Banning pictures only helps people with something to hide. It's far far better to be really well and truly cognizant of the consequences of neglecting really basic infrastructure. It helps the electorate keep their priorities straight.

It's what pisses me off about the "Taxpayer's Federation of Canada", a conservative lobby group. They pointed out today that the gov't has, in the last seven years, collected 60 billion dollars more than they spent, and say that the government is overcollecting taxes. They neglect to mention that when we run those surpluses, we get to peg off 60G$/7 per year off the total national debt. This means that next year, less and less of our tax money is going to pay on the interest on the accumulated debt (and we've knocked about 9% of the total CDN federal debt in the last seven years), which means that in the long run we are freeing up resources to put to the priorities that we, the electorate of Canada, have, as opposed to the priorities of our creditors. However, the CTF seems to be advocating a cognitive disconnect between the services we receive, the debt we have (and its associated costs) and the taxes we pay. This only makes sense is they are in fact attempting to put us into the position of having to kowtow to the priorities of our creditors rather than ourselves.

Life is sometimes messy, and sometimes it involves painful things. We don't learn from pleasure, we learn from pain, and hiding the pain away from the people's eyes is a good way to ensure that they don't learn from the mistakes of the past. This only makes sense if you are a person who has profited from the mistakes of the past.