All principle converts to cash.
The official policy is reductio ad argentum. As your humble e-scribbler put it only a few weeks ago:
Take a look at the current administration and you can quickly see the prominent role money plays. In fact, money is the only real measure of anything. News releases typically refer to how much money will be spent and how much has been spent.
To wit, from the House of Assembly, The Native, returned again from sunnier climes, and on the first day the House sat in three weeks, bristles as his own weapon – the condescending lecture – is turned against him:
Thank you for the Sermon on the Mount. That was lovely; I really appreciated it. I do not need a lecture from you or anybody else, I can tell you that much.
We are trying to get this resolved. There is a letter that is going out this afternoon that is putting $79 million of public money on the table and offering close to Atlantic parity which is exactly what the doctors have been looking for….
…
Mr. Speaker, what did we do when the ER-PR situation came up? What did we do when the oncologists wanted to meet? What did we do when they wanted to have a raise? We acted immediately. We gave them a significant raise which virtually put them close to Ontario parity. So we stepped up immediately.
What have we done as a government? We are now up to, I guess, close to $2.6 billion or $2.7 billion. That is what we have done; we have dramatically increased it. We have put money into information technology. We have put money into equipment. We have put money into long-term care facilities. We have put money into nurses.
…
Neither the issue or the sides in the current dispute are important for this discussion here.
Rather, notice that the only perspective the Premier took was one that considered how much money had been spent or how much he was proposing be spent.
Action is spending money and spending money is the only action the Premier seems to understand.
In another part of his exchange with New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael, the Premier put it this way:
There is never enough money around because all you want to do is criticize; get on the bandwagon!
That last exclamation - as misplaced as it is even in a sentence that itself makes no sense – adequately conveys the essence of the rather bizarre tirade which the Premier delivered in his responses to Michael’s questions.
But there is no mistaking the connection the Premier makes between spending money and displaying interest, concern or attention.
It is always about spending money.
-srbp-