mulcair is backpedaling on the corporate tax rate this afternoon. the truth is that there's never been a left-wing ndp government elected anywhere, ever. they consistently end up further right than the liberals once they actually get in power.
more change in canadian politics happens through the court system than the political system. the three parties are almost exactly the same, with the liberals coming out furthest left on some social issues. activists need to focus on protests and legal challenges. the best message voters can send is low turnout. if we can get turnout to 30%, it might change the spectrum a little.
http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/22/what-would-tommy-douglas-say-liberals-target-ndps-left-flank/15:13
Jh
Ignorant or Stupid? Roy Romanow, Saskatchewan. Bob Rae Ontario, Rachel Notley, Alberta. That's just off the top of my head. None of these premiers ever went as right as the Liberals have although they certainly have made compromises as governments. Too early to say for Rachel. Liberals copy NDP ideas and pretend that they are theirs. Trudeau senior with national healthcare is a classic example. Its time we reward the people with the real new ideas and make Canada a better place.
deathtokoalas
neither: informed. much more than you are. romanow & rae are two of the most right-wing premiers that the country has ever seen and both of them managed to completely destroy the party's base in their respective provinces.
to this day, in ontario, you will not find a major union that supports the ndp. every single one of them supports the liberals. such is the extent of the catastrophe to the left that was bob rae.
and, romanow is often cited by the fraser institute as an example of good conservative governance.
Dw
Citations, please?
deathtokoalas
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=fraser+institute+roy+romanow
jh
Unions are like businesses and vote and fund their interests and many are not what I'd call ' left.' The Fraser institute is not what I'd call a credible organization. Honestly I don't care if they are right or left so long as they have good policy ideas for the public and a party apparatus that will implement those ideas. The Liberals historically have been far more willing to preach principle and practice the opposite than the NDP.
deathtokoalas
see, i think that's the question that is up for debate. the stuff in the 90s is sort of complicated (they had to cut things temporarily to prevent the imf from cutting the credit rating, which is the only meaningful consequence of budget deficits, and they brought spending back when they could. blame the imf. it's fun. but the liberals have taken the bulk of the blame for having to make difficult choices to fix mulroney's mess.), but if you take the bc liberals (and maybe the quebec liberals) out, because they're not really liberals, i think the opposite is more true. the liberals have to walk a line in the centre that restricts them from cracking down on labour too hard, whereas the ndp consistently take the labour vote for granted and then poke sticks in their eyes and make faces at them, while they kick them in the shins. it's just the historical reality of it.
when bob rae took over in ontario, he set up mandatory unpaid days off called "rae days" in order to "fight the deficit". only the ndp could have done something so absurd to get to the conservative aim of a balanced budget. it would have led to a general strike if the liberals tried something like that. and, this sort of thing is true of ndp governments across the country.
i'm broadly happy with the liberal government in ontario. they've taken concrete steps on carbon emissions. they've made positive structural changes on income inequality - they're modest, but they'll be felt. i'd like to see them re-nationalize the grid, but not even the ndp are talking about that. really, the ndp are just pushing tax cuts and yelling about corruption. again: they sound like conservatives. and, they have to - because they simply can't get unionized workers to vote for them anymore. all they've got left is the "tim horton's vote".
it's not a clear-cut issue, or anything. but i think that a careful, objective analysis will demonstrate that the liberals have generally stayed closer to their principles and leaned further to the left.
Jh
I disagree. I was a union steward when Rae days came along. We loved them. Much of organized labour hated Rae for that but it was a mistake. They paid for that when Mike Harris showed up on the scene and many of those opposed to Rae ideas ate crow as jobs were destroyed.
I think presuming all unions are left is a mistake. Some are, some are not. They do what they feel is in their members interests. As you pointed out many became Liberal but many went back to the NDP. I do not think the NDP took the labour vote for granted. Quite the opposite. I think many labour leaders couldn't believe Rae didn't do exactly as they wanted.
Rae days - Considering the economic and budget context - it was lose your job or take some time off. I think time off was and is the best choice. It worked. The economy recovered quickly under Rae. To manage the economy well is not a conservative or right issue. Harris did a terrible job in Ontario leaving it 3 billion in debt. Same pumpkins now are in Ottawa.
The Liberals also had choices and made them. They pulled far right under Chrétien and Martin. They balanced the budget and good for them. But a careful objective analysis reveals a Liberal campaigns left and when in power fails to keep those promises. Time and again. Federally it's why they got destroyed last election. Now they've put all their Eggs with Justin who seems like a nice guy. He's just with the wrong party if he wants to be a real progressive. Wynne is no different. I admire some of her policies like the pension plan but the privatization of Hydro is a very bad idea.
Cutting and pasting other party ideas and calling it a grand vision is what Liberals do. There is no consistent liberal vision, there are no consistent liberal principles there is only say what seems the middle at the time to get elected. Liberals are 'conveniently progressive' which to my mind are the worst kind.
deathtokoalas
see, again: you have to keep in mind that the issue federally was the credit rating. the next step is imf restructuring, including privatization. we had a really hard choice, there: if we didn't find a way to improve the credit situation, we'd be in a situation where we'd start losing things like our health care system. that sounds like a scare tactic, but look around at the world. these financial institutions are vampires.
what the feds had to do was raise taxes and temporarily cut services, then put them back once the revenue stream was put in order. mulroney got the tax in place, at least. and, they followed through with the rest. i've been over this with a lot of people. and, it's very hard to explain it. but, they weren't acting out of ideological persuasion. again: these institutions were horrid.
rae was not under the same pressure. there was nothing stopping him from raising corporate taxes, or even just running a deficit. instead, he went after workers. it's consistent...
jh
Rae was under even more pressure. Ontario did lose its credit ratings of double AA. Whoopdi do. To this day you can find Conservatives that think he was the anti Christ. Despite this he found an interesting solution in very challenging times. The federal Liberals on the other hand caved like wet cardboard. I do agree there was some things they had to do to retain a credit rating at the time but they went way overboard. The cuts were deep and the services not restored. By the way these are the same agencies that gave AAA credit to Lehmans before the 2008 collapse.
The IMF cannot call the shots on Canada because we own a disproportionate share of their financial drawing rights and represent other middle powers of similar standing. We could have threatened to withdraw that cash built up since WW2 to pay down sovereign debt. They wouldn't like that. This was not even investigated nor entertained by the Liberals because they let fear, not hope guide their policy decisions. This is not ideological- just practical.
The IMF and the World bank now have a new world bank to deal with because their policies have failed over and over again around the world and they failed to respond to demands from emerging economies. The consortium is led by China and has 53 countries signed up including the UK.
deathtokoalas
AA is not junk status. there was serious talk of default. and, while it would be nice to see the feds push back like that on a utopian level, the reality is that the retaliation would be swift. it's not something you can seriously entertain.
Jh
"Retaliation would be swift." Really? What would or could the IMF do? The rating agencies? We might take a hit to credit ratings for a brief period at worst. We attack their analysis and conclusions for the nonsense it was. Hell South Korea came out of the Asian financial crisis better and by taking on the IMF and ignoring most of their advice. Seriously? Liberals - no principle and no courage, take credit for others work. Its a consistent pattern.
I understand and accept the Liberals contributed to healthcare in Canada with Mackenzie King and Trudeau but it was the CCF/NDP that had the courage and skill and did the heavy lifting. I apologize for my earlier remark. You are better informed than many on this site.
deathtokoalas
if we were to legitimately give the imf the finger like that, they'd probably launch a coup. i think canada is too big and close to the united states for them to be able to put somebody like pinochet in power. but, the sitting government would be gone pretty quickly, one way or another.
as an aside, the health care thing was a joint effort. the ndp pushed for it, but there was legitimate desire from the liberals for it. also, it was pearson & douglas, not trudeau & lewis.
dtgraham
That was strictly an NDP Tommy Douglas thing in Saskatchewan in 1944. Eventually, bible Bill Aberhart in Alberta bought in and a few others did later, but there was no legitimate desire from the federal Liberals for it at that time. None. That came much later.
deathtokoalas
i know that the ndp likes to pretend that it's entirely responsible for the health care system, but it's simply not accurate.
after the war, mackenzie-king set up a commission to discuss the issue with the full intent of creating a single-payer system like the one in britain. talks fell apart. it was only after these talks fell apart that tommy douglas set the ball rolling on a number of things. however, his initial plan in 1944 was not universal - it was restricted to special categories like pensioners. in 1947, he created a hospital insurance plan that was universal (but this is still not universal medicare). this was emulated by paul martin's father (a liberal mp) in 1957 and passed as a private member's bill while diefenbaker was prime minister. so, this was a liberal bill based on an ndp idea passed in a conservative legislature. sometimes, good ideas are good ideas and get cross-partisan support.
it wasn't until 1962 that a universal health insurance plan was set up in saskatchewan, but it was a very different system than we're used to - it was a traditional insurance plan that everybody pays into. closer to obamacare than single payer. the hospital adaptation was pretty spot on emulation. but the federal health insurance system is really not a direct adaptation of the system initially devised in saskatchewan; it is far superior. pearson introduced this legislation in 1965 and once again got cross-party support for it. pearson did not require douglas' support for the bill to pass, he could have passed it with support from diefenbaker.
in 1984, trudeau then took the acts from '57 and '66 and put them together into the canada health act. this was under a liberal majority.
while one can argue with some likelihood that medicare in canada would be rather different if it were nor for douglas, one can argue just as strenuously that it would also be rather different if douglas had written the legislation.
Jh
Medicare would not have happened without Tommy Douglas and the CCF and the NDP. Period. Certainly Liberals jumped on the bandwagon as the political opportunists they are (hooray :-( ) but let's not pretend the Liberals would have done it on their own. The NDP made it work and the federal Liberals followed cause it was very popular. One could argue otherwise but then they would be wrong.
deathtokoalas
i think that what's more accurate to say is that the liberals would not have had the popular support to do it on their own. if you want to know how canada actually reacted to health care, take a look at the debate in the states. there were howls and cries of government tyranny and dictatorial socialism. the doctors went on strike. that's why the mackenzie-king commission fell apart. and, that was douglas' real accomplishment - he fought the doctors, he set it up and he proved it could work without bringing in death panels. that created a shift in public attitudes that allowed the liberals to bring in single-payer to popular support rather than public outcry.
Jh
I know how they reacted. I know that the NDP led the fight for socialized medicine against doctors and insurance companies and Tommy made it work and consequently more popular. I know the Liberals of the time thought 'hey we should try and take some credit for that idea and movement that the other party represents.' Just like now. The Liberals deserve credit for nationalizing healthcare but they had to. The NDP was growing much stronger and the Liberals made the right political calculus for time. Your initial comment was the NDP try to take all the credit for national healthcare. Well it was their idea, they fought the tough battles, they popularized it and they implemented the first large scale working model. The Liberals copied and nationalized it. So let's agree that the NDP are historically responsible for healthcare in Canada but the Liberals deserve some credit in copying a good policy idea when they saw one and tweaked it to make it work at a national level.
deathtokoalas
as mentioned previously, the discussions for a national health care system in canada were set off by mackenzie-king right after the war, with the intention of emulating the british national health service. tommy douglas began fighting for a provincial system after the breakdown of those talks. his success in building that system allowed the liberals to carry through with their original plan.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
want a metric on how weird the election is going to be?
a lawn sign for my zombie ndp candidate just went up on my lawn, presumably from my landlord's brother (who lives in one of the units).
this is a person that has tried to argue with me to stop recycling. solid ndp supporter, apparently.
i suspect he's in support of the energy rebate from the last *provincial* election. energy costs seem to be a priority in the unit. they've been swapping out the electric heaters for gas furnaces. i don't like this, but i can't argue with them - the price of electricity in ontario has become ridiculous.
it's just one example. but, support seems to be solidifying in rather unusual - and perhaps somewhat unpredictable - ways.
a lawn sign for my zombie ndp candidate just went up on my lawn, presumably from my landlord's brother (who lives in one of the units).
this is a person that has tried to argue with me to stop recycling. solid ndp supporter, apparently.
i suspect he's in support of the energy rebate from the last *provincial* election. energy costs seem to be a priority in the unit. they've been swapping out the electric heaters for gas furnaces. i don't like this, but i can't argue with them - the price of electricity in ontario has become ridiculous.
