APRIL 14, 2019
"Conservatism" causes even smart people to vote stupid. Running government/society is THE EXACT OPPOSITE of running a business. It's how BUSINESS just keeps posting up platform-free tax-cut for the rich nitwits like George Bush, Donald Trump & Jason Kenney.
Think it's a no-brainer that Government should be run like a Business? Here's the end of that forever: who are your shareholders & who are your workers? If the answer is 'the People' for both your analogy has already imploded.
What INEVITABLY begins happening for folks that think 'Gov should be run like Business' is they start to see 'the People' as 'the Workers' and their own funders/benefactors as shareholders. Hence a ludicrously wealthy 1% at the expense of all else. The inevitable result is this:
The corporate ethos is 'profit at the expense of all else'. Anybody says otherwise just doesn't get Capitalism. Results of taking this single-minded, nuance-free approach to picking leaders & government have been manifestly catastrophic throughout history.
Examples of this are legion but I'll just give you three. Slavery & the American Civil War were the direct result of big business interests in America's south refusing to accept a burgeoning global consensus: slavery was evil. "But what about my cheap labor force? My profits?"
Big Sugar (the industry, not the band) needs to sell as much sugar as they can to as many humans as they can regardless of how it has single-handedly created a global childhood obesity epidemic & a generation of humans shaped like big, wobbly walking refrigerators.
It's big business WORKING WITH government to remove regulations that might enable us to know how much crap we eat. Check any label in your kitchen and you'll see time and time again they do not say what %age of sugar from a single serving of that product is in your daily diet.
Canada recently tried to place warning labels regarding sugar content & early childhood obesity. America seeks to block this. Big Sugar is mad. Not good for business. Profits. At all costs. Will they be helped or hurt by conservative politicians? Guess.
Leading us up to today. NOW. Where once again there is a global consensus on the most important issue of our time and once again "the Party Of Business" find itself squarely & unashamedly on the wrong side of history. Of course I refer to the #ClimateCrisis.
Getting into all the dirty things Big Business has done to avoid addressing the #ClimateCrisis is a thread all its own but guess which political party they had as fully cooperating conspirators Every. Single. Step. Of the way. You know the answer.
Today in Canada not a single Conservative leader from municipal to provincial to federal has bothered to offer up a #ConservativeCaseForClimateAction though it's absolutely do-able & worth doing. The best Canada's "Party of Business" has offered so far is opposition to solutions.
ASIDE: Call me, "conservatives". The #ConservativeCaseForClimateAction is indeed do-able & would position you as an increasingly rare & desperately needed thought-leader on The Right. In time it would INEVITABLY show you as a leader with foresight.
When you vote conservative YOU VOTE SMOKEY AUGUSTS. And if you keep voting SMOKEY AUGUSTS eventually you'll be VOTING SMOKEY JULYS. STOP DOING THIS. THEY ARE WRONG ON EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS AND HAVE BEEN FOR A LONG TIME.
"But conservatives are better with the economy" is the last fallback. Maybe all this other manifestly despicable stuff is at least palatable if these villains are somehow good at managing the economy? BUT THEY'RE NOT. THEY'RE THE ABSOLUTE WORST. OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
It wasn't evil for Ronald Reagan to propose his trickle-down theory. It was an experiment. But the experiment failed and we all watched it fail for going on 40 years now. That Jason Kenney's economic plan rests almost entirely on this historically bunk idea is what you'd expect.
If you're a fan of creating historic inequalities you'd be hard pressed to find a greater champion & pioneer for the 1% than Ronald Reagan, another great big business champion who also managed to ship nearly all of America's manufacturing overseas.
'Party of the People' President Bill Clinton had America's best economy of the modern age. The 'Party of Business' replaced him in 2000 with an obvious goofball by the name of George Bush who promptly went on to break everything worth breaking and within reach.
Obama was passed Bush's burning tire-fire of an economy in 2008 & did the best he could before the midterms, in which the Party of Business recommended "conservatives" vote in to Congress (to 'check Obama') the same folks who'd helped Bush crash the plane into the mountain.
And now the "Party of Business" in America is LOCK-STEP with this man. An openly racist, misogynist, homophobic, climate-denying, bring-back-coal, taxcuts-for-the-rich guy. Sound familiar, Alberta? It should.
Does it hold up in Canada? Yes, it does, of course it does because it holds up everywhere. "Conservatives" are bad at running economies because they keep shovelling money at their benefactors at the expense of all else (including YOUR working wages, safety & health).
Nothing wrong at creating revenues at the expense of all else in the business world. It's your fiduciary responsibility. Fill your boots. Be excellent at it. But that behaviour in governance has only been & can only ever be disastrous to its people. And it's LITERALLY killing us.
This Tuesday Alberta may decide to elect a "Party of Business" offering "something something PIPELINES, something something ECONOMY" & hoping it'll make enough Calgarians ignore the open racism, misogyny, hate & homophobia of Jason Kenney & his fleet of bozo-erupting candidates.
Economists don't support his trickle-down plan. Scientists obviously don't support his non-climate plan. Experienced legislators don't support his belligerent 'just be loud & bang your fist on the table' approach to getting a pipeline built by fed bucks across provincial lines
But tax cuts for the rich? Lower the minimum wage? Kill overtime? Cut schools? Cut hospitals? That gets done surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. A bedrock certainty. They've admitted it. Entirely unashamed to do it.
And if you again enable this manifestly odious 'Party of Business' its YOU doing it now. You're the one stinking up our Augusts with smoke. You're the one's trashing our schools & hospitals. All so somebody richer than you can get yet richer still while everybody else gets poorer
Or you could just vote for Rachel Notley on Tuesday, who's done a whole lot more than most Albertans know on clean energy, diversification & a #JustTransition for Alberta's vulnerable oil and gas workers and communities all while lowering child poverty in the midst of a recession
To Trump or Not to Trump? This election is our crucible. Will we make the exact same old dumb mistake or will we pick the leader obviously better for all Albertans & not just the richest? Choose wisely. This one's for all the marbles.
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