Reading Jeannot Volpe and Al Hogan this morning, I feel compelled to plagiarize a line from The Breakfast Club. After hearing Brian talk about his dad, Bender says:
“I think your old man and my old man should go bowling”
Only, I think it should be:
“I think Jeannot and Al should go bowling”
Al Hogan, who’s interest in publishing any relevant statistics has been almost zero over the past seven years, loves to turn over every rock to find a statistic or two to shove down the throat of Saint Johners (another one this morning). Then, he complains the SJ dominated Cabinet is dragging its feet with regard to the large scale projects in New Brunswick. It is likely that the Tories won almost every seat in Greater Moncton in large part because of Al Hogan’s little crusade to keep Bernard Lord in power. Now, he wants to hammer Saint John (almost weekly) and then get in a huff because provincially-funded Moncton projects are on hold. Just shut up, Al and go back to long columns about Brad and Angelina. Better yet, just make Alec Bruce write all the We Says (without editing). Or how about being a little gracious and write a few positive stories about Moncton’s sister city. I doubt a single Monctonian feels about Saint John the way Al Hogan does and his friggin’ paper should reflect the people of Moncton.
As for our old friend Volpe, he is now outraged that the Liberals are ‘decieving’ the people of New Brunswick by delaying the provincial budget. He says they are waiting until after the by-election to replace Bernard Lord.
This from a government that must of set the record by dragging its feet to the very last minute for the by-election in Shediac.
This from a guy (Volpe) who spent his entire time as Finance Minister misleading people about the state of the economy. He would use taxpayer dollars (hundreds of thousands of dollars each year) to send around an ‘update’ from the Finance department that was nothing more that a political advertisment for him and the Tories. There was never a mention of the out-migration and population stagnation. Never a mention of the increasing need for Equalization because the provincial economy was not generating enough own-source revenue. And a whole ream of statistics skewed to paint a picture that was not reality. Imagine using ‘GDP growth per capita’ to hid the fact that the province’s GDP growth underperformed the national average sox of the seven years the Tories were in power. Talk about trying to benefit from population stagnation. And then there was the ‘exports’ figure. Volpe bragged on and on about the growth of New Brunswick exports – A Record! he said. Led the country! he said. All the time he knew full well all of that growth was due to the Irving Refinery and that 70% of the major export categories actually were in decline – a serious problem across the board. But they didn’t want facts, they wanted spin and only spin.
Maybe that’s why this was the shortest elected government in New Brunswick in over 50 years.
Anyway, given that Al Hogan never said a bad word about Lord and Volpe in seven years (he would litely chide them when he disagreed), maybe he and Volpe should go bowling (in the Bender sense of the term).