This just in: Michael Jackson jury finds for Terry Evans in libel case.

Well Terry replied sure enough. Well, he threatened legal action. Well he didn't so much threaten legal action as say: "If someone says things about you online is that libel or slander?" To the crew on the radio. This, of course, is much like asking if hitting someone with a baseball bat is assault or assault with a deadly weapon is not so much uttering threats. Just to clarify in the above situation, it is assault with a deadly weapon as reported on Today's 'What the Hell is Going On.'

Just so you know this isn't libel, I am dealing in opinion and fact. Nothing I say is inaccurate and I am at pains to refer to Terry's on air persona. Much like referring to Andrew Dice Clay's stage character.

Terry replied to my open letter at 6:33:51 AM today:

I read a couple of sentences from Kerry's column...then encouraged the "common man" to send in the ballot if they so desired. You said it yourself...Kerry's column was full of innacurracies...etc. Call him! You left me an e-mail and/or phone message on friday afterI left the building. I didn't check my e-mail or phone messages over the weekend. I never do. There is no issue tobe resolved here, Sean. I made people aware of a method by which they could react if they thought gas taxes were unfair. Take a deep breath and carry on with your day. You have gotten yourself worked up into a virtual tizzie about this. I will stop believing the worst about our public officials when they start working with the interest in Canadians in mind, rather than acting like shitheads and children
Goodbye, Sean
Terry

So In reply I do write:

Dear Mr. Evans:

I appreciate your concern over the letter of the 25th. Regrettfully, we cannot comply with your requests as there are a few inaccuracies in your current letter of the 26th:

Firstly: You claim that you read a couple of sentences from Mr. Diotte's column. This much is true, what then proceeded to happen is that in response to these new revalations and failing to hinge your statements on the veracity of Mr. Diotte's writings you did refer to Mr. Paul Martin as being, "a liar." You then proceeded to rail about the GST on the excise tax on gasoline in far greater detail and verbosity than Mr. Diotte had promised to.

Secondly: You state: "I made people aware of a method by which they could react if they thought gas taxes were unfair." This much is true. However, you based your feeling of this unfairness on the fact that the Right Honourable Prime Minister did utter falsehoods about the issue of gasoline excise tax, specifically his pledge to eliminate the federal share. I, as a citizen of Canada listening to a program receiving it's licence from the Government of Canada, did call to demand a retraction of the above statements.

Thirdly: I did appreciate the clever play on my last name, please be assured that no one has been similarly inspired before. And if you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida that previously belonged to Pee Wee Herman that I'd like to sell you.

And lastly: In reference to your reply above, only, "shitheads and children," lie by ommission.

Once again I repeat my challenge. You have the text read it.

Hello Terry,

Sean 'tizzie' Tisdall

Enjoy the show kids.

An open letter to Terry Evans:

For those of you who don't know Terry Evans is a radio pundit / journalist. Despite his ribald sayings and his over the top witticisms, which normally rely on fairly clever and quick witted innuendo, Terry comments on public issues of more import than the contest in BC to see which girl will win free implants. Terry talks about many issues of national importance as is his right, even his duty, and he speaks the language of the common man. For this he is to be commended.

But Terry Evans does not speak with the cadence of the common man. Terry's voice often arises out of a meanness that Bob Rae characterised as, "being born on third base and acting like you hit a triple." Leaving aside superficialities such as the fact that Terry seems to spend more time commuting than he does on the air and leaving aside the fact that anyone who lives an hour out of town has no right whatsoever complaining about the lowest gas prices in the developed world. Terry's on air persona can be summed up thusly: Despite the fact that I am a paid entertainer, I am being horribly exploited by: Utilities, government organisations, businesses that fail to meet my demands, other motorists, and anyone else I do not know personally. Also I am strong enough to kill a child molester with my bare hands. (To be fair he said that he would kill one with his bare hands given the opportunity, I assume the Molester is to be locked in a room with Mr. Evans. Otherwise, he expects the molester to be restrained or subdued in some manner, which to me does not seem sporting.)

The previous week, Terry Evans, in response to a Kerry Diotte column regarding a supposed promise by Paul Martin to eliminate the federal excise tax on gasoline, fulminated about the federal excise tax and the seven-percent rating of those taxes under the GST. The article was riddled with weak corrolations and glaring inaccuracies (See Previous Post). On Friday, the 22nd, I left a voice mail with Terry leaving my home telephone number in the hopes that he could reach me and we could resolve the issue. Three days later, with no response, I called in to the Terry, Bill, and Steve Morning show to discuss the matter further, hoping to extract a mia culpa from Mr. Evans. I was more than prepared for the fact that he might belly ache about the fact that I was splitting hairs and that he would unleash al sorts of ribald innuendo. Or perhaps he could have asked were it still necessary to have a gasoline tax given the state of the nation.

