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Monday, January 30, 2017

Alternative facts from Kevin O'Leary and Lying like Patrick Brown

"No matter, because facts don’t matter. Brown keeps repeating what he knows to be untrue, and now O’Leary is getting in on the act — knowingly or out of ignorance."


Why Kevin O'Leary is a gift to Kathleen Wynne: Cohn

Alternative facts are the disruptive innovation of politics — less factual than the facts, but just enough truthiness to make the sale and club the competition.
Spoiling for a fight, Kathleen Wynne has finally found a foil.
Kevin O’Leary is the opponent she dreams of taking down.
When he trash-talks Ontario, it’s music to her well-worn ears — those ears having been bent out of shape by angry voters, and pinched by her provincial opponents.
The premier can’t push back against senior citizens with quavering voices, and it’s tough to pin down her invisible opposition rivals — akin to fighting phantoms.
O’Leary, however, is right out of central casting. The long-running TV personality is now running for the federal Tory leadership, but he went off script by taking a run at Ontario with the usual pot shots.
Not just high hydro bills, but high taxes allegedly driving away auto plants.
Which is why the premier couldn’t resist engaging him — not on a Tory campaign stage, but on the Facebook platform that now hosts fake news and faux debates. The better to bend our ears and bait our eyeballs.
“Dear Mr. O’Leary,” begins her cheeky Facebook post, followed by warm congratulations for entering the den of fire-breathing politicians.
The premier proceeds to pick apart his rhetoric from a talk radio interview in which he claimed carmakers will move to Michigan to pay “30 per cent less in tax, no regulations, no carbon tax.”
But as Republican candidate Mitt Romney reminded Americans in the 2012 presidential debate, Canadian corporate taxes are well below U.S. rates (thanks to dubious reductions by both Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in Ottawa and Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals in Ontario). As Wynne pointed out, the combined federal-provincial rate here is 28.5 per cent, well below the 38.9 per cent that Michigan car makers pay.

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