What Does Mr. Harper Mean?

“It’s not a question of illegal funds; it’s a question of the definition of spending”, quips our Mr. Harper. Does the leader of this country say that it is OK to spend ill-gotten money so long as you spend it legally? The issue of where the funds come from is so trivial that Mr. Harper reduces it to a question of definitions.

Frankly, I don't understand this logic. Does this mean that it does not matter whether the funds received are from an illegal source, so long as they are spent legally? I always thought that the name for that sort of thing was money laundering. Have the laws changed so much that money laundering is no longer a crime? Maybe the laws of the land have also become a question of definition.

It appears to me that this is exactly the reverse of what is happening to our taxes: they are legally had but are spent illegally, away from the social services, health and education and into the coffers of corporations that want to privatize everything, from our hospitals to our universities, from our day care centers to our pensions. In the meantime, they are illegally spent on buying military planes and sending ships to Libya. But that is OK because we can define spending. The second question is: guess who gets to define the spending?

submitted by Esther Matharu