[Newsbot]

Title: Accusations And Perceptions Of Elitism: The Danger To Progressive Goals - See mo
Written By: JaredMilne
Date: Wednesday, September 17 at 18:27
In August, Prime Minister Stephen Harper attacked the “liberal media and academic elites” who supposedly supported Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals. He took pains to portray himself as standing up for the little guy against these supposed elites, who are supposedly out to get him.
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[Individualist]

Urban "progressives" have a point in that the pursuit of lower municipal taxes in Toronto and elsewhere has left to an infrastructure deficit and to cuts in valuable programs. They claim it to be the result of a "neo-liberal assault" on the idea of government, but there are very few on the right/conservative side who actually wish to drown the state in a bathtub. There has, however, been a desire to starve the beast somewhat.

Folks on the left have a way of embedding social tinkering into even the blandest and more innocuous of infrastructure projects. It sometimes seems like everything is an experiment with them. It's the hubris of believing that there is no social problem (real or perceived) that can't be solved with sufficient application of money and coercive power, and that such application is always justified, unintended consequences be damned. There are some on the conservative side who simply want to pay less in taxes. For the more thoughtful of us, though, it's about curtailing the social tinkering and allowing people to make their own lifestyle choices. Because the social tinkering is so often hiding, Trojan Horse like, in otherwise sensible projects, some degree of general budget cutting is often required to scale it back. You can think of it as fiscal chemotherapy.

The Christopher Humes of the world are all about centralized control and supervision of people's lives. That's why they love dense urban environments so much. Someone living in a micro-condo in the sky and dependent on transit is more limited in terms of personal space, personal possessions and personal mobility. And *those* are the things the left-wing urbanists want shrunk down to bathtub-drowning size.

[JaredMilne]

I wrote the main article a while ago, and I've since found a few more things that reinforce my point...

First, an example of Justin Trudeau being accused of showing the same dismissive arrogance towards different views that his father Pierre so often showed:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... -contempt/

$1:

Mr. Trudeau is 42. He hasn’t made clear when a man becomes “old”. (In French, his tweet was targeted at “les hommes aux cheveux gris”, so we know hair colour has something to do with it.) Scott Brison is just 47 – five years his senior. Is that old yet? His hair still looks pretty dark, but maybe he touches it up. Should Mr. Brison start curbing his opinions in preparation for turning 50? Or is 55 the cut-off point? Mr. Trudeau hasn’t made that clear, but perhaps he’s holding back for the election, as he is with the rest of his platform.

...

But wait: Isn’t the point of democracy the right to choose candidates who reflect your views and values? I’m betting there are relatively few Liberal voters who would support a strongly anti-abortion candidate, but if one or two constituencies out of 338 should feel that way, would it destroy the Liberal party to allow them a seat in caucus, if only to hear the other side? Apparently so. For Trudeau Liberals, democracy isn’t about the freedom to disagree, but about towing the line, even if it violates your conscience

...

Whatever else we may not know about Mr. Trudeau, we know he isn’t after the CARP vote. He has all that Trudeau arrogance the grey-hairs remember from way back when. When his father got annoyed at protesters on a western tour in 1982, he flipped them the bird. His son (who was reportedly on the train at the time) hasn’t got around to that yet, but there’s plenty of time. Lucky for him he’s still young, and knows everything.

There's also the perception of entitlement, that these elites feel they have the right to spend as much taxpayer money as they like on whatever junkets and pet projects they want, even if such spending has little or nothing to do with their responsibilities:

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/09/18/ad ... ment-crowd

$1:

Here are a few simple rules for Toronto school trustees, Ontario Pan Am Games executives, Canadian Senators, government consultants and politicians to follow to avoid public outrage when filing travel and expense claims, paid for by taxpayers.

First, don’t charge for anything you couldn’t justify were it to appear on the front page of your newspaper the next day.

...

Third, before embarking on any “business trip”, ask yourself (a) is this really necessary? (b) how many times have I been there before? (c) what can I accomplish that can’t be done by phone or online?

(d) how related is this to what I actually do?

(Hint: If you’re a school trustee, it’s probably a bad idea to charge the public almost $4,000 for a walking tour of Israel.)

For a Toronto-specific example, here's a sample of some of the things that Rob Ford cited as part of the City Hall "gravy train":

http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=c49 ... b456cd1e2d

$1:

Toronto taxpayers will this year give $250,000 to an international environmental organization the city no longer wants to be part of, spend $140,000 funding the London, England, office of the climate-change group chaired by Mayor David Miller, and pay $250,000 to study the impact of extreme weather.

Toronto's proposed $8.7-billion operating budget was approved by the budget committee yesterday, despite much grumbling from councillors that the spending plan is "too rich."

...

"It's almost like running yourself into a brick wall," he said. "There's probably little change that is ever going to be affected, that's just the way it is here. The Mayor and his group have the votes to pass whatever they want and that's what they do.

[RickW]

Isn't this just a variation of the "Joe-Lunchbucket-watching-the-antics-of-Canadian-artists-in-all-their-finery-congratulating-one-another-for-all-the-subsidies-they-scored"?