Flanagan Takes a Page Right Out of GW Bush’s Playbook

Yes, Tom Flanagan has decided to find a captive audience in the Grope & Fail today, out serving that tough on crime kool-aid.    Flanagan shows his talent for taking a positive statistic of lowering crime rates by making them still almost as high as the U.S.  Fine, think about that one for a moment;  Flanagan admits (however reluctantly) that our crime rate is still lower than the U.S., so why on Gawd’s green earth would advocate for the way the U.S. handles crime?  Or, is he like his former protege and simply likes all things Americana?

The fact is,  Flanagan is, as WFDS pointed out in his post, ”fear mongering”   It appears that he is attempting to keep Canadians afraid, much the way GW Bush did; that old ‘he’s the only one who can keep America safe from Commie Muslims’ tactic that pretty much won him a second term in office. What’s scary is I think Flanagan sees the way haphazzard way Steve is managing his caucus and thus is desperately grasping at ways to keep his protege in power; by keeping Canadians afraid of criminals; they’re all over the place!

What Flanagan is also suggesting is an additional justification for his old protege, Brother Steve to further gut our universal social programs. These Harpercons and their cheerleaders whine about taxes for government services for all, but it’s ok for government spending  for new prisons and other by-products of a new tough on crime regime?

Yes, it costs a lot of money. But so what if it costs more to keep a criminal in prison for a year than it does to maintain a soldier in the Canadian Forces or a student at university?

Well, anyone see how this kind of thinking begins a vicious circle? We cut social programs in order to build these super sized prisons. Cutting social programs invariably means much more poverty, hardship and desperation with nowhere or no one to turn to; a recipe for more crimes to be committed.  With this vicious circle that Flanagan and Harpercon cheerleaders are proposing, one can’t help but wonder if they actually enjoy watching folks suffer and actually enjoy kicking those who are down even further.

This whole putting kids in adult jails is going to serve to do nothing but create more hardened criminals. Repeat offenders. The whole idea of treating juvenile offenders differently is so that kids could have a chance at beginning adulthood on a postitive note.  Throwing them arbitrarily in adult jails will take that hope away; thus actually increasing the crime rates. Bet ol’ Flanagan didn’t think about that one, did he? It really doesn’t take a genious to figure that one out.

R.G. Harvie,  a blogging tory, comments about the hypocrisy of it all over at WFDS:

This Conservative Party member and donor says,”You, my friend, are exactly right.”

The Conservative shuck and jive over their “get tough” crime bill is shameful vote-buying.

They criticize the gun registry, and then, they basically embark on the same course, seeking to profit from societies insecurities.

It’s embarassing and as of now, this donor is saying “no” to their request for new donations.

Well,  we’ll see if he really holds off on future Harpercon donations,  but he is correct in the above statement.  It does smack of vote buying by fear mongering; much in the same way Georgie won his second term in office.  It seems that with all of Steve’s mismanaging his disfunctional puppets in his caucus, it seems like keeping folks afraid may be all he has to campaign on to get his coveted majority. What’s even scarier than the idea  criminals here, there, everywhere on the loose,  as Flanagan suggests in his column, is if the Canadian voters will indeed swallow that Harpercon kool-aid as they are prone to do these days; that same kind of kool-aid that American voters swallowed in order for Georgie to get that second term.

Here is another example of how we’re regressing instead of progressing.