I called at 5:50. With no callers ahead of me I got on at 6:30 Here was the exchange:
(To be fair this is what I heard reconstructed from 6 1/2 hours of memory)

T: From the look on Holly's face I can see that Sean is on the line Hello Sean, How are you?

S: Fine Terry, did you read the blog entry I let you know about?

T: No...

S: Essentially, you know that Kerry Diotte article, which you repeated on the air, about Paul Martin's promise to eliminate the federal excise tax on gasoline.

T: Yippee.

S: Yes, I checked it out and the allegation is utterly false. In no way did Paul Martin promise to eliminate the federal excise tax on gasoline...

T: Well thanks Sean, Goodbu...

At this point the phone cut off. Those with their radios up heard Terry say goodbye. At least I hope they did.

I have no problem with Terry repeating an erronious article, which has not been exposed as such. But when someone calls you with the information, showing that when you called the Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada a, "A liar lair pants on fire," erroniously, you should at least have the intestinal fortitude to say:

Yes, I was wrong. I screwed up and believed too readily the worst about our public figures. Sorry Edmonton and sorry Canada.

So Terry, I challenge you, be a man and say this. If only for all the people out there who revere your opinions and need a figure-head to rail irrationally against the very structures that hold this country together.

As always, I am a blow hard, but a blow hard with a cogent point.

With respect and without yielding.

Sean.

Kerry Diotte, I thought you knew better.

Short economics lesson today as I am through the bulk of Adam Smith's the wealth of nations. (I hope to then have read it 0.999 times more than the average rabid-free-marketeer (i.e. Lorne Gunter). Meaning 1 time)

Kerry Diotte has written another column about Paul Martin's Promise to eliminate the 10 cent per litre federal excise tax on gasoline.

So I did some research and the only information that I found was a pledge by then finance minister Paul Martin that the gasoline tax increase of 1.5 cents per litre was intended as a deficit fighting tax increase. You can check it out for yourself.

http://money.canoe.ca/Columnists/Leatherdale/2005/06/19/pf-1096516.html

So Then I went after the 1995 budget speech and found this quote in the only section that mentions gas or gasoline:

Despite the size of the savings we must secure, this budgetfocuses almost entirely on reducing the spending of government, not increasing taxes for Canadians.
That being said, spending cuts themselves get us very near to our targets. But there is a small gap we must close.
Therefore, we have found it necessary to do four things...

Third, effective midnight tonight, the federal excise tax ongasoline will be increased 1.5 cents per litre raising $500million annually. This will restore total revenues from all federal excise taxes to about their 1993-94 level.

And finally, we are announcing today a temporary tax on thecapital of large deposit-taking institutions, including thebanks. That tax will be in effect until October 31, 1996, andwill raise about $100 million.

The fourth is the only measure mentioned as temporary.

So Paul Martin increased, as finance minister under Jean Chretien, the excise tax on gasoline by 1.5 cents per litre. Yet never in his budget speech does he mention that the excise tax increase is by any means temporary nor does he mention that the increase is conditional on the government's non-deficit position. To be fair he doesn't do this for spending cuts either.

So with Canada still servicing a national mortgage that amounts to 25% of our National Income Paul Martin decides that it might not be a good idea to eliminate a tax that encouages Canadians to use public transit and by energy efficient vehicles. Woo hoo. Good idea.

I will posit that particular bit of masterly inactivity though the subsequent 10 years to have been Paul Martin's greatest achievement. To be sure if Paul Martin were to cut one of my taxes I wouldn't want it to be that on Gasoline. Or even Income. It would be the EI surplus. Why? Because EI acts as a flat tax with a cap at a certain point, which means that beyond that certain point (which I'm too lazy to look up) the more you earn, the less you pay. Therefore, I'd sure like to eliminate that regressive tax that runs at cross purposes to the very progressively scaled income tax.

