Today’s topic is, as it almost always is, about my disdain for today’s modern soy-latte sipping, politically-correct, pretentious and condescending Liberals. Rolling Stone magazine has just run our pretty-boy Prime Minister, Trudeau Jr., on its cover with the caption “Why Can’t He Be Our President?” The simple and pithy answer is, “because he’s Canadian you morons.” Unfortunately, our GQ model wanna be PM loves and revels in this sort of publicity… but is horribly bad at what he’s supposed to be doing which is running the country. Legendary golf teacher Butch Harmon (of Tiger Wood fame) said this to his new protege Rickie Fowler:
“We had a big conversation at the end of the year last year, and he didn’t like it. I said, ‘You gotta decide are you going to be a Kardashian or are you going to be a golf pro?’ You’re the king of social media, you’re all over these Snapchats and all these things. You need to reach down and grab your ears and get your head out of your you know what and get back to work, get your body in shape. He’s got a trainer he works out tremendously with and he’s worked unbelievable with his golf swing. He’s gone back to winning tournaments again – get rid of those Kardashians.”
My message to Trudeau Junior is the same: “Do you want to be a Kardashian or do you want to be Prime Minister of Canada?” I think John Ivison has the same idea when he wrote in the National Post (reprinted in the Calgary Herald with the title “Why can’t he be effective?“) “But the idea that Trudeau is getting everything right – particularly when it comes to balancing environmental protection and growing the economy – is fallacious… This has not been a good week for the reputation of the country’s natural resources sector. On Tuesday, the $36 billion Pacific North-West liquefied natural gas project was cancelled, ostensibly because of poor global prices but really because of the reduced attractiveness of the Canadian market for investment.”
Readers know where I stand on these issues because Canada’s economy basically depends on resource extraction to maintain our high standard of living as I pointed out in my earlier blog “Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water.” Only a Liberal with their head so far up their organic fair-trade asses would think otherwise and unfortunately we have more than our fair share of them (mostly concentrated in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal). Liberals like this village idiot, John Stephansson from Toronto who wrote a letter to the editor in the Calgary Herald on 28 July: “Last August, the California state senate approved a resolution calling on Congress and the president to enact a carbon-based fee on fossil fuels and return all the proceeds to middle-and low-income Americans. It’s called a fee, not a tax, because there is no net withdrawal from the economy by the government. It’s called fee and dividend and has been advocated for years by many smart people across the political spectrum… The geniuses who guide carbon pricing policy in Canada need a wake-up call.”
Well I hope that the “smart people” of which Mr. Stephansson is clearly not a group member, have a greater grasp of basic economics and English than he does. Here’s the definition of fee:
fee
noun
a payment made to a professional person or to a professional or public body in exchange for advice or services.
Nowhere in this definition is there anything that resembles “no net withdrawal from the economy.” I don’t even know what “net withdrawal from the economy” means and I have some pretty advanced economics theory and practice under my belt. I assume he is trying to make the case that his “carbon fee” basically takes from the rich and gives to the poor (as opposed to being put into the government blackhole of spending) but even this is a transfer of wealth and the economic impact is not zero.
In case Mr. Stephansson has trouble looking it up (we have already established that he is not the brightest lightbulb in the room), here’s the definition of tax:
tax
noun
a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers’ income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.
You can put all the lipstick on this “carbon tax” sow that you want and possibly even fool enough of the masses by trying to call it a “fee and dividend” but in the end, any and all carbon pricing is a tax. I did not receive any advice of service from the government in exchange for them charging me for carbon so it is clearly not a fee. It is a compulsory contribution to state revenue (even if it is redistributed) and, as we have seen
ad nauseum, every “revenue neutral” tax invented pretty much ends up being non-neutral eventually. Heck, our new “revenue neutral”
carbon tax in Alberta stopped being neutral even before the ink was dry on the legislation. “Revenue neutral” is the new political buzzword when a government wants to introduce a new tax (which pretty much every voter hates) to try to mislead the public into thinking it won’t be milked even more. In the old days, they might have called it a “temporary tax” – you know, the kind like Income Tax that was supposed to be lifted after we paid for the Great War… and is still with us today… Even if Mr. Stephansson’s Robin Hood fairytale idea that the money will only come from the rich and all the proceeds are returned to the middle and low income people were possible to implement, it’s still a tax because it is, by definition, being redistributed. Plus it is mathematically impossible because carbon taxes, just like sales taxes, are by nature regressive. Even if I consume ten times as much carbon as the poor guy because of my gas guzzling sports-car and jet-setting lifestyle, my income is 100x higher which means proportionally, the hit of any carbon levy will fall on the lower and middle classes; the very definition of a regressive tax. But look at the way and tone that Mr. Stephansson writes; so smug, so condescending, so arrogant… despite being so wrong… the classic definition of Liberal – thinks he’s so clever, knowledgeable and intelligent when the opposite is true.
