Headlines this week revealed to Canadians that we are about to hit a record debt.
And while this news begs the question, why fighter jets, prisons and corporate tax cuts, it should also prompt you to ask who is the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the ones who brought us this "news".
If you don't know who to ask, ask me.
The CTF is the Canadian spin-off of Republican operative Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. Like the Tea Party, it is a corporate sponsored AstroTurf group, focused on reducing taxes for the rich and taking over all government services.
Jason Kenney once led the CTF, which should mean "enough said", but unfortunately there is still a lot more to say.
... the same tactic [as the National Citizens Coalition] was used to create another agent for the corporate elite, the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. The connection with the business elite in this second so-called grassroots citizens' movement is both as strong and as obscure as in the NCC. The CTF's own documents go out of their way to insist that it is 'not a lobby group.' Nor is it a special interest ... Obviously it has not occurred to CTF members that taxpayers themselves constitute a special interest. According to Andrew Hilton of The Lobby Monitor, the CTF avoids referring to itself as a lobby group specifically because it fears that this 'delegitimizes their desired status as a grassroots movement'. (1)
The CTF helped to promote the Reform Party, by coordinating their efforts with other AstroTurf organizations, like Stephen Harper's NCC. Kenney would later become a Reform MP.
"Before the 1995 Budget was brought down .... the CTF sponsored no fewer than eighteen protest rallies across the country whose theme was 'No New Taxes.' These rallies were also deliberately coordinated with others sponsored by the Reform Party and the National Citizens Coalition for maximum affect. "... 'much of the group's anti-tax sentiment is based on ignorance of the actual situation in Canada .... a perception of reality, rather than reality' .... "Many other tax experts ... have also pointed out that the benefits received from government in exchange for taxes have to be taken into account ... Kenney's response to this, however is instructive. 'We only look at taxes, not benefits'..
Public-Service union president Darryl Bean has called the CTF 'a front for the Reform Party,' and it is not difficult to understand the source of his accusations. Preston Manning has often been asked to address its anti-tax rallies. At one such event in Pickering Ontario in 1995, media accounts routinely reported some 3,500 Reform Party supporters in attendance, and Manning received a standing ovation. "... (1)
They also created the "Flat Tax" campaign for Stockwell Day when he was in the Alberta Legislature, and many supporters hail Day as a financial guru, despite the fact that he never had anything to do with it.
People still move back and forth between the CTF and the 'Harper' government. Former CTF director, John Williamson, was hired as part of Harper's swelling communications (aka: propaganda) team and is now running as a Conservative candidate.
In fact, this man who is supposed to be so concerned with taxpayers, was caught already abusing our money, using it for self-promotion. He'll fit right in.
The debt clock is important, but given it's source, we can only conclude that this debt will be used to justify the end to programs like public heathcare. It's what they do.
Instead they should be focusing on the enormous abuse of tax dollars for Stephen Harper's self-promotion and wasteful 'Canada Action Plan'. Or that he's trying to buy an election with our money. Or maybe his contempt of Parliament for refusing to provide the costs of new prison schemes. Or more corporate tax cuts. Or using phony receipts to get money they weren't entitled to.
Because only then will the CTF have any credibility. Traipsing around with a stupid clock just doesn't cut it. I wonder if Grover Norquist has a clock?
Sources:
1. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2, Pg. 416-417
repost from Emily Dee's blogs: Between 1990 and 2005 there were a number of media corporate mergers and takeovers in Canada. For example, in 1990, 17.3% of daily newspapers were independently owned; whereas in 2005, 1% were. These changes, among others, caused the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications to launch a study of Canadian news media in March 2003. (This topic had been examined twice in the past, by the Davey Commission (1970) and the Kent Commission (1981), both of which produced recommendations that were never implemented in any meaningful way.)
ReplyDeleteThe Senate Committee’s final report, released in June 2006, expressed concern about the effects of the current levels of news media ownership in Canada. Specifically, the Committee discussed their concerns regarding the following trends: the potential of media ownership concentration to limit news diversity and reduce news quality. (2)
http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/2010/11/cold-case-solved-murder-of-canadas.html
With fewer journalists on staff, news editors increasingly turn to the copy provided by organizations like the Fraser Institute to fill the "news holes" between advertisements in their papers.
This is why we get so many reports from bogus groups like the Fraser, the Frontier Centre, The Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the Manning Centre for Destroying Democracy. Not enough staff so we allow them to fill in the blanks.
I remember reading in one of your blogs how Canadian Taxpayers Federation also runs as a pyramid scheme cheating taxpayers out of revenue from wealthy corporate donors.
ReplyDelete........................
Author Brook Jeffrey explains:
"A few years later, the same tactic [as the National Citizens Coalition] was used to create another agent for the corporate elite, the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. According to the CTF's mission statement, it's threefold purpose is to 'act as a watchdog on government spending, promote responsible fiscal and democratic reforms and mobilize taxpayers to exercise their democratic responsibilities.' Although this may sound reasonably innocuous in theory, the actual activities of the CTF have been anything but passive. Originally formed as a protest group in Saskatchewan in 1990 to combat Brian Mulroney's despised GST ... the original Resolution One Association had become the CTF and had allegedly grown from 2000 to 85,000 members. "
"The connection with the business elite in this second so-called grassroots citizens' movement is both as strong and as obscure as in the NCC. The CTF's own documents go out of their way to insist that it is 'not a lobby group.' Nor is it a special interest. 'Our role is to address government policy on the basis of efficiency and cost' .. 'What we are is a common interest group working for the benefit of taxpayers.' Obviously it has not occurred to CTF members that taxpayers themselves constitute a special interest. According to Andrew Hilton of The Lobby Monitor, the CTF avoids referring to itself as a lobby group specifically because it fears that this 'delegitimizes their desired status as a grassroots movement'.
"The similarities with the NCC in terms of organization, decision making and memberships are striking. Like the NCC, the CTF in reality is neither a grassroots movement nor a democratically run organization. One critic has actually described it as 'more of a pyramid sales group than a bottom-up grassroots movement,' and an examination of CTF recruiting tactics explains why.
"Incredibly, the entire operation of the CTF depends on the recruitment of new members by some sixty-five salespeople operating on commissions .... In 1991 the Consumers' Association of Canada issued a warning about the CTF, noting that approximately 59.5 per cent of membership fees went to the CTF sales force, field managers and 'consultant' Kevin Avram, the Saskatchewan businessman who first organized the Resolution One Association ...
"Like the members of the NCC, the CTF's business members are able to write off their contributions as a business expense. (2)
So while they claimed to be helping taxpayers, they were actually cheating taxpayers out of revenue from wealthy corporate donors. And their function was?
http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/2009/10/jason-kenney-and-canadian-taxpayers.html
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That tactic is indeed imported from the US. It is called "starve the beast". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
ReplyDeleteIt's important to have a name for something we want to fight.