Saturday, March 7, 2009

Give the money to municipalities

As far as I can tell Canadians live in towns, villages and cities, that's where they work, that's where they eat, sleep and shop. Provinces are abstractions. Even on islands like PEI and Newfoundland, everybody lives in a municipality. It's at the municipal level that you can act locally and think globally. So in order to solve a global economic meltdown created by the merger of gangster and corporate capitalism in America and abroad, the place to re-invest in non-corporatist society is at the local level. It's deeper representation than can be provided by federal ridings, which makes government expenditures less prone to the kind of partisan manipulation so loved by Stephen Harper. The three billion dollar slush fund he wants has only one purpose, because Harper has only one purpose, the destruction of the Liberal Party. What he wants to do with money is to make Conservative ridings healthier and to make everyone else suffer for not voting for him. This budget is such a waste of time, it was designed to do little, and to achieve nothing more than the appearance of doing something. It has no vision, no depth. Let the people we vote for at the local level have the money, they know what's needed where we live.

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