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William Watson: Stop spinning us with our own money

Of all the wasteful forms of government spending the very worst are the TV ads in which governments tell us what great jobs they're doing

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Of all the many forms of egregiously wasteful public spending there are — the billion dollars to renovate Parliament, the hundreds of thousands for fine airplane dining as our elect jet off to summits here and there, the millions to make and distribute TV shows and films only handfuls of people ever watch — the most galling are the “public service” ads, which are actually “private partisan service” ads, in which our governments use our own tax dollars to tell us what a great job they’re doing. It’s bad enough being spun. But being spun with our own money is the worst. For the governments that do it, it’s the acme of arrogance, the nadir of nihilism.

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