Angry in the Great White North

As a blogger, Garth Turner is the sort who will gladly erase anything embarrassing from his blog, hoping that no one will recall his mistakes.

Fortunately, I have the original Garth Turner post regard Jon C Coates, and I'll reproduce it here.  It is available in the Google cache.  In this post, Garth Turner shreds Jon C Coates, a senior citizen in Halifax, who dared suggest that people might suffer if Stephane Dion gets the chance to tax all forms of energy with a carbon tax.  Garth Turner claims that Jon C Coates is either a liar, or more likely, a fiction created by people in the Prime Minister's Office.  It makes for a fun read:

In the north end of Halifax, just up from the rotary where poor drivers from Ontario get befuddled, the Herring Cove Road peels off on its way to Peggy’s Cove. Two streets in, is Jon Coates’ house. Maybe.

It’s a decent neighbourhood, just blocks away from Halifax’s millionaires row, on the high ground overlooking the water and the basin where yachts bob at their moorings. And it’s from here that a letter emanated which is being gleefully emailed to bits by those who oppose the notion of putting a price on the carbon which society is pumping into the air.

Written, supposedly, by Jon Coates, the letter says this senior who lives on one income, “consisting of CPP and Old Age Security” is stinking mad at Stephane Dion because he calculates the Green Shift, fully implemented after four years, would cost him $416 a year, while his tax reduction would be just $10 a year.

Most of his carbon emissions, he says (he went online and used a carbon calculator), come from electricity, and he can’t cut his consumption further because, “I have already improved insulation in my walls and replaced my windows and doors, use the new ‘twirly’ lights and ensured my appliances are all Energy Star products.”

Mr. Coates says about this situation, facing increased costs, no income gain and a new tax from Dion: “Revenue neutral? In a pig’s eye! This is a tax on seniors living on fixed incomes. Well, Mr. Dion, you haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting my vote. I hope everyone else takes five minutes to run the same calculations I did and vote to send this joker to the political bone yard.”

I called Mr. Coates on Sunday. He wasn’t there. But I did discover he doesn’t live alone, as his letter suggested, and seems to have another household income, according to the woman who answered.

I also surmised that money isn’t actually all that tight at 70 Ridgevalley Dr. I mean, after all, Mr. Clates says he replaced all the windows and doors in his home – a job which costs tens of thousands of dollars for even a small bungalow. And he mentioned having all Energy Star appliances, which means they’re also new. More thousands. And Mrs. Coates (I presumed) cheerily took my Toronto-area phone number, waving off my offer to call collect, saying they have “a good long distance plan. He’ll call you back.” Of course, no response.

Just a thought, but what if Mr. Coates does not exist? Or what if the PMO has him locked up somewhere?

I mean, something’s not right here. We have the thousands and thousands of dollars in improvements to a single family home on the income of a man making, what?, $12,000 a year in government benefits. There’s the issue of his wife, presumably adding to the household income by way of pension, but not recorded in the letter. There are the all-new, energy-saving appliances. Where did they come from?

And then there’s the calculations. First, Mr. Coates says his hydro consumption equals 10 tons of greenhouses gases a year (of the 16 tones his household generates), so he multiples that by the gross amount of carbon tax his electricity company will be charged to generate carbon, to arrive at “his” additional bill. This gives him a 25% hike in monthly charges, when it’s estimated the increase will be no more than 5%. That means his $416 extra in annual energy charges will be more like $78.

And how about the income tax break he can expect with the Green Shift? Well, if the PMO boys ever let him out of the basement, he can use the tax calculator at www.thegreenshift.ca, and see that on CPP and OAS, his tax reduction will be $600 a year. This means he should be about $520 better off each year, instead of $406 worse off.

And, by comparison, if Mr. Coates comes to live under the Conservative plan, he will be paying about the same extra for electricity, and have a zero tax reduction.

I’d like to tell him that. But I don’t think Mr. Coates exists. If he does, he can’t count, doesn’t realize he has a wife living with him, and wonders who the hell bought those shiny appliances, cracked his walls to install installation, put in the snazzy windows and slapped on the new doors.

Welcome to the new politics, folks. You’ve been had.

As I discovered, Jon C Coates is not only real, he has real concerns.  Garth Turner discovered that too, and he has done a complete 180-degree turn.  He has erased his old post, and now has a new one.  The title has changed from "Huckstered in Halifax" -- referring to Jon C Coates pulling a fast one on everyone with his bald-faced lies -- to "Hoodwinked in Halifax" -- in which Jon C Coates is the victim of nefarious lies coming from the Conservative Party.

Right.  Well, Garth Turner is nothing if not flexible.

He does make a reference to his mistake:

This had all the markings of a PMO disinformation initiative, and I concluded that, especially so after I called Mr. Coates Sunday and his wife answered, putting to bed the assertion he lives on one income.

Of course, he doesn't mention that he wrote an entire missive based on his conclusion that this was a "disinformation initiative".   Nor does he make mention of the tone of his post, in which he makes Jon out to be a wealthy duplicitous liar.

And then Garth Turner speaks of his admiration for Jon:

Do I blame him? Absolutely not. I admire him. He decided to do something about a situation he perceived was unjust. There are too few among us willing to do so.

And when Jon tried to do something about a situation that is perceived to be unjust, his reward was to have a leading figure in the Liberal Party publicly call him a liar.

Now the liar is Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

It’s just a shame his prime minister lied to him.

Oh, so now it's Stephen Harper's fault.

Perhaps Garth Turner ought to look in a mirror and consider just what role he plays in the hesitation so many people have in trying to do something about perceived injustices.

But then admitting to some measure of responsibility with regards to why there are so few people like Jon Coates would put Garth Turner on the slippery slope towards making an apology.  It's so much easier to just erase the past, and then start calling Stephen Harper names.

Meanwhile, even as Garth Turner tries to cover up his slurs aimed at Jon Coates by aiming new slurs at his political opponents, Stephane Dion keeps Turner on as his communications guru, even as Garth Turner stumbles from one gaffe to another with his refusal to shut down his blog.

Is Stephane Dion intimidated by Garth Turner?  You would think that after this episode, Stephane Dion and his team would be calling Garth Turner out on the carpet, and telling him to shut down his blog completely, or convert it to reposting authorized Liberal Party news releases.

But nothing happens.  Garth Turner continues to embarrass himself and the Liberal Party, and nothing happens.

Go figure.