By Rick Stiebel
Although the bride does an amazing job of reeling me in when I’m about to enter the rant zone, there are times when even my little queen of the serene can’t find anything in her bag of mental tricks to dial me back from broil to simmer.
What’s increasingly riling me recently is the B.C. Liberals spending scads of our hard-earned cash on election ads that aim to hypnotize us into voting for them again. Turning on the television and seeing another sleazy assault on our dollars and senses leaves me feeling angrier than a blind rhino on a road rage rampage.
The good news is that Auditor General Carol Bellringer – an apt name if there ever was one – weighed in last week on the latest onslaught of back-patting, propaganda and self-serving promises to agree that these ads do indeed cross already blurred lines.
It’s like lending someone $20 and having them say they can only pay back $15 because they blew five bucks on a thank-you card.
Unfortunately, because of the way the rules are currently rigged, there’s nothing Bellringer can do to stop this government from flushing $15 million down our helpless hatches. The Liberals will never slam the brakes on raiding our wallets for their own political gain as long as they believe these ads will sway voters to their side of the fence. There’s no way, no matter how much money lines a war chest already bloated past capacity with corporate plunder.
What really gets my gonch in a knot tight enough to blow out my eyeballs is thinking of what the Liberals could do with the $15 million we gave them in good faith through our taxes.
How many sexually assaulted children languishing on waiting lists could have been provided with the counselling they so desperately need with just a chunk of that change? How many surgeries could that kind of coin purchase for people limping along through another 18 months of misery while waiting for hip a hip or knee replacement? Ask anyone from any political party, whether they’re dressed in Liberal red, NDP orange or garbed from head to foot in Green. I’m certain they could all come up with a thousand better ways to spend $15 million in a heartbeat.
Anyone who condones this kind of conduct probably keeps their social conscience locked away in the closet in a stink-proof jar.
Let’s pray, including semi-agnostics like me, that enough voters are still angrier than a rattlesnake on ‘roids when the democratic day of reckoning in May rolls around. Pray that enough ballots are cast, Horgan help us, to stop Christy and her merry band of reverse Robin Hoods from getting their hands on our purses for another four years.
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Rick Stiebel is a Sooke resident and semi-retired journalist.
