Tag Archives: Hypocrite

News

NDP leader Jack Layton lived in subsidized housing with $120,000 income

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NDP leaders Bob Rae and Jack Layton
NDP leaders Bob Rae and Jack Layton

Here’s an article from the Toronto (Red) Star on the NDP Party, Jack Layton and ethics.

Excerpt:

Layton, who is married to fellow NDP MP Olivia Chow, elicits strong feelings both for and against. His critics say he is a tax-and-spend socialist while supporters are almost moony-like in their adoration of the man.

“I quite like the guy as a person,” said Harper cabinet minister John Baird, “but his solution to everything is increase taxes and increase spending.”

From time to time he has been criticized for saying one thing and doing another, including being caught red-handed in 1985 living in subsidized housing in Toronto when his and Olivia Chow, then a Toronto trustee, were raking in a combined $120,000 year.

“Jack once told me many years after that incident that it is the one thing he has never able to purge or expunge from the public’s mind, this apparent contradiction,” said former seatmate Brian Ashton.

The Toronto Star is the most radical, left-wing newspaper in Canada. They are far to the left of the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times.

How did former NDP leader Bob Rae govern in Ontario?

If you want to know what New Democrats do to an economy, you can read about how NDP leader Bob Rae wrecked the Ontario economy in the 1990s.

Excerpt:

The Liberal government had forecast a small surplus earlier in the year, but a worsening North American economy led to a $700 million deficit before Rae took office. In October, the NDP projected a $2.5 billion deficit for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 1991.[40] Some economists projected soaring deficits for the upcoming years, even if the Rae government implemented austerity measures.[41] Rae himself was critical of the Bank of Canada’s high interest rate policy, arguing that it would lead to increased unemployment throughout the country.[42] He also criticized the 1991 federal budget, arguing the Finance Minister Michael Wilson was shifting the federal debt to the provinces.[43]

The Rae government’s first budget, introduced in 1991, increased social spending to mitigate the economic slowdown and projected a record deficit of $9.1 billion. Finance Minister Floyd Laughren argued that Ontario made a decision to target the effects of the recession rather than the deficit, and said that the budget would create or protect 70,000 jobs. It targeted more money to social assistance, social housing and child benefits, and raised taxes for high-income earners while lowering rates for 700,000 low-income Ontarians.[44]

A few years later, journalist Thomas Walkom described the budget as following a Keynesian orthodoxy, spending money in the public sector to stimulate employment and productivity. Unfortunately, it did not achieve its stated purpose. The recession was still severe. Walkom described the budget as “the worst of both worlds”, angering the business community but not doing enough to provide for public relief.

[…]Rae’s government attempted to introduce a variety of socially progressive measures during its time in office, though its success in this field was mixed. In 1994, the government introduced legislation, Bill 167, which would have provided for same-sex partnership benefits in the province. At the time, this legislation was seen as a revolutionary step forward for same-sex recognition.

[…]The Rae government established an employment equity commission in 1991,[49] and two years later introduced affirmative action to improve the numbers of women, non-whites, aboriginals and disabled persons working in the public sector.

[…]In November 1990, the Rae government announced that it would restrict most rent increases to 4.6% for the present year and 5.4% for 1991. The provisions for 1990 were made retroactive. Tenants’ groups supported these changes, while landlord representatives were generally opposed.

Be careful who you vote for, Canada. We voted for Obama, and now we have a 14.5 trillion dollar debt and a 1.65 trillion deficit – TEN TIMES the last Republican budget deficit of 160 billion under George W. Bush in 2007. TEN TIMES WORSE THAN BUSH.

UPDATE: This post linked by Blazing Cat Fur.

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Commentary

Can a person be a Christian and yet still do bad things?

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I sometimes write posts about atheists and say that they will have difficulty grounding the minimal requirements of morality if the universe is an accident and they are just lumps of matter. To show how this works out, I like to cite famous atheists who also managed to get political power, and then point out how they treated other people. I then say that doing bad things is not really wrong on atheism, since morality is really based on doing whatever you feel like that makes you feel good and that your peers will approve of. And if you want to do something they won’t approve of, you can still do it, as long as no one ever finds out.

Atheist readers sometimes object that Christians can behave just as badly as atheists.

But consider this post from Retha’s English-language blog. (She’s from South Africa)

Excerpt:

However you choose to define Christian, the definition most certainly is not “anyone who calls himself a Christian, is a Christian.” We don’t use that definition for anything else. We don’t believe that everyone who calls themselves “honest” are. We don’t believe that everyone who calls themselves “not overweight” are not. You cannot be a king, or a genius, or a dog, or a tall person, by calling yourself that. (If it worked that way, it would have been a very strong temptation to call myself drop-dead gorgeous.)

Simple word etymology is more useful: Christian has the root word Christ and the suffix –ian. A Christian is a Christ-following/ Christ-imitating person. Who is meant when we speak of Christ? He is the Jesus described in the New Testament, as described there.To be a Christ-ian, you need to follow/ imitate Jesus as he is painted in the Bible. That is where He is painted as the Christ.

There’s a lot of wisdom in those two paragraphs.

I think it’s possible for someone to call himself a Christian and yet to do bad things. Christians aren’t perfect. Even when they know what they ought to do, they struggle to do it. The dividing line here is that a real Christian is never going to call sin anything other than sin. They aren’t going to try to defend it. (Although I always try to explain what leads me to sin if anyone asks – which is not the same as rationalizing, it’s just explaining). Someone who claims to be a Christian and yet does things that Bible forbids without any shame or regret is not a Christian. If that person responds to being judged by denying that what they are doing is wrong, or by attacking the Bible’s authority on moral issues, then that person is not a Christian.

If the person is saying “don’t judge me”, or “the Bible doesn’t say that”, or “the Bible was written by men“, or “the Bible was written a long time ago”, or “I believe in a God of love”, or “you’re intolerant”, or “I was born as a pickpocket”, or “I have the bank-robbing gene”, or “that’s your truth”, or “that’s just your interpretation”, or “if God loved me, he would give me a Mercedez Benz”, then you are probably not dealing with a Christian, whatever they claim to be. Lots of people claim to be Christians but don’t follow Christ. An we shouldn’t believe that someone who tries to argue that abortion is consistent with the Bible is an authentic Christian, for example. The Bible forbids pre-marital sex and murder.

I sometimes struggle with going to church, because I can’t stand being around happy, singing people (unless they know apologetics, in which case I can). But you would never hear me say that going to church was wrong, or that I was morally justified in avoiding church. Instead, I would say I was wrong not to go to church regularly, but that I hadn’t found a church that made me feel comfortable yet.

Videos

Tom McClintock’s response to Arizona’s immigration law

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This is the view of immigration law and immigration law enforcement from the conservative wing of the Republican party.

And here is something a little more light-hearted:

These are from ECM, who blogs at Waxing Erratic.