Now to the economics lesson. The Ad Velorem Tax:

About the time the Federal gas tax increased from 8.5 to 10 cents a litre (I don't recall if the provincial share changed so we'll assume it stayed at nine) I remember that Gas was at 39.9 Giving Kerry the benefit of the doubt, which I am wont to do, otherwise I couldn't be sure he was talking out his gas hole, the Gas tax made up a bit more than 43% of the price of gasoline. The Federal share comprised 21.3%. Today, regular gas was priced at 92.4 cents a litre in Edmonton. The Federal gas tax's share comprises 10.8% Gas tax in total: twenty and one-half percent. Therefore I'd like to castigate Paul Martin for his inaction on the Gas tax. The Tax should be higher to keep the Ad Velorem (Caught your lips moving there Kerry) rate the same. In fact one way that this could be accomplished specially is though the Goods and Services Tax.

That's another thing that has a bee in Kerry's bonnett. The "tax on the tax". You see Kerry believes that taxing a tax, which is often a simpler way to express a compound rate, is in his words now, "immoral". Wow. It's not so much immoral as requiring a grasp of basic arithmatic.

The GST is an Ad Velorem Tax. It taxes at a constant rate. However that rate is either seven percent or zero percent. What would please Kerry I suppose is if we were to zero rate the tax on gasoline while seven rating the rest of the cost of the gas.

My father worked in the point of sale system maintenence and programming business for 26 years, so I asked him what he thought coding that would require. As he said it would be a nightmare and thusly would cost business owners a lot of money to have that work done. Gas station owners by the way don't do that well. They do okay, but many to most owners don't even get a slice of the revenue from the pumps. They rely on the pumps to attract customers who buy coffee, snack foods, and poorly published tabloid dailies, giving the owner his profit.

So what I propose is simple. For the so called sin-taxes, Smokes, booze, and sulfur oxide spewing gasoline, the government introduce a new GST rating. Since the tax has been around for 13 years plus 4 prime ministers and 5 finance ministers let's make it the 22 rate. That's right a 22% ad velorem tax on Booze, Smokes, and Gas to replace these ridiculously arcane systems we have now. Problem solved! The immoral tax is axed and the new moral and higher tax is introduced.

Now to channel Kerry for a line:

That will give those greedy grits some much needed money to throw on the pile.
(Note this is not Kerry, he would more likely sort of growl like frankenstein and shout TAAAAX BAAAAD!)

Back to me:

I don't think the Liberals are greedy. I do think they are incompetent and govern like frightened rabbits, but they aren't greedy, they just aren't bright. Brighter than the official opposition mind you, but that's like beating a three year old in an arm wrestle as you'll note if you've read my blog.

Now Kerry, I'm not the kind of guy to fire off two colums based on information that I couldn't verify and I'll assume that you aren't either, so if you could just contact me with the relavent quote that has Paul explicitly stating that it's his intent to eliminate the tax on Gasoline. I'll go ahead and just say it:

You're an intellectually dishonest man Kerry.

Bad Journalist, no Scoop for You!
Gas Hole.

By all means be a menace to South Central!

Or Just be a gas jockey / politician who has gone mad with the moderate amount of power he's been given... In South Central Edmonton. Ah, public tennis, all you can eat sushi, tree lined boulevard, larger numbers of inconsiderate commuters, and another 90 minutes of time in my day. I love the area somewhat south of the U of A! It's next to everything! I can get on a bus and be downtown in 20 minutes!! Clareview in 30!!! West Edmonton Mall In 15!!!!! Work in 20!!!!!!!! This leaves me enough time to exclaim in Fibinacci sequence!!!!!!!!!!!!! And in addition, I can make a joke go on far too long rather than uncomfotably long!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Like I'm doing now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! See??????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Of course you do !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay I'm done ................................................................................................................................................

Chuck Cadman and Admiral Stockdale have both died. These are two politicians who made the game a little more about ideas and a little less about tactics. I'm glad they were here, agree or not with their ideas.

David Orchard was 55 when I last posted, (BTW my absence has been due to time without a compy 386), Six quick questions for David:

1. Will Paul Martin abrogate NAFTA?
2. Will Stephen Harper abrogate NAFTA?
3. Will Gilles Duceppe abrogate NAFTA?
4. Will Jack Layton abrogate NAFTA?
5. Would you abrogate NAFTA?
6. How can you without a political vehicle?

Please do run David. You are a committed nationalist and Canada needs some more of those in public life.

And in other news, terrorists blew up some bombs in London murdering more than 50 and assaulting more than 1000. "Do your worst. We will do our best." - Winston Churchill

I am now out of stuff to say for now so I leave you with something stupid I have heard from a drunken clubber at work, "Next time I go to pick up chicks I should really wear pants."

exunt.