No doubt many of your readers agree with the views expressed from time to time on the editorial page of the Sooke News Mirror by Tom Fletcher, mouthpiece of the Black Press and big business.
However, printing this April 27 diatribe was unworthy of your fine paper because:
1. By publishing Fletcher’s attack on Jack Layton and his “bogus arguments” on the Wednesday before the election, you left no chance for a rebuttal before we went to the polls.
2. Fletcher’s phony arguments promoting the HST, such as that the movie industry has avoided B.C. because paying two sales taxes was too “complicated” and an “expensive insult” was nothing but a further attempt to discredit the NDP for opposing it.
3. And, finally, his bias shows up when he advocates, “the general trend away from income taxes and towards consumption taxes” of which the HST is but the latest blow. This philosophy rewards the rich, who have high incomes and spend relatively less on consumption but puts the greater burden on the rest of us with less income to tax.
Did Fletcher influence the outcome of the federal election? Who knows? But he is certainly setting us up to influence us when the time comes to vote on the HST and, eventually the provincial one.
Dick Momsen
Sooke