Back to our good friend Trudeau Junior’s front cover fiasco. I won’t go over everything because enough has been written about the subject already like this MacLean’s article “
The 10 most cringeworthy lines in Rolling Stone’s Justin Trudeau profile.” Since the press is so fond of “fact checking” everything President Trump says or tweets on a daily basis, it is sad that the writers and editors at
Rolling Stone now don’t have time now to do a proper fact checking job on their own writing. For the record, the RCMP, even if they are posted to the heart of the Rockies and even if they are not on horseback, stands for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police… not Mountain Police. If Trudeau Junior was the leader of the Liberty Party, and not the Libtard… ummm… Liberal Party… I probably would have voted for him as well because that sounds like a party that is more aligned with my political thinking.
But the most egregious thing about Trudeau Junior gracing the cover of
Rolling Stone is not the attention grubbing or the cringeworthy puff piece that it was – it’s the fact that other than a small group of dewy-eyed urban elitist liberals on both sides of the border – nobody else can see the utopian leader that
Rolling Stone portrayed. The piece seems to have been met by
derision on both sides of the border and from a broad political spectrum of media as well. Even left-leaning and “respected” publications like the
Washington Post, have taken umbrage at this sycophantic portrayal and ran a piece yesterday titled, “
The world needs to stop mindlessly fawning over Justin Trudeau.”
Whatever his talents as clickbait, a strong case can be made that Trudeau is not very good at the governing side of his job. And I’m not talking about the mildly contrarian he’s-not-progressive-enough critiques you sometimes read from left-wing Canadians in the foreign press; I’m talking basic competence… Trudeau may cut an interesting figure on the global stage, contrasting with various populist demagogues and reinforcing stereotypes of Canada as the world’s goody-goody. Yet it’s the luxury of foreigners to treat the politics of other countries as parable, entertainment or escapist fantasy. Actually living in a country run by a social media celebrity is a lot less fun.
I could care less about the
Rolling Stone article or its inane puffery of Trudeau Junior: “He was raised in jet-set privilege but overcame tragedy to become Canada’s prime minister. Is he the free world’s best hope?” By definition, anyone raised in jet-set privilege doesn’t or at least shouldn’t, have any problem in overcoming tragedy (or is this a #firstworldproblems thing?) Liberal belief that Canada and Trudeau are the last beacon of light in the Western world is not a new thing as even I highlighted it last year in my article “
And then there was one.” Moreover, if Trudeau Junior, the very embodiment of privileged narcissistic hubris, really is the free world’s best hope, then you had better start stocking up on food, water, and ammunition because that basically means the world is doomed and the apocalypse is not far off. Apart from spouting politically-correct liberal buzzwords (diversity is our strength, building infrastructure), doing carefully orchestrated photo-ops and presenting carefully studied talking points; Trudeau Junior is a poor shadow of his father who was a charismatic political genius (even though I hated his guts and his policies). Not widely reported or reposted, this is what Trudeau Junior is like when someone asks a question he hasn’t been prepping all day for:
For your future reference Justin, you can’t use a word and then say you won’t use it because by definition you already have used it. That’s like me saying that “Trudeau Junior is, to not use a phrase like vacuous incompetent moron, which I will not use”. Personally, I’m hoping that Junior stares at his Rolling Stone cover photo and like Narcissus of Greek legend, just sits there unmoving – bathing in his own beauty and glory. At least that way he can’t do anymore damage.
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