it's just one example. but, support seems to be solidifying in rather unusual - and perhaps somewhat unpredictable - ways.
listen: this is ridiculous. trying to frame an election around trust is just going to suppress turnout, because....i mean, honestly. politicians. trust. it's absurd. it's a very rare circumstance when voters aren't making a lesser evil calculation. it doesn't matter what kind of voters you're talking about, either; an anti-abortion voter is making the same basic calculation that an environmentalist is: who is going to get me the closest to what i want, with the least damage to what i care about. nobody lines up perfectly behind any kind of platform. there's no trust involved; there's a mental calculation to minimize distrust. it's a house of representatives, it's not a bloody church.
if you can somehow warp me into accepting this narrative and force me to vote based on nothing but trust, i'm going to conclude they're all scheming liars and i'm not going to vote at all. and, the target becomes the benefactor.
i like to say "i wouldn't trust a politician in ottawa to tell me the time of day when we're standing underneath the peace tower". and, it's broadly true. across the spectrum. you want to push this, really? you want to enumerate the lies and psychologically manipulative half-truths told by mulcair and trudeau on the campaign trail, type them up and publish them? do it candidate-by-candidate, riding by riding?
in the end, we'll all be writing in dudley do-right.
voting is a calculated risk. part of the process is working this out - trying to figure out which lies are obviously ridiculous, which lies are attempts to obscure positions, which lies are a big problem in where you stand and which lies don't really matter. but, you don't expect not to be lied to. not unless you're the most ridiculous caricature of the naive canadian ever imagined.
you don't get the opportunity to run for acting and effective head of state in an oecd country unless you've proven yourself an effective liar - or perhaps come from a political dynasty, in which case you've got an uphill battle in figuring the art out.
harper's problem is less that he's a liar. it's more that he's not very good at it, and/or has become flippant and haphazard about it.
http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/20/message-management-in-the-harper-pmo-replacing-one-lie-with-another/
if you can somehow warp me into accepting this narrative and force me to vote based on nothing but trust, i'm going to conclude they're all scheming liars and i'm not going to vote at all. and, the target becomes the benefactor.
i like to say "i wouldn't trust a politician in ottawa to tell me the time of day when we're standing underneath the peace tower". and, it's broadly true. across the spectrum. you want to push this, really? you want to enumerate the lies and psychologically manipulative half-truths told by mulcair and trudeau on the campaign trail, type them up and publish them? do it candidate-by-candidate, riding by riding?
in the end, we'll all be writing in dudley do-right.
voting is a calculated risk. part of the process is working this out - trying to figure out which lies are obviously ridiculous, which lies are attempts to obscure positions, which lies are a big problem in where you stand and which lies don't really matter. but, you don't expect not to be lied to. not unless you're the most ridiculous caricature of the naive canadian ever imagined.
you don't get the opportunity to run for acting and effective head of state in an oecd country unless you've proven yourself an effective liar - or perhaps come from a political dynasty, in which case you've got an uphill battle in figuring the art out.
harper's problem is less that he's a liar. it's more that he's not very good at it, and/or has become flippant and haphazard about it.
http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/20/message-management-in-the-harper-pmo-replacing-one-lie-with-another/
JACKROU
WE LEARNED MULCAIR SAID ABSOLUTELY NO PIPELINES UNDER HIS GOV
OIL WILL STAY IN THE GROUND
AND THERE WILL BE A NATIONAL CARBON TAX
AND QUEBECERS LOVE IT
Jessica Murray
actually, i think what he's said - consistently - is that he'll use a rubber stamp review process to try and convince environmentalists to stop opposing the pipelines - in so much psychologically tricky language. because he thinks you're stupid. just like harper....
his basic argument is that gutting the environmental reviews is the cause of the opposition, and that if the government was performing it's proper orwellian functions than the "ministry of the environment" would be properly functioning as the "ministry of industry", and nobody would be upset about this. therefore, in order to get opposition levels down to a point where they can build the pipelines, the government needs to put the environmental review process back in place. it's what people in britain refer to as "new labour psychology".
it's just that he went bond criminal on it and explained it open view - at the *debates*, actually.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-learned-this-week-aug22-1.3196750
WE LEARNED MULCAIR SAID ABSOLUTELY NO PIPELINES UNDER HIS GOV
OIL WILL STAY IN THE GROUND
AND THERE WILL BE A NATIONAL CARBON TAX
AND QUEBECERS LOVE IT
Jessica Murray
actually, i think what he's said - consistently - is that he'll use a rubber stamp review process to try and convince environmentalists to stop opposing the pipelines - in so much psychologically tricky language. because he thinks you're stupid. just like harper....
his basic argument is that gutting the environmental reviews is the cause of the opposition, and that if the government was performing it's proper orwellian functions than the "ministry of the environment" would be properly functioning as the "ministry of industry", and nobody would be upset about this. therefore, in order to get opposition levels down to a point where they can build the pipelines, the government needs to put the environmental review process back in place. it's what people in britain refer to as "new labour psychology".
it's just that he went bond criminal on it and explained it open view - at the *debates*, actually.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-learned-this-week-aug22-1.3196750
this is what happens when you push evangelical christianity down on children with the force of a twenty tonne fist: they reject it in bizarre ways, and identify with it's opposite. the social engineers need to get up to date with some more modern psychological techniques.
the best way to get kids to grasp moral principles is to raise them as atheists and let them arrive at them through reason.
the best way to get kids to grasp moral principles is to raise them as atheists and let them arrive at them through reason.
in terms of pure numbers, stalin's holocaust of the ukrainians was larger than hitler's holocaust of the jews. i've seen a lot of criticism of the conflation. but, it's rooted in a denial of how brutal stalin was. a lot of the outside world sees the soviet union as liberators and gets confused by it. but, it's easy to understand the conflation from a ukrainian standpoint if you're aware of the history.
you don't need these kinds of restrictions here in canada because they're universally reviled.
you don't need these kinds of restrictions here in canada because they're universally reviled.
the cape to cairo railroad? geez. that's nineteenth century british imperialist policy, pushed mostly by cecil rhodes, iirc. that old society. can't get rid of these guys, huh? you'd think they'd maybe update it a bit, though.
forget about highways. let's move forwards. how about a high speed electric rail system?
"we want african countries to compete with each other"
africa needs to avoid falling into this trap. for, it is true - if the country next door offers even lower wages and even lower standards, then the company will get up and move. the more that african countries compete with each other, the worse off they all are - as a whole.
rather, the african solution needs to be to form trade blocs that align common standards to prevent that kind of race to the bottom. i hope that african leaders see that, but the corruption on the continent is discouraging. and, there are those pesky trade agreements...
forget about highways. let's move forwards. how about a high speed electric rail system?
"we want african countries to compete with each other"
africa needs to avoid falling into this trap. for, it is true - if the country next door offers even lower wages and even lower standards, then the company will get up and move. the more that african countries compete with each other, the worse off they all are - as a whole.
rather, the african solution needs to be to form trade blocs that align common standards to prevent that kind of race to the bottom. i hope that african leaders see that, but the corruption on the continent is discouraging. and, there are those pesky trade agreements...
Friday, August 21, 2015
there aren't a lot of circumstances where markets look like a better approach, but i have to accept this is one of them - with some strong caveats.
i think everybody understands that flooding corrupt governments with cash doesn't accomplish anything, except political bribery. it gets a military on the west's side. it doesn't alleviate poverty. this is true whether we're talking about dictatorships or democracies. and while not every government in africa is corrupt, a substantial number of them are rotten beyond any sort of possible redemption - and it takes a lot of corruption for somebody standing in north america to say that.
so, if you look at the three development possibilities - government, co-operatives, markets - it sort of immediately reduces the actual choice to one between co-operatives and markets. and, you know where a good reliable lefty comes down in a discussion between co-operatives and markets.
i think a good strategy would be co-operative oriented. and, my understanding of how the culture in most of africa is inherently suggests it would be difficult for a market strategy to ignore co-operative development. but, at the end of the day co-ops can't do things like build power plants. and, it's those sorts of inputs that are necessary for a seriously co-operative economy.
i think capitalism is fooling itself if it thinks it can swing africa entirely. it just fooled itself into thinking it could swing india entirely. and, we're generally very good at deluding ourselves. but, african capitalism could never be western capitalism. it would necessarily have deep social roots.
however, focusing on private investment seems like the right step forwards to get things moving. and, you don't need a marxist concept of history to realize that. or a nice check from the gates foundation.
i think everybody understands that flooding corrupt governments with cash doesn't accomplish anything, except political bribery. it gets a military on the west's side. it doesn't alleviate poverty. this is true whether we're talking about dictatorships or democracies. and while not every government in africa is corrupt, a substantial number of them are rotten beyond any sort of possible redemption - and it takes a lot of corruption for somebody standing in north america to say that.
so, if you look at the three development possibilities - government, co-operatives, markets - it sort of immediately reduces the actual choice to one between co-operatives and markets. and, you know where a good reliable lefty comes down in a discussion between co-operatives and markets.
i think a good strategy would be co-operative oriented. and, my understanding of how the culture in most of africa is inherently suggests it would be difficult for a market strategy to ignore co-operative development. but, at the end of the day co-ops can't do things like build power plants. and, it's those sorts of inputs that are necessary for a seriously co-operative economy.
i think capitalism is fooling itself if it thinks it can swing africa entirely. it just fooled itself into thinking it could swing india entirely. and, we're generally very good at deluding ourselves. but, african capitalism could never be western capitalism. it would necessarily have deep social roots.
however, focusing on private investment seems like the right step forwards to get things moving. and, you don't need a marxist concept of history to realize that. or a nice check from the gates foundation.
aug 6 is the anniversary of....
her appointment in the department. so, it will be a day of celebration. let there be an explosion of happiness. i'm sure everybody will have a positive reaction. let's throw a party that makes it look like the place got hit by a bomb!
"...as we get ready for the onslaught..."
egads.
her appointment in the department. so, it will be a day of celebration. let there be an explosion of happiness. i'm sure everybody will have a positive reaction. let's throw a party that makes it look like the place got hit by a bomb!
"...as we get ready for the onslaught..."
egads.
ricohman
Markets are falling, oil will be $30 a barrel soon and this is what Tom considers important to Canadians.
Jessica Murray
marijuana is the future of the economy. oil is not.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-mulcair-marijuana-decriminalization-1.3199532
Markets are falling, oil will be $30 a barrel soon and this is what Tom considers important to Canadians.
Jessica Murray
marijuana is the future of the economy. oil is not.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-mulcair-marijuana-decriminalization-1.3199532
further demonstrating harper's dishonesty is spitting on a fish. it's been clear he's a pathological liar since at least 2008.
72% say it doesn't matter because that's the swing vote on the left. you can take that down further by ignoring conservative base supporters.
the best-case estimates for the liberals are that there's about a 10% red tory swing vote, mostly in the suburbs, that will be irritated enough about it that they think harper's lost the "moral authority" to govern, or something.
but, for the vast majority of voters, it doesn't matter because they'd never vote for the conservatives, anyways.
that won't stop the media from confirming it's own irrelevancy when the conservatives are at least reduced in october. but, the harsh truth is that it's just another subplot in what has been a fantasy media narrative for many years, now.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-duffy-aug21-1.3199132
i mean, what do you want, exactly? for people to vote for some other party twice?
it's like suggesting that 70% of people don't consider hitler's perspective on cartels important in supporting the aims of the second world war. a difference of scale, sure. but the basic idea is what the polling is measuring - that this is minor, in comparison to philosophical differences in *policy*.
ad scam did not lead to liberal party collapse - that's the same imaginary media narrative. if that was true, the swing would have moved right. it actually swung left. the fall in liberal voters at the time was correlated with an increase in ndp support and stagnation in conservative numbers. and, the reason was that people didn't want to vote for paul martin because they opposed his budget cuts and general reputation as a fiscal conservative [which is only half fair].
that doesn't suggest voter ignorance, so much as it reflects an ability for voters to prioritize issues properly as they matter to them.
people arguing that this ought to be an issue are the same people that remain confused by canada's complete rejection of ignatieff. they think he was a brilliant philosopher; most canadians saw him as a war crimes collaborator, and not a particularly deep thinker, either. it's this class of people that think they're brilliant, but that in truth are really quite dense.
so, when 72% say that it's not going to affect their vote, that doesn't mean 72% don't care at all. that's a logical fallacy in reasoning. it just means that 72% prioritize actual issues, rather than media circuses and what are essentially protestant accusations of moral impiety. this evil-doer rhetoric doesn't fly here. we're a broadly secular country.
it's a right-wing strategy to sway a very significantly left-leaning electorate.
but, whatever, i've been banging my head against the wall since 2004, warning liberals that the ndp are going to steal all their votes if they don't change their strategy. nobody's listened. but, hey - take a look at the polls, eh?
