Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

So the Alward government has resorted to increased taxes again to help slow the flow of red ink. It was bad enough the wealthy in this province had been singled out to be punished, now every person in the province working person in the province will be required to pay more for the bureaucratic / crony capitalist empire that we call the New Brunswick government.

Are spending cuts not on the table at all? Is there anybody in government who realizes we cannot tax and spend our way to prosperity? Are there any conservatives in government?

This is very disheartening to say the least.

The government will hide behind the line that the tax cut had not been implemented yet, but announcing the hike during the Christmas season shows that higher taxes, more spending and runaway bureaucracy and regulation is the plan to grow our economy.

Some plan.

When you steal from Peter to give to Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul.

A Good Start - Eliminating 6 MLAs

Have to give Alward some credit on the plan to shrink the size of the legislature from 55 members to 49.

Taking it down to 39 would have been better, but the reality of trying to keep his caucus together probably limited how much he could really reduce the number.

When the census data quantifies the movement of people from rural areas to urban areas, our hope is still that the suggested range of +/- 5% is adhered to. Every vote should have equal weight, whether that voter lives in Dieppe or Bathurst.

A Law For Thee, But Not For Me

The Energy Minister is evidently going to void a legally binding contract with Enbridge Gas NB. While he is doing that, could he also write legislation cutting everybody's mortgages by 15%?

Read CBC story here.

So the government makes a terrible deal years ago with a company acting in good faith. The company would assume the government would act in good faith. Now we are going to use force to accomplish what we could not accomplish at the bargaining table.

This does give us hope that when we fuck up the deal to extract natural gas from our land we will at least act like a third world dictatorship and just void the contract.

Just because Enbridge Gas NB is part of an evil energy company should not make them crime victims at the hands of our provincial government. But to be fair, we are going in by the front door, not smashing a window and crawling through to pillage their assets.

Dog Bites Man

So, lets get this straight:

Rural MLA in New Brunswick lobbies Minster responsible for DOT to get a local guy a job and a local guy with a truck a gravel contract.

And this is news? This is exactly what New Brunswick politics is!

As long as government uses employment as a way to collect votes, offers of employment will be used to collect votes.