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Deserve's got nothing to do with it [CA]

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Author: 
Salutin, Rick
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Article
Publication Date: 
13 Jan 2006
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Paul Martin doesn't deserve re-election, voters seem to have decided. No argument here. I can't think of a thing in his record that merits a vote. His pride and joy, deficit elimination, was done brutally, by shredding social programs created by his dad and others. By the nature of those programs &emdash; health, welfare, education &emdash; they take decades to build and a few minutes with a calculator and no heart to savage. Big achievement, Paul. Along the way, he killed off the right to not be destitute, i.e. welfare, as a thing all people are entitled to.

When he scored a huge surplus and could have rebuilt in the wreckage, he instead handed out, he says proudly, the biggest tax cut ever, mainly, as these things always are, to the rich. Now he wants to restore what he devastated.

When he realized his dream of power, he sent his minions to make sure Sheila Copps would be pushed out of her seat. Petty vengeance was a priority. Gives you a look into a corner of his soul. He promised Bono, publicly and privately, to boost foreign aid, didn't do it, yet says he did and seems to believe it. In other words, he can apparently lie and not know he's lying. It's a kind of honesty.

On the other hand, remember what the gut-shot sheriff dying on the barroom floor in Unforgiven said: "I don't deserve this." And Clint Eastwood answered, irrefutably: "Deserve's got nuthin' tuh do with it."

Deserve's got nothing to do with this election, in the sense that elections should not be a way of meting out moral payback. Karma works by other means, or ought to. If Paul Martin loses, as he deserves to, people will lose some things they deserve, like a real child-care program. It's not perfect but it's paid for, deals are signed with all the players and, once in motion, it'll be hard to stop, as medicare was. They won't get that with Stephen Harper. So they must decide whether to vote against what they want, in order to get rid of who they don't want. Not an easy choice.

- reprinted from the Globe and Mail

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