CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDA PROMPTS NEGATIVE REACTION
I’ve been sampling public opinion about the negative Conservative “attack ads” – both in print and on television – which are saturating the country this summer.
So far, the response is 100 percent AGAINST this Conservative campaign.
Many people find this attempt to vilify Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff to be tacky and mean-spirited. Others say it’s entirely out-of-place when 450,000 Canadians have lost their jobs in a Conservative recession. Mr. Harper’s advertising shows how perverted his priorities are.
What’s worse, much of the bill is being paid, directly or indirectly, by taxpayers!
Like George Bush and his Republican henchmen in the U.S., the Conservatives seem to operate on the theory that if you repeat a big enough falsehood often enough and loud enough, some people may believe it.
Beyond attack ads, this propaganda technique is also reflected in what the Conservatives are saying about Employment Insurance (EI).
With tens of thousands of jobless Canadians not being able to access the EI benefits they’ve paid for – because the eligibility rules were not designed to cope with the reality of a recession – Liberals argue that those rules need to change.
Why should a recession victim in Regina have to confront EI rules that are nearly twice as tough as those for a recession victim in Windsor or elsewhere? They are both equally unemployed. We need national eligibility standards.
As Premier Wall says, this is a matter of fairness. It’s also a matter of economic efficiency – improving access to EI would provide greater economic stimulus faster than anything else the government has done to combat the recession.
But Conservatives keep distorting the Liberal position. They imply that Liberals want people to collect a full year of EI benefits based on just nine weeks of work.
Such an insinuation is untrue and dishonest!
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