"One should doubtless keep an open mind...though open at both ends, like the food pipe, and have a capacity for excretion as well as intake." -- Northrop Frye, 'The Great Code'
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Canadian taxpayers' buy Broadway tickets for corporate FatCats
The Trudeau government spent $30K in taxpayers money giving out free tickets to a Broadway Play ...Come From Away ... Not only were tickets given to foreign diplomats – including reps from the United Nations, Qatar, and Kuwait – but wealthy bankers were also given tickets at taxpayers expense...
... the opposition grilled Freeland [who] had no good answers:
As an aside, unlike Spenser Fernando, I DO have a problem with the theme of the musical. It strikes me as cringe-worthy self-regard for Canadians to present a play in America, telling Americans how wonderfulwe were in their time of tragically obvious need [and, our government promoting the show, at taxpayers' expense, just compounds the problem]. Now, if Americans had created such a play to thank Canadians, that would have been something else.
Given how the Americans are not hesitant to tell us how wonderful they are, and how much they do for us, I don't have that hesitation. However, I do indeed think that those tickets would have better been given to the Canadians who picked up the slack and handled the crisis. Gander is the poster airport, but many other airports - including Calgary - took whatever inbound flights they could, and locals stepped up.
But that's our PM - giving lip service to the people who actually did the hard work while handing out the goodies to the professional rent-seekers.
I'm not too fond of anyone who goes out of their way to vainly congratulate themselves for their own good deeds, no matter their nationality. True heroes seldom brag about their heroism and more often humbly deny it. Granted, though, that the play's producers were likely not the ones who actually responded on 9/11.
While the people of Gander would have been more deserving recipients of those tickets than the bankers I wonder how many would have accepted, or could have, considering the expense of travelling to New York.
"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences." -- C. S. Lewis
2 comments:
Given how the Americans are not hesitant to tell us how wonderful they are, and how much they do for us, I don't have that hesitation. However, I do indeed think that those tickets would have better been given to the Canadians who picked up the slack and handled the crisis. Gander is the poster airport, but many other airports - including Calgary - took whatever inbound flights they could, and locals stepped up.
But that's our PM - giving lip service to the people who actually did the hard work while handing out the goodies to the professional rent-seekers.
I'm not too fond of anyone who goes out of their way to vainly congratulate themselves for their own good deeds, no matter their nationality. True heroes seldom brag about their heroism and more often humbly deny it. Granted, though, that the play's producers were likely not the ones who actually responded on 9/11.
While the people of Gander would have been more deserving recipients of those tickets than the bankers I wonder how many would have accepted, or could have, considering the expense of travelling to New York.
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