic picture of supply and demand".
Hmm - yet, Epp for some strange reason never mentions what the Ontario Liberal's role was in this "classic picture of supply and demand"!!
Furthermore, there was NOT A WORD IN THIS PATHETIC ARTICLE about local Liberal MPP hack Jim Bradley!!
Funny, eh - seeing that Jim Bradley and his Liberals were the ones who were screwing up and attempting to interfere with the "supply and demand", by price fixing gasoline THEMSELVES!! That's classic LIBERAL MARKET INTERFERENCE.
"Editorialist" Epp just plain 'forgot' (hahaha) to mention Jim Bradley's decades-long attempt to score votes by promising to regulate gas prices!
Yep: suddenly, when gas prices are dropping, Jim Bradley is nowhere to be found on the pages of the St.Catharines Standard - the same paper which for years had loyally trumpeted Bradley's phony gas-price-control antics!!
Now - nothing.
In his editorial, Epp doesn't dare bother to link or context the Ontario Liberal's paranoia and hatred for everything oil, nor their phony global-warming / climate-change Green-Fearmongering.
Epp says "more oil is being produced globally" and that "the U.S.is pumping out more oil than Saudi Arabia" - yet Epp doesn't link any of that to Jim Bradley and his oil-hating Ontario Liberals.
Jim Bradley was fear mongering about "peak oil" decades ago - yet now, that there's more oil, Epp doesn't bother to ask Niagara's chief peak oil propagandist about this??!
By purposefully excluding Jim Bradley from this editorial, Epp is just continuing the St.Catharines Standard's pathetic propensity for swathing their hero Jimmy in convenient Cones of Silence.
Epp spews out lines such as "After years of getting hosed at the pumps" - without specifying WHICH years, and by which standard he was measuring what "getting hosed" meant. That kind of line is just what Jim Bradley would have spewed in the past.
Peter Epp should specifically explain what he meant here; it is crap journalism for the St.Catharines Standard to write half-baked articles such as this.
Does Epp have evidence of gasoline price-fixing, or something?? Why didn't Epp ask Jim Bradley about it, then?
What the hell is Epp actually talking about? This just blowhard rhetoric.
Epp is the one hosing readers with his garbage.
Epp didn't bother to get Liberal Jim Bradley - the chief gas-price-fear-spreader in Niagara - to confirm or deny that we have been 'getting hosed at the pumps for years'.
Were these the years under Bradley and his Liberals, which Epp refers to??
Is that why Peter Epp purposefully neglected to interview Jim Bradley about falling gas prices - because this incongruity didn't jive with Bradley's (and the Standard's) GreenFear-mongering agenda?
*
Now, it's as if Ole Jimbo had never written any price-control bills in the past - and then conveniently forgot about them for the last eight years!!
Now, it's as if Jim Bradley and Dalton McGuinty had never said that they could - and would, if elected - bring in laws to... umm... stop all the "gouging", all the "ripping-off", all the "price-fixing", all the "collusion" that was supposedly going on.
Yep: read the Standard today and it's as if the Liberals had never fraudulently presented themselves as 'controllers of gasoline prices' !!
[The St. Catharines Standard sure doesn't want you to remember any of that!! After all, why would the St.Catharines Standard - whose motto oughtta be " Happily doing Jim's political laundry since '77 " - want to remind the proletariat about Jim Bradley's Liberal lies and deceptions about controlling the price of gasoline?!?]
There's no need to remind loyal Liberal voters about JimBoyBradley's track record of smarmy lies and hypocrisy!!
Yeah: Jim Bradley - the Liberal liar from St.Catharines - along with that other gas-hole scumbag McGuinty - outright conned voters into believing that the Liberals would "control" gas prices. The St.Catharines Standard merrily went along with that narrative back then; yet today, there's not a damn word about the Liberals' past deceit on this very issue.
Today, there's nothin' from the St.Catharines Standard about how a sanctimonious Jim Bradley, at Queen's Park on May 4, 1999, had goaded the Conservatives to "pass my bill" about helping control gas prices.
Today, no-one from the St.Catharines Standard has bothered to recall for readers what specifically was in Bradley's private-member's bill.
Today, no-one from the Standard has asked Jim Bradley why his bill was never reintroduced and passed during the last eight years of McGuinty's Liberal majority.
What bias.
And of course, when real investigative reporting fails in this Standard report, who else do they turn to for gassy filler than Dan McTeague, the Liberal MP who was thankfully finally booted out of office when that disgusting Liberal Ignatieff was walloped in the May 2 election.
Reporter Fraser didn't explain to readers - and didn't bother to actually contact and ask McTeague to explain - why McTeague, for all his years in a Liberal majority federal government - also DID NOTHING to "control" oil prices!
Didn't McTeague also try to pass some kind of gas price control bill at the federal level?
OOPS! Why would the Standard want people to know about that, eh?!!! hee hee!
Yet: here's McTeague, like a bad penny, unquestioningly now being used as a source!
The St.Catharines Standard - mysteriously (ha ha !) - also fails to mention, or to ask McTeague about, the role which former St.Catharines federal Liberal MP Walt Lastewka played in quashing his own Liberal colleague McTeague's gas price control bill!!
Say what??!!
Why should the local Liberal-lovin' proletariat wanna know 'bout that?!? The St.Catharines Standard really doesn't want to mention any of this! The locals don't need to know the direct roles which Liberals such as Jim Bradley, Walt Lastewka, and Dalton McGuinty played in creating today's "record pump prices"!
Then, in a May 13 St.Catharines Standard story ("Ottawa to investigate high gasoline prices" by Jonathan Jenkins) that same old Liberal, Gas-Tank McTeague, blames in particular the federal GST for higher gas prices, telling us it 'goes up lockstep with the price'.
No challenge was made by the reporter, who should have asked: say, there, Danny Boy, what "GST" is there in Ontario? Isn't it specifically the "HST" which you should be talking about? In particular - McGUINTY'S newly-implemented Liberal 8% tax-gouge on gasoline????????????!!!!!!!?!
Doesn't McGuinty's new 8% tax-grab on gas 'go up in lockstep with the price' ?!!
Astoundingly, Jenkins didn't bother to ask Liberal McTeague whether his Liberal buddy McGUINTY'S taxes had anything to do with the high price of gas!!!
And - of course - no one from the St.Catharines Standard will bother to recall for readers that Lastewka's Liberals also had called for 'investigations' into gas-price fixing by the Competition Bureau. Back then this was seen as a brave and heroic deed! Now, when Clement does the same, massageboy Jackoff Layton's dippers deride that as "inadequate" - without quite saying what exactly they would do!
And finally, let's not forget: when Chretien-era Liberal Lastewka was telling us that there was no evidence of any price fixing, Liberal MP Dan McTeague was also Lastewka's Liberal colleague at the time.
*
Fast forward to Oct.16, 2014, to a strange St.Catharines Standard editorial headed "Let's relish this rare drop in fuel prices", written by Peter Epp.
Reading this weirdo editorial, it's like Epp doesn't know any of the previous gasoline-price-voodoo which Ontario's Liberals were practicing!
Epp whines on about how gas prices are falling in Canada, and are "at five-year lows" (eg "as low as $1.14 in some parts of Ontario" on Wed. Oct. 15, 2014)
Epp calls it "a classic picture of supply and demand".
Hmm - yet, Epp for some strange reason never mentions what the Ontario Liberal's role was in this "classic picture of supply and demand"!!
Furthermore, there was NOT A WORD IN THIS PATHETIC ARTICLE about local Liberal MPP hack Jim Bradley!!
Funny, eh - seeing that Jim Bradley and his Liberals were the ones who were screwing up and attempting to interfere with the "supply and demand", by price fixing gasoline THEMSELVES!! That's classic LIBERAL MARKET INTERFERENCE.
"Editorialist" Epp just plain 'forgot' (hahaha) to mention Jim Bradley's decades-long attempt to score votes by promising to regulate gas prices!
Yep: suddenly, when gas prices are dropping, Jim Bradley is nowhere to be found on the pages of the St.Catharines Standard - the same paper which for years had loyally trumpeted Bradley's phony gas-price-control antics!!
Now - nothing.
In his editorial, Epp doesn't dare bother to link or context the Ontario Liberal's paranoia and hatred for everything oil, nor their phony global-warming / climate-change Green-Fearmongering.
Epp says "more oil is being produced globally" and that "the U.S.is pumping out more oil than Saudi Arabia" - yet Epp doesn't link any of that to Jim Bradley and his oil-hating Ontario Liberals.
Jim Bradley was fear mongering about "peak oil" decades ago - yet now, that there's more oil, Epp doesn't bother to ask Niagara's chief peak oil propagandist about this??!
By purposefully excluding Jim Bradley from this editorial, Epp is just continuing the St.Catharines Standard's pathetic propensity for swathing their hero Jimmy in convenient Cones of Silence.
Epp spews out lines such as "After years of getting hosed at the pumps" - without specifying WHICH years, and by which standard he was measuring what "getting hosed" meant. That kind of line is just what Jim Bradley would have spewed in the past.
Peter Epp should specifically explain what he meant here; it is crap journalism for the St.Catharines Standard to write half-baked articles such as this.
Does Epp have evidence of gasoline price-fixing, or something?? Why didn't Epp ask Jim Bradley about it, then?
What the hell is Epp actually talking about? This just blowhard rhetoric.
Epp is the one hosing readers with his garbage.
Epp didn't bother to get Liberal Jim Bradley - the chief gas-price-fear-spreader in Niagara - to confirm or deny that we have been 'getting hosed at the pumps for years'.
Were these the years under Bradley and his Liberals, which Epp refers to??
Is that why Peter Epp purposefully neglected to interview Jim Bradley about falling gas prices - because this incongruity didn't jive with Bradley's (and the Standard's) GreenFear-mongering agenda?
*
Talk about ignorant clowns - - fast forward to June 16 2021, around 3 pm when CHML Hamilton, Ontario Corus radio show host Scott Thompson was 'interviewing' the same old Dan Gas-Tank McTeague, this time about all the havoc created in Canada by the cancellation of various pipeline projects in Canada (thanks in part to dementia-laden Biden's demotards).
For years it was McTeague and his OWN Liberals who were pushing the same global warming lies which ended up with these current cancellations in 2021!!
They nowget what they craved - the destruction of Canada's economy. They were told; they didn't care to listen.
McTeague was PART of the PROBLEM - he helped CAUSE IT!! It's as if the ignorant show host knows nothing about it, pretending he doesn't even know what lines 3 and 5 are... it beggars belief the level of idiocy common in Canadian broadcasting. McTeague's role as a SOURCE in spreading massive amounts of global warming fear - which led to the situation we are in today - wasn't dare mentioned in this weirdo interview.
Friday, April 15, 2011
More McGuinty lies and deceptions: Don't ask MPP Jim Bradley for an explanation
The Apr.15,2010 St.Catharines Standard published Jonathan Sher's QMI story, "Ontario won't punish hospitals that won't cut costs", which noted that "...Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan won't penalize hospitals or other government-funded entities that fail to reduce executive costs by 10% in the next two years - a target announced in the spring budget."
So here we have, merely weeks after the Ontario budget, yet another example of pure, predictable, Liberal healthcare duplicity: fraudulent Liberal promises, followed by bald-faced Liberal lies.
And we know that no-one at the St.Catharines Standard will ever dare ask Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley about that latest Liberal health-care lie!
Just as Don Fraser (writing his front page St.Catharines Standard story on Apr.13, 2011 "Gasoline price increases in the fast lane") managed to completely avoid any mention about Jim Bradley! {...what's Good Ole Jimmy got to do with any of that?!!}
{...update: turns out that by Oct. of 2012, Fraser would reveal that he was a water-skiing student of the Great Kahuna himself, none other than Dalton McGuinty... so... umm.... yah: lookin' back at Fraser's pantheon of "reports", it now makes sense why Liberals would conveniently not be mentioned if whatever story at the moment couldn't be made to make them somehow look good. No personal spin or bias there, eh ?! What we saw in the St.Catharines Standard's pages was basically just Liberal-friendly commentary/propaganda, politely but nevertheless disturbingly disguised as "reporting". Took years for this bias to be revealed, though.}
Amazing, isn't it: Good Ole Jimmy for years blustered and outright lied about how his Liberals would control and regulate gas prices!
A smug Jimmy - in opposition - made all kinds of smarmy, squawking, disingenuous statements about gasoline-price-fixing and collusion and his Liberals' ability to control and regulate the price of gas!
But strangely - now that Good Ole Jimmy's Liberals are in power (for two majority terms, btw...) - the St.Catharines Standard mysteriously CAN'T FIND lyin' Jimmy to comment on gas prices!!
Reporter Don Fraser couldn't be bothered, for some reason, to find and to ask Jim Bradley about his years of deception about gas prices!
Did the St.Catharines Standard bother to contact the Liberal MPP in their own city for a comment?! Or was Jim Bradley conveniently, um... overlooked, and excused from scrutiny, by the local press?!
Why, back on Feb.13, 2003 [when Harris was in power...] the Standard easily managed to find Jimmy [!], eagerly reporting how Bradley "doesn't remember gas prices ever being this expensive" ! (and, remember, that was when gasoline was at 80 cents!)
Funny, eh, how now (with gas pushing $1.34.9 (as seen in St.Catharines on Apr.18, 2011) - after eight years of McGuinty Liberal majority rule - NO-ONE is asking whether Jim Bradley 'remembers gasoline being this expensive' in Ontario - under his own Liberal watch!
Certainly no-one at the St.CatharinesStandard's JimmyBoy Fanclub.
THAT'S McGUINTY'S LIBERAL FINANCE MINISTER saying it!
And yep: that's the same Dalton McGuinty - along with Good Ole Crapbag Jimmy Bradley - who were saying THE EXACT SAME THING when they were in opposition, as Horwath is saying now!
Yep: McGuinty and Bradley's Liberals were accusing Harris of being in bed with the oil barons, bla, bla, bla... yet now, lookit that, Ole Dunco has come to the SAME conclusion as did Harris and Chretien!
Dwight Duncan has finally revealed the truth: Liberal Dalton McGuinty and shitbag Bradley in fact were "mindlessly grandstanding" when they were blabbing about gasoline "gouging" and "price-fixing" and "collusion" a decade ago, just as a clueless, shamelessly pandering Jackoff Layton is still doing in 2011.
[ohhh... and hey, why aren't the St.Catharines green teamsters asking Jim I'm-Saving-The-Planet Bradley about the, umm, "carbon footprint" of the province busing thousands of prisoners in the Sarnia-Windsor area, because of McGuinty's super-prison-building plans?! Gosh: no Van Dongen kissy-face interview with Bradley about how his Liberals are polluting the planet... funny, huh?
So here we have, merely weeks after the Ontario budget, yet another example of pure, predictable, Liberal healthcare duplicity: fraudulent Liberal promises, followed by bald-faced Liberal lies.
