If Nothing Else Lorrie Harper Knows How To Play The Game

And to be honest he is playing it well and I think both of us realize that things might be dramatically different if he had a majority government and he was in a position to kick ass rather than kiss ass. Personally I like the fact that he has allocatted more money to the army than to the arts, has gutted the Kelowna Accord, is repaying Toronto, Vancouver and other large urban mayors for their past support and is giving the premiers their pound of flesh meaning McGinty can't shift the blame for his broken promises.

It's the same old story
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

At long last, Stephen Harper has revealed his "hidden agenda."

It's to be a Liberal.

That's Liberal as in:

(a) Bribe us with our own money.

(b) Spend three dollars of our money for every dollar you let us keep in tax cuts.

(c) Up government spending by 7.9% this year and 5.7% next year -- exactly what the Liberals used to do.

Stephen Harper meet Paul Martin. Or Jean Chretien. Or Pierre Trudeau.

It doesn't matter anymore. Liberal? Tory? Same old story.

All of them believe (or believed) that when it comes to our money, they know best. And just as important, that this is how you win elections in Canada.

The difference between the federal Conservatives and federal Liberals (aside from the sponsorship scandal, which Harper hasn't stumbled into -- yet) is now down to such fine points as which special interest groups the Conservatives, as opposed to the Liberals, will give our money to, since serious, broad-based income tax relief is off the agenda of both parties.

John Williamson of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation nicely summed up yesterday the second budget of Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who used to be a fiscal conservative.

Williamson accurately described it as "Big Government Conservatism" adding:

SPENDING GROWS BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS

"The Conservative government is no better at managing a surplus than the previous Liberal government. There is nothing responsible about over-taxing taxpayers and amassing massive surpluses that fuel more spending. Today the word 'surplus' means 'big government' as Ottawa's spending has grown by leaps and bounds with the federal surplus. The government will get bigger and bigger so long as legislators have excess tax money to spend. Legislators are incapable of demonstrating restraint. And they are also unwilling to return the surplus where it rightly belongs, namely the taxpayers of Canada."

Uh ... yeah. When Harper ran for the leadership of the Conservative (in name only) party, he said he believed the federal government should concentrate on its core responsibilities of justice, foreign affairs, defence, immigration, transportation, and, to the extent that it could, the economy and dollar.

But that was before we got the "new" greenhouse-gas-fighting, special-interest-appeasing, patronage-appointing, Quebec-is-a-nation-within-Canada (and boy are we going to pay to keep it there) Harper. Indeed, it's just as the critics feared. Under the Conservatives, we are going back to the 1950s.

Straight to the set of Father Knows Best. And Harper? He's our Big Daddy.