A month in review - part one of at least one

Alternate title: Nobody said I'd be topical

Let's see, what's been going on while I've been incommunicado? (Er, commando. That's right -- no underwear for the past four weeks. But then, you knew that.)

That Budgety Thingy

I'm torn on Flaherty's first effort at spending my sorta hard-earned tax dollars (and, I guess, yours).

First, I'm in favour of the 1% cut to the GST. Now, some of my fellow lefties have complained (the left, complaining -- go figure) that a miniscule drop in a consumption tax won't really help, say, a single mother trying to raise a couple of kids on $15,000 a year.

Hogwash! Sure, Mommy Nobucks would save only pennies on, say, the rental of the latest Wallace and Grommit flick for little Jimmy to watch on movie night. But if she really loved her kids, and got them a Samsung 61" Widescreen DLP HDTV to prove it, the savings would be a hefty $50! That's enough to subscribe to a month of the Hustler/Playboy channel value pack, with some left over for a 24 of Blue. (Hey, grade two's a bitch. A kid has to unwind.)

But I'm strongly against the $1200 annual child care allowance for families with children under 6 years of age. And not for the reasons you might think. I'm not upset about the scrapping of the Liberals' plan to provide more daycare spaces. There are quite enough daycare spaces right now. It's just that they are too large. Really, these spaces are huge -- some with enough room for three or four kids. What they ought to do is subdivide them. The Tories' plan to allow for a tax break on the cost of recreational activities for kids will come in handy here. A more active child is a thinner child, meaning you can cram more of them into one daycare "space".

No, I'm against the new baby bonus because it is yet another attempt to offload a financial burden onto the provinces. Here's the problem: $1200 per child per year is such a ridiculously generous amount that people will be having kids just to get their hands on the cash. Women will be popping fertility pills, birthing four, five, six kids at a time. Rolling in Haperbucks, ma and pa will live high on the hog for a few years -- Belgian beer, gourmet popcorn, weekend excursions to Sarnia. Then, a day after each child's sixth birthday, he or she gets abandoned in a farmer's field, clad only in a "Mommy and Daddy blew a grand at RiverRock Casino and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" shirt. This will mean thousands of extra children in foster care, on the province's dime. Fiscal imbalance, indeed.


Yeah, so that's that. I'm thinking there must have been something else that went on while I was away. I remember hearing something about Afghanistan -- probably something to do with the final episode of Amazing Race. Lemme check my TiVo and get back to you.

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