the outcome of a debate like that would likely be to split the vote up further, because there's not really a clear dividing line between the ndp and the liberals. i prefer the ndp on economic issues and the liberals on issues of governance, and haven't made a real choice yet (although i'm leaning ndp). it'd be nice if mulcair could take a stronger stand on marijuana legalization. a lot of people will say the opposite, or pick other single issues. that kind of jumbled up reality on the issues is the primary problem facing the anti-harper vote. it's less that all these parties are presenting the same thing, and more that they're all segmented up into this confused stew, where the electorate is picking and choosing in this kind of piece-meal fashion.

so, there is an easily understandable tactical basis for this decision.

the flip side is that it's going to alienate a lot of people. we'll have to see how that works out - but we'll never know whether the hit he takes for it is greater or lesser than the hit he doesn't take for it.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-ndp-threatens-to-pull-out-of-broadcasters-debates-1.3175720

lady goodiva@Jessica Murray
Anyone who is leaning NDP should think long and hard about what Mulcair is doing by threatening to withdraw from these debates. He once said he would debate "anywhere, anytime." Was he lying then or is he lying now? Mulcair has either fallen into Harper's trap or the polls have gone to his head and he thinks he's PM already and can use Harper-style bullying tactics to get his way. Do your really want a PM who is just the opposite side of the Harper coin?

Jessica Murray@lady goodiva
no. i think he's trying to avoid splitting the vote. his condition is if harper shows up, and i'll take his word at that. it's not beneficial to progressive forces for us to tear each other up over specifics while harper stays at home and laughs.

harper's decision to pull out is a divide and conquer strategy. mulcair's decision to pull out is an attempt to prevent the damage of such a strategy.

as mentioned, it's going to piss some people off. might even backfire. we'll have to see.

but, this doesn't make sense.

there are no spending limits before the election is called. if the conservatives have such an advantage, they ought to wait as long as possible to prevent the spending limits from kicking in. further, the other parties are more reliant on public spending. waiting as long as possible would starve them of funds.

but, if i was a liberal, i'd be pushing for the campaign to start as soon as possible to open up those public funds and put limits on what the conservatives can do. i'm calling shenanigans on this.

however, if this is more than a media circus and there is truth to the idea [i remain skeptical] then it indicates some desperation by the conservatives. if they saw themselves in a strong position, they would wait for the reasons i just stated.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-says-stephen-harper-changing-the-rules-to-hold-power-1.3175482

enrgyblogwalter@Jessica Murray
they want to stop PAC spending which is legal before the election at any amount but restricted when the writ is dropped. By forcing the parties to spend on ads it means the Connies hold the media advantage and will milk it

Jessica Murray@enrgyblogwalter
you don't think the conservatives have the corporate pac advantage over anything the ndp can squirm together with union funds?

harper has a history of kneejerk, irrational reactions. i've argued strenuously that you can't really analyze his actions through strict adherence to rational thinking. in that sense, it's sort of characteristic - but only if he sees himself in serious trouble.

NanaimoGuy@Jessica Murray
What the Conservatives care about is how much they can spend on TV ads in the last few days before election day. If the campaign in longer they have a higher limit on total spending. They are allowed under their new law to spend it at any time during the campaign. That includes the final week.

Jessica Murray@NanaimoGuy
that's still not really adding up, because the limits are the same across the parties once the election starts. the longer the conservatives have to save for ads, the longer the other parties have to save for ads.

the only actual advantage the conservatives can have in terms of funding is pre-election.

the bottom line is that the spending limits are the same for each party once the election starts. i suppose a fiscal conservative might naively think that their fundraising capacity is an advantage, but that's ignoring the ability of the other parties to borrow money. and, if you're specifically talking about an advertising blitz at the end of the election? the ndp is going to borrow until it's swimming. this might be the first, best, last chance it has at forming government. it's not going to blow that opportunity to balance it's budget.

so, there's not an actual advantage to the conservatives in doing this. they absolutely have an advantage in fundraising capacity, but if they're going to spread it out evenly then they're better off not capping themselves until the the end. and, if they're trying to blitz, well...that's the error of conservative "logic" acting against itself.

again: i think that if there's any truth to this, and i remain skeptical, then what they're trying to do is force the narrative into a campaign mode. harper tends to do a little better when dealing with concrete proposals than he does when dealing with abstract philosophical positions. the one policy advantage that the conservatives are going to have in this election is that their policies are clear and already written. but, if that's true then it's a trade-off: it's actually forfeiting their financial advantage (relatively more so than absolutely) in order to sharpen the message. and, it demonstrates a little bit of desperation

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Chris.S.PEI
Justin is absolutely right whether or not you support the LPC.

In a time of economic recession and budget deficit Harper has chosen to spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to benefit himself. Harper, only in it for himself.

Jessica Murray@Chris.S.PEI
see, this is a really head-scratching thing to say and it's indicative of the amount of confusion that exists in canadian politics right now. with all due respect, your sloganeering suggests you're not really a real person. i apologize if i'm being presumptuous, but real people don't tend to walk around spouting catch phrases.

harper comes from a sort of anti-intellectual school of economics that has never been very mainstream in an academic sense but managed to build a considerable amount of political support in the 80s and 90s. he would agree that it's a bad idea to spend money in a recession. unfortunately, since the 90s, a lot of liberals would also agree with him. which is why i'm leaning towards the idea that you work for the liberal party.