And we know that no-one at the St.Catharines Standard will ever dare ask Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley about that latest Liberal health-care lie!
Just as Don Fraser (writing his front page St.Catharines Standard story on Apr.13, 2011 "Gasoline price increases in the fast lane") managed to completely avoid any mention about Jim Bradley! {...what's Good Ole Jimmy got to do with any of that?!!}
{...update: turns out that by Oct. of 2012, Fraser would reveal that he was a water-skiing student of the Great Kahuna himself, none other than Dalton McGuinty... so... umm.... yah: lookin' back at Fraser's pantheon of "reports", it now makes sense why Liberals would conveniently not be mentioned if whatever story at the moment couldn't be made to make them somehow look good. No personal spin or bias there, eh ?! What we saw in the St.Catharines Standard's pages was basically just Liberal-friendly commentary/propaganda, politely but nevertheless disturbingly disguised as "reporting". Took years for this bias to be revealed, though.}
Amazing, isn't it: Good Ole Jimmy for years blustered and outright lied about how his Liberals would control and regulate gas prices!
A smug Jimmy - in opposition - made all kinds of smarmy, squawking, disingenuous statements about gasoline-price-fixing and collusion and his Liberals' ability to control and regulate the price of gas!
But strangely - now that Good Ole Jimmy's Liberals are in power (for two majority terms, btw...) - the St.Catharines Standard mysteriously CAN'T FIND lyin' Jimmy to comment on gas prices!!
Reporter Don Fraser couldn't be bothered, for some reason, to find and to ask Jim Bradley about his years of deception about gas prices!
Did the St.Catharines Standard bother to contact the Liberal MPP in their own city for a comment?! Or was Jim Bradley conveniently, um... overlooked, and excused from scrutiny, by the local press?!
Why, back on Feb.13, 2003 [when Harris was in power...] the Standard easily managed to find Jimmy [!], eagerly reporting how Bradley "doesn't remember gas prices ever being this expensive" ! (and, remember, that was when gasoline was at 80 cents!)
Funny, eh, how now (with gas pushing $1.34.9 (as seen in St.Catharines on Apr.18, 2011) - after eight years of McGuinty Liberal majority rule - NO-ONE is asking whether Jim Bradley 'remembers gasoline being this expensive' in Ontario - under his own Liberal watch!
Certainly no-one at the St.CatharinesStandard's JimmyBoy Fanclub.
It was hilarious to hear Dwight Duncan during Question Period on Apr.19, 2011, "answering" a question about controlling gasoline prices from the NDP's Horwath. Duncan told the dippers that it was "mindless grandstanding" for cheap votes to pander the illusion that the province can control gasoline prices!
Yeah: did ya hear that?
And yep: that's the same Dalton McGuinty - along with Good Ole Crapbag Jimmy Bradley - who were saying THE EXACT SAME THING when they were in opposition, as Horwath is saying now!
Yep: McGuinty and Bradley's Liberals were accusing Harris of being in bed with the oil barons, bla, bla, bla... yet now, lookit that, Ole Dunco has come to the SAME conclusion as did Harris and Chretien!
Dwight Duncan has finally revealed the truth: Liberal Dalton McGuinty and shitbag Bradley in fact were "mindlessly grandstanding" when they were blabbing about gasoline "gouging" and "price-fixing" and "collusion" a decade ago, just as a clueless, shamelessly pandering Jackoff Layton is still doing in 2011.
[ohhh... and hey, why aren't the St.Catharines green teamsters asking Jim I'm-Saving-The-Planet Bradley about the, umm, "carbon footprint" of the province busing thousands of prisoners in the Sarnia-Windsor area, because of McGuinty's super-prison-building plans?! Gosh: no Van Dongen kissy-face interview with Bradley about how his Liberals are polluting the planet... funny, huh?
*
Friday, February 25, 2011
Dalton McGuinty and Jim Bradley: Liberal apologists for the oil barons!
below: gas in St.Catharines was selling at $1.23 per litre. Several days ago it was $1.09.
So now McGuinty sez that his Liberals won't regulate gasoline prices!
Oh, how times have changed!
This is the exact opposite of what McGuinty and his loyal Liberal hacks such as Jim Bradley were saying while they were in opposition!
Back then, Liberal millionaire Jim Bradley shrieked incessantly about gasoline "price-fixing" and gas "gouging"! (You do remember that, doncha, Jim?!!) The local press cheered Bradley as he railed against Harris!!
Jim Bradley smugly insisted - while safely in opposition - that gasoline price control was a provincial matter!!! But now... [!!!] ...where's Jimmy?!
Back then, Jim Bradley bellowed with feigned outrage at how Harris was an "apologist for the oil barons"!!!
But now... heh heh ...Jimmy's nowhere to be seen!! And you can bet that no-one from the St.Catharines Standard's Bradley Asslick Society will bother to ask their Liberal buddy about his past lies!!
As I wrote in 2007:
"Ten years ago, a smug “veteran Liberal MPP” we know as good ole Jim Bradley, was saying a lot of things.
[Even the Sault Star was helpfully providing pointless innuendo, editorializing about then (Conservative)tourism minister Bill Saunderson being “a self-made millionaire”. (What was the point of that? Of what flicking relevance is that?) Surely, now with over 30 years in political life, Jim Bradley has also earned a million dollars, and enjoys the special-status of an unlocked pension. Oh, and yes, it was ‘self-made’, in the sense that it came out of our tax pockets. What business has Jim Bradley ever been in?]
So, what is our wealthy Liberal Jim Bradley doing about gas prices today, in 2007?
The price at the pumps went up five cents overnight, from a buck a litre (Dec.12, 2007) to $1.05 (Dec. 13, 2007). Is Jim Bradley talking to his “corporate pals” today?..Is Jim Bradley tabling predatory pricing laws? Setting up inquries? Does Jim Bradley, now the transportation minister, have anything to say about greedy oil companies, and price-fixing and price-gouging and oil-barons, today?
Who’s the apologist for the big oil bosses now, Mr. Bradley?
Bradley once accused then premier Mike Harris: “He has made a lot of noise. He huffs and puffs and he blusters, but he simply does nothing.” (Hamilton Spectator, Oct.15, 1997). Sounds like Jim Bradley was actually describing himself. It was a lot of bluster even then, but it's outright B.S. now."
Jim Bradley's fraudulent Liberals were as full of shit then as they are now. It takes a while for voters to see the long-con that is the McGuinty Liberal government.
*
Oh, how times have changed!
This is the exact opposite of what McGuinty and his loyal Liberal hacks such as Jim Bradley were saying while they were in opposition!
Back then, Liberal millionaire Jim Bradley shrieked incessantly about gasoline "price-fixing" and gas "gouging"! (You do remember that, doncha, Jim?!!) The local press cheered Bradley as he railed against Harris!!
Jim Bradley smugly insisted - while safely in opposition - that gasoline price control was a provincial matter!!! But now... [!!!] ...where's Jimmy?!
Back then, Jim Bradley bellowed with feigned outrage at how Harris was an "apologist for the oil barons"!!!
But now... heh heh ...Jimmy's nowhere to be seen!! And you can bet that no-one from the St.Catharines Standard's Bradley Asslick Society will bother to ask their Liberal buddy about his past lies!!
As I wrote in 2007:
"Ten years ago, a smug “veteran Liberal MPP” we know as good ole Jim Bradley, was saying a lot of things.
[Even the Sault Star was helpfully providing pointless innuendo, editorializing about then (Conservative)tourism minister Bill Saunderson being “a self-made millionaire”. (What was the point of that? Of what flicking relevance is that?) Surely, now with over 30 years in political life, Jim Bradley has also earned a million dollars, and enjoys the special-status of an unlocked pension. Oh, and yes, it was ‘self-made’, in the sense that it came out of our tax pockets. What business has Jim Bradley ever been in?]
So, what is our wealthy Liberal Jim Bradley doing about gas prices today, in 2007?
The price at the pumps went up five cents overnight, from a buck a litre (Dec.12, 2007) to $1.05 (Dec. 13, 2007). Is Jim Bradley talking to his “corporate pals” today?..Is Jim Bradley tabling predatory pricing laws? Setting up inquries? Does Jim Bradley, now the transportation minister, have anything to say about greedy oil companies, and price-fixing and price-gouging and oil-barons, today?
Who’s the apologist for the big oil bosses now, Mr. Bradley?
Bradley once accused then premier Mike Harris: “He has made a lot of noise. He huffs and puffs and he blusters, but he simply does nothing.” (Hamilton Spectator, Oct.15, 1997). Sounds like Jim Bradley was actually describing himself. It was a lot of bluster even then, but it's outright B.S. now."
Jim Bradley's fraudulent Liberals were as full of shit then as they are now. It takes a while for voters to see the long-con that is the McGuinty Liberal government.
*
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Liberals hide like cockroaches from Ombudsman's light
There were three interesting and somewhat-related stories in the St. Catharines Standard over the last several days.
The July, 4, 2008 St. Catharines Standard had a story headlined “Region to get $16M for community health care”, saying: “The provincial government announced an extra $16 million on Thursday to support community health-care programs in Niagara and surrounding regions.” The story listed varying amounts of monies, to be “delivered” by the government to the local LHIN, which was described in this story as “a non-profit corporation that works with local health providers and community members to determine the health service priorities of their region”.
Wow - the LHIN-healthcare bureaucracy just seems so wonderfully benign when it’s described this way by the “Standard Staff” writer, doesn’t it? The LHIN is just this good-hearted “non-profit” that just good-naturedly “works with” the local providers and “community members”. What community? Are they not medicare apparatchiks?
The LHIN is legislated TO FORCE health care “priorities”. The LHIN is a government apparatus, a sad child of Smitherman. Its mentioned “non-profit” status is irrelevant to this story anyway, isn’t it? (Unless you are one who nods approvingly at such things, while sneering at the concept of ‘for-profit’). The LHIN is a social-policy instrument designed, funded, and played by fiat of the Liberal government. The LHIN consists of government appointees. The LHIN protects the government from policy blowback. The LHIN is the operating scalpel of the McGuinty Liberal cabinet’s medicare ideology.
Let’s look at the way the word “extra” is used in this news-story, preceding the dollar figure.
“Extra” from/in-addition-to what?? From an under-funded, lowball, barebones budget allocation made initially somewhere in the Liberal bowels of Queen’s Park; at some Liberal central-planning-is-best medicare-pushing apparatchik’s desk?
In a health-care MONOPOLY, legislated by McGuinty’s Liberals, what exactly is the definition of “extra”? When it is illegal by Liberal law for Ontarians to provide for their own health-care funding, what parameters are the Liberals, and the media, using when descriptors such as “extra” are being used? How is it "extra"?!
Is this funding that otherwise would NOT have been provided? (and why, then, not? Because the central-planner-geniuses didn’t allow for budget contingencies? Because the Liberals are rolling in a lot of “Health-Tax’ dough, and need to get rid of it on unplanned (!) efforts, the efficacy of which conveniently don’t fall under Ombudsman scrutiny?)
Is it a way for the politicians to ingratiate themselves into the psyche of their voters: ‘look, oh all ye of our fair realm, how we Liberals have magnanimously bestowed upon the health-system all this "extra" money. By the way, this “extra” money, we have generously deemed, is good for a- our re-election brochures a couple of years hence, and b- it shows we can spend your tax-dollars as we deem fit. Do not ask whether this money is wisely spent; just humbly know and be thankful that we, glorious Liberals, are here to spend it for you, so that your system may live forever!’ For some reason, we're never explicitly told when 'it's not enough' funding, until the Liberals graciously bestow upon us the bonus of "extra". Is it ever 'enough' ?! Isn't it all "extra"! Isn't it a political matter of making these distinctions only when its politically favourable for politicians to do so?
In a related story, the next day, on July 5, 2008, the St. Catharines Standard carried a story which ties into the government healthcare funding sleight-of-hand I mention above. This story was titled “Psychology for $400, please”, by Michael S. Rosenwald.
The story described how prices are planned (“engineered”, as it’s now known!) for psychological impact to affect consumer behaviour.
Examples were given such as the considered setting of restaurant menu prices, with several extremely high and low entree prices, together with some mid-range choices: the mid-range choices would sell better.
Also described were situations (or “pricing tricks”, as Rosenwald writes) such as that initially-high set prices determine a consumer’s “reference” or “anchoring” point’, which, when the price drops, makes the purchasing consumer believe he has made a wise decision, that he ‘perceives’ having obtained deal.
“Richard Thaler, a University of Chicago economist… came up with the notion of transaction utility, which he has described as “the difference between the amount paid and the ‘reference price’ for the good, that is, the regular price that the consumer expects to pay for this product.” But there are trade-offs, Thaler notes, in incidental, or not quite hidden, but associated costs, down the road, “thus wiping out any gains, real or psychological”. “Thaler said we tend to “underweight” these costs because they are off in the future.”
So what do these two stories in the St. Catharines Standard, one after the next, have in common? I guess if you hate markets and choice, then you might well be politically predisposed to believing that all corporate marketing – and pricing – is inherently evil, that it’s all fundamentally ‘pricing trickery’, and therefore that it all must be controlled by the government.
And isn’t this the underlying philosophy as well, behind the "engineered" concept of medicare? Wasn’t old socialist Tommy Douglas one of these central-planning-is-best believers - the market be damned, we will set and control and rule the market by legislating a ban on payer and provider health-care choices?
Does anyone believe we have found “transactional utility” in Ontario’s health-care monopoly? That is, even if this concept could even be made to apply to a closed, Marxist-style government monopoly construct? The government relies on the “perceived” benefits to somehow be disassociated from the actual costs - this is the great unsubstantiated myth which surrounds medicare. ‘Yes, yes, yes…we've told, you - you’re covered … so now, go back in line and wait. Stop pestering us with your perceptions of value … you individuals gave that privilege up to Tommy Douglas's collectivists years ago!!’ The government relies on continuous, grand “extra” funding announcements to maintain the perception that it is ‘keeping up with problems’ (never of its own making, naturally!) and continually inserts itself as a heroic saviour by providing strategic “extra” funding solutions where and when politically advantageous … a great political perpetual-motion machine!
What did we expect to get – for the price of having the government subjugate our right to provide for our individual health-care choices?
Here's the third related story to that subject, titled “Surgery wait riles patient’s family’ (St. Catharines Standard, July 4, 2008) which described the circumstances of 67 year old Cecile Boudreau who shattered her pelvis while she was a passenger in a lurching city bus. She had to wait over 72 hours in the St. Catharines General Hospital before she could finally obtain an operation. The hospital said such waits are the norm across Ontario.
This is ‘normal’?
‘Normal’ compared to what – the rest of the Liberal-run health-care policy-laboratory called Ontario?!
Why isn’t anyone asking whether this is acceptable, rather than accepting that it is ‘normal’; rather than just sloughing it off to ‘oh, well, that’s just how it is in Ontario”? We can't do better?
