Saturday, May 26, 2012

Libertarian DENIERS to get physical over buses and bikes?

     HALIFAX - There has been quite an outcry among the libertarian majority in the Halifax public.
   (These libertarians are DENIERS of any limits to their freedom to do what they want).
    Their current whine is over the extension of bus and bike lanes in Halifax, because it reduces their absolute rights to see that their big SUVs (usually with just as single person in them) have ample curb space, whenever wherever.
    Agricola Street seems the current flashpoint but there has been other signs of ill-temper from car owners.
     In Ottawa ,a city famous around the world for being seen as health-conscious and bike-friendly, a similar big backlash has emerged against bike lanes from among the opponents to good health (again the unhealthy Medicare-addicted SUV-driving libertarian denier types).
     Laurier Street is the site of the latest Ottawa protest against bikes.
    Ultimately, SVE believes it is really a battle over TAX DOLLARS : between the healthy and frugal who saves them and the unhealthy libertarian deniers who wastes them.

    One side sees bike-riding as a way for both the planet and the rider to enjoy better health and reduce the cost to the hard-pressed taxpayer of paying to improve the health of citizens and the Earth.
     The other side, deniers of any restrictions on their rights to do anything they want, including among those rights their right to abuse their bodies and the planet and then expect the long-suffering healthy/responsible taxpayer to pay to repair the damage.
    Fat,lazy SUV drivers in Ottawa who never want to have to walk more than a few feet are highly incensed they may have to park their vehicle a block away when they to go to a shop for some smokes.
    Just as they feel they have a right to park close to the front door of the hospital , en route for their weekly (taxpayer-funded) 'chemo', for their 'lungs'. They aren't 'handicapped' you understand , just 'sick'.
   Yes, they certainly are.
    Sick,sick, sick. 
    And selfish,selfish,selfish.
    One can compare them to the non-renewable industries that feel they have a right to raise their profits (big shout out to the Tar Sands !) by off-loading all the clean-up costs onto the long suffering
taxpayer 30 years from now.
    Bravo to Thomas Mulcair for making this issue front and centre in the Canadian Parliament: why should future taxpayers have to pay to inflate the dubious profitability of the Tar Sand projects- when these same artificially-inflated projects drive up the value of the Canadian dollar and kill Canadian home manufacturing?
     The Dutch Disease: kill the planet and kill your national economy, all in one easy step.
   Bike-riding, healthy, environmentally taxpayers are getting fed-up having to pay damage caused by 'TAR', be it from the cigarettes smoked by SUV drivers or from the oil sands that fuel those SUVs.
   "Make the TAR-PEOPLE Pay" sounds like a pretty good slogan for a future taxpayer rebellion among Canada's health-conscious, environmental responsible citizens : cigarette tar in their's and our lungs and also tar sand pollution, again in their's and our lungs --- and in the lungs of this planet.
     TEA-party protests only in America, you say ? Pity.
   There haven't yet been fisticuffs in the bike-friendly streets where the SUVers and the cyclists duke it out physically - as yet "The News Story of the Century" remains merely an uncivil war of words - but it could get very ugly indeed....

No comments:

Post a Comment