Monday, October 26, 2009

Will Amanda Lang continue to espouse Flaherty's tax leakage lies on CBC?



Now that Amanda Lang, formerly of CTVglobemedia’s Biased News Network (BNN)has moved over to CBC, the question becomes will she become an honest and legitimate newscaster, more concerned about the truth than advancing the policy positions lobbied for and advanced by her employer?

This new job at the CBC, airing for the first time today, affords Amanda with a clean break. We will soon learn what she is made of. Perhaps she would like to begin by exploring the multitude of foreign takeovers of trusts that have occurred since October 31, 2006 and whether a tax policy that was intended to address the alleged notion of “tax leakage” has done more to cause massive tax leakage, since none existed before, but plenty exists today with all these foreign takeover of trusts by groups like state owned Korea National Oil Company and state owned Abu Dhabi Energy Inc.

I know that Jim Flaherty went out of his way to bid Amanda farewell from her old job at BNN and claimed that he will no longer have to contend with her income trust questions. Surely Amanda’s new job at the CBC was not intended to stifle her inquiry of the government, specifically Jim Flaherty? Meanwhile I am not sure what penetrating income trust questions were ever posed by Amanda Lang, as all I ever witnesses was her incessant cheer leading of a policy that was based on the complete hoax of tax leakage, a falsehood that Amanda never challenged once, when asked to do so.

For example I attended a May 14, 2007 Toronto Board of Trade luncheon at which Jim Flaherty was speaking and at a time when the income trust issue was still very topical, at the end of which I asked Flaherty to justify his use of 18 pages of blacked out documents to "validate" his claims of tax. Flaherty refused to answer my question by saying that I was not from the press. I then turned to Amanda Lang who standing right beside me and handed her the 18 pages and asked her to pose the question instead. Her answer: “I’m not going to ask that question” and then proceeded to lob some lame softball question at Flaherty.

Perhaps with her new journalistic freedom, Amanda could explore Jim Flaherty’s argument that the income trust tax was intended to level the playing field, as if to suggest that fewer taxes were collected under the income trust structire versus the corporate structure, and ask him why a policy whose intent was to “level the playing field” employed the exact opposite measures by imposing a 31.5% tax on income trust held in RRSPs and yet a 0% tax when those very same income trust are held privately within pension funds, which is the sole motivation and loophole behind why CPP is acquiring Livingston Income Trust?

How does that address the fact that RRSPs were created in the first place to allow the 75% of Canadians without pensions to be on the same footing as the pension funds that manage the retirements of only 25% of Canadians.

I look forward to Amanda’s debut performance today on CBC at 4:30 and now that her employer is the taxpayers of Canada, I expect and demand of her a measure of honesty truthfulness, that was clearly not forthcoming in her earlier gig......on CTV’s Biased News Network.

9 comments:

Dr Mike said...

Wonder why Amanda felt the need to kowtow to a guy like Flaherty??

So he is finance Minister , big deal.

This is the same guy who just a few short months ago predicted surpluses as far as the eye could see.

This is the same guy whose deficit predictions were as good as Harper`s promise not to tax income trusts.

This is the same guy who told us in Ontario when he was the finance guy that he had a surplus which turned-out to be a 5.6 billion dollar deficit all because he did not get a chance to sell-off gov`t assets before he was given the boot.

This guy is a lawyer for God`s sake & not some financial guru to the stars.

Amanda , get over him & do the people a service & take another look at the trust file before it is too late & before he drives the country even further in debt.

Dr Mike

Anonymous said...

I am not expecting any change [in Amanda's clear bias]. The next show, Power and Politics might be interesting, depending.

Robin

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately I think you may be hoping for a bit much from Amanduh.

Neville

Fillibluster said...

Hey Neville: It's worth a try. Miracles have been known to happen.

Although maybe that was the sole reason for hiring her in the first place, so Amanduh would have a larger audience to espouse the government’s lies to?

Brent

Anonymous said...

I agree with you Brent and look forward to Amanda's debut today, but I'm not sure she will ask Flaherty anything or change her tune, even if she is now working for the taxpayer's of Canada!

Doug

Anonymous said...

Will Amanda Lang continue to espouse Flaherty's tax leakage - FIRST GUEST? Flatulance himself

that's it for me

Robin

Bruce Benson said...

Softball questions are an understatement. My dog could have asked better questions. Wooof!

Anonymous said...

We are presented with two options.
One is that Amanda prefers men who are small, dark and not very handsome & that she is ready to leave her ConBorg.

The other is that CBC has received government funding with strings attached & one of the stipulations was that CBC would hire Amanda & Kevin and that Cons, in general, would be well represented on the show.

Carswell

Anonymous said...

Its a stupid show with what his face freaking out at anything.

Sombody tell this guy not to be so one dimensional