Eliminating the Per Vote Subsidy

Aside from Stephen Harper and regular donors to his Conservative Party, who exactly is demanding that the “per vote” subsidy be eliminated? Aside from those with entirely self-serving reasons of political gain, what group of Canadians feels OUTRAGED! by the fact that a measly $2 of their taxes will be directly funnelled to the political party they voted for at the ballot box?

Conservatives routinely claim that this form of public financing – or “handouts” as they spuriously describe them – is a “waste of tax dollars” that is “wrong on principle” and yet, quite oddly, they have no qualms whatsoever about the fact that donations (up to $1,100 per person) receive a 75% tax credit of the amount given. Under this arrangement, taxpayers effectively subsidize parties they don’t support to the tune of millions of dollars through the back door of the tax code, far above and beyond their measly $2 “per vote” contribution

Lunkhead libertarian Gerry Nicholls proposes a bizarre “solution” to the problem of the “per vote” subsidy: eliminate it completely and then open the floodgates to unlimited personal contributions. Seriously. That’s his proposal. No talk of eliminating the tax deduction at the same time, just let more money flow… thereby giving more influence to the wealthy while subsidizing the vast majority of their contributions from the general revenue.

Truly, it’s hard to believe that Nicholls is actually paid real money to write such asinine tripe in a national newspaper.

Making Cents with Nicholls

It seems that yesterday, old Gerry was “Reviewing the Liberal Ad” and had this to say of it: “OK this Liberal TV ad has got to be one of the weirdest political spots I have ever seen.”

Only thing is that the “ad” in question isn’t a “political spot” at all, it’s the promotional video that the Liberals put out to accompany the launch of the Green Shift policy back in the summer.

Has he never seen it before? It was released last June, but he actually seems to think that it’s one of the Libs’ current election ads. Oy.

Making Mockery with Nicholls

“Not being a psychologist maybe I shouldn’t say what I am about to say,” begins the always hopeless Gerry Nicholls in his Toronto Sun column this morning.

I fully concur. He should have stopped right there. But no such luck, I’m afraid.

Basing his entire article on the idle speculation of one “unnamed MP” that he quotes as having opined that the “sweet spot” for calling an election would be late November in order to benefit from “the afterglow of hope and change with Obama,” Nicholls goes on to label this as “delusional” because, and I know this will come as a shock to you, Stéphane Dion is no Barack Obama.

Well duh.

This blindingly obvious revelation does, however, give Nicholls the opportunity to unleash some of his remarkably “funny” barbs; claiming, for example, that Dion “not only has no charisma he actually emits rays of ‘anti-charisma,’ which have been known to repel voters over a five-km radius.” Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Unlike, say, Stephen Harper, who feels the need to pose, creepily smiling, while he fondles non-headless kittens to um… prove something, I guess.