When Blockheads Attack

Poor Patrick… like Charlie Brown forever attempting to connect with the football held by Lucy, he tries ever so hard, but seems doomed not to win an argument. Perhaps he’d have more luck flying a kite. I really shouldn’t waste my time on this loser, but it would be remiss of me to allow his arrogant taunts to go completely unchallenged.

In his latest attempt to prove how absolutely brilliant he is, he takes our friend Canadian Cynic to task for a snarky observation made in passing a while back about the hypocrisy of Charles McVety. First, he contends that CC “never said anything about the tax-deductibility of donations to religious organizations.” Well, considering this was completely obvious to everyone but Patrick and was reinforced by a graphic of McVety’s advertisement wherein it was stated “All donations are tax deductible” it hardly needed to be spelled out in order for the reader to get the point. And what was the point? It most certainly wasn’t, as Patrick seemed to have imagined for some reason, that “that McVety uses the internet to solicit donations for the Canada Christian Coalition.” No, it was simply pointing out the alleged “hypocrisy” of someone like McVety complaining about his tax dollars going to “subsidize porn” as he put it, while at the same time being “subsidized” by virtue of being a tax exempt religious organization.

Now, Patrick’s contention is that the sort of tax exemption McVety’s organization enjoys is entirely different from that of the situation applicable to domestic films because: “Tax deductible donations to religious organizations provide individuals with a choice regarding what their tax dollars will support. Largely unaccountable production grants to, in particular, pornographic films -- like Bubbles Galore, which received a $100,000 production grant -- offers the taxpayer no choice.” He then accuses CC of having made a “false equivalency” between the two.

This of course is an utterly specious argument because the issue at hand is the proposed amendment to Bill C-10, which is what McVety has been publicly crusading of late to change. Therefore, we’re not talking about “production grants” at all, but rather about “tax credits” — a big difference. The dispute over C-10 involves a proposed amendment to The Income Tax Act that would allow the Heritage Minister, or a government committee, to deny tax credits to productions deemed offensive and “contrary to public policy.”

Whether tax exemptions or credits constitute a “subsidy” is debatable — in some ways they are very much like subsidies, and there are other ways in which they are not. For whatever it’s worth, the SCOTUS has regularly treated tax exemptions as a type of subsidy. For example, in the 1983 case of Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Washington, the Court noted that tax exemption, credits, and deductions are “a form of subsidy that is administered through the tax system.”

Be that as it may, if McVety maintains that the current system of allowing tax credits to films that he deems as being “pornographic” constitutes a “subsidy” then logic dictates that he too is enjoying a “subsidy” at the taxpayer’s expense (including many people who may find his brand of Judeo-Christian zealotry offensive). Hence the hypocrisy. Now, had the discussion actually been about production grants (which the Calgary Herald article in question wasn’t), that’s another matter altogether.

I think it’s quite clear who’s “terminally not so bright”… and sorry, but it’s not ME Patrick. Maybe in future, before you go complaining about the “lost art of getting one’s point across” and then start laughably thumping your chest about the “ass kicking” you’ve purportedly delivered, it might help if you had your basic facts straight instead of charging off half-cocked and making a completely asinine fool out of yourself — again.

Update: The delusional retardation never stops. Remember, this absurd argument was all based on a passing remark that was painfully obvious to all but the most profoundly thick sort of person. What kind of pathetic reject would engage in meandering rants, spanning four posts made up of untold thousands of words from an initial observation that was actually just a pretty trivial bit of casual snark about the hypocritical double-standard of Charles McVety. A lonely wanker with a dismal blog that nobody reads, that’s who — aka Patsy “Doughy Pantload” Ross.