--
Kit's Kat
After what we have seen this week about the Harper PMO in action, I am not sure why anyone would vote for Harper and the Conservative candidates.
Jessica Murray
this is another talking point that's of no use in convincing anybody.
there's a handful of issues that are unpopular in urban canada but command a majority in rural canada - opposition to abortion (which, if you think is not an issue, you should think again), a certain type of support for the military that makes liberals cringe, vengeance-based crime policy (including capital punishment), etc. a lot of this is off the radar, but it's still driving voters because there remains this perception that the conservatives will carry through with it - it's irrational projection, but it's real. and mark my words: if the conservatives end up having to deal with a long term scorched earth policy in the urban centres, you can expect them to hail mary on some of this stuff, as they fall back into their reform roots. the blunt reality is that you can't convince an anti-abortion voter with much of anything, if you continue to support abortion.
it's an ideological gulf. there's no way to break through it. and, it's been cemented in canadian politics for at least 80 years.
the conservative polling numbers right now ought to be seen as an absolute best case scenario for the liberals & ndp. remember: they haven't polled under 29% since world war two, and the only time they polled under 30% was when joe clark endorsed the liberals. it's astounding that they're consistently polling in the 20s. this is a historic shift unto itself that liberals should be jumping at glee over. don't get greedy....
i remain exceedingly skeptical that they'll finish under 30% in the general. it's just demographically infeasible. and if they land at 27% or lower, *it will be the worst showing for the conservative party since confederation*.
nothere4ueither
@Jessica Murray Good observations. There seems to be a belief in a lot of supposed Canadian laws and traditions that never really did exist.
Jessica Murray
borden swept bc in the 1911 election under the slogan "a white canada", getting 60% of the vote and all 7 seats. it's a little more complicated today than it was then. but, the rejection of pearsonian multiculturalism remains a vote driver on the rural right.
i think the long term trend suggests that the conservative party is moving into the space that the socreds used to occupy - a sort of fringe western right-wing party. whomever replaces harper is likely to be a lot more right-wing on social issues. it's kind of "phase 2", from what i can gather. and, they're kind of stuck. they only pretend to hug the middle for so long before the strategy seems pointless, and unable to bear fruitful results (from their perspective). and, it's consequently only so long before the party heads have to make a choice between carrying through on these projections and watching the party collapse again. i suspect they won't let it collapse a second time.
but, if we're optimistic, we can look at 25% as an absolute minimum floor, for this election. and, that extra cut is going to come mostly in ridings where they're not particularly competitive in the first place.
this is rock bottom for the conservative party. people need to deal with that.
72% say it doesn't matter because that's the swing vote on the left. you can take that down further by ignoring conservative base supporters.
the best-case estimates for the liberals are that there's about a 10% red tory swing vote, mostly in the suburbs, that will be irritated enough about it that they think harper's lost the "moral authority" to govern, or something.
but, for the vast majority of voters, it doesn't matter because they'd never vote for the conservatives, anyways.
that won't stop the media from confirming it's own irrelevancy when the conservatives are at least reduced in october. but, the harsh truth is that it's just another subplot in what has been a fantasy media narrative for many years, now.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-duffy-aug21-1.3199132
i mean, what do you want, exactly? for people to vote for some other party twice?
it's like suggesting that 70% of people don't consider hitler's perspective on cartels important in supporting the aims of the second world war. a difference of scale, sure. but the basic idea is what the polling is measuring - that this is minor, in comparison to philosophical differences in *policy*.
ad scam did not lead to liberal party collapse - that's the same imaginary media narrative. if that was true, the swing would have moved right. it actually swung left. the fall in liberal voters at the time was correlated with an increase in ndp support and stagnation in conservative numbers. and, the reason was that people didn't want to vote for paul martin because they opposed his budget cuts and general reputation as a fiscal conservative [which is only half fair].
that doesn't suggest voter ignorance, so much as it reflects an ability for voters to prioritize issues properly as they matter to them.
people arguing that this ought to be an issue are the same people that remain confused by canada's complete rejection of ignatieff. they think he was a brilliant philosopher; most canadians saw him as a war crimes collaborator, and not a particularly deep thinker, either. it's this class of people that think they're brilliant, but that in truth are really quite dense.
so, when 72% say that it's not going to affect their vote, that doesn't mean 72% don't care at all. that's a logical fallacy in reasoning. it just means that 72% prioritize actual issues, rather than media circuses and what are essentially protestant accusations of moral impiety. this evil-doer rhetoric doesn't fly here. we're a broadly secular country.
it's a right-wing strategy to sway a very significantly left-leaning electorate.
but, whatever, i've been banging my head against the wall since 2004, warning liberals that the ndp are going to steal all their votes if they don't change their strategy. nobody's listened. but, hey - take a look at the polls, eh?
--
Kit's Kat
After what we have seen this week about the Harper PMO in action, I am not sure why anyone would vote for Harper and the Conservative candidates.
Jessica Murray
this is another talking point that's of no use in convincing anybody.
there's a handful of issues that are unpopular in urban canada but command a majority in rural canada - opposition to abortion (which, if you think is not an issue, you should think again), a certain type of support for the military that makes liberals cringe, vengeance-based crime policy (including capital punishment), etc. a lot of this is off the radar, but it's still driving voters because there remains this perception that the conservatives will carry through with it - it's irrational projection, but it's real. and mark my words: if the conservatives end up having to deal with a long term scorched earth policy in the urban centres, you can expect them to hail mary on some of this stuff, as they fall back into their reform roots. the blunt reality is that you can't convince an anti-abortion voter with much of anything, if you continue to support abortion.
it's an ideological gulf. there's no way to break through it. and, it's been cemented in canadian politics for at least 80 years.
the conservative polling numbers right now ought to be seen as an absolute best case scenario for the liberals & ndp. remember: they haven't polled under 29% since world war two, and the only time they polled under 30% was when joe clark endorsed the liberals. it's astounding that they're consistently polling in the 20s. this is a historic shift unto itself that liberals should be jumping at glee over. don't get greedy....
i remain exceedingly skeptical that they'll finish under 30% in the general. it's just demographically infeasible. and if they land at 27% or lower, *it will be the worst showing for the conservative party since confederation*.
nothere4ueither
@Jessica Murray Good observations. There seems to be a belief in a lot of supposed Canadian laws and traditions that never really did exist.
Jessica Murray
borden swept bc in the 1911 election under the slogan "a white canada", getting 60% of the vote and all 7 seats. it's a little more complicated today than it was then. but, the rejection of pearsonian multiculturalism remains a vote driver on the rural right.
i think the long term trend suggests that the conservative party is moving into the space that the socreds used to occupy - a sort of fringe western right-wing party. whomever replaces harper is likely to be a lot more right-wing on social issues. it's kind of "phase 2", from what i can gather. and, they're kind of stuck. they only pretend to hug the middle for so long before the strategy seems pointless, and unable to bear fruitful results (from their perspective). and, it's consequently only so long before the party heads have to make a choice between carrying through on these projections and watching the party collapse again. i suspect they won't let it collapse a second time.
but, if we're optimistic, we can look at 25% as an absolute minimum floor, for this election. and, that extra cut is going to come mostly in ridings where they're not particularly competitive in the first place.
this is rock bottom for the conservative party. people need to deal with that.
nonsense. i immediately understood both statements as limited to federal workers. every time i've heard mulcair himself state the $15/hr raise, he's stated "for federal workers".
there's been absolutely no ambiguity, and it's been entirely clear from the start.
some voters like to project their fantasies on to candidates. that's something we've seen before.
for example, consider obama & the iraq war. barack obama was always crystal clear: he opposed the iraq war because he thought it was bad strategy. he thought they should have attacked pakistan, instead. he never suggested he was anti-war or any kind of dove on the anti-war spectrum. and, yet, masses of people pulled that out of the clouds somehow and interpreted "we should have bombed pakistan instead of iraq" as some kind of adherence to gandhian principles of non-violence.
that's not obama's fault. Drone Strike Tuesdays are obama's fault. but, he was perfectly clear that he was going to be an absolute war monger.
the truth is that voters just made stuff up. they heard what they wanted to hear, not what was actually said. and they'll do that. repeatedly. and predictably.
an example of that kind of thing this election may come out in the coalition question. it might not matter how unequivocally trudeau rejects this. it's what voters *want* to hear. and, they want to hear it so much that it might prove almost impossible to get through to them on the point.
ipolitics.ca/2015/08/20/details-details-promising-whats-up-to-the-provinces-to-deliver/
there's been absolutely no ambiguity, and it's been entirely clear from the start.
some voters like to project their fantasies on to candidates. that's something we've seen before.
for example, consider obama & the iraq war. barack obama was always crystal clear: he opposed the iraq war because he thought it was bad strategy. he thought they should have attacked pakistan, instead. he never suggested he was anti-war or any kind of dove on the anti-war spectrum. and, yet, masses of people pulled that out of the clouds somehow and interpreted "we should have bombed pakistan instead of iraq" as some kind of adherence to gandhian principles of non-violence.
that's not obama's fault. Drone Strike Tuesdays are obama's fault. but, he was perfectly clear that he was going to be an absolute war monger.
the truth is that voters just made stuff up. they heard what they wanted to hear, not what was actually said. and they'll do that. repeatedly. and predictably.
an example of that kind of thing this election may come out in the coalition question. it might not matter how unequivocally trudeau rejects this. it's what voters *want* to hear. and, they want to hear it so much that it might prove almost impossible to get through to them on the point.
ipolitics.ca/2015/08/20/details-details-promising-whats-up-to-the-provinces-to-deliver/
Mallius62
If you say children, do you mean multinational corporations?
Then yeah...Harper loves them.
Jessica Murray
it's specifically when they say *dependent* children that they mean multinational corporations.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-parents-aug21-1.3197844
Cyrus Manz
NEWSFLASH
ONTARIO TEACHER UNIONS have just announced that they will be on strike across the province starting on the start of the school year in a couple of weeks from now.
So now whatever help Ontario parents get from the federal government will have to be spent on RAISED salaries for their teachers.
Think about it!
Jessica Murray
you gotta pay teachers. otherwise, you end up with conservative voters.
if you're dead set on not printing money, we could always cancel some military contracts.
more seriously, the ontario government takes a class war approach to this that's designed to keep the fight up so they're rewinning the same battles rather than breaking new ground. it's unavoidable. and, from their perspective, they have to be pro-active. so, they'll start all kinds of fights and then back off and then pick it back up.
the traditional conservative dream of class harmony through strict obedience to social hierarchy is a pipe dream in a modern economy. this is a perpetual struggle that can never be won, but can only be fought into perpetuity.
if your interests are on the side of the state, you just have to accept there's going to be conflict and you're going to lose the fight, sometimes. which is why you have to support being pro-active in throwing wrenches into things to consistently give the state a better bargaining position, or move the battle into an area that's already been decided. and, if your interests are with the teachers, then you've just got to grab a sign and get at it.
If you say children, do you mean multinational corporations?
Then yeah...Harper loves them.
Jessica Murray
it's specifically when they say *dependent* children that they mean multinational corporations.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-parents-aug21-1.3197844
Cyrus Manz
NEWSFLASH
ONTARIO TEACHER UNIONS have just announced that they will be on strike across the province starting on the start of the school year in a couple of weeks from now.
So now whatever help Ontario parents get from the federal government will have to be spent on RAISED salaries for their teachers.
Think about it!
