Now that's an Editorial: Fictitious Funds Can't Rescue BC Liberals

Good editorial, although not exactly earth shattering, it's still nice to see at least a little truth in print for a change. We are hooped here in Beautiful BC. I can't be the only noticing my income dwindling under the new tax on items that previously had no tax. It's actually like a kick in the teeth each time a bill rolls in, or I look at the receipt.

$8.20 HST on Hydro; $9.15 HST to Telus; $1.21 to Gas = it all adds up, month after month.

Went to a worldwide coffee chain and it now costs over $7 for a medium sized drink and a baked good. Over $7 for 2 items!!! Yesterday, I paid over $10 for a half a sandwich and a coffee drink at another local coffee chain. Want to bet this is rapidly informing/reforming my spending habits and those of others I talk to. It can't be a coincidence that there are more and more store owners working the counter. What about all of those jobs the HST was going to bring?

We all know people who lie, most of us have lied at some point in our lives. Once the lies start rolling off our tongues enough, or people around us keep telling us the lies, the truth is replaced by the lies. Seemingly moral, decent people become warped and are treading water in oceans of lies. It's a scary place to be. No life preservers can save people from drowning in the lies that have been created once they've started swimming in the ocean.

It's pretty much only a matter of time before the end once people become trapped in promulgating the lies. Wonder if it's true that in the last moments of life people review the memories of their lives? There are some people who will be able to answer this figurative question as they continue the demise of their political lives.

Fictitious Funds Can't Rescue BC Budget
Burnaby Now. Sept. 18, 2010.

The provincial government's recent presentation of its revised budget is insulting.

Finance Minister Colin Hansen announced Tuesday that British Columbia's deficit for this fiscal year is now expected to come in at $1.4 billion - $335 million less than when the plan was tabled.

That much is good.

But then Hansen went on to invite taxpayers to tell him what to do with the government's newly "available dollars" for next year. Fund new services? Cut taxes? Reduce the debt?

This part is outrageous.

It doesn't take an accountant to understand that these dollars are fictitious.

The province isn't making more money than originally planned; it's only borrowing less. There is not, in fact, any "extra" money available at all.

To treat the difference between the old projected deficit and the new projected deficit as cash is misleading and irresponsible - and doubly so coming from a government that only just repealed its own law making deficits illegal.

Worse, to suggest that this discrepancy could be used to pay down debt crosses the line from ill-advised to ridiculous.

Since when can negative funds be used to cut debt?

It's nothing new for a government to use accounting sleight-of-hand to buy votes, but to do so in such a blatant fashion is disrespectful.

Any voter with a credit card understands our province's predicament very well.

No amount of silly rhetoric is going to change that.

If the B.C. Liberals want to regain the respect of their electorate, they have to stop trying to dupe them, and begin treating them as the thinking adults that they are.

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