Friday, June 5, 2009

You Want Fire Fighters Don't You?

Our left leaning friends over at Macleans Blog, are chastising the marking of tax freedom day, by reminding us that we have firefighters and roads because of taxes.

The left's desire to shame their political opponents - not as a method of debating, but rather to shut down debate - gets more and more silly.

Insinuating that those who simply want to keep a check on the seemingly endless growth of government (and taxes) are cold-hearted, knuckle dragging thugs who'd love to watch a house burn to the ground just to save a few bucks, is a tad sanctimonious. More importantly, its dishonest.

You'd have to go pretty far down the line items in the budget before you'd get to basic services - past the funding for the artist who can't seem to market his 'pencil in urine display', and so demands "funding" from us, past the official language officer that exists in many government departments that have nothing to do with language, past the "health day" junkets designed to let the government worker experience wholeness (in addition to the four weeks paid vacation and all stat holidays) and so on and so on and so on.

Dear me, imagine how many more fire trucks we could have (in addition to reducing taxes) if we'd cut out some of that waste. How "un-progressive" to think such things.

2 comments:

  1. Here's what I wrote over at MacLeans in one of Andrew Potter's oevres:

    Tax Freedom Day serves an important purpose. It gives Canadians a clear understanding of how much tax they pay in a highly concrete manner. That can only be a good thing.

    And then it compels us to ask "How much taxation is reasonable?" and "Are we getting value for our money?"

    I suspect that Potter's real problem is that he doesn't want those questions asked.

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  2. I think your suspicions are bang on.

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