Jessica Murray
you gotta pay teachers. otherwise, you end up with conservative voters.
if you're dead set on not printing money, we could always cancel some military contracts.
more seriously, the ontario government takes a class war approach to this that's designed to keep the fight up so they're rewinning the same battles rather than breaking new ground. it's unavoidable. and, from their perspective, they have to be pro-active. so, they'll start all kinds of fights and then back off and then pick it back up.
the traditional conservative dream of class harmony through strict obedience to social hierarchy is a pipe dream in a modern economy. this is a perpetual struggle that can never be won, but can only be fought into perpetuity.
if your interests are on the side of the state, you just have to accept there's going to be conflict and you're going to lose the fight, sometimes. which is why you have to support being pro-active in throwing wrenches into things to consistently give the state a better bargaining position, or move the battle into an area that's already been decided. and, if your interests are with the teachers, then you've just got to grab a sign and get at it.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
i think what's more relevant is his citing of tony blair as a model to emulate - because blair largely adopted thatcherism. and would probably be found guilty of war crimes, too, i might add, should he be tried.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tom-mulcair-defends-praise-for-margaret-thatcher-s-winds-of-liberty-and-liberalism-1.3196265
Jessica Murray
@Björga the reason i pointed this out is that it doesn't mention tony blair. some off-handed comment about thatcher is mindless gotcha politics. but, his elevation of blair to a role model to emulate is pretty real.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tom-mulcair-defends-praise-for-margaret-thatcher-s-winds-of-liberty-and-liberalism-1.3196265
Jessica Murray
@Björga the reason i pointed this out is that it doesn't mention tony blair. some off-handed comment about thatcher is mindless gotcha politics. but, his elevation of blair to a role model to emulate is pretty real.
that's great as an election promise and everything for voters that are sort of clueless on the topic, but every study ever done has indicated that putting more cops on the street doesn't reduce crime, it just puts more people in jail. it's the "disincentivize" canard based on homo economicus that has been thoroughly debunked over and over again.
it's kind of sad that i'm sitting here criticizing the ndp for not understanding crime prevention, and not focusing on root causes. but, i understand that people have warped perceptions, and there's an election going on. what i want to hear - and what more educated members of the affected communities are going to want to hear - is that in addition to the pointless policing increase, there will be funding for crime *prevention* in the form of social programs.
a few years ago, i'd take that for granted. nowadays, i think that needs to be articulated, so i'm not left thinking that they're pushing the same stupid, failed policies that don't work.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tom-mulcair-promises-250m-for-2-500-new-police-officers-1.3196461
it's kind of sad that i'm sitting here criticizing the ndp for not understanding crime prevention, and not focusing on root causes. but, i understand that people have warped perceptions, and there's an election going on. what i want to hear - and what more educated members of the affected communities are going to want to hear - is that in addition to the pointless policing increase, there will be funding for crime *prevention* in the form of social programs.
a few years ago, i'd take that for granted. nowadays, i think that needs to be articulated, so i'm not left thinking that they're pushing the same stupid, failed policies that don't work.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tom-mulcair-promises-250m-for-2-500-new-police-officers-1.3196461
mulcair is on record more than once clarifying that his plan for the ndp is to emulate the labour party under tony blair.
what's worse is that he's purged the party of it's better mps, which has been the only real hope of the ndp since the liberals walloped them over nafta. they legitimately had quality mps, relative to the limitations of the system. but, they're pretty much all standing down this election, or retired quietly. on top of that, he's been merciless in stamping anything out that deviates from the party line. they removed "socialist" from the party in 2013, but these are the same crappy tactics you continually get from the authoritarian left - party line politics that is intolerant of dissent or free thought, centralized power, cult of leadership....it's actually feeling worse than a cave to capital, it's starting to get a little creepy.
it's to the point where i'm wavering between voting for a bourgeois liberal that happens to be mildly critical of free trade and launching an online campaign to suppress voting. i'm starting to feel that the only thing that's going to get through to the system is non-voting on a serious, large scale. if they were to wake up on election day and see a 25% turnout, it might be the most effective tool at this point.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/19/cana-a19.html
what's worse is that he's purged the party of it's better mps, which has been the only real hope of the ndp since the liberals walloped them over nafta. they legitimately had quality mps, relative to the limitations of the system. but, they're pretty much all standing down this election, or retired quietly. on top of that, he's been merciless in stamping anything out that deviates from the party line. they removed "socialist" from the party in 2013, but these are the same crappy tactics you continually get from the authoritarian left - party line politics that is intolerant of dissent or free thought, centralized power, cult of leadership....it's actually feeling worse than a cave to capital, it's starting to get a little creepy.
it's to the point where i'm wavering between voting for a bourgeois liberal that happens to be mildly critical of free trade and launching an online campaign to suppress voting. i'm starting to feel that the only thing that's going to get through to the system is non-voting on a serious, large scale. if they were to wake up on election day and see a 25% turnout, it might be the most effective tool at this point.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/19/cana-a19.html
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
it's kind of like laws against political donations. ideally, corporations could pay the politicians all they want, and people just wouldn't vote for them. really, in order for a democracy to be functional it kind of has to be true. if you have to go around policing who gets paid by who so they don't sucker people into voting for them, you don't really have a democracy. you have a bureaucracy.
it's hard to read these stories. but this really shouldn't be illegal. rather, people should know better. and, perhaps they might know better if the education system wasn't so deplorable.
it's hard to read these stories. but this really shouldn't be illegal. rather, people should know better. and, perhaps they might know better if the education system wasn't so deplorable.
i'm sorry to say it, but the only zombie apocalypse i'm worried about right now is an ndp majority. the candidates they're running....they're just....
let's just say that they're not really up to par.
it's less that i'm concerned about them ruining the country or something. it's more that they seem to provide almost no potential for any kind of pushback. it's this mass of backbenchers that will produce almost no private members legislation, and just do what the party instructs them to.
and, it's sort of amazing, actually, because the ndp have up to this point been known for the quality of their mps in contrast to the quantity of them. they never elected a lot of people. but, you knew when one got elected it was a good one. because the hill to climb was that much steeper.
i'm really attached to voting for a local mp that's going to stand up and make independent choices, rather than a rubber stamp for the politburo in ottawa. it's kind of distressing, even.
if the party executive spun it around a little and got them out, it might swing some voters like myself a little more convincingly. but, instead, they seem to understand the deficit of talent they're working with, and have them scripted to the absolute core.
they may have stripped the socialism out of their platform, but they seem increasingly centralized, increasingly focused on a cult of leadership and increasingly harsh on dissent.
so, it kind of seems like a zombie apocalypse, in terms of what we're actually going to get: mindless, strict observation of the party line.
let's just say that they're not really up to par.
it's less that i'm concerned about them ruining the country or something. it's more that they seem to provide almost no potential for any kind of pushback. it's this mass of backbenchers that will produce almost no private members legislation, and just do what the party instructs them to.
and, it's sort of amazing, actually, because the ndp have up to this point been known for the quality of their mps in contrast to the quantity of them. they never elected a lot of people. but, you knew when one got elected it was a good one. because the hill to climb was that much steeper.
i'm really attached to voting for a local mp that's going to stand up and make independent choices, rather than a rubber stamp for the politburo in ottawa. it's kind of distressing, even.
if the party executive spun it around a little and got them out, it might swing some voters like myself a little more convincingly. but, instead, they seem to understand the deficit of talent they're working with, and have them scripted to the absolute core.
they may have stripped the socialism out of their platform, but they seem increasingly centralized, increasingly focused on a cult of leadership and increasingly harsh on dissent.
so, it kind of seems like a zombie apocalypse, in terms of what we're actually going to get: mindless, strict observation of the party line.
i swear, my body has loosened up by a factor of 80%, if such things can be measured, which of course they can't. but whatever stress buildup existed is fading away. and, that should actually help me focus a bit better.
it should also help me kick the cigarettes. it seemed pointless when i didn't know how much longer i'd be alive...
i bought one more pack for the next day or two. i need to put the election shit down and get through the remaining tracks for this. that last track is bugging me, because it just sounds kind of odd. i may end up replacing it after all. and, the next few should be pretty quick to pass over.
it should also help me kick the cigarettes. it seemed pointless when i didn't know how much longer i'd be alive...
i bought one more pack for the next day or two. i need to put the election shit down and get through the remaining tracks for this. that last track is bugging me, because it just sounds kind of odd. i may end up replacing it after all. and, the next few should be pretty quick to pass over.
checks
hi.
just letting you know that my disability extension was approved, so i have checks ready to give paul for the rest of the year, whenever he's home to take them.
j
just letting you know that my disability extension was approved, so i have checks ready to give paul for the rest of the year, whenever he's home to take them.
j
my ndp candidate seems to be an anti-science hippie with few views of her own that will just occupy the seat, zombie like, and vote as she's told. total backbencher.
my liberal candidate seems to be some kind of business person that is critical of nafta and calling for it to be renegotiated - which is not likely to happen. but a bit of contrariness and independent thought is a bit more appealing to me. he seems to be pro-active in cross-border issues. trade is one of the big issues that has turned me off the liberals. this guy looks like he's a rogue liberal that's a bit more in the style of the old liberals i had somewhat of a fondness for. he may end up a little outside the caucus, but maybe he can shake it up a little.
the green candidate is quoted in papers as a liberal party activist as recently as late 2013. i'm guessing he's going to sound like a mcguinty liberal, but there's basically no information as of yet.
i don't want to vote for a zombie. and, if the green candidate and liberal candidate end up being indistinguishable, it seems foolish to vote for the one with the lesser chance of winning.
i may end up voting for the damned liberals. we'll have to see how the ndp candidate defines herself, but i'm really not expecting much besides memos from head office.
my liberal candidate seems to be some kind of business person that is critical of nafta and calling for it to be renegotiated - which is not likely to happen. but a bit of contrariness and independent thought is a bit more appealing to me. he seems to be pro-active in cross-border issues. trade is one of the big issues that has turned me off the liberals. this guy looks like he's a rogue liberal that's a bit more in the style of the old liberals i had somewhat of a fondness for. he may end up a little outside the caucus, but maybe he can shake it up a little.
the green candidate is quoted in papers as a liberal party activist as recently as late 2013. i'm guessing he's going to sound like a mcguinty liberal, but there's basically no information as of yet.
i don't want to vote for a zombie. and, if the green candidate and liberal candidate end up being indistinguishable, it seems foolish to vote for the one with the lesser chance of winning.
i may end up voting for the damned liberals. we'll have to see how the ndp candidate defines herself, but i'm really not expecting much besides memos from head office.
i believe trudeau's position is actually that he'll support it if it's no longer widely opposed. which is almost comically liberal. mulcair's position is that he'll support it if it passes the environmental review. but, see, it's unclear to me why it is that they would think - in contradiction to all polls - that criticizing mulcair for possibly being *against* the pipeline would be good politics. you'd think they'd criticize him for being in favour of it, if they were trying to win votes - whether it's true or not (and it mostly is).
but, see, there's been this constant string of hints for years that these elections are...they're not inconsequential, so much as that they're really directed at a layer of power that's largely obscured, and of unclear national origin.
there's a sort of cognitive dissonance around it. on the one hand, we're all very naive, aren't we? on the other, what's the use in peddling evidenceless conspiracy theories? but it's the absolute truth: you'll see these weird campaign announcements and attacks from time to time that just make you scratch your head, until you realize "oh. right. that's not meant to influence voters. that's meant to influence that unstated ethereal force of unclear national origin."
it's just this unclear force that seems to be of great importance.
like, diefenbaker getting into a lot of trouble with kennedy-johnson administration, and then disappearing.
or there was the time that reagan accused trudeau of being a soviet spy, and then trudeau disappeared.
and the time that chretien refused to go to war, and canada got mad cow, sars and stephen harper (i'm undecided on which is more dangerous to our health).
it's just been there. this force. in the background. for many years. and the actors seem entirely aware of it. but, there's very few ways in which the public can quantify or understand it
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/brian-gallant-criticizes-tom-mulcair-s-energy-east-pipeline-stance-1.3197057
but, see, there's been this constant string of hints for years that these elections are...they're not inconsequential, so much as that they're really directed at a layer of power that's largely obscured, and of unclear national origin.
