newearthling
Senior Member
I am surprised that The Sun printed this.
Ford Nation is divided against itself
First posted: Sunday, April 13, 2014 06:45 PM EDT
Opinion Columnists
It is an easy thing to dismiss Ford Nation.
For the elite, Ford Nation is a mess of contradictions and political incorrectness.
You can hear the disdain, even in pollsters’ numbers: Ford Nation members earn in the lower regions of the 99% and almost half don’t graduate high school. They’re young (18-34) or old (over 55), and they live to the north and east in Toronto and here and there in rural Ontario.
Mike Harris, with his “Common Sense Revolution,†was the first conservative to court them. Stephen Harper has made a science of them. Rob Ford is them.
Ford Nation loves it when their guys do things that aren’t elite-like: smoking crack cocaine, or squabbling with the liberal press, or being in contempt of Parliament.
But what will happen when the Nation figures out they’re being used?
I can hear my friends from here: “Whoa there, buddy! You trying to tell us how to vote now?†“No,†I say, “The government has robo-calls for that.†“Aw, that’s just politics. You don’t have the sense God gave a hockey puck, do you? It’s business that creates jobs, not government. Government needs to get out of the way.†Well, my friend, that might have been true once. But the corporate fix is in. Reagan Republicans started getting government out of the way in the 1980s.
And in 2008, workers mired in right-to-work-poor states watched as Wall Street ran away with the economy of the Western world.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Harper doubled down on former Liberal finance minister Paul Martin’s massive corporate tax cuts.
Now we have the lowest corporate tax rate in the G7, most new jobs are part time and companies in Canada have a stash of cash worth $600 billion.
And do you know what business whispers into the perky ears of the federal finance minister? “We want more of the same and screw the workers.†Big oil and gas get almost $3 billion a year in subsidies from the federal government. That’s helped create more than 50,000 jobs out west, a good thing. Except our high petro-dollar has sent some 140,000 manufacturing jobs AWOL.
Harper was MIA when Caterpillar gave 500 Ontario workers the bum’s rush and made off like a bandit for right-to-work-poor Indiana.
Who did the government blame? The workers, for wanting to hold on to their middle-class wages.
And yet, for all their contrariness and willingness to vote for ideology over their own interests, we must not dismiss Ford Nation.
Its citizens carry the hard seed of those who came to Canada to fill this so-called “empty landâ€.
Righteous, rough and rebellious, a bloody-minded bunch they were, especially toward those who had a prior claim to the land.
Sure, Canadians are courteous: courtly, truthful, skilled in diplomacy and debate.
But we are also hockey-hardened SOBs who were first up the hill in two world wars and fought the Taliban in the hairiest parts of Afghanistan.
Please, come election day, take care where you mark your X.
— McLaren lives on the Bruce Peninsula. Links to facts and figures in this article are at jdavidmclaren.wordpress.com/. Or watch ‘Poor No More’ on YouTube
And as an aside: I can't believe some people here supported Jim Flaherty, who started screwing people over with Mike Harris, in the 'Common Sense Revolution" and continued it with sociopath Harper. So you got the Tax Free Savings, or saved a few bucks in other ways. Just like Ford saved his minions $60 each ....but is really costing us millions. Canada is in much worse shape since these Cons took over.
Ford Nation is divided against itself
First posted: Sunday, April 13, 2014 06:45 PM EDT
Opinion Columnists
It is an easy thing to dismiss Ford Nation.
For the elite, Ford Nation is a mess of contradictions and political incorrectness.
You can hear the disdain, even in pollsters’ numbers: Ford Nation members earn in the lower regions of the 99% and almost half don’t graduate high school. They’re young (18-34) or old (over 55), and they live to the north and east in Toronto and here and there in rural Ontario.
Mike Harris, with his “Common Sense Revolution,†was the first conservative to court them. Stephen Harper has made a science of them. Rob Ford is them.
Ford Nation loves it when their guys do things that aren’t elite-like: smoking crack cocaine, or squabbling with the liberal press, or being in contempt of Parliament.
But what will happen when the Nation figures out they’re being used?
I can hear my friends from here: “Whoa there, buddy! You trying to tell us how to vote now?†“No,†I say, “The government has robo-calls for that.†“Aw, that’s just politics. You don’t have the sense God gave a hockey puck, do you? It’s business that creates jobs, not government. Government needs to get out of the way.†Well, my friend, that might have been true once. But the corporate fix is in. Reagan Republicans started getting government out of the way in the 1980s.
And in 2008, workers mired in right-to-work-poor states watched as Wall Street ran away with the economy of the Western world.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Harper doubled down on former Liberal finance minister Paul Martin’s massive corporate tax cuts.
Now we have the lowest corporate tax rate in the G7, most new jobs are part time and companies in Canada have a stash of cash worth $600 billion.
And do you know what business whispers into the perky ears of the federal finance minister? “We want more of the same and screw the workers.†Big oil and gas get almost $3 billion a year in subsidies from the federal government. That’s helped create more than 50,000 jobs out west, a good thing. Except our high petro-dollar has sent some 140,000 manufacturing jobs AWOL.
Harper was MIA when Caterpillar gave 500 Ontario workers the bum’s rush and made off like a bandit for right-to-work-poor Indiana.
Who did the government blame? The workers, for wanting to hold on to their middle-class wages.
And yet, for all their contrariness and willingness to vote for ideology over their own interests, we must not dismiss Ford Nation.
Its citizens carry the hard seed of those who came to Canada to fill this so-called “empty landâ€.
Righteous, rough and rebellious, a bloody-minded bunch they were, especially toward those who had a prior claim to the land.
Sure, Canadians are courteous: courtly, truthful, skilled in diplomacy and debate.
But we are also hockey-hardened SOBs who were first up the hill in two world wars and fought the Taliban in the hairiest parts of Afghanistan.
Please, come election day, take care where you mark your X.
— McLaren lives on the Bruce Peninsula. Links to facts and figures in this article are at jdavidmclaren.wordpress.com/. Or watch ‘Poor No More’ on YouTube
And as an aside: I can't believe some people here supported Jim Flaherty, who started screwing people over with Mike Harris, in the 'Common Sense Revolution" and continued it with sociopath Harper. So you got the Tax Free Savings, or saved a few bucks in other ways. Just like Ford saved his minions $60 each ....but is really costing us millions. Canada is in much worse shape since these Cons took over.
