“‘You’re a criminal serving time in prison – you should not be getting an HST bribe cheque,’ Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said Friday.”

But

“Mail call will be welcomed by those inmates serving less than 90 days in provincial correctional facilities, as they are the only convicts eligible for the payments.”

Ok. That seems fine. Tax adjustments shouldn’t apply to inmates? So if an inmate has an income while in prison, and tax rates are increased for his tax bracket, he shouldn’t pay the increased rate?

I’m not that dense, I realize that considering the cheque literally as a bribe means why let criminal offenders benefit from a bribe, but of course it’s not actually a bribe. It’s a bit of money to say “Look, prices won’t come down overnight after businesses start seeing the benefits of HST, so in the meantime here’s a bit of cash to smooth things out.” People in prison for less than 90 days will certainly need that sort of help. And that’s fine.

No no, I highly doubt that anyone purchased 1500 kg of ammonium nitrate. You see, we’ve spent A BILLION DOLLARS on security, so it’s just not possible, you see.

What if someone jumps into the fake lake? I’m sure money has been set aside for that lawsuit. A BILLION DOLLARS!

Every single paragraph in this article explaining Giorgio Mammoliti’s transit proposals contains a horrible idea.

It’s this kind of stuff that scares people who know anything about economics away from the party: “No one believes that businesses will pass on their savings to consumers. If the government’s own business—the LCBO—isn’t going to pass on the savings, why should those in the private sector?” said [NDP leader] Horwath.

It’s not a matter of why should they as in why would they feel any moral compunction to do so, but a matter of that’s just how competition works. Unless you have mass price fixing, eventually someone says “Hey, it’s costing me a bit less to produce my crap, so I’m going to lower my costs a bit to beat out my competition,” and then the competition does the same thing and so on and so forth until prices come down.

“Liberals are calling on the Harper government to honour a motion passed in the House today to provide specific details of the $1-billion G8/G20 security boondoggle,” according to a party release.

I think in grade five we had a current events folder where you were supposed to be able to notice bias. “Boondoggle” is one of those words.

Everybody is horrible.

In my post a moment ago I mentioned a stupid graph.

I just came across it here.

Copied here:

(Without having a link to a specific instance, what I was talking about is the kind of crap nobody likes to see the other side doing, just restating the party line.)

Southen neighbour Steve Benen reports that conservatives in his country are happy that the health care system in our country has problems. It validates their criticisms of their recently passed health care bill, they believe.

Benen notes, “the new health care law in the United States creates a system that isn’t similar to the Canadian system at all, so condemning the Affordable Care Act by pointing to Canadian budget problems doesn’t make sense.”

Yes. But even if it is similar, it’s still better than no system at all.

Yes. But even the underlying premise that something that needs work is something that shouldn’t exist, is completely stupid. When brakes go in a car, you get new brakes, you don’t say “Ha! Told you cars were a bad idea!” Because you’d sound like an idiot. Because you would, in fact, be an idiot. Conservatives are idiots.

So the combined spending for the G8 and G20 events dwarf the spending of other large but in no way obviously directly comparable events.

Comparing the G8 and G20 to another G8 doesn’t make any sense.

If the 2002 G8 was $190 million, and the G20 is equal to the G8*20/8, then the combined expense would be expected to be $665 million. Which is a stupid calculation. But that’s what you get when you start with a stupid comparison.

I’m not saying the spending isn’t ridiculous, I’m just saying poor comparisons are no way to support that ridiculousness.