there's a sort of cognitive dissonance around it. on the one hand, we're all very naive, aren't we? on the other, what's the use in peddling evidenceless conspiracy theories? but it's the absolute truth: you'll see these weird campaign announcements and attacks from time to time that just make you scratch your head, until you realize "oh. right. that's not meant to influence voters. that's meant to influence that unstated ethereal force of unclear national origin."
it's just this unclear force that seems to be of great importance.
like, diefenbaker getting into a lot of trouble with kennedy-johnson administration, and then disappearing.
or there was the time that reagan accused trudeau of being a soviet spy, and then trudeau disappeared.
and the time that chretien refused to go to war, and canada got mad cow, sars and stephen harper (i'm undecided on which is more dangerous to our health).
it's just been there. this force. in the background. for many years. and the actors seem entirely aware of it. but, there's very few ways in which the public can quantify or understand it
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/brian-gallant-criticizes-tom-mulcair-s-energy-east-pipeline-stance-1.3197057
the biggest benefits that i can think of regarding this are in transportation. that's less transportation time, less transportation costs and less pollution resulting from travelling. we produce a lot of carbon getting to work and back, and we waste upwards of 10% of our day on it. how necessary is that, really, if we're just sitting in front of a screen when we get to work?
there's other benefits. less child care costs, for example, which are a kind of a deadweight on the economy.
but, i think this is ultimately a carbon reduction strategy. and, it's one that offers a better quality of life or many.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-pitches-new-parental-leave-proposals-flexible-work-plan-1.3195987
Re: deleted response
see, this is why people get so irritated by conservative propaganda. the guy suggests a policy for people to work at home more, and to provide for more flexible hours, and you jump to the most ridiculous and unlikely scenario: which is that everybody is going to request the graveyard shift. it's just idiotic.
most federal workplaces are not open overnight.
there's other benefits. less child care costs, for example, which are a kind of a deadweight on the economy.
but, i think this is ultimately a carbon reduction strategy. and, it's one that offers a better quality of life or many.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-pitches-new-parental-leave-proposals-flexible-work-plan-1.3195987
Re: deleted response
see, this is why people get so irritated by conservative propaganda. the guy suggests a policy for people to work at home more, and to provide for more flexible hours, and you jump to the most ridiculous and unlikely scenario: which is that everybody is going to request the graveyard shift. it's just idiotic.
most federal workplaces are not open overnight.
these large regional margins of error suggest that sudden swings, especially when they slice across the spectrum, are mostly due to sampling error. but, that doesn't give their earlier results greater stability. i look at some of the trendlines in these regional polls and see absolutely nothing whatsoever of value out of them; they're flying around all over the place by 10-15%. i really wish the firms would get meaningful sample sizes if they're going to do weekly polls. the result does make the ndp numbers seem the most volatile, but that has to be interpreted in the context of how the ndp's immediately apparent volatility affects the numbers for the other parties. for example, the last nanos poll gave the conservatives a 10% bump on the ndp in ontario in a way that is inconsistent with the other polling. on first glance, the conservative numbers look roughly stable while the ndp numbers look volatile. but, that can't actually be true - it's actually impossible.
the abacus polling was another internet poll. it seems like the internet polls are consistently polling the ndp a little higher. i suspect this is a consequence of bias in the sample, due to how the poll is being taken. the forum polls seem to continue to be understating their margins.
the phone polling is mostly placing them tightly together, but that may also be technology dependent because younger people are going to be harder to reach over the phone. it's well understood that phone polling tends to overweight older people. this has tended to balance out in recent elections with higher conservative voter turnout. the fact that the conservatives are having a hard time getting over 32 in phone polling - and with questionable regional polling - suggests they ought to be extremely concerned.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-polltracker-aug19-1.3195182
the abacus polling was another internet poll. it seems like the internet polls are consistently polling the ndp a little higher. i suspect this is a consequence of bias in the sample, due to how the poll is being taken. the forum polls seem to continue to be understating their margins.
the phone polling is mostly placing them tightly together, but that may also be technology dependent because younger people are going to be harder to reach over the phone. it's well understood that phone polling tends to overweight older people. this has tended to balance out in recent elections with higher conservative voter turnout. the fact that the conservatives are having a hard time getting over 32 in phone polling - and with questionable regional polling - suggests they ought to be extremely concerned.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-polltracker-aug19-1.3195182
gwest
I'm not at all sure that your hunch about what the Liberals would do - especially if they're whittled down a bit from 2011 - when confronted with an opportunity to share power with a minority Harper contingent.
I can't forget the aftermath of the 2006 election when 'Liberal' David Emerson packed his suitcase and walked across the floor to Stephen's open arms and a cabinet post...and I seem to recall a long form interview with Peter Mansbridge when the new PM made it pretty clear that he feels there really isn't that much difference between Liberals (on fundamentals) and Harper's own views about running the country. Although he clearly hates Pierre Trudeau and probably would have liked to see the Liberals decimated as a political force - he saves his real antipathy for the 'socialist' NDP: Recall that speech in the US when he led the National Citizens Coalition and said of the NDP..."The NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men..."
Furthermore, the antipathy of the power elites (within the Liberal party) in this country toward the possibility that the NDP (despite the centralizing tack it has taken since Jack Layton) might actually get to shape policy and write laws which would affect the ability of those elites to keep managing the economy for their own benefit would be a strong goad to convince Trudeau fils that he should support a minority Conservative government after October 19.
Wells's book, by the way, has some really interesting things to say about the centrality of the 'relationship' between Pee Wee and Ray Novak....it's well worth another read for anyone who hasn't picked up a copy.
deathtokoalas
i responded to this elsewhere, and need to agree in reiterating that the liberals will NOT back an ndp minority, and anybody voting for the liberals under that perception should strongly reconsider doing so. it's not exactly conservative propaganda, but it's delusional of the realities in the house. if you're voting for the liberals for other reasons, whatever - after taking a look at the candidates in my riding, it seems clear to me that the liberal is the best candidate (and he's critical of nafta, to boot) and i may end up doing that myself. but, this idea that the election is going to come up with any kind of arrangement between the ndp and the liberals is nothing short of delusional. the liberals will conscientiously oppose the ndp on the right in an attempt to position themselves as an alternative to the conservatives.
but, they won't outright back the conservatives, either, for the same reason. it would be a suicide pact, in either circumstance.
you can't believe everything these guys say. you should be pretty skeptical about it. but, when trudeau says no to a coalition, he's being dead serious and you should take him at absolute face value. this will NOT happen, in either direction.
but, you could see some floor crossings. even if the ndp win a majority, i'm sure they'd be happy to take the experience of some cabinet ministers. and, if they're just a few seats short, it's the perfect excuse. similarly on the other side.
and, in the long run, there are some liberal mps that will be tempted to bail in either direction. it's an inherent problem with parking the middle party in third place. there will be plenty of pressure to rip the party in half.
the media will not drop this. but voters really need to get it out of their heads. it's not a possibility. it's been ruled out, explicitly. and the liberals would be destroying themselves by even considering it.
trudeau will have little choice but to allow carefully arranged "free votes" on almost everything. and, that will give them the flexibility to run the house from the center, as they pick and choose policies from the right and the left.
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/19/Harper-Minority-Team/
Wwm
Hi, i agree that the Liberals most likely won't join a formal coalition unless they have the most seats themselves [then they'd think it a great idea] But i do think they'd vote non-confidence in Harper at the first opportunity and allow the NDP to govern like you said through free votes and subtle pressure on the NDP to make their bills acceptable to the Liberals. All of which may be less than perfect but it's still a hell of a lot better than what we have now IMO.
Of course, as i've said before, the best of all possible outcomes, in my eyes, is that the NDP comes up a seat or two short of an absolute majority and that the Greens make up the missing seats in a coalition that puts Elizabeth May in as Minister of the Environment.
deathtokoalas
we may end up with a bit of obscure manoeuvring around the precise point of the election, but i would expect the liberals to prefer harper as prime minster to mulcair, for the reason that it keeps them in direct opposition to a force without momentum. i hope i explained that concept in easy to understand terms; it's a little aloof. allowing mulcair to become prime minister would set a new ball in motion, as it were, and put them back where they started. terms in canada (won via fresh mandate) nowadays seem to be around 10-15 years or so. by that time, they'll be appealing to a generation of people with only vague memories of liberal government, and they'll be in the same position the ndp are now in.
technically, stephen harper will remain prime minister after the election, until he resigns or is replaced by the gg. should the governor general decide he is most likely to win a confidence vote, the issue may never really arise - he could just remain prime minister. see, the thing is that it may not be remotely clear who is most likely to win a confidence vote. and, then what? if the gg cannot make a distinction, how is that he can replace him? and, you can expect harper to pull his usual obfuscating playbook out and, perhaps correctly on an abstract level, argue that it's undemocratic to replace him. the possibility of harper whining about this on tv, combined with the actual reality of such a house composition, may suit the liberals well enough that they don't push this. and, that would leave mulcair arguing he ought to be prime minister with less than majority support - an argument he can't win in the public spectrum. he won't make it.
but, it won't take long for harper to do something like bundle a law against abortion in the budget (i exaggerate only mildly to avoid providing any good ideas). if we end up in this kind of mess, it will be harper that instigates another election by packaging a confidence vote into something the opposition can't support. but he might wait a month or two to let the dust settle. it's risky - it might not settle in his favour. but, there's little other option. harper will not govern under trudeau's thumb.
I'm not at all sure that your hunch about what the Liberals would do - especially if they're whittled down a bit from 2011 - when confronted with an opportunity to share power with a minority Harper contingent.
I can't forget the aftermath of the 2006 election when 'Liberal' David Emerson packed his suitcase and walked across the floor to Stephen's open arms and a cabinet post...and I seem to recall a long form interview with Peter Mansbridge when the new PM made it pretty clear that he feels there really isn't that much difference between Liberals (on fundamentals) and Harper's own views about running the country. Although he clearly hates Pierre Trudeau and probably would have liked to see the Liberals decimated as a political force - he saves his real antipathy for the 'socialist' NDP: Recall that speech in the US when he led the National Citizens Coalition and said of the NDP..."The NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men..."
Furthermore, the antipathy of the power elites (within the Liberal party) in this country toward the possibility that the NDP (despite the centralizing tack it has taken since Jack Layton) might actually get to shape policy and write laws which would affect the ability of those elites to keep managing the economy for their own benefit would be a strong goad to convince Trudeau fils that he should support a minority Conservative government after October 19.
Wells's book, by the way, has some really interesting things to say about the centrality of the 'relationship' between Pee Wee and Ray Novak....it's well worth another read for anyone who hasn't picked up a copy.
deathtokoalas
i responded to this elsewhere, and need to agree in reiterating that the liberals will NOT back an ndp minority, and anybody voting for the liberals under that perception should strongly reconsider doing so. it's not exactly conservative propaganda, but it's delusional of the realities in the house. if you're voting for the liberals for other reasons, whatever - after taking a look at the candidates in my riding, it seems clear to me that the liberal is the best candidate (and he's critical of nafta, to boot) and i may end up doing that myself. but, this idea that the election is going to come up with any kind of arrangement between the ndp and the liberals is nothing short of delusional. the liberals will conscientiously oppose the ndp on the right in an attempt to position themselves as an alternative to the conservatives.
but, they won't outright back the conservatives, either, for the same reason. it would be a suicide pact, in either circumstance.
you can't believe everything these guys say. you should be pretty skeptical about it. but, when trudeau says no to a coalition, he's being dead serious and you should take him at absolute face value. this will NOT happen, in either direction.
but, you could see some floor crossings. even if the ndp win a majority, i'm sure they'd be happy to take the experience of some cabinet ministers. and, if they're just a few seats short, it's the perfect excuse. similarly on the other side.
and, in the long run, there are some liberal mps that will be tempted to bail in either direction. it's an inherent problem with parking the middle party in third place. there will be plenty of pressure to rip the party in half.
the media will not drop this. but voters really need to get it out of their heads. it's not a possibility. it's been ruled out, explicitly. and the liberals would be destroying themselves by even considering it.
trudeau will have little choice but to allow carefully arranged "free votes" on almost everything. and, that will give them the flexibility to run the house from the center, as they pick and choose policies from the right and the left.