(And - is it actually ‘normal’, as the NHS claims, to have your operation three days later in other areas of Ontario? In a similar incident - over a national holiday, no less - would that really have been the case in Toronto, or in Hamilton? What about in Buffalo, or does that not count as a comparison?)
Is this an example of how accepted “transactional utility” has become in the Ontario health-care consumer’s psyche?! That we just accept such tradeoffs as ‘normal’, that we are resigned - if not trained - not to demand better ??
Astoundingly, this is what the injured lady’s daughter Linda Rogers said in the Standard about the ordeal:
“I’m not out to get any doctors or nurses in trouble. I’m just trying to raise awareness of how badly we need some government interference in this sad medical system we have”.
What? Read that again...! What is to be made of this comment? We need MORE “government interference” … what, as if the interference already caused by the Liberals over the last five years is NOT ENOUGH?
Or, was she trying to say we need more interference INTO the government's handling of medicare??! Such as perhaps...oversight from the Ombudsman's office? But, if so, why call that "interference" ??
Did the Liberal’s medicare ideology, as found in their 2004 “Commitment to the Future of Medicare”, not directly contribute to the “sad medical system we have” today; the same sad Liberal-run system that told Boudreau it’s normal to suffer and wait three days after an accident for an operation?
This is the price we are forced to pay for Liberal medicare! These are the ‘tradeoffs’ for being forced into believing the charade of universal, government-run, single-payer health-care, the kind pushed by the likes of St. Catharines MPP, Liberal Jim Bradley. (See:Liberal Healthcare Duplicity, An Ontario Overview 2003-2007)
What exactly was St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley’s reaction to this situation in his own city’s hospital? Well, none, as far as can be seen, because Good Ole Jim Bradley wasn’t mentioned in the story! Our Stealth MPP, the elusive Jim Bradley, once again, strangely sits silent while patients in his riding suffer in his health-care monopoly. After all: these are just normal problems; anomalies, obscure incidents, minor inconveniences compared to the Grandeur That Is Liberal Medicare! Just trust the Liberals, they will soon find another “extra” funding announcement to distract us!
Just don’t ask Jim Bradley why his Liberal government is hiding from allowing the Ombudsman to investigate their health-care monopoly. Don’t ask whether there is a systemic link in the Liberal’s health-monopoly which makes three-day surgery waits like Boudreau’s to be “perceived” as “normal”.
Yep, Liberal Jim Bradley, the pompous, grand champion of ‘anti-American-style health-care’, cannot be found to comment on his Liberal-style health-care’s failings. Bradley and his Liberals hide from scrutiny like cockroaches scurrying from the light; the Liberals are afraid to allow the Ombudsman to shine the light of scrutiny upon them.
And sadly, in the meantime, Ontarians have no competition, no other choices to turn to.
Michael S. Rosenwald’s story, mentioned earlier, can also be utilized to examine consumer behaviour in a no-patient-payer-choice-by-legislated-government-fiat health-care system.
Funny that Rosenwald’s story doesn’t quite explain what happens if you go to ANOTHER restaurant and check THEIR competitive pricing (you have to read the book, I guess!). The assumption one needs to willingly believe/swallow is that all competitors are in a planned, nefarious conspiracy to fix prices, which then only a populist government, interfering with individual rights, can 'fix' for the supposed ‘betterment-of-all’! (Remember, for example, St. Catharines MPP Liberal Jim Bradley ragging on about ‘gasoline price fixing’ when he was in opposition?! See: Jim Bradley's criticisms in opposition foreshadowed duplicity in government)
Health care is “free” in Canada (!), or so Michael Moore-ish Sickos preach and lead others to believe (just don’t ask about taxes). This is their “perception”! And what of the trade-offs in the future, the associated costs down the road?? Well, the medicaristas are counting on the consumer to politically “underweigh” those very real medical risks!! This is what happens when lefties want to make decisions for you on your behalf, for ‘your own good’! DO NOT MENTION the associated waiting-lists, shortages, new central-planning fixes for old central-planning blunders, the resultant unaccountability of anyone for anything down the road … this aspect of single-payer, universal health-care is not broached when the medicaristas are making their pitches! Do not ask what eventually is “perceived” to be “normal” under a medicarista-run monopoly! There is no “trickery” when it comes to single-payer health-care, is there?!
Our local Liberal Jim Bradley made a lot of noise in the past, agitating for political power, by condemning his pet boogey-man, 'U.S. style health-care'; yet what responsibility does Jim Bradley now shoulder when hundreds of C. Diff patients have been found to have died in his secretive, no-choice health monster; a situation which possibly could have been reduced or avoided had Bradley’s ‘non-U.S Style’ (!) system been accountable to patients, and not just for perpetuating itself?
Conveniently (for Liberals) there is no market mechanism to challenge the Liberal government-run health monopoly’s standards, practices, funding decisions, or 'value-received-for money-spent' comparisons. Conveniently, the Liberals prevent any oversight, such as from the Ombudsman’s office, from investigating their health-care actions.
Questioning such things is anti-Canadian, anti-Tommy Douglas, anti central-planning heresy.
How dare we have the unmitigated audacity to ask Jim Bradley and his Liberals to stand to account for their health-monopoly’s performance?!
How dare we even ask whether the question is even 'value-received-for-money-spent' anymore, anyway – that would apply if you are talking about a government that understands the enormity of its responsibility when it decides to ban an individual’s health-care choices by maintaining a legislated monopoly.
They just don’t get that TRUST has to be there! This medicare monopoly is only as good as the belief that it would do what was promised – and it is not doing that at all. The McCreith/Holmes constitutional court challenge against McGuinty's Liberal government health monopoly is an indication of this.
The question now should be 'what is the value-PERCEIVED-for-the-money-spent'? How, or why, should we trust the government anymore with such an important individual liberty as health-care? They have pandered to us the PERCEPTION that only a health-care monopoly will be our saviour, our mythical heaven on earth. They FIXED (manipulated!) the competitive nature of the health-care 'market', because competition was distasteful (not to mention disruptive!) to the socialist tenets underpinning their grand supply/demand-fixing scheme.
Yet, when it fails, suddenly Jim Bradley is no-where to be found! He is unavailable to drone on about his Liberal health-care duplicity. James J. Bradley and the other Liberal McGuintyites have retreated into their ideological shells. No questions need be answered. All you need to do is trust the Liberals. You need no substantiation.
This is not just a "sad medical system" we have, it’s an "extra" sad Liberal government which perpetuates it; it’s a sad, secretive Liberal government where the word ‘normal’ is synonymous with barely-acceptable; where an Ombudsman's scrutiny, when patients need it most, is suppressed by frightened Liberals.
The July, 4, 2008 St. Catharines Standard had a story headlined “Region to get $16M for community health care”, saying: “The provincial government announced an extra $16 million on Thursday to support community health-care programs in Niagara and surrounding regions.” The story listed varying amounts of monies, to be “delivered” by the government to the local LHIN, which was described in this story as “a non-profit corporation that works with local health providers and community members to determine the health service priorities of their region”.
Wow - the LHIN-healthcare bureaucracy just seems so wonderfully benign when it’s described this way by the “Standard Staff” writer, doesn’t it? The LHIN is just this good-hearted “non-profit” that just good-naturedly “works with” the local providers and “community members”. What community? Are they not medicare apparatchiks?
The LHIN is legislated TO FORCE health care “priorities”. The LHIN is a government apparatus, a sad child of Smitherman. Its mentioned “non-profit” status is irrelevant to this story anyway, isn’t it? (Unless you are one who nods approvingly at such things, while sneering at the concept of ‘for-profit’). The LHIN is a social-policy instrument designed, funded, and played by fiat of the Liberal government. The LHIN consists of government appointees. The LHIN protects the government from policy blowback. The LHIN is the operating scalpel of the McGuinty Liberal cabinet’s medicare ideology.
Let’s look at the way the word “extra” is used in this news-story, preceding the dollar figure.
“Extra” from/in-addition-to what?? From an under-funded, lowball, barebones budget allocation made initially somewhere in the Liberal bowels of Queen’s Park; at some Liberal central-planning-is-best medicare-pushing apparatchik’s desk?
In a health-care MONOPOLY, legislated by McGuinty’s Liberals, what exactly is the definition of “extra”? When it is illegal by Liberal law for Ontarians to provide for their own health-care funding, what parameters are the Liberals, and the media, using when descriptors such as “extra” are being used? How is it "extra"?!
Is this funding that otherwise would NOT have been provided? (and why, then, not? Because the central-planner-geniuses didn’t allow for budget contingencies? Because the Liberals are rolling in a lot of “Health-Tax’ dough, and need to get rid of it on unplanned (!) efforts, the efficacy of which conveniently don’t fall under Ombudsman scrutiny?)
Is it a way for the politicians to ingratiate themselves into the psyche of their voters: ‘look, oh all ye of our fair realm, how we Liberals have magnanimously bestowed upon the health-system all this "extra" money. By the way, this “extra” money, we have generously deemed, is good for a- our re-election brochures a couple of years hence, and b- it shows we can spend your tax-dollars as we deem fit. Do not ask whether this money is wisely spent; just humbly know and be thankful that we, glorious Liberals, are here to spend it for you, so that your system may live forever!’ For some reason, we're never explicitly told when 'it's not enough' funding, until the Liberals graciously bestow upon us the bonus of "extra". Is it ever 'enough' ?! Isn't it all "extra"! Isn't it a political matter of making these distinctions only when its politically favourable for politicians to do so?
In a related story, the next day, on July 5, 2008, the St. Catharines Standard carried a story which ties into the government healthcare funding sleight-of-hand I mention above. This story was titled “Psychology for $400, please”, by Michael S. Rosenwald.
The story described how prices are planned (“engineered”, as it’s now known!) for psychological impact to affect consumer behaviour.
Examples were given such as the considered setting of restaurant menu prices, with several extremely high and low entree prices, together with some mid-range choices: the mid-range choices would sell better.
Also described were situations (or “pricing tricks”, as Rosenwald writes) such as that initially-high set prices determine a consumer’s “reference” or “anchoring” point’, which, when the price drops, makes the purchasing consumer believe he has made a wise decision, that he ‘perceives’ having obtained deal.
“Richard Thaler, a University of Chicago economist… came up with the notion of transaction utility, which he has described as “the difference between the amount paid and the ‘reference price’ for the good, that is, the regular price that the consumer expects to pay for this product.” But there are trade-offs, Thaler notes, in incidental, or not quite hidden, but associated costs, down the road, “thus wiping out any gains, real or psychological”. “Thaler said we tend to “underweight” these costs because they are off in the future.”
So what do these two stories in the St. Catharines Standard, one after the next, have in common? I guess if you hate markets and choice, then you might well be politically predisposed to believing that all corporate marketing – and pricing – is inherently evil, that it’s all fundamentally ‘pricing trickery’, and therefore that it all must be controlled by the government.
And isn’t this the underlying philosophy as well, behind the "engineered" concept of medicare? Wasn’t old socialist Tommy Douglas one of these central-planning-is-best believers - the market be damned, we will set and control and rule the market by legislating a ban on payer and provider health-care choices?
Does anyone believe we have found “transactional utility” in Ontario’s health-care monopoly? That is, even if this concept could even be made to apply to a closed, Marxist-style government monopoly construct? The government relies on the “perceived” benefits to somehow be disassociated from the actual costs - this is the great unsubstantiated myth which surrounds medicare. ‘Yes, yes, yes…we've told, you - you’re covered … so now, go back in line and wait. Stop pestering us with your perceptions of value … you individuals gave that privilege up to Tommy Douglas's collectivists years ago!!’ The government relies on continuous, grand “extra” funding announcements to maintain the perception that it is ‘keeping up with problems’ (never of its own making, naturally!) and continually inserts itself as a heroic saviour by providing strategic “extra” funding solutions where and when politically advantageous … a great political perpetual-motion machine!
What did we expect to get – for the price of having the government subjugate our right to provide for our individual health-care choices?
Here's the third related story to that subject, titled “Surgery wait riles patient’s family’ (St. Catharines Standard, July 4, 2008) which described the circumstances of 67 year old Cecile Boudreau who shattered her pelvis while she was a passenger in a lurching city bus. She had to wait over 72 hours in the St. Catharines General Hospital before she could finally obtain an operation. The hospital said such waits are the norm across Ontario.
This is ‘normal’?
‘Normal’ compared to what – the rest of the Liberal-run health-care policy-laboratory called Ontario?!
Why isn’t anyone asking whether this is acceptable, rather than accepting that it is ‘normal’; rather than just sloughing it off to ‘oh, well, that’s just how it is in Ontario”? We can't do better?
(And - is it actually ‘normal’, as the NHS claims, to have your operation three days later in other areas of Ontario? In a similar incident - over a national holiday, no less - would that really have been the case in Toronto, or in Hamilton? What about in Buffalo, or does that not count as a comparison?)
Is this an example of how accepted “transactional utility” has become in the Ontario health-care consumer’s psyche?! That we just accept such tradeoffs as ‘normal’, that we are resigned - if not trained - not to demand better ??
Astoundingly, this is what the injured lady’s daughter Linda Rogers said in the Standard about the ordeal:
“I’m not out to get any doctors or nurses in trouble. I’m just trying to raise awareness of how badly we need some government interference in this sad medical system we have”.
What? Read that again...! What is to be made of this comment? We need MORE “government interference” … what, as if the interference already caused by the Liberals over the last five years is NOT ENOUGH?
Or, was she trying to say we need more interference INTO the government's handling of medicare??! Such as perhaps...oversight from the Ombudsman's office? But, if so, why call that "interference" ??
Did the Liberal’s medicare ideology, as found in their 2004 “Commitment to the Future of Medicare”, not directly contribute to the “sad medical system we have” today; the same sad Liberal-run system that told Boudreau it’s normal to suffer and wait three days after an accident for an operation?
This is the price we are forced to pay for Liberal medicare! These are the ‘tradeoffs’ for being forced into believing the charade of universal, government-run, single-payer health-care, the kind pushed by the likes of St. Catharines MPP, Liberal Jim Bradley. (See:Liberal Healthcare Duplicity, An Ontario Overview 2003-2007)
What exactly was St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley’s reaction to this situation in his own city’s hospital? Well, none, as far as can be seen, because Good Ole Jim Bradley wasn’t mentioned in the story! Our Stealth MPP, the elusive Jim Bradley, once again, strangely sits silent while patients in his riding suffer in his health-care monopoly. After all: these are just normal problems; anomalies, obscure incidents, minor inconveniences compared to the Grandeur That Is Liberal Medicare! Just trust the Liberals, they will soon find another “extra” funding announcement to distract us!
Just don’t ask Jim Bradley why his Liberal government is hiding from allowing the Ombudsman to investigate their health-care monopoly. Don’t ask whether there is a systemic link in the Liberal’s health-monopoly which makes three-day surgery waits like Boudreau’s to be “perceived” as “normal”.
