Cut services or raise taxes...

I wish more politicians would talk like this.

Bravo to Mayor David Miller for telling it like it really is. For too long in this country and especially in the United States, politicians have massaged the truth, used Orwellian language or just plain lied to the citizenry when selling their tax-cuts.

Time and time again, the governments of the day in every province have extolled the virtues of tax-cuts, campaigned on "no new taxes" and undercut the idea that paying taxes is one of a citizen's duties to society.

What do we have to show for it? Crumbling infrastructure throughout North America and a society that turns on its' most vulnerable when the budget gets tight.

For so long the supply-side Conservatives have told us that taxes must be cut and they told us that this would actually increase government revenue from the resulting prosperity, but what they failed to say was that it would make it necessary to defer infrastructure investment for an additional 20 years, would cause those who most need our help to go without and would actually not lead to increased revenue.

Interesting to note for my Ontario readers, there's an election coming up and the party that initiated this budget crunch is on the ballot:

After years of tapping reserve funds to balance its budget - by law the city cannot run an operating deficit - the city faces a projected $575-million shortfall next year.

At the root of its problems, almost everyone on council agrees, is the pressure of having to fund services formerly covered by the province, but "offloaded" by the Progressive Conservative government of the day in the 1990s. A provincial panel on the offloading problem is due to report back in February.

Same old John Tory story....

A.L.