Harper delivered a speech during the celebration of his party’s election victory anniversary. His speech gave us a taste of what lies he plan to sow if there is an election. Starting from his December interview, he have been hinting about hard economic times ahead. There were already fear of economic slow down in U.S. when Harper was busy cutting GST to boost his party in the polls. Economist have called the GST cut wrong-headed and won’t help the economy. But Harper and Flaherty ignored their advice. In his speech today, he said this of the Liberal:
They never saw a tax they didn’t like. Never saw a tax they wouldn’t hike.
Which of course is not true and the person saying that is either ignorant of the fact or intentionally lying. Looks like Harper would try to use that as a theme in an election thinking he can deceive the people. He have tons of money from political contribution and have a large war chest to spent on advertising. As sellers of consumer product knows, marketing works. So expect to be bombarded with these false message over and over again through TV, radio and other media ads. As one official of the great brain washing propaganda machine in history have said:
“A lie, repeated often enough, will end up as truth”. – Dr Paul Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda)
Alexander Panetta of Canadian Press points out in the news article “Harper sets economy as key theme in election-style speech” that
The previous Liberal government cut taxes by $100-billion, eliminated the deficit, presided over years of uninterrupted economic growth, and tabled more tax cuts in a 2005 budget the Tories later reversed.
A research reported by Washington Post talks about how human brain develop biases based on persistent myth and
Indeed, repetition seems to be a key culprit. Things that are repeated often become more accessible in memory, and one of the brain’s subconscious rules of thumb is that easily recalled things are true.
And for those who likes to believe Harper lies even if a quick search of fact reveal what he says is not true, they likely belong to these group.
The mind’s bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts.
I don’t find the previous Liberal government faultless. For that is why a lot of traditional Liberal supporter voted them out in the last election so that they can elect a new leader. Now they have a new leader in Stephane Dion. He might not be as charismatic as other leaders but he is not stupid like Conservative would have you believe. Harper would like to keep blaming everything on past Liberal government and act like Dion was on the helm at that time. But since Harper constantly engage in lies and taking opposition word out of context, always treating non-partisans bureaucrats with contempt for not towing their partisan line, then I’ll take my chance with Dion. When you filter out the noise from Harper’s hack repetitive talking point discrediting Dion, you would realize that what Dion says makes more sense than what Harper have to offer.
Harper also said in his speech:
Their reckless spending would – in one budget – push the country back into deficit, adding to the federal debt and putting upward pressure on interest rates,
So expect Harper to accuse Liberal of overspending if they offer any money for health and social services, which are considered an abomination by Harper. He would probably claim Liberal are being irresponsible and it is not possible to spend for all these health and social services. Of course, Harper conveniently gloss over the fact that under previous Liberal government, Canada’s economy was resilient even during times of economic slowdown in USA. Contrast that with the present government where economist are projecting a possible deficit this time around even for just a mild slowdown. They also willfully ignore the fact that economist calculated that GST cut won’t be noticeable and that they support Dion’s plan to cut personal income tax instead of GST.
He also kept saying “Canada is back” like we were on a decline. What is closer to the truth is under Harper, our international reputation is on a decline. He embarrasses Canada in more ways than one. Not the least of which range from environment / health issues to human rights issue, from taking sides in international conflict to ignoring established law.
Reading the speech you would think he was talking about a different government. Phrase like “To working parents, we said: we get it……. To seniors, you will be respected…. To those unrepresented by lobbyists and special interests: We hear you.” As those links shows, what Harper said is opposite to what he does. It’s worse than saying you are going to do something and not do it. Here, he said one thing but did the exact opposite.
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