Saturday, April 28, 2007

Internecine Battle Looming in Ottawa

It’s not my fault......this statement of denial does clearly conclude it was someone's fault as these grossly mislabeled "unintended " consequences can not be easily rationalized......so who is Flaherty pointing the finger at? Is he pointing up or down? Is he blaming Stephen Harper or Kevin Lynch? Kevin Lynch or Stephen Harper? Who knows, David Dodge may very well have been the first casualty of this internecine battle that must be brewing within Ottawa. Perhaps the equivocal testimony that Dodge gave at the Public Hearings wasn't to Flaherty’s sufficient liking. Dodge is now holding an empty hand as a result, namely severely damaged reputation in the eyes of many Canadians who for the first time expected something from his office and meanwhile no contract extension even though that was what he was clearly lobbying for in public a short two months ago as he extolled the virtues of working beyond 65.

No doubt the lines are being drawn in Ottawa between those defenders of the civil service whose battle cry is "if we were incompetent, we wouldn't admit to it" and those bold elected statesmen who proclaim; "its not my fault" as it pertains to the $35 billion Income Trust Scandal.

Does this leave you with the impression that there are a dwindling number of people in Ottawa who want to admit to being architects of the TFP? Right up there with being the architect of the NEP. Slightly different outcome however. The NEP attempted to nationalize our energy sector through misguided interventionism where the TFP will achieve the opposite result through benign neglect and a fundamental misunderstanding of how capital markets work within the DoF....perhaps better renamed as the DuF....don't understand finance.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting comparison to the NEP. As an Albertan who lived thru this period I fully remember what this did to my livelihood and to the Alberta economy and to the Federal Liberal Party's fortunes in Alberta.

Harper take note. You are taking for granted we will vote for you because you are a local boy. You take your base for granted and it will disappear.

Click on the link for a youtube video. People are making the connection between the NEP and TFP (Trust F_cking Plan)

Kephalos said...

The word internecine …usually has the meaning "relating to internal struggle," but in its first recorded use in English, in 1663, it meant "fought to the death." How it got from one sense to another is an interesting story in the history of English. The Latin source of the word, spelled both internecīnus and internecīvus, meant "fought to the death, murderous." It is a derivative of the verb necāre, "to kill." The prefix inter- was here used not in the usual sense "between, mutual" but rather as an intensifier meaning "all the way, to the death." Source The American Heritage® Dictionary (available over the Internet.)

Does fate find us, or do we go out to meet our fate? In the case of the federal Conservatives, an argument can be made that they chose Hubris as a dance partner and are happily waltzing to their fate. Over the winter, the general public accepted the tailored-news ‘trusts avoid tax’ ‘$500 million, and maybe as much as $1 billion tax leakage’, ‘capital inefficiency and productivity losses caused by trusts’, etc. But the darn thing was that the trust complainers would just not go away.

The trust legislation was ported into the budget. But other complaints started to happen. Three provincial Premiers objected to the budget. One called the Prime Minister a ‘liar’. Very knowledgeable tax accountants and lawyers started to complain about the disallowance of a deduction. Foreign private equity vultures (too pejorative? okay try ‘American eagles over some trust deadfall at a Canadian buffalo jump’) started drop from the skies to beak on proudly Canadian businesses, thereby doing in a different way the evil that trust legislation seeks to prevent. Other cracks in the façade are appearing.

Whose fault is all this? Who set the Conservatives on this calamitous path? Fate or the hubris of Flaherty? Will we see an internal struggle such as was seen between Agamemnon and Odysseus, or will we see a replay of the more commonplace downcast of the Conservatives (a movie playing at a poll near you once every 14 years.)

rick said...

Where is this link ?

Click on the link for a youtube video. People are making the connection between the NEP and TFP (Trust F_cking Plan)

Anonymous said...

Click on the name or try this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SD9rfeZxLE

Anonymous said...

In order to keep this issue in the eye of the media, there are a couple of places where you can post besides here.

1) Garth.ca hosts a "weblog" wth comments.

2) The globe and Mail puts out articles pertaining to IT's or to the sell off fall out of the tax betrayal, and now even general articles referring to Flahertys incompetence. You can post comments about many of those articles.

Keep posting comments, linking back to the infamous blacked out documents on the CAIT web site, every chance you get. Blogs, political sites, where ever you can raise the issue again do so.