Yep, Liberal Jim Bradley, the pompous, grand champion of ‘anti-American-style health-care’, cannot be found to comment on his Liberal-style health-care’s failings. Bradley and his Liberals hide from scrutiny like cockroaches scurrying from the light; the Liberals are afraid to allow the Ombudsman to shine the light of scrutiny upon them.
And sadly, in the meantime, Ontarians have no competition, no other choices to turn to.
Michael S. Rosenwald’s story, mentioned earlier, can also be utilized to examine consumer behaviour in a no-patient-payer-choice-by-legislated-government-fiat health-care system.
Funny that Rosenwald’s story doesn’t quite explain what happens if you go to ANOTHER restaurant and check THEIR competitive pricing (you have to read the book, I guess!). The assumption one needs to willingly believe/swallow is that all competitors are in a planned, nefarious conspiracy to fix prices, which then only a populist government, interfering with individual rights, can 'fix' for the supposed ‘betterment-of-all’! (Remember, for example, St. Catharines MPP Liberal Jim Bradley ragging on about ‘gasoline price fixing’ when he was in opposition?! See: Jim Bradley's criticisms in opposition foreshadowed duplicity in government)
Health care is “free” in Canada (!), or so Michael Moore-ish Sickos preach and lead others to believe (just don’t ask about taxes). This is their “perception”! And what of the trade-offs in the future, the associated costs down the road?? Well, the medicaristas are counting on the consumer to politically “underweigh” those very real medical risks!! This is what happens when lefties want to make decisions for you on your behalf, for ‘your own good’! DO NOT MENTION the associated waiting-lists, shortages, new central-planning fixes for old central-planning blunders, the resultant unaccountability of anyone for anything down the road … this aspect of single-payer, universal health-care is not broached when the medicaristas are making their pitches! Do not ask what eventually is “perceived” to be “normal” under a medicarista-run monopoly! There is no “trickery” when it comes to single-payer health-care, is there?!
Our local Liberal Jim Bradley made a lot of noise in the past, agitating for political power, by condemning his pet boogey-man, 'U.S. style health-care'; yet what responsibility does Jim Bradley now shoulder when hundreds of C. Diff patients have been found to have died in his secretive, no-choice health monster; a situation which possibly could have been reduced or avoided had Bradley’s ‘non-U.S Style’ (!) system been accountable to patients, and not just for perpetuating itself?
Conveniently (for Liberals) there is no market mechanism to challenge the Liberal government-run health monopoly’s standards, practices, funding decisions, or 'value-received-for money-spent' comparisons. Conveniently, the Liberals prevent any oversight, such as from the Ombudsman’s office, from investigating their health-care actions.
Questioning such things is anti-Canadian, anti-Tommy Douglas, anti central-planning heresy.
How dare we have the unmitigated audacity to ask Jim Bradley and his Liberals to stand to account for their health-monopoly’s performance?!
How dare we even ask whether the question is even 'value-received-for-money-spent' anymore, anyway – that would apply if you are talking about a government that understands the enormity of its responsibility when it decides to ban an individual’s health-care choices by maintaining a legislated monopoly.
They just don’t get that TRUST has to be there! This medicare monopoly is only as good as the belief that it would do what was promised – and it is not doing that at all. The McCreith/Holmes constitutional court challenge against McGuinty's Liberal government health monopoly is an indication of this.
The question now should be 'what is the value-PERCEIVED-for-the-money-spent'? How, or why, should we trust the government anymore with such an important individual liberty as health-care? They have pandered to us the PERCEPTION that only a health-care monopoly will be our saviour, our mythical heaven on earth. They FIXED (manipulated!) the competitive nature of the health-care 'market', because competition was distasteful (not to mention disruptive!) to the socialist tenets underpinning their grand supply/demand-fixing scheme.
Yet, when it fails, suddenly Jim Bradley is no-where to be found! He is unavailable to drone on about his Liberal health-care duplicity. James J. Bradley and the other Liberal McGuintyites have retreated into their ideological shells. No questions need be answered. All you need to do is trust the Liberals. You need no substantiation.
This is not just a "sad medical system" we have, it’s an "extra" sad Liberal government which perpetuates it; it’s a sad, secretive Liberal government where the word ‘normal’ is synonymous with barely-acceptable; where an Ombudsman's scrutiny, when patients need it most, is suppressed by frightened Liberals.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Stealth MPP Jim Bradley's cloaking device - it's not science fiction anymore!
R. Bobak wrote in “If only CanGro was a cricket club…”, (St. Catharines Standard, May 2, 2008):
“Re: How the deal went sour, The Standard, April 26.
I was hoping to read, in The Standard's report on the CanGro fiasco, local MPP Jim Bradley's explanation as to why his Liberal government decided, as fruit farmers Bill and Kim Duffin said, to walk away from helping them save the plant.
Many people in Bradley's St. Catharines riding work there, so presumably he would have thoroughly explained how hard he worked to get a deal done on behalf of his constituents.
No such luck. Neither did we get anything from Liberal Economic Development and Trade Minister Sandra Pupatello, who disappeared - ironically - to China on a trade mission.
I hope Pupatello returned with some great trade deals on Chinese fruit imports!
If political ineffectiveness was an Olympic team sport, Bradley's Liberals would be gold-medal champions. Dalton McGuinty's new Liberal theme-song should be an off-key rendition of "Good things used to grow, in On-ta-ri-o . . . "
If only CanGro had been a cricket club, the Liberals already would have gladly handed over a million or two - and that's with no questions asked.”
It looks like the Liberal team sport also includes relay-type pass-the-hot-file contests, where if you ask one MPP about an issue, he’ll pass it onto another, but the question never really gets answered.
Jim Bradley has vanished when it comes time to explain how his Liberal’s grandiose greenbelt legislation contributed to the loss of the CanGro fruit cannery and its 150 jobs. What, just because CanGro is in Kim Craitor’s riding next door, Bradley is suddenly bereft of having anything of substance to say to HIS OWN constituents??!! (see Good things USED to grow, in On - ta - ri - o! )
Bradley has left it to Craitor to fumble around with the questions surrounding the Niagara Health System’s “review of reviews” yet, the mortality-rate in the St. Catharines hospital (third highest in Canada, according to a Nov.2007 CIHI study) - which is in Bradley’s backyard - remains unexplained. (see Jim "Crackpot" Bradley's Liberal realism)
As I outlined in Jim Bradley's Smoggy-Bottom Grits , Bradley, in opposition, would even travel outside of the country to politically agitate against the sitting government, if he thought he could score some brownie points.
Now, Bradley is MIA, missing in action, regardless of whether an issue pertains solely to his own riding, or is more general in scope (which is more often the case, anyway).
We’ve heard more of Bradley’s promises and bluster about Go/trains/buses while he was in opposition, than when he was in government. (See: Go Train to Niagara runs into Liberal fog)
We’ve heard from Bradley about how supposedly-divisive and destructive publicly-funded faith-based schools are, while an extremely successful one sits in his own riding. (See: Jim Bradley's faith-based two-face)
We've heard Bradley bleat about controlling gas prices, when prices were half of what they are today, yet now, Bradley - the Transportation Minister (!) - has nothing to say about that! (Liberal Jim Bradley's deception on gasoline prices)
We’ve heard that the Niagara Health System had to cancel 190 surgeries recently, yet we heard nothing from Bradley as Ontarians are forced to travel to the U.S. for treatment. (See: Sadistic Liberal health-care in Ontario)
Bradley has been sitting as a St. Catharines MPP for thirty years, and was on city council even before that; now we hear that St. Catharines is being blamed by Bradley’s MTO for delaying a local QEW-emergency traffic plan? What’s Bradley been doing about that for three decades? Jim Bradley has become a smug and arrogant member of an unresponsive Liberal government! He's the vaporous, elusive, stealth MPP - we know he's hovering nearby, yet he's hidden and untouchable!
On so many issues, Liberal Jim Bradley’s silence is becoming glaringly conspicuous.
“Re: How the deal went sour, The Standard, April 26.
I was hoping to read, in The Standard's report on the CanGro fiasco, local MPP Jim Bradley's explanation as to why his Liberal government decided, as fruit farmers Bill and Kim Duffin said, to walk away from helping them save the plant.
Many people in Bradley's St. Catharines riding work there, so presumably he would have thoroughly explained how hard he worked to get a deal done on behalf of his constituents.
No such luck. Neither did we get anything from Liberal Economic Development and Trade Minister Sandra Pupatello, who disappeared - ironically - to China on a trade mission.
I hope Pupatello returned with some great trade deals on Chinese fruit imports!
If political ineffectiveness was an Olympic team sport, Bradley's Liberals would be gold-medal champions. Dalton McGuinty's new Liberal theme-song should be an off-key rendition of "Good things used to grow, in On-ta-ri-o . . . "
If only CanGro had been a cricket club, the Liberals already would have gladly handed over a million or two - and that's with no questions asked.”
It looks like the Liberal team sport also includes relay-type pass-the-hot-file contests, where if you ask one MPP about an issue, he’ll pass it onto another, but the question never really gets answered.
Jim Bradley has vanished when it comes time to explain how his Liberal’s grandiose greenbelt legislation contributed to the loss of the CanGro fruit cannery and its 150 jobs. What, just because CanGro is in Kim Craitor’s riding next door, Bradley is suddenly bereft of having anything of substance to say to HIS OWN constituents??!! (see Good things USED to grow, in On - ta - ri - o! )
Bradley has left it to Craitor to fumble around with the questions surrounding the Niagara Health System’s “review of reviews” yet, the mortality-rate in the St. Catharines hospital (third highest in Canada, according to a Nov.2007 CIHI study) - which is in Bradley’s backyard - remains unexplained. (see Jim "Crackpot" Bradley's Liberal realism)
As I outlined in Jim Bradley's Smoggy-Bottom Grits , Bradley, in opposition, would even travel outside of the country to politically agitate against the sitting government, if he thought he could score some brownie points.
Now, Bradley is MIA, missing in action, regardless of whether an issue pertains solely to his own riding, or is more general in scope (which is more often the case, anyway).
We’ve heard more of Bradley’s promises and bluster about Go/trains/buses while he was in opposition, than when he was in government. (See: Go Train to Niagara runs into Liberal fog)
We’ve heard from Bradley about how supposedly-divisive and destructive publicly-funded faith-based schools are, while an extremely successful one sits in his own riding. (See: Jim Bradley's faith-based two-face)
We've heard Bradley bleat about controlling gas prices, when prices were half of what they are today, yet now, Bradley - the Transportation Minister (!) - has nothing to say about that! (Liberal Jim Bradley's deception on gasoline prices)
We’ve heard that the Niagara Health System had to cancel 190 surgeries recently, yet we heard nothing from Bradley as Ontarians are forced to travel to the U.S. for treatment. (See: Sadistic Liberal health-care in Ontario)
Bradley has been sitting as a St. Catharines MPP for thirty years, and was on city council even before that; now we hear that St. Catharines is being blamed by Bradley’s MTO for delaying a local QEW-emergency traffic plan? What’s Bradley been doing about that for three decades? Jim Bradley has become a smug and arrogant member of an unresponsive Liberal government! He's the vaporous, elusive, stealth MPP - we know he's hovering nearby, yet he's hidden and untouchable!
On so many issues, Liberal Jim Bradley’s silence is becoming glaringly conspicuous.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Liberal Jim Bradley's deception on gasoline prices
In Oily Grits I asked whether Liberal Premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty was deceitful regarding his claims, when he was in opposition, that the Premier of Ontario has jurisdiction over the price of gasoline.
What about St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley – what was he saying about gas prices then?
In opposition, Jim Bradley also was blustering - a lot - about alleged price gouging and price fixing, claims which even then-MP Liberal Walt Lastewka said were groundless.
As Richard Brennan reported in “Motorists gouged by gasoline companies” (St. Catharines Standard, Aug.22, 1997):
“Greedy oil companies are once again gouging Ontario motorists and tourists and the province sits back and does nothing, a veteran Liberal MPP says.
"As thousands of tourists visit Ontario this week, they will be confronted with the same circumstances facing all motorists in our province: gas price gouging by the major oil companies," said St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley in the legislature Thursday.
He said it might be time the province did something about runaway gasoline prices by holding a legislative inquiry.” (Gasoline prices in St. Catharines at the time of the above story (Aug.1997) were reported at 62-63 cents per litre – half of today’s prices under the Liberals!! Jim was outraged then, in 1997 – but why isn’t he outraged at the “runaway” gas prices now!??) The report continued: “Bradley urged Bill Saunderson, economic and tourism minister and a self-made millionaire, to talk to corporate pals about the high gasoline prices or "are you going to continue to apologize for the big oil bosses?"”
Yet, is Jim Bradley talking to HIS corporate pals today?!
Why is Jim acting as an apologist for the big oil bosses today?!
Have Jim's governing Grits bothered to reduce their gasoline taxes (now at 14.6 cents per litre), or lower their outrageously burdensome 8% PST?
(By the way: You gotta love the totally unnecessary use of 'self-made millionaire' in the above story as a populist attempt to denigrate Saunderson … well done! No biased editorializing there, eh, Richard Brennan?!)
In response to Bradley's allegations, Andrew Lundy reported in “Gas prices not rigged, MP says”, (St. Catharines Standard , Aug.26, 1997):
“St. Catharines MP Walt Lastewka is deflecting a recent torrent of criticism over gasoline prices, saying there's no evidence the major oil companies are in cahoots to boost prices past the 60-cents-a- litre mark.
Lastewka, whose Liberal constituency office has received a string of angry phone calls in the past week, said yesterday federal studies looking at the oil industry have repeatedly "found no evidence to support allegations of price fixing, anti-competitive behavior or misleading advertising."”
Yet, since Ontario's Liberals gained power in 2003, have Bradley or McGuinty called for a legislative inquiry into the gas price increases which have occurred under their government??
Since 2003, Bradley has been Tourism minister, and now he’s Transport minister – yet what the hell has Bradley done about gas prices “as thousands of tourists visit Ontario” now, in 2008??!
In opposition, Bradley introduced a gas-price control bill, as the St. Catharines Standard reported in “Bradley aims bill at gas price gouging”, (Nov.19, 1999):
“St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley has introduced a private member's bill in the Ontario legislature in a bid to control gas pricing.
The Liberal's bill would prohibit large oil companies from undercutting small independent retailers, and calls for fines of up to $10,000 for violations.
Bradley challenged the government to give the bill quick passage.
"By protecting the independent retailer, this legislature, like some other provinces and many states in the U.S., can promote competition in the market and give consumers a break," he said.
Bradley said he introduced the legislation because of the government's failure to take meaningful action on price gouging.”
So, let's ask: where is Jim Bradley's bill now, in 2008??
Jim is now the Transportation Minister - in a majority Liberal government - and Jim has clearly ‘failed to take any meaningful action on price gouging’!! Why has Bradley's bill not resurfaced for nine years?
Is it because in reality, Bradley and his bill were just a load of hot air all along?
