Weblog Categories Main Books (3) Bowling (5) Computing Devices (1) Politics (26) Religion (7) Science (2) Stained Glass (1) Sudoku (60) Television (2) Toronto (15) Trains (9)  Politics Stories Voting for Change? Scarborough-Guildwood: 2006 Results Two Days Before Election Beer And Popcorn Scarborough-Guildwood: Past Results One Percent Solution? A Winter Election? Same-Sex Marriage Bill Passes Stephen and Belinda and Paul Shocked I Say, Shocked! Traditional Marriage - What Is It? Terri Schiavo is Dead Support Minority Marriage Rights Archives April 2008 (1) March 2008 (7) February 2008 (2) January 2008 (5) December 2007 (4) November 2007 (4) October 2007 (8) June 2007 (2) October 2006 (2) July 2006 (1) May 2006 (3) April 2006 (1) March 2006 (3) February 2006 (1) January 2006 (6) December 2005 (5) November 2005 (5) August 2005 (18) July 2005 (29) June 2005 (13) May 2005 (2) April 2005 (5) March 2005 (8) February 2005 (4)  Unclassifieds FAQ Guest book Recommended Links 
|
Conservatives Playing Games AgainCategory: Politics During the last federal election campaign, it was reported in the Toronto Star that the Conservative association in my riding, Scarborough-Guildwood, was offering a special offer: Donate $100 to the Conservative candidate, Pauline Browes, and you'd get a $25 gift card in return. Curious, I wrote to Browes and asked if I would get a $100 or a $75 tax receipt. She answered back that I would get a receipt for $75. Hmmm, this didn't seem like that great a deal. If I donated $100, I'd get back a $25 gift card and a $75 tax receipt. On the other hand, if I donated $75, I'd get a $75 tax receipt, and I'd still have $25 cash in my wallet I could spend anywhere. What was the advantage to the offer? Could it be that, before the story reached the Toronto Star, some trusted Conservative Party supporters were getting $100 receipts? 
Even if $75 receipts were always issued to donors, could they have used this scheme to some other advantage? Now then, I'm no accountant or tax lawyer, but perhaps they were reporting a string of $75 donations when in reality they were getting $100 donations? Even if it was entirely on the up and up, something just didn't quite pass the smell test. We all know that at least a few candidates for political office will do what they can to bend the rules to their advantage. Heck, twenty years ago, a co-worker told me that the main raison d'être for the Libertarian Party was to game the election system for the tax breaks for candidates and party supporters! And now we learn that Conservative Party is alleged to have played games at the level of the national campaign during the last election. When they reached their national spending limit, they transferred money to participating local candidates who would pay for national party ads. Small fine print at the end of the ads revealed that the ad was paid for by the local candidate. The Conservative Party, of course, insists that they did nothing wrong. But one Conservative candidate, Garth Turner, is reported to have said that the scheme seemed fishy to him, and so he refused to participate. Indeed, the majority of Conservative candidates did not participate either. Heck, even the party's own election advertisers expressed doubts about the scheme! If the Conservatives are found guilty of spending a million dollars more than allowed on national advertising, what would it mean? It could be argued that that million dollars meant the difference between winning and losing for the Conservatives, and that the Conservatives effectively "stole" the 2006 election. During the next election campaign, be sure to ask your Conservative candidate if he or she participated in the "in and out" scheme in the last election. Omnifariously yours, Hans path: /Politics | permanent link to this entry  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
