{"id":3254,"date":"2012-03-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3254"},"modified":"2012-03-08T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T17:00:00","slug":"extra-extra-no-new-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3254","title":{"rendered":"Extra! Extra! No New Taxes!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With an election call expected within weeks, the Alberta PCs are blanketing the airwaves with advertising touting their pledge to not raise taxes. Well, let me rephrase that &#8211; the <em>Alberta government <\/em>is blanketing the airwaves with <a href=\"file:\/\/\/p:\/\/www.calgaryherald.com\/business\/Redford+under+fire+campaigns\/6262676\/story.html#ixzz1oT1C0wHI\">advertising<\/a> touting their plan to not raise taxes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family:arial;\">The Redford government is under attack from opposition members over spending more than $1.3 million of taxpayers&#8217; money on advertising campaigns &#8211; including $425,000 promoting the 2012 budget &#8211; just weeks before an election call.<\/p>\n<p>Wildrose MLA Guy Boutilier charged Tuesday that many of the advertisements constitute blatant political electioneering that should be paid for by the Progressive Conservative party rather than taxpayers.<\/p>\n<p>Boutilier drew attention to a new campaign to assure Albertans there are no new taxes coming this year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This government ad isn&#8217;t about a new program or project,&#8221; Boutilier told the legislature. &#8220;It&#8217;s not a public service announcement. It&#8217;s a purely political ad using Albertans&#8217; hard-earned tax dollars.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said the campaign contains lines like: &#8220;No new taxes means you can keep spending money on things that matter to you.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This, of course, isn&#8217;t new. Governments of all political stripes do this (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/politics\/taxpayers-cough-up-12-million-for-ads-touting-flahertys-budget\/article2355501\/\">case in point<\/a>). There&#8217;s nothing wrong with informing citizens about new services or tax credits &#8211; this is often essential to make sure programs are taken advantage of.<\/p>\n<p>But informing people their taxes <em>aren&#8217;t <\/em>going up? That borders on absurd.<\/p>\n<p>I look forward to future government funded ad campaigns entitled &#8220;<em>we haven&#8217;t blown up any hospitals in over a decade<\/em>&#8221; and &#8220;<em>hey, just letting you know we&#8217;d be against a new NEP program if anyone tried to bring it in<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With an election call expected within weeks, the Alberta PCs are blanketing the airwaves with advertising touting their pledge to not raise taxes. Well, let me rephrase that &#8211; the Alberta government is blanketing the airwaves with advertising touting their plan to not raise taxes: The Redford government is under attack from opposition members over [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}