When gasoline reached 80 cents a litre, the St. Catharines Standard (Feb.13, 2003) reported :
“Short-term wholesale prices at big refineries and terminals have also risen due to the cold winter and tight crude oil market. But St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley, who doesn't remember gas ever being this expensive, doesn't buy Baily's explanation.
"There's obvious price fixing going on," Bradley said. While the price of crude oil is a factor, "every (gas station) raises the price the same amount at the same time.”
Again we see Liberal MPP Bradley still angling for us to buy his unsubstantiated "price-fixing" allegations… six years after Liberal MP Lastewka’s 1997 earlier comments to the contrary!
If Liberal MP Lastewka was wrong, why then hasn’t Liberal MPP Bradley done anything about it for eleven years??
Did the alleged “price-fixing” magically vanish when McGuinty's Liberals came to power, or is it rather that Bradley’s blustery accusations have vanished, and, that there never was any collusion? Was Bradley deceptive about price-fixing while in opposition, or is he being deceptive about it now, in government?
As for those trite Bradley-esque observations, such as ‘Bradley doesn’t remember gas ever being this expensive’…. oh, come on! So what?? In opposition, Jim was smugly outraged … but why isn’t anyone asking Jim Bradley if 'he remembers' gas being this expensive TODAY – under his watch??
-
In a Sept.16, 2005 St.Catharines Standard story written by Monique Beech ("Pump pain - Gas prices not falling as fast in Niagara as elsewhere") the Standard reporter did NOT EVEN MENTION local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's name, nor Bradley's years of previous lies about 'price fixing' and about 'Liberal gas price control'.
What about St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley – what was he saying about gas prices then?
In opposition, Jim Bradley also was blustering - a lot - about alleged price gouging and price fixing, claims which even then-MP Liberal Walt Lastewka said were groundless.
As Richard Brennan reported in “Motorists gouged by gasoline companies” (St. Catharines Standard, Aug.22, 1997):
“Greedy oil companies are once again gouging Ontario motorists and tourists and the province sits back and does nothing, a veteran Liberal MPP says.
"As thousands of tourists visit Ontario this week, they will be confronted with the same circumstances facing all motorists in our province: gas price gouging by the major oil companies," said St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley in the legislature Thursday.
He said it might be time the province did something about runaway gasoline prices by holding a legislative inquiry.” (Gasoline prices in St. Catharines at the time of the above story (Aug.1997) were reported at 62-63 cents per litre – half of today’s prices under the Liberals!! Jim was outraged then, in 1997 – but why isn’t he outraged at the “runaway” gas prices now!??) The report continued: “Bradley urged Bill Saunderson, economic and tourism minister and a self-made millionaire, to talk to corporate pals about the high gasoline prices or "are you going to continue to apologize for the big oil bosses?"”
Yet, is Jim Bradley talking to HIS corporate pals today?!
Why is Jim acting as an apologist for the big oil bosses today?!
Have Jim's governing Grits bothered to reduce their gasoline taxes (now at 14.6 cents per litre), or lower their outrageously burdensome 8% PST?
(By the way: You gotta love the totally unnecessary use of 'self-made millionaire' in the above story as a populist attempt to denigrate Saunderson … well done! No biased editorializing there, eh, Richard Brennan?!)
In response to Bradley's allegations, Andrew Lundy reported in “Gas prices not rigged, MP says”, (St. Catharines Standard , Aug.26, 1997):
“St. Catharines MP Walt Lastewka is deflecting a recent torrent of criticism over gasoline prices, saying there's no evidence the major oil companies are in cahoots to boost prices past the 60-cents-a- litre mark.
Lastewka, whose Liberal constituency office has received a string of angry phone calls in the past week, said yesterday federal studies looking at the oil industry have repeatedly "found no evidence to support allegations of price fixing, anti-competitive behavior or misleading advertising."”
Yet, since Ontario's Liberals gained power in 2003, have Bradley or McGuinty called for a legislative inquiry into the gas price increases which have occurred under their government??
Since 2003, Bradley has been Tourism minister, and now he’s Transport minister – yet what the hell has Bradley done about gas prices “as thousands of tourists visit Ontario” now, in 2008??!
In opposition, Bradley introduced a gas-price control bill, as the St. Catharines Standard reported in “Bradley aims bill at gas price gouging”, (Nov.19, 1999):
“St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley has introduced a private member's bill in the Ontario legislature in a bid to control gas pricing.
The Liberal's bill would prohibit large oil companies from undercutting small independent retailers, and calls for fines of up to $10,000 for violations.
Bradley challenged the government to give the bill quick passage.
"By protecting the independent retailer, this legislature, like some other provinces and many states in the U.S., can promote competition in the market and give consumers a break," he said.
Bradley said he introduced the legislation because of the government's failure to take meaningful action on price gouging.”
So, let's ask: where is Jim Bradley's bill now, in 2008??
Jim is now the Transportation Minister - in a majority Liberal government - and Jim has clearly ‘failed to take any meaningful action on price gouging’!! Why has Bradley's bill not resurfaced for nine years?
Is it because in reality, Bradley and his bill were just a load of hot air all along?
When gasoline reached 80 cents a litre, the St. Catharines Standard (Feb.13, 2003) reported :
“Short-term wholesale prices at big refineries and terminals have also risen due to the cold winter and tight crude oil market. But St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley, who doesn't remember gas ever being this expensive, doesn't buy Baily's explanation.
"There's obvious price fixing going on," Bradley said. While the price of crude oil is a factor, "every (gas station) raises the price the same amount at the same time.”
Again we see Liberal MPP Bradley still angling for us to buy his unsubstantiated "price-fixing" allegations… six years after Liberal MP Lastewka’s 1997 earlier comments to the contrary!
If Liberal MP Lastewka was wrong, why then hasn’t Liberal MPP Bradley done anything about it for eleven years??
Did the alleged “price-fixing” magically vanish when McGuinty's Liberals came to power, or is it rather that Bradley’s blustery accusations have vanished, and, that there never was any collusion? Was Bradley deceptive about price-fixing while in opposition, or is he being deceptive about it now, in government?
As for those trite Bradley-esque observations, such as ‘Bradley doesn’t remember gas ever being this expensive’…. oh, come on! So what?? In opposition, Jim was smugly outraged … but why isn’t anyone asking Jim Bradley if 'he remembers' gas being this expensive TODAY – under his watch??
-
In a Sept.16, 2005 St.Catharines Standard story written by Monique Beech ("Pump pain - Gas prices not falling as fast in Niagara as elsewhere") the Standard reporter did NOT EVEN MENTION local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's name, nor Bradley's years of previous lies about 'price fixing' and about 'Liberal gas price control'.
Bradley's previous positions on this specific issue were completely relevant to the story - yet, Bradley was purposefully hidden in a Cone of Silence by his biased friends in the press!!
Are we to believe that this reporter Beech just plain forgot to talk with Ole Jimmy about any of that!!hahaha!!!!
Beech reported that the average gasoline price in Niagara region was about 1.10 per litre, but it varied - in Beamsville it was 1.02. Beech also reported statistics that in 2004, the average price in the city of St.Catharines was 78.9. So, even though gasoline prices went up over 20 cents per litre during the year - during Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's watch - reporter Beech and the St.Catharines Standard protected Jim Bradley from scrutiny.
WHY??? (Why? Because in 2005, Jim Bradley and his Liberals were now in government, that's WHY. Details of Bradley's BS were no longer important!)
The Standard made no mention at all regarding Bradley's gasoline price lies in this Sept.16, 2005 story - yet, in their earlier Feb.13, 2003 story, the Standard made damn sure to report how their best boy Bradley "doesn’t remember gas ever being this expensive" !!!
WHY was Bradley trotted out for one story, but not another? (Why? Because in 2003, Jim Bradley was in opposition, and the Standard was helping out in his re-election campaign! Anything to make Liberal Jimmy look good.)
*
Are we to believe that this reporter Beech just plain forgot to talk with Ole Jimmy about any of that!!hahaha!!!!
Beech reported that the average gasoline price in Niagara region was about 1.10 per litre, but it varied - in Beamsville it was 1.02. Beech also reported statistics that in 2004, the average price in the city of St.Catharines was 78.9. So, even though gasoline prices went up over 20 cents per litre during the year - during Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's watch - reporter Beech and the St.Catharines Standard protected Jim Bradley from scrutiny.
WHY??? (Why? Because in 2005, Jim Bradley and his Liberals were now in government, that's WHY. Details of Bradley's BS were no longer important!)
The Standard made no mention at all regarding Bradley's gasoline price lies in this Sept.16, 2005 story - yet, in their earlier Feb.13, 2003 story, the Standard made damn sure to report how their best boy Bradley "doesn’t remember gas ever being this expensive" !!!
WHY was Bradley trotted out for one story, but not another? (Why? Because in 2003, Jim Bradley was in opposition, and the Standard was helping out in his re-election campaign! Anything to make Liberal Jimmy look good.)
*
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Oily Grits
Keith Howell wrote in “Give Northlander two more years”, (North Bay Nugget, Mar.1, 2000):
“Liberal leader wants `genuine effort' to revive passenger train before killing it.
WEST NIPISSING - Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty wants the Northlander passenger train to run for another two years in a final attempt to make it viable.
"I think there should be a genuine effort made to revive it. It simply cannot survive as it is," McGuinty said in an interview Tuesday.
"It has to be transformed into a viable, attractive mode of transportation or it is going to go the way of the dodo. There will be no new lease on life given beyond that unless there has been an increase in ridership," McGuinty said.
The Liberal leader was at Club Calumet in Sturgeon Falls for a speech to about 100 party faithful at a fund-raising dinner. Earlier in the day, he and fellow Grit MPPs David Ramsay (Timiskaming- Cochrane) and Michael Gravelle (Thunder Bay-Superior North) hosted the first stop on a fact-finding tour about Ontario's transportation needs.
"One problem they have is low ridership. I would like to see some kind of proposals put forward by the community," McGuinty said.
Ramsay, who accompanied his leader and Gravelle to Sturgeon Falls, said it is time for the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC) to "reinvent" the Northlander.
He suggested getting the private sector involved with the Northlander, perhaps with concepts such as casino cars and snowmobile cars.
"It needs some entrepreneurial, private-sector partnerships," Ramsay said.
ONTC chairman Dick Grant said recently the current six-day-a- week passenger train service has an operating deficit of about $4.2 million annually.
After public hearings into passenger rail service last fall, the ONTC gave the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines a choice of two recommendations - end the train service and replace it with buses; or continue the service on the existing level or reduced schedule, possibly three days a week.
The ONTC no longer wants to subsidize the service through its other operations and wants the province to decide the Northlander's fate.
As for his thoughts on the gasoline crisis, McGuinty recommended rescinding the $37 vehicle registration in Northern Ontario to compensate for the greater traveling distances.
"They (Ontario government) should call off that dog-and-pony show (Ontario oil and gasoline price hearings), which is serving no purpose other than to point a finger at the federal government. The fact is the province has jurisdiction over pricing," he said.
Premier Mike Harris has three choices, McGuinty said.
"He can regulate gas prices; he can cut gasoline taxes, which are about 15 cents a litre, or he can stop complaining. I wouldn't close the door on a reduction in the gasoline tax, understanding that at the same time there is also a demand for money in public transit."
McGuinty stopped short of supporting a gasoline tax cut, though.
"I'm just saying it's not something I would rule out. But I would stop pointing provincial guns at the federal government."
After hearing presentations in Timmins, McGuinty said one idea the government might look at is providing greater infrastructure and trails for the burgeoning snowmobile industry.
Ramsay came away from the Timmins meeting even more convinced either Highway 11 or 17 should be four-laned across Northern Ontario, he said.”
*
On Apr.3, 2008 there was this exchange in the Ontario legislature regarding the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission:
“Mr. John O'Toole: My question is to the Premier. You should know that the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission has not published an annual report for the entire term of your government, since 2003. In fact, the last statement was in 2003 and more recently-it is described as "the site is under construction." Yet, Premier, it is your government that ran on those very themes of openness and the principle of accountability.
Premier, in the interest of this accountability, what will your government do to ensure that the Ontario Northland Transportation System delivers at least one annual report in your term?
Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Transportation.
Hon. James J. Bradley: Thank you very much. I will share this with the Minister for Northern Development and Mines, who is responsible.
I tend to agree with the member that whenever we can it's valuable to have that kind of information available, not only to members of the Legislature but the general public. I know that when they have a lot of activities to undertake, sometimes the one that is not put on the front burner is the one of developing an annual report, and I think that is valuable information. So when I'm in my discussions with the minister, I will let him know, first of all, that you have asked the question in this House about this important matter and that it would be valuable to gather this information together as soon as possible. I know the member is, as all members of the House would be, concerned that reports be provided in a timely fashion. I'll do my very best to see that happens.
Mr. John O'Toole: Again, to the Premier, and the minister as well can respond if he wishes. It's obvious that that is a real surprise here, just by the Premier not having any notes on it at all and the Minister of Transportation going to refer it to a minister who's not here.
This is a serious, serious issue. In fact, it begs a larger question. Something you should know is that the sunshine list published yesterday has 33 employees from this very commission on the list making $100,000 or more. If this isn't about accountability-
The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I would ask that the member stick to his initial question, which dealt with an annual report from Ontario Northland.
Mr. John O'Toole: Well, Ontario Northland has a report out there. The only one that's available, Mr. Speaker, is accounting that there are 33 employees on the $100,000 list, and yet that commission is funded by the province of Ontario. Premier, what are you going to do to have some openness and accountability in your government when you've got spending going through the roof and services being delayed?
Hon. James J. Bradley: I wasn't aware that the question was designed to embarrass members of the public service, as the ongoing attack of my friends in the opposite benches who continually-and I know this embarrasses the former Minister of Health, a good friend of mine from the Waterloo area, to hear that the party is swinging to the right one more time and is attacking the public service of this province by trying to embarrass them.
I would note that all members of the Legislature happen to be on the list to which he makes a reference. So I guess firing those stones around from those of us who are in glass houses can be difficult. But I want to tell the member this: The financial statements that are audited by the Auditor General are indeed on their website. I invite the member to go the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission website to look carefully at the audited statements at that time. They're available to the Auditor General, and they're available to the member.”
*
Eight years ago Liberal Dalton McGuinty was considering killing the Northlander train. (Why…wasn’t smog and GHG a problem, which would be solved by more – not fewer – trains, at whatever cost? That’s the story McGuinty and Bradley were peddling in Niagara about the GO train at the time!)
Now, the ONTC apparently has 33 employees in the sunshine list – and all Bradley can do is make some smarmy-assed, pointless remark about “the former Minister of Health, a good friend of mine from the Waterloo area” ? Wha…?!
What the FLICK, Jim?! Just answer the FLICKING question! Has ONTC become vastly profitable since McGuinty wanted it killed off? Has the McGuinty government 'revived' , 'increased ridership', and 'transformed' the railroad into a 'viable and attractive mode of transportation, or are they sheilding a 'dodo'?