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/19/Harper-Minority-Team/
Wwm
Hi, i agree that the Liberals most likely won't join a formal coalition unless they have the most seats themselves [then they'd think it a great idea] But i do think they'd vote non-confidence in Harper at the first opportunity and allow the NDP to govern like you said through free votes and subtle pressure on the NDP to make their bills acceptable to the Liberals. All of which may be less than perfect but it's still a hell of a lot better than what we have now IMO.
Of course, as i've said before, the best of all possible outcomes, in my eyes, is that the NDP comes up a seat or two short of an absolute majority and that the Greens make up the missing seats in a coalition that puts Elizabeth May in as Minister of the Environment.
deathtokoalas
we may end up with a bit of obscure manoeuvring around the precise point of the election, but i would expect the liberals to prefer harper as prime minster to mulcair, for the reason that it keeps them in direct opposition to a force without momentum. i hope i explained that concept in easy to understand terms; it's a little aloof. allowing mulcair to become prime minister would set a new ball in motion, as it were, and put them back where they started. terms in canada (won via fresh mandate) nowadays seem to be around 10-15 years or so. by that time, they'll be appealing to a generation of people with only vague memories of liberal government, and they'll be in the same position the ndp are now in.
technically, stephen harper will remain prime minister after the election, until he resigns or is replaced by the gg. should the governor general decide he is most likely to win a confidence vote, the issue may never really arise - he could just remain prime minister. see, the thing is that it may not be remotely clear who is most likely to win a confidence vote. and, then what? if the gg cannot make a distinction, how is that he can replace him? and, you can expect harper to pull his usual obfuscating playbook out and, perhaps correctly on an abstract level, argue that it's undemocratic to replace him. the possibility of harper whining about this on tv, combined with the actual reality of such a house composition, may suit the liberals well enough that they don't push this. and, that would leave mulcair arguing he ought to be prime minister with less than majority support - an argument he can't win in the public spectrum. he won't make it.
but, it won't take long for harper to do something like bundle a law against abortion in the budget (i exaggerate only mildly to avoid providing any good ideas). if we end up in this kind of mess, it will be harper that instigates another election by packaging a confidence vote into something the opposition can't support. but he might wait a month or two to let the dust settle. it's risky - it might not settle in his favour. but, there's little other option. harper will not govern under trudeau's thumb.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
i really don't think this is likely. but, let's suppose it happens. and, let's even look at existing numbers that (i think naively) suggest harper gets around 130 seats, the ndp around 120 seats and the liberals with almost all of the rest of them.
trudeau has recently indicated that the liberal party will only whip it's votes under three circumstances. the first is planks in the party platform, presuming they win (which is now unlikely). the second is confidence issues. the third is charter issues.
confidence issues would include a speech from the throne. but, it's stipulated that this applies to a liberal government.
now, it may be sort of silly to go pouring over a liberal election promise and looking for loopholes that they could use to get out of it without technically breaking it. but, the broad idea here is that trudeau has committed to open votes as a part of his campaign. and, he's likely to be keen to demonstrate that he means it.
i think that this is the way out of this: trudeau will allow a free vote on the throne speech. well, a "free vote". there'll be just enough so it passes.
propping up the ndp would be strategic suicide for the liberals. this will NOT happen. and, people planning on voting for the liberals thinking it will should think again.
http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/17/a-harper-minority-would-have-options-all-of-them-terrible/
Kendall
But both Mulcair and Justin have rejected a coalition government and that should be the signal for leftist Red Grit Liberals to vote NDP .... and the Blue Grit Liberals to vote Conservative to Stop Mulcair .....
deathtokoalas
that's not how either voting bloc thinks. people don't vote based on fear. that's the conservative talking point. right-leaning liberals vote liberal because they're not conservatives. and left-leaning liberals, however rare they may be nowadays, have specific reasons that they don't vote for the ndp.
here's an example.
suppose you're a gay dude making 500,000/year in a gta suburb. you're about as liberal as you can get on social issues - do as you wish, harm none. you're into science-based policy, 'cause you're smart. you're an atheist. but you're also a fiscal conservative, and you think you're overtaxed.
this is what a right-leaning liberal looks like. they're liberals on everything except taxes. and, in a pinch, they're probably more likely to vote for mulcair than harper - and may even be tempted to by mulcair promising to not raise their taxes.
the swing on the right is a red tory swing, and almost always swing towards the liberals rather than away from it. that's why the liberals were in power for the entirety of the last century and the conservatives weren't.
the other side of the spectrum is a little more fluid, because those stark defining points don't exist.
but, the fact is that harper walked into his job as conservative party leader with 38%. he hasn't bested it. he's not going to swing right-leaning liberals. he hasn't, yet. he won't in the future....
conversely, trudeau's red tory shtick may very well be tory enough to break through the harper fatigue and cut deeper into the conservative base than we've seen in a while. that's their strategy. the problem is that it's mathematically and strategically stupid, because it's just going to sweep mulcair in on the other side.
so, i need to be clear: i think the liberals will best their 2011 numbers by a good margin. but, it will be at a 10 point loss to the ndp and a 15 pick up from the conservatives - which will put them second place across the country, and win them almost no seats.
i think the results will look something like this:
ndp: ~37% - majority
conservatives: ~30% - opposition
liberals: ~27% - lose party status
nobody ever said that fptp was fair.
it'll be a while before i state that with any conviction, though.
a 2% swing would be dramatic.
trudeau has recently indicated that the liberal party will only whip it's votes under three circumstances. the first is planks in the party platform, presuming they win (which is now unlikely). the second is confidence issues. the third is charter issues.
confidence issues would include a speech from the throne. but, it's stipulated that this applies to a liberal government.
now, it may be sort of silly to go pouring over a liberal election promise and looking for loopholes that they could use to get out of it without technically breaking it. but, the broad idea here is that trudeau has committed to open votes as a part of his campaign. and, he's likely to be keen to demonstrate that he means it.
i think that this is the way out of this: trudeau will allow a free vote on the throne speech. well, a "free vote". there'll be just enough so it passes.
propping up the ndp would be strategic suicide for the liberals. this will NOT happen. and, people planning on voting for the liberals thinking it will should think again.
http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/17/a-harper-minority-would-have-options-all-of-them-terrible/
Kendall
But both Mulcair and Justin have rejected a coalition government and that should be the signal for leftist Red Grit Liberals to vote NDP .... and the Blue Grit Liberals to vote Conservative to Stop Mulcair .....
deathtokoalas
that's not how either voting bloc thinks. people don't vote based on fear. that's the conservative talking point. right-leaning liberals vote liberal because they're not conservatives. and left-leaning liberals, however rare they may be nowadays, have specific reasons that they don't vote for the ndp.
here's an example.
suppose you're a gay dude making 500,000/year in a gta suburb. you're about as liberal as you can get on social issues - do as you wish, harm none. you're into science-based policy, 'cause you're smart. you're an atheist. but you're also a fiscal conservative, and you think you're overtaxed.
this is what a right-leaning liberal looks like. they're liberals on everything except taxes. and, in a pinch, they're probably more likely to vote for mulcair than harper - and may even be tempted to by mulcair promising to not raise their taxes.
the swing on the right is a red tory swing, and almost always swing towards the liberals rather than away from it. that's why the liberals were in power for the entirety of the last century and the conservatives weren't.
the other side of the spectrum is a little more fluid, because those stark defining points don't exist.
but, the fact is that harper walked into his job as conservative party leader with 38%. he hasn't bested it. he's not going to swing right-leaning liberals. he hasn't, yet. he won't in the future....
conversely, trudeau's red tory shtick may very well be tory enough to break through the harper fatigue and cut deeper into the conservative base than we've seen in a while. that's their strategy. the problem is that it's mathematically and strategically stupid, because it's just going to sweep mulcair in on the other side.
so, i need to be clear: i think the liberals will best their 2011 numbers by a good margin. but, it will be at a 10 point loss to the ndp and a 15 pick up from the conservatives - which will put them second place across the country, and win them almost no seats.
i think the results will look something like this:
ndp: ~37% - majority
conservatives: ~30% - opposition
liberals: ~27% - lose party status
nobody ever said that fptp was fair.
it'll be a while before i state that with any conviction, though.
a 2% swing would be dramatic.
if i were in that position, i'd purposefully try to get fired just to make a political issue out of it. might be why they won't hire me...
you can't do this.
i know. they're doing it.
but they really can't, and get away with it. in the long run.
it's the kind of thing that destroys political movements.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/federal-public-servants-warned-about-social-media-use-during-election-campaign-1.3195402
you can't do this.
i know. they're doing it.
but they really can't, and get away with it. in the long run.
it's the kind of thing that destroys political movements.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/federal-public-servants-warned-about-social-media-use-during-election-campaign-1.3195402
well, he's kind of right. there's lots of really good reasons why we need a change in government. this political theatre soap opera isn't one of them.
don't bother: i don't even know the plot line...and don't care to. it's really not important.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-harper-duffy-questions-1.3194754
don't bother: i don't even know the plot line...and don't care to. it's really not important.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-harper-duffy-questions-1.3194754
i support this in principle, but he can't actually do this. the trade deals that canada has signed forbid it as "anti-competitive". if he tries, he'll get sued by a consortium of investors, then be forced to change the legislation to abide by wto regulations. the new world order forbids governments from carrying out policies that promote job creation.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-pledges-millions-of-dollars-to-support-green-technology-1.3194875
Wray101
With the exception of Harper's China Investment Deal, all the trade deals have notice of withdrawal clauses. To end Canada's participation in NAFTA requires 60 or 90 days notice and viola, not more secret NAFTA challenges from American corporations. The EU trade deal is not signed, all the rest - Ukraine, Israel, Chile, South Korea, can either be negotiated or ended. Any trade deal with an investor protection clause needs to be torn up and tossed into the circular filing cabinet.
jessica murray
that's all very true and everything, but the liberals have not indicated the slightest level of interest in renegotiating or criticizing the trade regime since the mulroney era. there's a contradiction here, and it's not likely to end in pulling out of any trade deals.
that said, it would be an interesting question to pose to trudeau directly: if his legislation is ruled anti-competitive, would he amend it or pull out of the relevant agreement?
further, keep in mind that the issue in ontario was not carried out through any specific trade deal. it was carried out through the world trade organization.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-pledges-millions-of-dollars-to-support-green-technology-1.3194875
Wray101
With the exception of Harper's China Investment Deal, all the trade deals have notice of withdrawal clauses. To end Canada's participation in NAFTA requires 60 or 90 days notice and viola, not more secret NAFTA challenges from American corporations. The EU trade deal is not signed, all the rest - Ukraine, Israel, Chile, South Korea, can either be negotiated or ended. Any trade deal with an investor protection clause needs to be torn up and tossed into the circular filing cabinet.
jessica murray
that's all very true and everything, but the liberals have not indicated the slightest level of interest in renegotiating or criticizing the trade regime since the mulroney era. there's a contradiction here, and it's not likely to end in pulling out of any trade deals.
that said, it would be an interesting question to pose to trudeau directly: if his legislation is ruled anti-competitive, would he amend it or pull out of the relevant agreement?
further, keep in mind that the issue in ontario was not carried out through any specific trade deal. it was carried out through the world trade organization.
the rising gap between the economy and economists is a growing problem that requires innovative solutions.
we can see that as the economy has changed dramatically, economists have remained stagnant. this is largely due to downward pressures from ideological forces, and can be resolved by creating incentives to better analyze evidence.
we can see that as the economy has changed dramatically, economists have remained stagnant. this is largely due to downward pressures from ideological forces, and can be resolved by creating incentives to better analyze evidence.
the disconnect between wages and productivity will not reassert itself; rather, we should be beginning to understand that the connection is no longer valid, as a consequence of automation. this is a part of a fundamental economic shift that we have to get our heads around. which means we need to stop looking towards the old, steady hand and start looking towards young people that have grown up in the new economy and understand it without the baggage of the past.
back when workers were involved directly in production, it certainly made sense that wages should rise with productivity. but that is no longer true and will never again be true in the future. today, most workers are involved in jobs that have to do with the distribution end of the cycle. we should not expect increases or decreases in productivity to have any effect on wages in a store or a restaurant.
further, it follows that the old arguments about inflation and wage increases are no longer valid either, because labour costs are coming primarily out of the retail end rather than the production end.