but, generally, economists would argue that you want to spend money in a recession. this comes out of the understanding that recessions are largely created due to a lack of money circulating in the economy, and the government being the only way to get it going in a recession [because the recession hurts demand, acting as a disincentive for private sector spending]. even harper would agree that recessions are solved by incentivizing spending, he just argues that a better way to get people to spend more is through tax cuts to corporations. this is that anti-intellectual school of economics, which has no empirical support and doesn't even make any sense when you sit down and work it out logically. tax cuts on the supply side don't incentivize spending. tax cuts to consumers may help a little, but it's the kind of thing you do in a structurally healthy economy - not one ravaged by job losses from free trade and mired in personal debt. serious recessions require government spending, which necessarily means you have to go into deficit. this isn't a negative thing. although increasing corporate tax rates would be a good start to balancing the situation a little, and increasing revenue when the situation picks up.

it's a sort of a rabbit hole situation, because liberals used to understand this and built policies around it. but, all of the evidence seems to be that they don't understand this anymore, and have drunk the anti-intellectual kool-aid that argues against deficits in recessions. and, it's not a coincidence that they're seeing this huge collapse in support amongst educated voters, who understand the economics of the situation well enough to realize that they're pushing the same broken neo-liberal economic model that the conservatives are.

liberal party voters have traditionally supported deficit spending. and, if the liberal party no longer does, then they're going to switch to a party that does.

this is a man that has drank enough koolaid to piss gaza into the sea.

i'm just trying to imagine how this might work.

up here in canada, we have a firearms registry. contrary to popular misconception, guns aren't impossible to buy here - they're just very regulated. what that means is that the cops have a system they can check to see if you have a registered gun.

in fact, they are required to check the system and take special precautions. if the system tells them you have a gun, they have to behave differently. this is particularly useful for things like domestic violence complaints.

drawing a parallel, the tailgate scenario is not a "might create problems" issue, so much as a "will create problems" issue because there will undoubtedly be certain procedures that the police are required to follow should they come into contact with people on this list. and, perhaps, there should be - if the list is reasonably constructed, rather than dragneted.

worse is that any possible positive consequences will be quickly nullified by the system's lack of practical utility. it won't take long for the cops to realize that the list is far too broad to be useful. in some places, that won't matter - because the cops are racist and/or because there are very few minorities. in more liberal areas with more diverse populations - like seattle, say - it will quickly cease to be taken seriously. on the miniscule chance that a cop might actually be dealing with somebody worth detaining, they'll just ignore the database hit as yet another false positive.

i think the answer to this is changing america's foreign policy, but no change in foreign policy is going to completely eliminate the threat of crazy people doing crazy things. and, this is just badly designed as a means to address that.

i should point out that our dipshit conservative ruling party removed this registry a few years ago, but it was a very unpopular move and it should be one of the first things that's reinstated when they lose power.

when i was a kid, growing up in the 90s, i remember how netanyahu was widely viewed as a sort of beacon of rationality on the right. i have a specific memory of a botched joke at dinner with an older member of my extended family. the way he told the joke went something like this:

"speaking of israel, netscape and yahoo just announced a merger. anybody want to guess what it's called."

dead air

i replied at the last minute:

"netanyahu. he's the opposition leader in israel."

blank stares across the dinner table, and a little surprise from the jester.

"you know, most adults don't know that."

"i read a lot on the internet."

he was relatively young. he very much presented himself as a free market conservative, stressing open economic relations over military might. almost a ron paul type, really.

how things have changed. a just war. wow.

hunting for sport is barbaric. but, lions are our oldest and most mortal enemies. they're not like cartoons in disney movies; they're worse than terrorists. they're worse than koalas. i don't exactly want to stand up for a hunter on the terms of him being a hunter. but, we ought not shed tears for dead lions. co-existence is really not possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LzXpE1mjqA

senate reform.

none of the parties are very good on the issue. i might abstractly agree most with the liberals' position, but i don't see it as a vote changer. recent polling has upheld that this is the case amongst most voters.

our system of government really doesn't have a lot of checks and balances. i'm in favour of structural changes to reduce the power of the prime minister's office, which strikes me as a far more pressing concern than senate reform. if we can do both at once, great. so, in all honesty, i do like the idea of a chamber of "sober second thought".

but, if that was ever an accurate description of the senate, it sure isn't an accurate description of it at any point in my lifetime. there is clearly a need to reform the appointment process so that it can accomplish it's stated purpose. we don't need a house of lords, of course. i'd rather see it work as some kind of an independent, technocratic body that draws primarily from academia and is largely run by the civil service - which might not be what the liberals are actually calling for, but is philosophically very trudeauvian. and, i think, inherent with that, is salary cuts. one of the best ways to prevent it from being a patronage institution is to take the money out of it. this is directly contradictory with liberal capitalist thinking, which is going to push the idea that if you want quality candidates then you need to pay them; that's true sometimes, but in this case it's the opposite - you want candidates that are willing to do the job as a public service because they give a fuck, not in order to get a nice pension. you want to throw people looking for personal gain out of the pool of candidates.

the value of the institution is that it remains unelected - i would certainly oppose an elected senate, as harper is pushing. our separation of powers was constructed to avoid the problems with states rights in the united states, which our framers saw as the cause of the american civil war. and, continuing on with the historical approach of learning from the mistakes made in the american system, i think the gridlock they get down there is reason enough to avoid emulating their system of government. an elected senate would likely grind ottawa to a halt. but, we do need to find ways to restrict the pmo in other ways.

the ndp position is not serious. in a practical sense, the ndp can promise to abolish the senate all they want, although they seem to have retreated from that position. the reality is that they're never going to get the premiers to agree. it's a non-issue in a practical sense. it's consequently not really rational for somebody that leans liberal on the issue to take the position of not voting ndp because they want to abolish the senate, because they're never going to succeed in abolishing the senate. and, you could say the same thing about an elected senate.

we need senate reform. it's just that none of the ideas being floated around are very good - or have any real chance at success.

after all - the whole purpose of bringing the east into confederation with upper and lower canada was to break the gridlock.