Is Bradley convinced, as David Ramsey was then, that either Highway 11 or 17 should be four-laned across Northern Ontario?
It was also interesting to note Dalton McGuinty, in Howell’s 2000 story above, lecturing Premier Harris on the price of gas:
“The fact is the province has jurisdiction over pricing," he said.
Premier Mike Harris has three choices, McGuinty said.
"He can regulate gas prices; he can cut gasoline taxes, which are about 15 cents a litre, or he can stop complaining. I wouldn't close the door on a reduction in the gasoline tax, understanding that at the same time there is also a demand for money in public transit."
McGuinty stopped short of supporting a gasoline tax cut, though.
"I'm just saying it's not something I would rule out. But I would stop pointing provincial guns at the federal government."
McGuinty said back then that the premier "can regulate gas prices".
(Jim Bradley even introduced a private member’s bill to regulate gasoline prices, (see St. Catharines Standard story, Nov.19, 1999) where Bradley introduces his 'gas-price control' bill, because, according to Bradley, of the (then-Conservative) government's 'failure to take meaningful action on price gouging'!!)
So here we are - in Apr 2008 - and Bradley's Liberals have done sweet-FLICK-all themselves!! In the last FIVE years, what 'meaningful action' have the Liberals taken, Jim?!)
So let’s look at what Dalton McGuinty – now Premier – said in the Legislature (from Hansard) on Apr.7, 2008:
“Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I can understand where the official opposition is coming from. They would like Ontarians to believe that we somehow have control over the price of oil, but they don't believe that. They think that we influence the value of the dollar, but Ontarians don't believe that. They would like Ontarians to believe that somehow we influence the vigour of the US economy. Ontarians don't believe that either.”
Flicking two-faced Liberals! Who's leading who to believe what?? Who was once leading Ontarians to believe that the Premier somehow does have control over the price of gas?
Now, in 2008, McGuinty pretends he CAN’T regulate the price of oil – as he ever-so-righteously claimed was possible about gas in 2000!?!
McGuinty clearly said then that the “province has jurisdiction”!
Mcguinty clearly said then that the Ontario Premier – who is now…McGuinty… “can regulate gas prices”; “can cut gasoline taxes”!!
Or will Dalton defer to the minutiae-distinction that he was referring then to the price of gasoline, and not specifically the price of oil? (as if one can exist in a vaccuum without influencing the other, and which - in any case - McGuinty, as Premier, has done nothing about! This is similar to the vague 'is it a GO /bus/train/commuter/tourist/weekend/weekday' transit service that the Liberals keep threatening to bring to Niagara)
Was Dalton McGuinty lying about gas prices in March 2000, or is he lying about oil prices in the Legislature now?
*
“Liberal leader wants `genuine effort' to revive passenger train before killing it.
WEST NIPISSING - Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty wants the Northlander passenger train to run for another two years in a final attempt to make it viable.
"I think there should be a genuine effort made to revive it. It simply cannot survive as it is," McGuinty said in an interview Tuesday.
"It has to be transformed into a viable, attractive mode of transportation or it is going to go the way of the dodo. There will be no new lease on life given beyond that unless there has been an increase in ridership," McGuinty said.
The Liberal leader was at Club Calumet in Sturgeon Falls for a speech to about 100 party faithful at a fund-raising dinner. Earlier in the day, he and fellow Grit MPPs David Ramsay (Timiskaming- Cochrane) and Michael Gravelle (Thunder Bay-Superior North) hosted the first stop on a fact-finding tour about Ontario's transportation needs.
"One problem they have is low ridership. I would like to see some kind of proposals put forward by the community," McGuinty said.
Ramsay, who accompanied his leader and Gravelle to Sturgeon Falls, said it is time for the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC) to "reinvent" the Northlander.
He suggested getting the private sector involved with the Northlander, perhaps with concepts such as casino cars and snowmobile cars.
"It needs some entrepreneurial, private-sector partnerships," Ramsay said.
ONTC chairman Dick Grant said recently the current six-day-a- week passenger train service has an operating deficit of about $4.2 million annually.
After public hearings into passenger rail service last fall, the ONTC gave the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines a choice of two recommendations - end the train service and replace it with buses; or continue the service on the existing level or reduced schedule, possibly three days a week.
The ONTC no longer wants to subsidize the service through its other operations and wants the province to decide the Northlander's fate.
As for his thoughts on the gasoline crisis, McGuinty recommended rescinding the $37 vehicle registration in Northern Ontario to compensate for the greater traveling distances.
"They (Ontario government) should call off that dog-and-pony show (Ontario oil and gasoline price hearings), which is serving no purpose other than to point a finger at the federal government. The fact is the province has jurisdiction over pricing," he said.
Premier Mike Harris has three choices, McGuinty said.
"He can regulate gas prices; he can cut gasoline taxes, which are about 15 cents a litre, or he can stop complaining. I wouldn't close the door on a reduction in the gasoline tax, understanding that at the same time there is also a demand for money in public transit."
McGuinty stopped short of supporting a gasoline tax cut, though.
"I'm just saying it's not something I would rule out. But I would stop pointing provincial guns at the federal government."
After hearing presentations in Timmins, McGuinty said one idea the government might look at is providing greater infrastructure and trails for the burgeoning snowmobile industry.
Ramsay came away from the Timmins meeting even more convinced either Highway 11 or 17 should be four-laned across Northern Ontario, he said.”
*
On Apr.3, 2008 there was this exchange in the Ontario legislature regarding the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission:
“Mr. John O'Toole: My question is to the Premier. You should know that the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission has not published an annual report for the entire term of your government, since 2003. In fact, the last statement was in 2003 and more recently-it is described as "the site is under construction." Yet, Premier, it is your government that ran on those very themes of openness and the principle of accountability.
Premier, in the interest of this accountability, what will your government do to ensure that the Ontario Northland Transportation System delivers at least one annual report in your term?
Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Transportation.
Hon. James J. Bradley: Thank you very much. I will share this with the Minister for Northern Development and Mines, who is responsible.
I tend to agree with the member that whenever we can it's valuable to have that kind of information available, not only to members of the Legislature but the general public. I know that when they have a lot of activities to undertake, sometimes the one that is not put on the front burner is the one of developing an annual report, and I think that is valuable information. So when I'm in my discussions with the minister, I will let him know, first of all, that you have asked the question in this House about this important matter and that it would be valuable to gather this information together as soon as possible. I know the member is, as all members of the House would be, concerned that reports be provided in a timely fashion. I'll do my very best to see that happens.
Mr. John O'Toole: Again, to the Premier, and the minister as well can respond if he wishes. It's obvious that that is a real surprise here, just by the Premier not having any notes on it at all and the Minister of Transportation going to refer it to a minister who's not here.
This is a serious, serious issue. In fact, it begs a larger question. Something you should know is that the sunshine list published yesterday has 33 employees from this very commission on the list making $100,000 or more. If this isn't about accountability-
The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I would ask that the member stick to his initial question, which dealt with an annual report from Ontario Northland.
Mr. John O'Toole: Well, Ontario Northland has a report out there. The only one that's available, Mr. Speaker, is accounting that there are 33 employees on the $100,000 list, and yet that commission is funded by the province of Ontario. Premier, what are you going to do to have some openness and accountability in your government when you've got spending going through the roof and services being delayed?
Hon. James J. Bradley: I wasn't aware that the question was designed to embarrass members of the public service, as the ongoing attack of my friends in the opposite benches who continually-and I know this embarrasses the former Minister of Health, a good friend of mine from the Waterloo area, to hear that the party is swinging to the right one more time and is attacking the public service of this province by trying to embarrass them.
I would note that all members of the Legislature happen to be on the list to which he makes a reference. So I guess firing those stones around from those of us who are in glass houses can be difficult. But I want to tell the member this: The financial statements that are audited by the Auditor General are indeed on their website. I invite the member to go the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission website to look carefully at the audited statements at that time. They're available to the Auditor General, and they're available to the member.”
*
Eight years ago Liberal Dalton McGuinty was considering killing the Northlander train. (Why…wasn’t smog and GHG a problem, which would be solved by more – not fewer – trains, at whatever cost? That’s the story McGuinty and Bradley were peddling in Niagara about the GO train at the time!)
Now, the ONTC apparently has 33 employees in the sunshine list – and all Bradley can do is make some smarmy-assed, pointless remark about “the former Minister of Health, a good friend of mine from the Waterloo area” ? Wha…?!
What the FLICK, Jim?! Just answer the FLICKING question! Has ONTC become vastly profitable since McGuinty wanted it killed off? Has the McGuinty government 'revived' , 'increased ridership', and 'transformed' the railroad into a 'viable and attractive mode of transportation, or are they sheilding a 'dodo'?
Is Bradley convinced, as David Ramsey was then, that either Highway 11 or 17 should be four-laned across Northern Ontario?
It was also interesting to note Dalton McGuinty, in Howell’s 2000 story above, lecturing Premier Harris on the price of gas:
“The fact is the province has jurisdiction over pricing," he said.
Premier Mike Harris has three choices, McGuinty said.
"He can regulate gas prices; he can cut gasoline taxes, which are about 15 cents a litre, or he can stop complaining. I wouldn't close the door on a reduction in the gasoline tax, understanding that at the same time there is also a demand for money in public transit."
McGuinty stopped short of supporting a gasoline tax cut, though.
"I'm just saying it's not something I would rule out. But I would stop pointing provincial guns at the federal government."
McGuinty said back then that the premier "can regulate gas prices".
(Jim Bradley even introduced a private member’s bill to regulate gasoline prices, (see St. Catharines Standard story, Nov.19, 1999) where Bradley introduces his 'gas-price control' bill, because, according to Bradley, of the (then-Conservative) government's 'failure to take meaningful action on price gouging'!!)
So here we are - in Apr 2008 - and Bradley's Liberals have done sweet-FLICK-all themselves!! In the last FIVE years, what 'meaningful action' have the Liberals taken, Jim?!)
So let’s look at what Dalton McGuinty – now Premier – said in the Legislature (from Hansard) on Apr.7, 2008:
“Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I can understand where the official opposition is coming from. They would like Ontarians to believe that we somehow have control over the price of oil, but they don't believe that. They think that we influence the value of the dollar, but Ontarians don't believe that. They would like Ontarians to believe that somehow we influence the vigour of the US economy. Ontarians don't believe that either.”
Flicking two-faced Liberals! Who's leading who to believe what?? Who was once leading Ontarians to believe that the Premier somehow does have control over the price of gas?
Now, in 2008, McGuinty pretends he CAN’T regulate the price of oil – as he ever-so-righteously claimed was possible about gas in 2000!?!
McGuinty clearly said then that the “province has jurisdiction”!
Mcguinty clearly said then that the Ontario Premier – who is now…McGuinty… “can regulate gas prices”; “can cut gasoline taxes”!!
Or will Dalton defer to the minutiae-distinction that he was referring then to the price of gasoline, and not specifically the price of oil? (as if one can exist in a vaccuum without influencing the other, and which - in any case - McGuinty, as Premier, has done nothing about! This is similar to the vague 'is it a GO /bus/train/commuter/tourist/weekend/weekday' transit service that the Liberals keep threatening to bring to Niagara)
Was Dalton McGuinty lying about gas prices in March 2000, or is he lying about oil prices in the Legislature now?
*
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Oil@$100US: Will Bradley control gas prices?
Reports in today's papers say that Jim Bradley's GO Transit will almost certainly suffer a partial strike on Jan.7. What will Jim do...settle with his union buddies, or will he cause commuters to take to the roads? Stay tuned. Oil hit $100US a barrel yesterday, prompting speculation of higher pump prices. Will Bradley resurrect his suddenly-dormant-once-elected gasoline pricing control scheme? After all, he said it's a provincial matter.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Liberal said gasoline prices not rigged
The same week the Gomery Commission reported on one of Canada’s worst political scandals, Niagara This Week chose to focus its Nov. 4, 2005 editorial on probing gas companies: “Once and for all, Canadians need to know if these oil companies are getting fat at our expense.” But, how many times should “once and for all” take?
The Conference Board of Canada, after a 10-year, 16 Canadian city study, concluded there was no evidence of price gouging. Ottawa’s federal Competition Bureau also probed this issue five times since 1990, each time finding no evidence of price collusion, noting that regulating gas prices is actually a provincial, not federal, matter. Ontario Liberal Premier Mr. McGuinty, while merrily collecting his gas tax portion, says he can’t do anything because we’re “at the mercy of international forces”.
A cynic might point out that after a dozen years in office, Liberal MP Walt Lastewka’s sudden interest to fight big oil is a red-herring ploy to deflect the post-Gomery anger Niagarans justifiably feel towards Liberal corruption.
Why, in 1999, when Ontario’s provincial Conservatives supported federal Liberal Dan McTeague’s anti gas-gouging bill, did Mr. Lastewka help quash it?
When Mr. Lastewka stated in an Aug. 26, 1997 St. Catharines Standard column headlined “Gas prices not rigged” that there is “no evidence to support allegations of price fixing, anti-competitive behavior, or misleading advertising”, were we supposed to believe him then? Or, when he tells Niagara This Week on Nov. 4 2005 of his “suspicions that in crisis situations, real or artificial, the oil companies may be price gouging for profit”, are we supposed to believe him now!?
Oh, and let’s not forget that in 1997 gas prices were at a then-shocking 60 cents per litre. When Mr. Lastewka now warns of a “recession caused by the doubling of energy prices”, as he does in his Fall 2005 report, he overlooks that they already had substantially increased during his watch.
At what point of the oil oligopoly’s supply and demand cycle will Mr. Lastewka begin to search for price gouging, predatory pricing, price collusion, too much profit, or not enough losses? Should we ignore why local gas prices also decreased, post-Katrina? What have the Liberals been paying their competition watchdog to actually do for the last 12 years?
Mr. McTeague notes that taxes make up 40% of the price of gasoline. Obviously, to answer Niagara This Week’s editorial, Mr. Lastewka’s government, for one, is “getting fat at our expense”, reaping huge excise tax revenues per litre on gasoline, while also double-taxing us GST at the pump, and still charging a 1.5% “temporary deficit tax” even though now we’re in surplus. A Statscan study showed that if federal and provincial gas taxes were taken out of the equation, comparative gas prices were 25% lower in 1999 than in 1957. Yet, despite exploration and refining efficiencies, the government has mercilessly taxed the petroleum industry, all ostensibly for our own good. After all, someone’s got to pay for our great health care system, eh?
It’s rather ironic to hear Liberal politicians outraged about gas-gouging, while diverting attention from the colossal tax-gouging and outrageous waste they themselves have wrought upon our country. Billions of our hard-earned tax dollars were squandered on such Liberal fiascoes as the gun registry, the HRDC, the Airbus affair, the tainted blood scandal, and the sponsorship scandal.
