Editorial collusion between the Star and the Globe

Upon reading the Editorial in today’s Globe and Mail and that of the Toronto Star, there is a fascinating degree of similarity going on here. The syncopated theme of these two Editorials are the self serving advice of these two supposedly independent papers to Michael Ignatieff calling upon him to vote in favour of the HST.

Both guns blazing, as it were.

Now why would Michael Ignatieff possibly want to vote in favour of the HST? In order to prove to Canadians that he cares not a with about their economic circumstances and that he is a today to both Stephen Harper and the wishes and whims of Canada’s corporations who simply want to shift their tax burden onto consumers, even if it means taxing consumers’ heating bills at 13% and imposing taxes on people’s investment savings. Meanwhile billions in underwriting fees paid to Canada’s largest banks are not subject to any GST. PST or HST whatsoever. Where is the Globe and Mail or Toronto Star editorial about that gross inequity? Is putting a new Porsche in the garage of every yuppie investment banker more important than Grandma or that single mother being able to pay for their heat? Evidently so, since that it the value system that the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail are asking Michael Ignatieff to endorse.

Voting against the HST is a political god send for Michael Ignatieff. Just because Dwight Duncan gave a last minute reprieve to the newspaper industry by exempting newspaper sales from HST for which the obvious quid pro quo was this syncopated editorial shrill from the Globe and the Star, doesn’t mean you have to fall for it.

One thing that the Globe’s and Star’s self serving editorials fail to point out in attempting to link you as the federal Liberal leader to your provincial counterparts like Dalton McGuinty, is that he is in office and you are not. Do you actually think that supporting Harper’s HST is the sure route to office. Since when would you start taking advice from the Globe and Mail? They supported Harper in each of the two last elections?

Meanwhile the Editorial collusion of the Globe and the Star is made evident by the fact that both of these editorial appeared on the same day and both employ the same logic. The Globe implores you to not act “refexively” or act in “knee jerk” fashion in opposing the HST, while the Toronto Star implores you “resist the political sirens”.

Obviously these two papers were “bought off” by Dwight Duncan’s last minute exemption of newspapers from HST. Hopefully your principles will see you do the right thing for the people of Canada by rejecting this absurd HST shifting of tax burden from Corporations to Individuals, which is the most hypocritical tax that both Harper and Flaherty could have come, since that was the very REVERSE RATIONALE that Harper and Flaherty used to justify their highly punitive and regressive income trust tax. Need I remind upi what that Ways and Motion claimed to achieve....namely the exact OPPOSITE of the HST, and read:

“ensuring that taxes are not unfairly shifted [from Corporations] onto the shoulders of Canadian taxpayers, especially Canadian families”

As such the HST is nothing more that Harper’s Hypocritical Sales Tax. It is completely contradictory to the rationale that Harper employed to justify his Income Trust Tax. This type of gross contradiction is made possible because Stephen Harper is completely devoid of principles. The HST is and important test of Michael Ignatieff as a potential leader. Is he governed by principle and the will of the people, or is he easily swayed by the shrill resonating messaging of the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, Two newspapers who were easily bought off by a last minute exemption from the very tax that they are advocating be imposed on everybody, but them?

What intellectually corrupt logic is that? Surely Michael Ignatieff can see the inherent conflict of interest at play here, and the political gold mine that opposing the HST means for him and his party. Failing that, he is in the wrong occupation.