Dear editor,
It was hugely amusing to watch a right-wing evangelical wingnut like Bill Vander Zalm in cahoots with the NDP to get the HST turfed, thereby punching a $3-billion-plus hole in the B.C. budget. Meanwhile, many of the folks who voted against the HST are clamouring for more healthcare (witness our homegrown fantasy of having two new fully staffed, fully equipped hospitals within 50 km of each other).
Teachers are now working to rule for a pie-in-the-sky salary increase and six months paid compassionate leave. What's next?Two months off for the death of a pet gerbil?
Meanwhile, don't look to bump into David Hahn the CEO of BC Ferries in your local food bank lineup any time soon. He is departing with a $315,000 per-year pension after steering the corporation onto the rocks with a $40-million deficit.
And at the pinnacle of cretinism we have U.S. bank CEOs who continue to earn 400 times what their employees make after engaging in risky practices that have nearly destroyed the world financial system and necessitated massive taxpayer-funded bailouts.
Everyone wants more — more compensation, more government services, more benefits, yet everyone wants lower taxes and someone else to foot the bill or bail them out. Politicians are only too happy to drive us into financial ruin by bribing us with our own money to get themselves elected.
Governments are going broke everywhere — most of Europe is a financial train wreck and numerous municipalities in the U.S. have gone bankrupt (soon to be followed by whole states and possibly the entire country).
It will be interesting to see what, if anything, our children and grandchildren inherit from the bankrupt ashes of today's culture of greed, entitlement, and self-absorption.
Historically, we've had the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages — perhaps the current period will be named the Age of Swine.
Dave Mcleod,
Cumberland