Next thing you know, diehard Liberal rednecks will be clamouring for an energy policy to nationalize oil companies. Oh wait, that too sounds like another recently-sold, multi-billion tax-dollar subsidized Liberal fiasco, Petro Canada.
The Conference Board of Canada, after a 10-year, 16 Canadian city study, concluded there was no evidence of price gouging. Ottawa’s federal Competition Bureau also probed this issue five times since 1990, each time finding no evidence of price collusion, noting that regulating gas prices is actually a provincial, not federal, matter. Ontario Liberal Premier Mr. McGuinty, while merrily collecting his gas tax portion, says he can’t do anything because we’re “at the mercy of international forces”.
A cynic might point out that after a dozen years in office, Liberal MP Walt Lastewka’s sudden interest to fight big oil is a red-herring ploy to deflect the post-Gomery anger Niagarans justifiably feel towards Liberal corruption.
Why, in 1999, when Ontario’s provincial Conservatives supported federal Liberal Dan McTeague’s anti gas-gouging bill, did Mr. Lastewka help quash it?
When Mr. Lastewka stated in an Aug. 26, 1997 St. Catharines Standard column headlined “Gas prices not rigged” that there is “no evidence to support allegations of price fixing, anti-competitive behavior, or misleading advertising”, were we supposed to believe him then? Or, when he tells Niagara This Week on Nov. 4 2005 of his “suspicions that in crisis situations, real or artificial, the oil companies may be price gouging for profit”, are we supposed to believe him now!?
Oh, and let’s not forget that in 1997 gas prices were at a then-shocking 60 cents per litre. When Mr. Lastewka now warns of a “recession caused by the doubling of energy prices”, as he does in his Fall 2005 report, he overlooks that they already had substantially increased during his watch.
At what point of the oil oligopoly’s supply and demand cycle will Mr. Lastewka begin to search for price gouging, predatory pricing, price collusion, too much profit, or not enough losses? Should we ignore why local gas prices also decreased, post-Katrina? What have the Liberals been paying their competition watchdog to actually do for the last 12 years?
Mr. McTeague notes that taxes make up 40% of the price of gasoline. Obviously, to answer Niagara This Week’s editorial, Mr. Lastewka’s government, for one, is “getting fat at our expense”, reaping huge excise tax revenues per litre on gasoline, while also double-taxing us GST at the pump, and still charging a 1.5% “temporary deficit tax” even though now we’re in surplus. A Statscan study showed that if federal and provincial gas taxes were taken out of the equation, comparative gas prices were 25% lower in 1999 than in 1957. Yet, despite exploration and refining efficiencies, the government has mercilessly taxed the petroleum industry, all ostensibly for our own good. After all, someone’s got to pay for our great health care system, eh?
It’s rather ironic to hear Liberal politicians outraged about gas-gouging, while diverting attention from the colossal tax-gouging and outrageous waste they themselves have wrought upon our country. Billions of our hard-earned tax dollars were squandered on such Liberal fiascoes as the gun registry, the HRDC, the Airbus affair, the tainted blood scandal, and the sponsorship scandal.
Next thing you know, diehard Liberal rednecks will be clamouring for an energy policy to nationalize oil companies. Oh wait, that too sounds like another recently-sold, multi-billion tax-dollar subsidized Liberal fiasco, Petro Canada.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Transport minister Jim Bradley: hypocrite on gas prices; fails to deliver GO Transit to his own riding
Here’s what the Sault Ste. Marie Star wrote in “An inquiry into gas prices”, Aug. 23, 1997:
“A veteran Liberal MPP has called for a legislative inquiry into the price of gasoline in Ontario. Jim Bradley, a St. Catharines MPP, charged this week that greedy oil companies are once again gouging Ontario motorists and tourists and the province does nothing about it.
Bradley urged Bill Saunderson, economic and tourism minister and a self-made millionaire, to talk to corporate pals about the high gasoline prices or "are you going to continue to apologize for the big oil bosses."
There does seem to be a basis for an inquiry into Ontario gas prices. That inquiry could examine not only the legitimacy of the steep summer increase in these prices, but also whether there is any collusion in setting prices between the oil companies and whether there is predatory pricing that unfairly penalizes independent gasoline outlets.
Spokespersons for the major oil companies claim that it was the high demand for gasoline this summer and problems with production that drove the price up an average of seven cents a litre across the province. But, even if we accept this as justification for some increase in price, the hike seems excessive.
Rocco Ciancio of Petro Canada points out that, without the federal and provincial sales taxes, the price of a litre of gas is now actually closer to 32 cents a litre. That being the case, even an increase of four cents a litre by the oil companies meant an increase of at least 14 per cent, which is well above the rate of inflation and the level of recent increases in most consumer products.
As far as possible collusion is concerned, motorists can't ignore how the oil companies seem to have been in lockstep in introducing these price increases. Is there some kind of formal or informal agreement not to be competitive in setting gasoline prices? Ontario motorists have the right to know and an inquiry could ascertain just what the situation is.
What also could be the subject of examination is whether the independents are being badly treated by the oil companies, this depriving motorists of access to competitive outlets. MPP Bradley said the province can pass a predatory pricing law that would prohibit major companies from selling at a lower price to their own dealers and higher prices to independents. That sounds like a measure that should be passed and an inquiry could decide whether such law should be introduced.
Of course, when it comes to gasoline prices in the Sault, the concern here is not only that the oil companies should be jacking their prices up like this but that the provincial and federal governments continue to refuse to give this city some tax relief in regard to gas prices. This latter move would allow the Sault to better compete with the Michigan Sault and keep more of our residents from buying gas and shopping across the St. Mary's River."
*
Ten years ago, a smug “veteran Liberal MPP” we know as good ole Jim Bradley, was saying a lot of things.
[Even the Sault Star was helpfully providing pointless innuendo, editorializing about then tourism minister Bill Saunderson being “a self-made millionaire”. (What was the point of that? Of what flicking relevance is that?) Surely, now with over 30 years in political life, Jim Bradley has also earned a million dollars, and enjoys the special-status of an unlocked pension. Oh, and yes, it was ‘self-made’, in the sense that it came out of our tax pockets. What business has Jim Bradley ever been in?]
So, what is our wealthy Liberal Jim Bradley doing about gas prices today, in 2007?
The price at the pumps went up five cents overnight, from a buck a litre (Dec.12, 2007) to $1.05 (Dec. 13, 2007). Is Jim Bradley talking to his “corporate pals” today?..Is Jim Bradley tabling predatory pricing laws? Setting up inquries? Does Jim Bradley, now the transportation minister, have anything to say about greedy oil companies, and price-fixing and price-gouging and oil-barons, today?
Who’s the apologist for the big oil bosses now, Mr. Bradley?
Bradley once accused then premier Mike Harris: “He has made a lot of noise. He huffs and puffs and he blusters, but he simply does nothing.” (Hamilton Spectator, Oct.15, 1997). Sounds like Jim Bradley was actually describing himself. It was a lot of bluster even then, but it's outright B.S. now.
Speaking further of Bradley bluster: Today, Dec.13, 2007, the Liberals announced grand plans to dump 100 million dollars into GO Transit.
During the recent Oct. 2007 election, bait-and-switch Bradley even said the GO train is coming to Niagara.
So, what does Niagara get, out of a $100,000,000? New service? A new rail line?
Niagara got nada.
Thanks, Jim.
“A veteran Liberal MPP has called for a legislative inquiry into the price of gasoline in Ontario. Jim Bradley, a St. Catharines MPP, charged this week that greedy oil companies are once again gouging Ontario motorists and tourists and the province does nothing about it.
Bradley urged Bill Saunderson, economic and tourism minister and a self-made millionaire, to talk to corporate pals about the high gasoline prices or "are you going to continue to apologize for the big oil bosses."
There does seem to be a basis for an inquiry into Ontario gas prices. That inquiry could examine not only the legitimacy of the steep summer increase in these prices, but also whether there is any collusion in setting prices between the oil companies and whether there is predatory pricing that unfairly penalizes independent gasoline outlets.
Spokespersons for the major oil companies claim that it was the high demand for gasoline this summer and problems with production that drove the price up an average of seven cents a litre across the province. But, even if we accept this as justification for some increase in price, the hike seems excessive.
Rocco Ciancio of Petro Canada points out that, without the federal and provincial sales taxes, the price of a litre of gas is now actually closer to 32 cents a litre. That being the case, even an increase of four cents a litre by the oil companies meant an increase of at least 14 per cent, which is well above the rate of inflation and the level of recent increases in most consumer products.
As far as possible collusion is concerned, motorists can't ignore how the oil companies seem to have been in lockstep in introducing these price increases. Is there some kind of formal or informal agreement not to be competitive in setting gasoline prices? Ontario motorists have the right to know and an inquiry could ascertain just what the situation is.
What also could be the subject of examination is whether the independents are being badly treated by the oil companies, this depriving motorists of access to competitive outlets. MPP Bradley said the province can pass a predatory pricing law that would prohibit major companies from selling at a lower price to their own dealers and higher prices to independents. That sounds like a measure that should be passed and an inquiry could decide whether such law should be introduced.
Of course, when it comes to gasoline prices in the Sault, the concern here is not only that the oil companies should be jacking their prices up like this but that the provincial and federal governments continue to refuse to give this city some tax relief in regard to gas prices. This latter move would allow the Sault to better compete with the Michigan Sault and keep more of our residents from buying gas and shopping across the St. Mary's River."
*
Ten years ago, a smug “veteran Liberal MPP” we know as good ole Jim Bradley, was saying a lot of things.
[Even the Sault Star was helpfully providing pointless innuendo, editorializing about then tourism minister Bill Saunderson being “a self-made millionaire”. (What was the point of that? Of what flicking relevance is that?) Surely, now with over 30 years in political life, Jim Bradley has also earned a million dollars, and enjoys the special-status of an unlocked pension. Oh, and yes, it was ‘self-made’, in the sense that it came out of our tax pockets. What business has Jim Bradley ever been in?]
So, what is our wealthy Liberal Jim Bradley doing about gas prices today, in 2007?
The price at the pumps went up five cents overnight, from a buck a litre (Dec.12, 2007) to $1.05 (Dec. 13, 2007). Is Jim Bradley talking to his “corporate pals” today?..Is Jim Bradley tabling predatory pricing laws? Setting up inquries? Does Jim Bradley, now the transportation minister, have anything to say about greedy oil companies, and price-fixing and price-gouging and oil-barons, today?
Who’s the apologist for the big oil bosses now, Mr. Bradley?
Bradley once accused then premier Mike Harris: “He has made a lot of noise. He huffs and puffs and he blusters, but he simply does nothing.” (Hamilton Spectator, Oct.15, 1997). Sounds like Jim Bradley was actually describing himself. It was a lot of bluster even then, but it's outright B.S. now.
Speaking further of Bradley bluster: Today, Dec.13, 2007, the Liberals announced grand plans to dump 100 million dollars into GO Transit.
During the recent Oct. 2007 election, bait-and-switch Bradley even said the GO train is coming to Niagara.
So, what does Niagara get, out of a $100,000,000? New service? A new rail line?
Niagara got nada.
Thanks, Jim.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Transportation Minister Jim Bradley : tank full of rhetoric
"Gas could reach $1.50 a litre by spring" was the headline in the St. Catharines Standard (Dec.3, 2007):
"Canadian drivers should brace themselves for record gasoline prices this spring if crude oil stays in the $90-a-barrel range, experts say.
"They could be getting into the $1.30, $1.40, maybe even the $1.50 range per litre," said Jason Toews, one of the founders of GasBuddy.com, a website designed to help motorists find the best deals at the pump.
Gas prices for this time of year should be around 90 cents per litre, but the national average was $1.07 on Friday. That's because of recent high crude prices, Toews said in an interview.
Crude oil receded to its lowest level in more than a month on Friday after flirting with the $100 a barrel mark at the beginning of last week.
Even though crude prices have shied away from triple-digit territory, they're still high enough to keep pump prices stable in the coming months, said industry analyst Michael Ervin of consulting firm M.J. Ervin and Associates.
"Crude oil, although that's a very important factor in the price at the pumps, it's by no means the only factor," he said in an interview.
The price of gasoline is partially determined by refining margins, or "crack spreads" - the difference between the cost of crude oil and how much the finished product sells for.
Since last fall refining margins have been falling, which has had a "countervailing effect on the crude price in terms of the impact on the price at the pumps," Ervin said.
The lower refinery margins should keep gasoline prices in check, at least for the time-being, said Ted Stoner, vice-president for the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute, an organization that represents downstream oil and gas businesses.
"The supply/demand balance this time of year is not extremely tight. There are gasoline barrels floating around looking for a home," he said.
"Therefore there's some deals to be made at the wholesale level in regards to gasoline."
But when the weather warms up and more drivers take to the highways, higher gas demand combined with high crude prices could make for a nasty one-two punch.
"If (crude oil) gets up into the 90s and stays there consistently then obviously that's going to cost the refiner more to buy the raw materials so he can make the gasoline and the diesel products and eventually it will start showing up in the marketplace," Stoner said.
The strong loonie has also been helping out consumers at the pumps recently, since oil prices are denominated in U.S. dollars.
"As the Canadian dollar goes up, it filters a lot of the crude oil price impacts as they work themselves through the chain," Stoner said.
GasBuddy's Toews said U.S. consumers have seen their gasoline go up as much as 40 per cent from a year ago, whereas here it's only been a 20 per cent increase.
High crude prices have been felt all the way down to the marketing level and gas stations have been fiercely competing with one another to stay afloat, Toews said.
"Right now people are so price sensitive. We're looking around for a better deal and we'll actually drive across the street or several blocks out of the way for an extra penny or two discount on gas," he said.
"The station owners know this and this is reflected in their pricing. If they're priced too high, people will go elsewhere. At a retail level it's a very cutthroat business right now and the gas stations themselves aren't making that much money off of gasoline."
They've instead been focusing on selling cigarettes, lottery tickets, car washes and food, among other things, to increase their margins.
Toews said motorists need to acknowledge that "the days of 60 cent per litre of gas are gone" and that they should instead learn how to be savvy consumers.
"Even though gas prices are really high right now, you can save a lot of money on gas just by knowing where to look," he said.
"We don't expect people to drive 50 clicks out of their way, but you can save five cents per litre just by knowing which station to buy your gas at and working that into your daily commute." "
*
Ontario Liberal MPP Jim Bradley (St. Catharines) railed on for years about how he was going to control gas prices, about price-gouging and price fixing, about how the Conservative government at the time were apologists for the big oil companies.
Well, it looks like Ontario Transportation Minister Jim Bradley will have to fill up his capacious tank of rhetoric to explain away how a possible "$1.50 a litre" gas price could occur on his watch.
Doesn't Jim Bradley recall his grand, blustery accusations of gas "price gouging" and "price fixing", which he made in the St. Catharines Standard, Oct.22, 1999?
