Just how stupid does Rahim Jaffer think we are?

Stupid enough to vote Conservative I guess.

According to Rahim Jaffer's quarterly missive to his constituents, the Liberals are to blame for high energy prices, because the Liberals are deliberately using taxes to gouge consumers at the pump. The evil Liberals' motivation is that if prices are unaffordable to the average consumer, consumption will go down, and then they will be able to meet the targets of that Commie Kyoto Plan.

He further asserts that the Liberals are deliberately obfuscating the issue when they say that energy prices are set by the global market, and that the real issue is that Americans are able to pay less at the pump despite high global prices, because they pay less tax.

Fuel taxes in Canada haven't changed in quite a while. Fuel is really, really expensive now. It used to be less expensive. Is the honourable Member of Parliament seriously trying to argue that prices went up at the pumps because taxes stayed the same?

I think I know who's deliberately obfuscating, and it's not the Liberals.

Q: Why is the cost of fuel up?
A: Because we have to pay the world market price for fuel, and the price of fuel has gone up worldwide.

Q: A lot of the fuel comes out of our own ground. If we're not having to buy it from another country, why do we have to pay global market price for it?
A: Because NAFTA says so.

Q: That seems like a shitty deal. How did we get suckered into that?
A: Brian Mulroney thought it sounded like a good idea.

Q: What party was Brian Mulroney?
A: One of the ancestors of the one that now wants us to believe that increases in fuel prices are due to taxes staying the same.

I do agree with Mr. Jaffer on one point: the Liberals' plan for Kyoto so far has been piss-poor. According to Mr. Jaffer's community bulletin, the Liberal Kyoto plan

lacks initiatives to find cheaper or even cleaner forms of fuel that would replace the millions of barrels of oil that we use daily to run our cars, heat our houses, and create electricity.

Instead of developing a real plan that would map out a strategy for new hydroelectric dams, wind and solar power, clean coal technology, strengthening Canada's nuclear capacity, providing incentives to develop hybrid cars, and new ways of insulating our houses, the Liberals instead earmarked money in the last budget without any plan.

According to Mr. Jaffer, the Conservatives' plan is much, much better, because they have a concrete plan. They're going to stop charging GST on top of all the other taxes, and just charge it on the base price of the gasoline. Clearly "Axe the tax on tax", by saving everybody a couple cents per litre, will provide us all with super-efficient houses, hybrid cars, hydroelectric, wind, and solar power, and cleaner nuclear and coal technologies.

I'm sure this clever, concrete plan has nothing to do with the fact that it rhymes, and plays to populist "TAXES BAAAD" sentiments.

I guess they think nobody remembers who brought in the GST in the first place.