the economy has drastically changed. economists across the spectrum have not. it's the rising gap between economists and the economy that needs to addressed, as a starting point.
i drew a graph:
daveruda
+deathtokoalas The resonable thing would be to tax the production itself instead of Labour. That way everyone can still enjoy the fruits of production. On top of that use the automation as a way to reduce working hours and share jobs and free time more equal.
deathtokoalas
+daveruda i don't deny that this is sort of a snotty position, but i've never seen anybody counter it effectively.
if corporations are people, why is it not discriminatory to give them special tax status? (the reason is that they're constitutionally exempt, but it's basically legislating themselves above the law). why should they not be taxed like people?
that's 30-40% above $100,000. and it could solve a lot of problems.
for ideological reasons, i'd rather put the production in the hands of the people. but, that's probably unrealistic. in the short term, i'd really honestly like to see corporations taxed like people...
back when workers were involved directly in production, it certainly made sense that wages should rise with productivity. but that is no longer true and will never again be true in the future. today, most workers are involved in jobs that have to do with the distribution end of the cycle. we should not expect increases or decreases in productivity to have any effect on wages in a store or a restaurant.
further, it follows that the old arguments about inflation and wage increases are no longer valid either, because labour costs are coming primarily out of the retail end rather than the production end.
the economy has drastically changed. economists across the spectrum have not. it's the rising gap between economists and the economy that needs to addressed, as a starting point.
i drew a graph:
daveruda
+deathtokoalas The resonable thing would be to tax the production itself instead of Labour. That way everyone can still enjoy the fruits of production. On top of that use the automation as a way to reduce working hours and share jobs and free time more equal.
deathtokoalas
+daveruda i don't deny that this is sort of a snotty position, but i've never seen anybody counter it effectively.
if corporations are people, why is it not discriminatory to give them special tax status? (the reason is that they're constitutionally exempt, but it's basically legislating themselves above the law). why should they not be taxed like people?
that's 30-40% above $100,000. and it could solve a lot of problems.
for ideological reasons, i'd rather put the production in the hands of the people. but, that's probably unrealistic. in the short term, i'd really honestly like to see corporations taxed like people...
it's a class thing, and you've maybe got the causality backwards. lower class white dialects are also viewed in a rather derogatory manner. and, it kind of goes back quite a ways in english. we have this collection of words we're not supposed to say. these are words that developed in the common vernacular of english, often from norse or welsh, and were rejected for deviating from the correct, aristocratic anglo-saxon version of it. scottish dialects remain widely mocked as well. judging people by the way they speak is a way to enforce class divisions, rather than a cause of them.
personally, i'm in favour of abolishing collectivized grammar altogether in favour of purely individualized expression. there's a kind of gramscian argument, there. the enforcement of correct modes of grammar is equivalent to the enforcement of correct modes of thinking. you could look at the rules of capitalization as one example of how grammar enforces the status quo. stepping back from that and allowing children greater freedom in constructing their own grammar conventions will allow for a wider range of individual expression that would be much more difficult to encapsulate into hierarchical categories.
for that reason, i think linguists need to be careful about how they approach ebonics, or whatever you want to call it. there have been periodic calls for this to be taught in schools and enforced as a cultural norm. but, the result of that is that it is going to enforce a hive mentality and then be used to further enforce a black/white class distinction. the path to equality is to abolish these sorts of distinctions, not to further cement them.
while integration has certainly not proceeded at the level that one might have predicted after brown v board, ebonics is not entirely a black language, either. whites raised in lower class majority black neighbourhoods in cities like detroit will speak in roughly the same way that the people around them will. policies that aim to mix it up a little and break down the association of dialect with skin colour will help in removing it as a tool of racial segregationist thinking, even if it doesn't take it out of the toolbox for class oppression. breaking down that perception and partial reality of ebonics as a "black language" is probably the best way to start.
personally, i'm in favour of abolishing collectivized grammar altogether in favour of purely individualized expression. there's a kind of gramscian argument, there. the enforcement of correct modes of grammar is equivalent to the enforcement of correct modes of thinking. you could look at the rules of capitalization as one example of how grammar enforces the status quo. stepping back from that and allowing children greater freedom in constructing their own grammar conventions will allow for a wider range of individual expression that would be much more difficult to encapsulate into hierarchical categories.
for that reason, i think linguists need to be careful about how they approach ebonics, or whatever you want to call it. there have been periodic calls for this to be taught in schools and enforced as a cultural norm. but, the result of that is that it is going to enforce a hive mentality and then be used to further enforce a black/white class distinction. the path to equality is to abolish these sorts of distinctions, not to further cement them.
while integration has certainly not proceeded at the level that one might have predicted after brown v board, ebonics is not entirely a black language, either. whites raised in lower class majority black neighbourhoods in cities like detroit will speak in roughly the same way that the people around them will. policies that aim to mix it up a little and break down the association of dialect with skin colour will help in removing it as a tool of racial segregationist thinking, even if it doesn't take it out of the toolbox for class oppression. breaking down that perception and partial reality of ebonics as a "black language" is probably the best way to start.
Monday, August 17, 2015
it's a complicated dynamic. because, sovereignty is not necessarily left-leaning. a part of the bloc's collapse was from right-wing adq supporters irritated about voting for "communists". the bloc started off on the right, but it had to make that choice to swing left to appeal to more voters.
what that means is that, in some way, the bloc is directly in competition with the conservatives for right-leaning sovereigntists. and, the bloc's ability to split is consequently not necessarily good for the conservatives, as is often assumed by analysts: they can steal sovereigntist voters from the conservatives, too. conversely, the conservatives probably have more of a swing with bloc voters in certain parts of quebec than they do with ndp or liberal voters.
i'm iffy analyzing three-wayraises races. four-way raises races? it might as well be down to dumb luck, really.
but, the conservatives taking seats in quebec city should surprise nobody.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-quebec-aug17-1.3193588
man, my grammar has been terrible recently. i think the edit button has made me lazy. and yet there is no edit button, here.
it's funny how your synapses can short out and throw out "raises" instead of "races". it's spelled correctly. but it really only sounds similar.
anyways. i'll be more careful. i'm kind of picky about that...
what that means is that, in some way, the bloc is directly in competition with the conservatives for right-leaning sovereigntists. and, the bloc's ability to split is consequently not necessarily good for the conservatives, as is often assumed by analysts: they can steal sovereigntist voters from the conservatives, too. conversely, the conservatives probably have more of a swing with bloc voters in certain parts of quebec than they do with ndp or liberal voters.
i'm iffy analyzing three-way
but, the conservatives taking seats in quebec city should surprise nobody.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-quebec-aug17-1.3193588
man, my grammar has been terrible recently. i think the edit button has made me lazy. and yet there is no edit button, here.
it's funny how your synapses can short out and throw out "raises" instead of "races". it's spelled correctly. but it really only sounds similar.
anyways. i'll be more careful. i'm kind of picky about that...
see, if he's campaigning for moderate conservative voters in the gta then this is in fact how to do it - offer them another tax cut (as if harper hasn't handed out plenty of tax cuts, as flatly odd as some of them may be...) and rail against "government corruption". that's the way you used to win elections, back in the olden days. and, the suburbs are a kind of insular bubble - always twenty-thirty years behind the times.
but, it's a tactic that cedes so much ground around so many of the issues that it's functionally a fight for second place. perhaps even a race to the bottom. fitting...
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-holds-rally-with-kathleen-wynne-in-toronto-1.3193641
but, it's a tactic that cedes so much ground around so many of the issues that it's functionally a fight for second place. perhaps even a race to the bottom. fitting...
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-holds-rally-with-kathleen-wynne-in-toronto-1.3193641
Sherlocks home
This is a serious question, I hear about the middle class daily, what about the working class? What about the welders, carpenters etc. To me the middle class is a professional, doctor, dentist etc, working class is non professional work, it seems that help is going to go to one sector of the population, leaving out the poor and the elderly, unless I have heard wrong or simply do not understand Canada's 'class' system. Again this is a serious question.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-where-the-leaders-are-aug17-1.3193295
jessica murray
politicians focus on the middle class because polls suggest that most people consider themselves in it, from people near the poverty line to people in big suburban houses.
if they went out and talked about helping the poor (the "lower middle class"), they'd alienate the bourgeois class. if they went out and talked about helping the rich (the "upper middle class"), they'd alienate the working class.
some people also suggest it's a way to avoid using marxist language, but it's no doubt a secondary point. it's just an attempt to think the entire audience is being spoken to.
what you want to do is take a closer look at the various policies and see what the actual numbers are. the language is constructed to gloss over this, and will be obsolete in a few years - once politicians realize that voters today have unlimited access to details and aren't afraid to go find it.
This is a serious question, I hear about the middle class daily, what about the working class? What about the welders, carpenters etc. To me the middle class is a professional, doctor, dentist etc, working class is non professional work, it seems that help is going to go to one sector of the population, leaving out the poor and the elderly, unless I have heard wrong or simply do not understand Canada's 'class' system. Again this is a serious question.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-where-the-leaders-are-aug17-1.3193295
jessica murray
politicians focus on the middle class because polls suggest that most people consider themselves in it, from people near the poverty line to people in big suburban houses.
if they went out and talked about helping the poor (the "lower middle class"), they'd alienate the bourgeois class. if they went out and talked about helping the rich (the "upper middle class"), they'd alienate the working class.
some people also suggest it's a way to avoid using marxist language, but it's no doubt a secondary point. it's just an attempt to think the entire audience is being spoken to.
what you want to do is take a closer look at the various policies and see what the actual numbers are. the language is constructed to gloss over this, and will be obsolete in a few years - once politicians realize that voters today have unlimited access to details and aren't afraid to go find it.
the supreme court will reinstate their constitutional right to vote. this is petty nonsense coming out of the government's attempt to appear consistent on the anti-ignatieff propaganda; harper knows this will be overturned, and would not have passed it if he thought it wouldn't be appealed. that's what you're dealing with with this guy...
a decade from now, we will probably look at the stephen harper period and see little of lasting substance that would not have occurred anyways. he's got those trade deals. there'll be a bridge or a road here and there. but most of his other decisions will be overturned or modified to the point that there's little of his signature left on them. we won't be debating his legacy so much as we'll have a hard time really defining what it is.
but, the one thing that will stand out in this period is how strongly he pushed the courts to enforce the constitution, and the precedents that they set in overruling him. in the process, he's made it that much more difficult for anybody to try and emulate him.
there may not be much legislative law that outlasts him very long. but, there will be a large amount of constitutional judicial precedents that carry on for decades.
he's consequently done less to change the country than he's done to put constitutional rules in place rules that prevent him from changing it in the ways he'd like to.
....which is just consistent with everything else about him: repeated epic failure.
a common response to somebody stating they're a conservative is to ask them what they're conserving. a common answer is that they're upholding the constitution.
we're in a sort of strange period, as our constitution was written somewhat - albeit not radically - to the left of the prevailing conservative consensus. but, has that not been true of every constitution? did the feudal aristocrats in france agree with "liberty, equality, fraternity"? did the totality of american landholders agree that all men are created equal, even if it didn't include slaves?
if i'm right about my shifting party theory, which sees the liberal party stabilize as the country's right-wing alternative, it's rather fitting to place them into the position of conserving the country's institutions as they actually exist. they built this. it's their responsibility to protect it. and, if i'm wrong, it's a mindset that is inevitable to overttake canadian conservatism. eventually, the canadian right will necessarily be composed of trudeauvian liberals that uphold the charter.
the future of conservatisim could be nothing else
it's very hard to see harper in anything but reactionary terms, or the reform movement as anything more than a last gasp attempt to hold on to the past that will eventually be swept away into the dust bin.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/expat-new-brunswickers-upset-they-can-t-vote-in-election-1.3191810
a decade from now, we will probably look at the stephen harper period and see little of lasting substance that would not have occurred anyways. he's got those trade deals. there'll be a bridge or a road here and there. but most of his other decisions will be overturned or modified to the point that there's little of his signature left on them. we won't be debating his legacy so much as we'll have a hard time really defining what it is.
but, the one thing that will stand out in this period is how strongly he pushed the courts to enforce the constitution, and the precedents that they set in overruling him. in the process, he's made it that much more difficult for anybody to try and emulate him.
there may not be much legislative law that outlasts him very long. but, there will be a large amount of constitutional judicial precedents that carry on for decades.
he's consequently done less to change the country than he's done to put constitutional rules in place rules that prevent him from changing it in the ways he'd like to.
