{"id":1448,"date":"2011-05-27T16:51:39","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T23:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/?p=1448"},"modified":"2011-05-27T17:07:06","modified_gmt":"2011-05-28T00:07:06","slug":"give-us-a-kiss-at-least","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/?p=1448","title":{"rendered":"Give us a kiss, at least."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000066;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1451\" title=\"Kevin Falcon\" src=\"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Kevin-Falcon.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"192\" height=\"116\" \/>Listening to the premier and finance minister trying to sell this solution to the HST reminded me of a story I heard many years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000066;\">It&#8217;s a bit long winded to put in here but the gist of it is a farmer is feeling overcrowded in his house and seeks advice from the priest. Over the course of a month, one week at a time, the priest suggests moving all the man&#8217;s livestock into the house. At the end of it he then suggests the last animal that was moved in, a goat, can now be moved out again: look how much room you have. It&#8217;s a comparative thing, of course and works great when a priest is telling it to kick off his sermon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000066;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/sZ5OTxvLaGM\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1449\" title=\"Christy Crunch\" src=\"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Christy-Crunch.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"279\" height=\"180\" \/><\/a><\/span><span style=\"color: #000066;\"><span style=\"color: #000066;\">The reason I&#8217;m bringing it up is because this solution is simply moving out a goat.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000066;\"><span style=\"color: #000066;\"> If (and only if) we behave ourselves and vote to keep the HST, all sorts of wonderful things will come our way. A 2% reduction in the HST will take place over 2 years (pause while the &#8220;whoop&#8221;s and &#8220;eee&#8221;s die down). There will be a generous serving of\u00a0nutritious\u00a0table scraps for families with children under the age of 18 in the form of a cash pay out of $175 per child and low income seniors will also be given helpings of similar gruel. Ah yes, a little bribing the electorate with their own money goes a long way&#8230; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000066;\"><span style=\"color: #000066;\">If the tax is a good thing then stand by it. It was implemented badly but that is done and over with now; the economic kick to the oh-be-joyful&#8217;s it delivered has <\/span>diminished<span style=\"color: #000066;\"> to a dull ache. If they just cowboyed up, treated the voters like grown-ups and framed the HST as an unpleasant but necessary fact of life, I&#8217;m pretty sure they could make a decent campaign out of it.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">But this promised reduction of the HST will be a nightmare to implement for businesses and will be beaten senseless by inflation within months. My children are over the age of 18 and I&#8217;m not old enough to be considered an impoverished senior so I don&#8217;t even get the consolation prize.\u00a0The majority of people in the province are treading water and now the government is offering shark bait instead of a life line.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1455\" title=\"Taking_of_the_Bastille\" src=\"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Taking_of_the_Bastille-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Taking_of_the_Bastille-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Taking_of_the_Bastille.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/>It really is an insult to an already fair to middling pissed off peasantry who are dusting off their torches and pitchforks. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>(What the hell am I whining about? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/british-columbia\/story\/2011\/05\/25\/bc-hst-changes.html\" target=\"_blank\">Background info courtesy of CBC<\/a>)<\/p>\n<div><span style=\"color: #000066;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listening to the premier and finance minister trying to sell this solution to the HST reminded me of a story I heard many years ago. It&#8217;s a bit long winded to put in here but the gist of it is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/?p=1448\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,9],"tags":[354,355,356,352,351,349,357,350],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1448"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1465,"href":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448\/revisions\/1465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}