True or not, politicians defend their promises with passion and confidence
The Harper Conservatives are the balanced-budget party. You might as well get that into your head now, because you are going to be hearing it repeated till election day.
This is also the economic stewardship party, the spending-on-transit party and the party fighting for the poor and middle class. Yesterday, Finance Minister Joe Oliver even implied they were the fight-against-climate-change party.
An independent analyst might dispute those statements. In fact, independent analysts in newspapers and columns across the country have been doing just that this week following Oliver’s federal budget. But in what is shaping up to be Canada’s “truthiest” election campaign, scientific evidence doesn’t strictly matter.
Truthiness, as coined by U.S. comedian Stephen Colbert, is something expressed as a truth because it is a feeling from the heart without evidence or logic.
After reading a wonderful piece by Oxford economist John Kay called “How beliefs became truths for the political establishment,” it struck me that this is exactly what we are seeing in our own Canadian (pre-) election campaign.
As well as claiming a balanced budget, Oliver promised spending on transit and other infrastructure and tax breaks that would stimulate the economy. But there may be less substance to these boasts than appear.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
