Number 2 in the number 2 business accuses number 1 (in the no. 2 business) of intellectual theft

The Socialist Party accuses Chirac of being both an “Ultra-liberal” and of stealing their ideas.

As if. It’s so silly, that even Figaro pulled the story, but found an extract at Socialist Party “PS Rising” blog: “Le PS accuse Chirac de lui prendre ses idées”

Pffftnchtssssfft! [Milk dripping from nose]
Sorry. Ahem. Excerpts from the article by Myriam Lévy:


The PS accuses Chirac of stealing their political platform

«Because it is easy for the PS to cry about "ultraliberal" policies, and other "gifts to employers", it is not easy to play its role as the opposition when one the president takes their ideas and implements them. In this respect, this week of presidential promises was a doozy. Jacques Chirac took another one of the Socialists’ planks: workers’ pensions, an idea which originated with the CGT that has been making its’ way through the last congress.

Quasi-copy/paste

On December 1, the majority party (the UMP) had however disallowed the socialist private bill which proclaimed, in its explanatory text that it was necessary that "the best pupils of each school in France have a right of access to the preparatory classes to the major national schools", only to state that they were drafting the same project just in time for the 2007 presidential election.

The PS tries to reassure itself. Since the "innovations" found in the President’s speech "are drawn from the Socialists’ platform", said François Rebsamen, the vice-chairman of the party, "it would be preferable that they are the Socialists themselves which implement them in 2007". For François Holland, "it is an old ‘methode chiraquienne’ to steal other people’s lines to silence his opponents".

To begin with, the PS does not want the right to have a monopoly on security matters, as it had done in 2002. "One will start to draw up the assessment of the government on the matter", said a senior PS official. The way in which the Socialists got whipped up over the attack on the Nice-Lyon train shows well that this battle has already started. It has the advantage of being politically useful to them along with using the “rural alliance” against the government as a whole, and Nicolas Sarkozy in particular. As for Jacques Chirac, who called the train affair unacceptable, François Holland replied "he made safety his platform in 2002, and has to acknowledgements it’s impotence".»

So what, you say? Who cares as long as it keeps pink from turning into a darker shade of red? Simply this: the ideas suck anyway, and if he HAD a belief system he wouldn’t be a policy whore to stay in power.