Predictions with bad outcomes
There is a lot of talk about deficits during the present federal election. For those of us of a certain age we remember the famous quote from Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau declaring: “The Montreal Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.”
It got me thinking of other more recent predictions with similar bad outcomes.
Justin Trudeau, drawing on his background as a drama teacher, told us in a reply to a reporter’s question of his announcement promising just a small $19 billion deficit if he won the 2015 election that “budgets will balance themselves.”
Fiscal 2020/21 deficit was $314 billion. Yikes! In fairness to Trudeau, he meant if government deficit spending increased the economy as planned, the parallel increase in revenue would go towards balancing the budget. I hope it works.
President George W. Bush promised his invasion of Afghanistan would not become the quagmire the U.S. experienced in Vietnam. Television reporting from the airport in Kabul is eerily reminiscent of the videos of helicopters leaving people stranded on the roof of the American embassy in Saigon.
Mr. Bush figured occupying Afghanistan while supporting a corrupt government, relying on a poorly trained and unmotivated Afghan army in a country more reliant on an insurgency than a central government would be different from the exact same situation the U.S. dealt with in Vietnam. Same result.
President Barack Obama campaigned on ending “dumb wars.”
He felt the invasion of Iraq was “dumb,” while the Afghan occupation was “smart” or justified. The Afghan invasion was supposed to simply block terrorist groups from having a safe haven in Afghanistan.
Osama Bin Laden was killed in May 2011, 10 years after the invasion started, yet the war continued for another decade. The objective of the war morphed from a “war on terror” to a failed nation building exercise. Obama’s smart war became a dumb one under his watch costing $300 million a day for 20 years.
President Donald Trump tweeted last fall, “Flu season is coming up!
Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the vaccine, die from the flu.
Are we going to close down our country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with COVID, in most populations far less lethal!”
Although his flu number was overstated by a multiple of five, the U.S. has now recorded more than 641,000 COVID deaths.
He didn’t care.
— Changing the subject to vaccine passports, which I strongly support. In Canada we do not allow HIV infected people to have unprotected sex with partners without disclosing their condition. In fact, we throw them in jail.
Why would we give pro-disease unvaccinated people a similar opportunity to infect us sensible citizens with COVID? If you, as an anti-vaxxer, feel strongly about your right to go without being inoculated, then the rest of us have a right to know your unclean status.
We can then safely dine-out, go to movies, hockey games and concerts, while the anti-vaxxers stay home and feel selfrighteous indignation.
(Note: those who cannot receive the vaccine for medical reasons ignore the above.)
John Dorn is a retired tech entrepreneur who resides in Summerland.