Does Jim Bradley recall (St. Catharines Standard, Aug.26, 1997) when he decanted at the then-sitting government that "Not one minister will speak out against the rip-off of the motorist"? Yet, will Ontario's current Minister of Transportation himself speak out today, in 2007?
Does Jim Bradley recall (Hamilton Spectator, Sept.3, 1997) stating that "clearly the province has retail jurisdiction [on regulating gas prices] If the premier was truly concerned about gas prices, he'd be moving ahead with a predatory pricing law in Ontario now"?
We should ask: Jim, after 10 years, where is that policy you pretended to support in 1997? You've had since 2003 - as a majority government - to actually do yourself what you were urging another government to do. Which leads to the question, Jim: did you believe in what you were saying, or were you simply pandering convenient dollops of populism to the electorate, knowing full well you'd never actually follow through? I guess ten years later, we can see how "truly concerned" you and your Liberal boss, McGuinty, really were: recommending what you yourself couldn't deliver. Typical Liberal SOP.
Here's what Margaret Grunfelder wrote in "Governments like high gas prices" (St. Catharines Standard, Apr.9, 1999):
"MPP Jim Bradley has been in office for more than 20 years, which included time served with the Peterson leadership.
Where were his concerns about the public being "gouged" by high fuel prices during all of these years?
As minister of consumer and commercial relations, he is just now becoming irate about this matter.
I think his concern is more grand- standing, just before a looming election, than any real concern on our behalf.
Let's tell it like it is, Mr. Bradley.
Both the provincial and the federal governments stand to gain with high prices at the pumps, since the gasoline tax is set at a percentage of the pump price.
So, logically, the higher the fuel prices go, the more tax money governments earn.
There is no real interest in governments' wanting lower fuel prices."
*
Liberal Jim Bradley "grand-standing"!?! Never!!
"Canadian drivers should brace themselves for record gasoline prices this spring if crude oil stays in the $90-a-barrel range, experts say.
"They could be getting into the $1.30, $1.40, maybe even the $1.50 range per litre," said Jason Toews, one of the founders of GasBuddy.com, a website designed to help motorists find the best deals at the pump.
Gas prices for this time of year should be around 90 cents per litre, but the national average was $1.07 on Friday. That's because of recent high crude prices, Toews said in an interview.
Crude oil receded to its lowest level in more than a month on Friday after flirting with the $100 a barrel mark at the beginning of last week.
Even though crude prices have shied away from triple-digit territory, they're still high enough to keep pump prices stable in the coming months, said industry analyst Michael Ervin of consulting firm M.J. Ervin and Associates.
"Crude oil, although that's a very important factor in the price at the pumps, it's by no means the only factor," he said in an interview.
The price of gasoline is partially determined by refining margins, or "crack spreads" - the difference between the cost of crude oil and how much the finished product sells for.
Since last fall refining margins have been falling, which has had a "countervailing effect on the crude price in terms of the impact on the price at the pumps," Ervin said.
The lower refinery margins should keep gasoline prices in check, at least for the time-being, said Ted Stoner, vice-president for the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute, an organization that represents downstream oil and gas businesses.
"The supply/demand balance this time of year is not extremely tight. There are gasoline barrels floating around looking for a home," he said.
"Therefore there's some deals to be made at the wholesale level in regards to gasoline."
But when the weather warms up and more drivers take to the highways, higher gas demand combined with high crude prices could make for a nasty one-two punch.
"If (crude oil) gets up into the 90s and stays there consistently then obviously that's going to cost the refiner more to buy the raw materials so he can make the gasoline and the diesel products and eventually it will start showing up in the marketplace," Stoner said.
The strong loonie has also been helping out consumers at the pumps recently, since oil prices are denominated in U.S. dollars.
"As the Canadian dollar goes up, it filters a lot of the crude oil price impacts as they work themselves through the chain," Stoner said.
GasBuddy's Toews said U.S. consumers have seen their gasoline go up as much as 40 per cent from a year ago, whereas here it's only been a 20 per cent increase.
High crude prices have been felt all the way down to the marketing level and gas stations have been fiercely competing with one another to stay afloat, Toews said.
"Right now people are so price sensitive. We're looking around for a better deal and we'll actually drive across the street or several blocks out of the way for an extra penny or two discount on gas," he said.
"The station owners know this and this is reflected in their pricing. If they're priced too high, people will go elsewhere. At a retail level it's a very cutthroat business right now and the gas stations themselves aren't making that much money off of gasoline."
They've instead been focusing on selling cigarettes, lottery tickets, car washes and food, among other things, to increase their margins.
Toews said motorists need to acknowledge that "the days of 60 cent per litre of gas are gone" and that they should instead learn how to be savvy consumers.
"Even though gas prices are really high right now, you can save a lot of money on gas just by knowing where to look," he said.
"We don't expect people to drive 50 clicks out of their way, but you can save five cents per litre just by knowing which station to buy your gas at and working that into your daily commute." "
*
Ontario Liberal MPP Jim Bradley (St. Catharines) railed on for years about how he was going to control gas prices, about price-gouging and price fixing, about how the Conservative government at the time were apologists for the big oil companies.
Well, it looks like Ontario Transportation Minister Jim Bradley will have to fill up his capacious tank of rhetoric to explain away how a possible "$1.50 a litre" gas price could occur on his watch.
Doesn't Jim Bradley recall his grand, blustery accusations of gas "price gouging" and "price fixing", which he made in the St. Catharines Standard, Oct.22, 1999?
Does Jim Bradley recall (St. Catharines Standard, Aug.26, 1997) when he decanted at the then-sitting government that "Not one minister will speak out against the rip-off of the motorist"? Yet, will Ontario's current Minister of Transportation himself speak out today, in 2007?
Does Jim Bradley recall (Hamilton Spectator, Sept.3, 1997) stating that "clearly the province has retail jurisdiction [on regulating gas prices] If the premier was truly concerned about gas prices, he'd be moving ahead with a predatory pricing law in Ontario now"?
We should ask: Jim, after 10 years, where is that policy you pretended to support in 1997? You've had since 2003 - as a majority government - to actually do yourself what you were urging another government to do. Which leads to the question, Jim: did you believe in what you were saying, or were you simply pandering convenient dollops of populism to the electorate, knowing full well you'd never actually follow through? I guess ten years later, we can see how "truly concerned" you and your Liberal boss, McGuinty, really were: recommending what you yourself couldn't deliver. Typical Liberal SOP.
Here's what Margaret Grunfelder wrote in "Governments like high gas prices" (St. Catharines Standard, Apr.9, 1999):
"MPP Jim Bradley has been in office for more than 20 years, which included time served with the Peterson leadership.
Where were his concerns about the public being "gouged" by high fuel prices during all of these years?
As minister of consumer and commercial relations, he is just now becoming irate about this matter.
I think his concern is more grand- standing, just before a looming election, than any real concern on our behalf.
Let's tell it like it is, Mr. Bradley.
Both the provincial and the federal governments stand to gain with high prices at the pumps, since the gasoline tax is set at a percentage of the pump price.
So, logically, the higher the fuel prices go, the more tax money governments earn.
There is no real interest in governments' wanting lower fuel prices."
*
Liberal Jim Bradley "grand-standing"!?! Never!!
Friday, November 30, 2007
A Liberal Bag Of Gas
This by Roman Bobak "Singing a different tune", (Niagara This Week, Jun.22, 2007):
"Remember when St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley bragged in opposition he was going to introduce a private member's bill to control gasoline pricing and challenged then-premier Mike Harris' Conservatives to give it quick passage?
Remember Bradley's frequent, yet unproven, claims of price-fixing? Remember him stating that if the premier was truly concerned about about gas prices, he'd move ahead with a predatory pricing law in Ontario?
Remember him demanding that former Consumer Minister Dave Tsubouchi call the captains of the oil industry on the carpet for yet another unjustified, dramatic increase in the retail price of gasoline?
Remember future Tourism Minister bradley complaining in 1997 of gas price gouging by the oil companies, when gas was a shocking 62 cents a litre?
How ironic that Bradley's Liberals have done so much that gas prices have almost doubled.
Bradley liked to huff and puff that Tories were apologists for the 'big oil bosses'.
Bradley's own words have morphed into a sad self-portrait of self-serving Liberals. Remember that on election day."
"Remember when St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley bragged in opposition he was going to introduce a private member's bill to control gasoline pricing and challenged then-premier Mike Harris' Conservatives to give it quick passage?
Remember Bradley's frequent, yet unproven, claims of price-fixing? Remember him stating that if the premier was truly concerned about about gas prices, he'd move ahead with a predatory pricing law in Ontario?
Remember him demanding that former Consumer Minister Dave Tsubouchi call the captains of the oil industry on the carpet for yet another unjustified, dramatic increase in the retail price of gasoline?
Remember future Tourism Minister bradley complaining in 1997 of gas price gouging by the oil companies, when gas was a shocking 62 cents a litre?
How ironic that Bradley's Liberals have done so much that gas prices have almost doubled.
Bradley liked to huff and puff that Tories were apologists for the 'big oil bosses'.
Bradley's own words have morphed into a sad self-portrait of self-serving Liberals. Remember that on election day."
Monday, November 26, 2007
Jim Bradley's criticisms in opposition foreshadowed duplicity in government
This letter by R. Bobak (St. Catharines Standard, June 29, 2007):
"Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty's nose grew a bit longer last year when he said in the legislature, "I have never been a proponent of regulating gas prices."
For years, that is exactly what his opposition Liberals advocated. St. Catharines Grit MPP Jim Bradley routinely made unsubstantiated claims about "gas gouging" and "price fixing."
For years, McGuinty and Bradley blustered that Ontario, instead of passing the buck to the federal government, had jurisdiction to regulate gas prices and cut gasoline taxes.
Yet now, Liberal Energy Minister Dwight Duncan (of gas shortage: "So what?" fame) says there's little, if anything, the province can do about gas prices!
McGuinty, who once badgered for a provincial gas price watchdog, now rejects his own proposal - and passes the buck to the federal government!
In opposition, Bradley introduced a private member's bill to regulate predatory gas pricing, but now that his governing Liberals have a majority, his bill has vanished!
In 2003, Bradley said he didn't remember gas, at 83 cents, ever being that expensive.
Has anyone remembered to ask him why it's now more expensive on his watch?
Bradley's pandering of a nebulous populism in opposition morphed upon gaining power into unprincipled hypocrisy, with promises never intended to be honoured.
Besides, how could anyone who advocated the now-kaput Kyoto protocol (as Bradley did) also really advocate for the incongruous concept of lower gas prices?
In 1997, Bradley smugly squawked about then-premier Mike Harris's plan to investigate gas prices: "He has simply made a lot of noise. He huffs and he puffs and he blusters but he has simply done nothing."
Clearly, we can now see that Bradley was actually foreshadowing a sad summary of his own Liberal duplicity. "
"Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty's nose grew a bit longer last year when he said in the legislature, "I have never been a proponent of regulating gas prices."
For years, that is exactly what his opposition Liberals advocated. St. Catharines Grit MPP Jim Bradley routinely made unsubstantiated claims about "gas gouging" and "price fixing."
For years, McGuinty and Bradley blustered that Ontario, instead of passing the buck to the federal government, had jurisdiction to regulate gas prices and cut gasoline taxes.
Yet now, Liberal Energy Minister Dwight Duncan (of gas shortage: "So what?" fame) says there's little, if anything, the province can do about gas prices!
McGuinty, who once badgered for a provincial gas price watchdog, now rejects his own proposal - and passes the buck to the federal government!
In opposition, Bradley introduced a private member's bill to regulate predatory gas pricing, but now that his governing Liberals have a majority, his bill has vanished!
In 2003, Bradley said he didn't remember gas, at 83 cents, ever being that expensive.
Has anyone remembered to ask him why it's now more expensive on his watch?
Bradley's pandering of a nebulous populism in opposition morphed upon gaining power into unprincipled hypocrisy, with promises never intended to be honoured.
Besides, how could anyone who advocated the now-kaput Kyoto protocol (as Bradley did) also really advocate for the incongruous concept of lower gas prices?
In 1997, Bradley smugly squawked about then-premier Mike Harris's plan to investigate gas prices: "He has simply made a lot of noise. He huffs and he puffs and he blusters but he has simply done nothing."
Clearly, we can now see that Bradley was actually foreshadowing a sad summary of his own Liberal duplicity. "
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
"The war for tourist bucks", Toronto Sun (July 9, 2007), by Brian Gray
Tourism Minister Jim Bradley's plan to spend 10 million dollars marketing Ontario to people who already live here is a typical Liberal smoke and mirrors waste of money. The goal is to attract tourists from outside our provincial tax jurisdiction, otherwise you're simply moving the same dollars around the same province.
Bradley, who is also the Liberal MPP for St. Catharines, sagely tells the Sun: "With gas prices higher, people maybe more inclined to stay close to home".
Yet, let's remember how Bradley sang a different tune about high gas prices when he was in opposition. When gas was only 0.62/litre , he smugly lectured to the then-governing Tories: "As thousands of tourists visit Ontario this week, they will be faced with the same circumstances facing all motorists in our province: gas price gouging by the major oil companies." (St. Catharines Standard, Aug. 22, 1997)
For years, Bradley and his Liberals made many noisy, unsubstantiated allegations about gas price-fixing. They insisted that gas price regulation was a provincial, not a federal, responsibility. They promised to regulate gas prices, to create a gas-price watchdog, and to lower the provincial gas tax.
Today, with the Liberals in power - and gas hovering at 1.04/litre, mid-July, 2007 - all of their bag-of-hot-air promises have vanished. Sadly, St. Catharines has been stuck with Jim Bradley for 30 years, since the days of disco. He used to be known as '"Gentleman Jim", now, sadly, it's more like 'B.S. Bradley'.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Gasoline prices and Bait & Switch Liberals
Where's Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's once highly-touted (mostly by him!) predatory gasoline price control bill, which he introduced as a private member's bill when he was in opposition? Now McGuinty and the Grits say they never were in favour of gas price regulation, but that's exactly what Liberals like Jim Bradley squawked about for years! Liberals, now in a majority government, didn't cut gas prices, or their own provincial gas tax, or create a provincial gas price watch dog, as they agitated for when they were in opposition. Bradley, for years, made unsubstantiated accusations about "price fixing" and "gas gouging" but now that gas is over a dollar, Liberals (like Dwight Duncan, Grit energy minister) say that there is little, if anything, the province can do about gas prices - which is exactly the opposite of what Bradley had said when he and his Liberals were in opposition. It's almost not worth bothering to link 'Jim Bradley' and 'bag-of-hot-air' - it's self-evident. Now that McGuinty is AGAIN asking us to believe him when he says he's not gonna raise taxes (as he lied to Ontarians in 2003), Liberal flip-flopping on almost any issue defies belief. When are the Ontario Liberals lying -in opposition, or in government? How can anyone tell, with all their posturing and broken promises melding into an incoherent and inconsistent policy blob?? It's like Liberals oppose and obstruct, rather than propose and construct.
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