....which is just consistent with everything else about him: repeated epic failure.
a common response to somebody stating they're a conservative is to ask them what they're conserving. a common answer is that they're upholding the constitution.
we're in a sort of strange period, as our constitution was written somewhat - albeit not radically - to the left of the prevailing conservative consensus. but, has that not been true of every constitution? did the feudal aristocrats in france agree with "liberty, equality, fraternity"? did the totality of american landholders agree that all men are created equal, even if it didn't include slaves?
if i'm right about my shifting party theory, which sees the liberal party stabilize as the country's right-wing alternative, it's rather fitting to place them into the position of conserving the country's institutions as they actually exist. they built this. it's their responsibility to protect it. and, if i'm wrong, it's a mindset that is inevitable to overttake canadian conservatism. eventually, the canadian right will necessarily be composed of trudeauvian liberals that uphold the charter.
the future of conservatisim could be nothing else
it's very hard to see harper in anything but reactionary terms, or the reform movement as anything more than a last gasp attempt to hold on to the past that will eventually be swept away into the dust bin.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/expat-new-brunswickers-upset-they-can-t-vote-in-election-1.3191810
you're not looking at broad levels of evidence. winning the seat last election by 40% or more doesn't make it a "safe seat". a safe seat is a seat that the conservatives have consistently won. like fort mcmurray. as mentioned previously: if the conservatives had more "safe seats" than the other parties, they wouldn't have spent most of the last century in opposition. 2011 did not represent a fundamental shift in the electorate. in fact, it had very low turnout. and, the numbers (by any polling) have changed dramatically since then, with large movements through both swing demographics.
take bc, for example.
harper won 45.5% of the vote in bc in 2011; the ndp won 32.5%, the liberals won 13.4% and the greens won 7.7%. current polling has harper around 20-25%, the ndp around 40-45%, the liberals around 20-25% and the greens around 10-15%. that's a big difference.
for you to point out the ridings and say "gee. in order for the ndp to win this seat, harper would have to lose 20%. that can't happen" is kind of foolish of you when the polling suggests that harper has in fact lost 20% in the province.
you're ignoring facts out of an inability to come to terms with them.
with numbers like that you would expect a reversal in outcomes. with a 20% swing, you should be looking at seats where harper won by 60% last election as in bounds.
as i pointed out in the article: the idea here is correct. you're just really not being remotely scientific in the way you're approaching it. if you begin with the assumption that people will vote the same way they did in the last election, of course you'll end up with the results of the last election.
a big win here and there does not a "safe seat" make. a "safe seat" has to have a long history in a single party. the margins could fly around all over the place. it's the consistency that is more important. and, yes - the conservatives have a significant number of them. but, it adds up to a minority of the seats in the parliament that is a far cry from declaring them the favourite.
you're half right in explaining the attack ads, but you're not pointing out that they're not working. both the ndp and the liberals are up relative to the previous election, and the biggest shift in voting intention seems to be from the conservatives to the liberals. them's the numbers: despite harper's effort, he's losing votes to trudeau. direct polling has pinpointed c-51 as the dominant factor in the collapse of the liberal vote towards the ndp earlier this year.
but, i would not expect the conservatives to expend much energy on the ndp for the reason that there's almost no swing between the conservatives and the ndp. the swing between the conservatives and liberals is about 5-10%, and mostly in the gta - it could, in theory, win them the election if the liberal vote didn't collapse so badly on the left. the swing between the ndp and liberals is as much as 30% by some estimates, and distributed widely across the country. it's the important part of this election, and has been the dominant factor since paul martin purged the liberal party. and, i would expect this to be the first election where a measurable swing between the ndp and the greens begins to open up.
the only way you'll see harper start to nail mulcair is if the ndp gets so far ahead that the best conservative strategy is to try and swing votes from the ndp to the liberals in order to split the vote. and, that's a long ways away. he'd have to be solidly over 35% nationally.
thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/17/New-Dem-Battlegrounds/
Macb423
But I recall that in 2011 the conservative media, led by the Post and the Globe and Mail, puffed up the NDP and trashed Mr Ignatieff, nicely splitting the votes in Ontario so the Conservatives won their majority. I think we can expect the same as this election unfolds. Maybe in the other direction, as you say. I'm not sure the NDP needs to be above 35% to make this a winning strategy for Mr Harper, since this election, he won't have his 39% but will be running at 35% or less himself.
deathtokoalas
i don't think that the attack ads made much of a difference. i was in that liberal/ndp split category at the time, and i came to my own conclusions on ignatieff by reading some of his writing. he was unelectable on his own merits. the conservatives didn't have to tear him down. and, when i voted for the ndp in that election it was a conscious decision of conscience to not vote for a pro-torture, neo-liberal war monger.
ignatieff was to the right of harper on a slew of issues. you don't have to blame it on anybody. he was a poor candidate. and he didn't appeal to liberal voters because he didn't believe in liberal party values.
by contrast, i voted for dion. and, while it's unlikely that i'll vote for trudeau, it has little to do with the attack ads.
in fact, i voted for paul dewar - who was articulating a more principled foreign policy perspective that i was in greater agreement with.
but, i want to stress this point. because the liberal "intelligentsia" does *not* understand what happened.
michael ignatieff did not lose in spite of his great intellect and brilliant writing. he lost *because* of his poor foresight and the opinions he expressed as an academic.
canadians were not brainwashed into not voting for him because he spent time out of the country. canadians looked at his record, weighed it carefully and rejected it as inconsistent with their value systems.
this does have something to do with the time he spent away. he didn't understand the political movement he attempted to lead.
and, as bad as harper has been, we are lucky he disappeared. ignatieff would be standing shoulder to shoulder with obama as he blows up half the world - and without any of the good political sense that harper has to keep it at arm's distance.
sorry. one more add.
the media is going to tell you that the race in toronto is between the conservatives and the liberals - even if the numbers are split. the logic is by looking at the past results of the ridings, which often have been liberal-conservative battles with the ndp in distant third.
however, if you follow what i'm saying and you look at the numbers closely, what emerges is a close three-way battle.
the reason is that the conservative rural ridings in ontario are very safe. so, if they're down 10% province wide, they're down more than that in the cities. but, the liberals are still struggling to reach their 2008 levels in ontario. conversely, the ndp are up by well over 10% on their 2008 levels. but, because the ndp are the opposite of the conservatives - more of their votes are in cities than rural areas - that means they're up disproportionately. a 10% bump province wide suggests a 15-20% jump in urban centres.
current polling numbers don't suggest that's enough to put the ndp ahead, comfortably. it suggests a tight three-way race. even if the liberals can get back every single vote that they lost to the conservatives in 2011, they will still lose a lot of votes to the ndp - many more than they will gain back.
and there lies the crux of the problem. taking the conservatives down to 35% doesn't help if neither the liberals nor the ndp can get over 33%. and, while there's clearly been a lot of movement from the liberals to the ndp in these ridings, there's a breaking point - because a lot of these ridings are quite wealthy. compounding the problem is that the liberals' election strategy is itself bounded - appealing to moderate conservatives can only take you so far before party politics prevents you from cutting deeper, and it alienates you from the other side. in the end, the perception that these races are between the conservatives and liberals could allow the ndp to dominate from the margin. and, that has been the general movement of voters over the last decade or so - as a result of the liberals endlessly pursuing this strategy.
this is why i float the 35% number. it's about the breaking point that's necessary. if the ndp are polling 30% over all of ontario, they're probably polling around 35% over much of the urban spaces. if the conservatives are polling 35% in all of ontario, they're probably polling around 30% over those same spaces. if the liberals are polling 30% over all of ontario, it's probably close to a wash. but, these are rough numbers subject to a lot of randomness and a lot of toss-up races - 33 here, 37 there....
if the ndp can get to 35% over all of ontario, it suggests they're polling closer to 40% in the urban cores. and, then the two-way result and urban/rural split is complete and clear.
until or when or if that magic number appears, this race remains exceedingly unpredictable, as the three-way dynamics throws everything around all over the place in key areas. but if it does appear, it's done.
Ken
I would expect this to be the first election where a measurable swing between the ndp and the greens begins to open up~This has been the problem all along the greens propped up by the Liberals and Cns to split the NDP votes! Where else does the greens get money to run all of their candidates and advertise? Mostly from the Conservative as greens are small C cons no where near a leftist party! To limit EM to just one debate and to vilify the other parties is the best advertising for the Greens. GO NDP GO
deathtokoalas
the greens are serious about stopping pipelines and pulling out of free trade agreements. the ndp are not. it's a different kind of left - the ndp have traditionally been a worker's left, whereas the greens are a libertarian left. the economic realities of the present and future indicate that worker's parties are a thing of the past, because we no longer have workers. the result is that the ndp have moved into the center-left, and have become indistinguishable from where moderate liberals used to sit.
the green party is the new left. they're going to have to make some changes, which will include replacing elizabeth may with somebody that's not a pro-life minister. but, that doesn't change the facts of it.
the new left is going to prioritize a transition out of fossil fuels, a greater focus on local economies at the expense of global trade and more political power at the local level. the planks of this new left were developed in the alter-globalization movement of the mid to late 90s, and have been further developed through the occupy movements.
up until this point, this new left has been split between the ndp and the greens, and has also included a lot of non-voters. this swing is going to open up because the ndp are in the process of completely abandoning it. it will mostly be composed of traditional "workers left" types that are stuck between the past and the future.
ken
it's a different kind of left and funded by whom from Harper or who ever pull's the strings of the media to refuse EM joining the debates where May takes a shot or two at Harper but her main thrust is the NDP! She gets many of the sympathy vote from the how dare you crowd not allowing her to debate, when she is not up in the seats in parliament to be invited, If she shut downs everything then what and the NDP is lead by an environmentalist in Tom Mulcair who will go all out green in time and give them a chance to change over from fossil fuels you can't make everyone live in the dark ages by stopping it all over night! now you are telling me that the Occupy movement was all green? I was there and I am NDP does that count to you or are you just fluff & stuffed with spin?
deathtokoalas
well, her main target ought to be the ndp at this point. they're shredding their policy conventions in public, and making it clear they're going to govern on the right. that's not what ndp voters are signing up for. the ndp has created this problem themselves by moving to the right and alienating their supporters. if they don't want to lose support on the left, they should stop abandoning it.
i'm not a partisan green party supporter. i'm a libertarian socialist that makes arms-length pragmatic voting decisions based on what's on the actual table. i'd rather see the party system abolished, frankly, and have everybody run as an independent. i'd prefer direct democracy on a wide range of non-specialist issues and technocratic rule under a wide range of specialist ones.
as such, my voting decisions have been partially riding based; i voted for john manley a few times under chretien, then ed broadbent & paul dewar when paul martin took over. i swung back to the liberals to vote for dion, even though i knew dewar would win the riding. i knew at the time it would probably be the last time i ever vote liberal, so i felt it was important to try and give them as much leftist support as they could get before they caved. and i understand that the green vote won harper the election in 2008, which i'm still rather bitter about. this was legitimately stupid. there was absolutely no reasonable reason to vote for a fifth party when the natural governing party had adopted it's platform and the leader of that party had endorsed them. but, we're in a different situation today; muclair is throwing around transparent rationalizations to cement the ndp as another neo-liberal party. dion was different, but i wouldn't expect mulcair to govern differently than harper. i then voted for dewar again in 2011. i've since moved out of ottawa into another safe ndp riding, but the candidate here is a backbencher for life. that said, i would not consider actually voting for a green candidate out of protest until i learn a little more about that person as an individual.
conservative supporters will follow the party wherever it takes them. the rest of the canadian spectrum will not be lead, nor will it follow. it expects to chart the course and for the politicians to listen to them. so long as canadian politicians think they can warp public opinion and ignore their policy conventions, they will continue to be thwarted by a public that demands they start listening.
--
Macb423
Puzzling, though. Polling across Canada shows the Conservatives running about 8 points lower than their 2011 totals, with little chance of improving those numbers because they are almost no one's second choice. Wouldn't that suggest a fair number of seats should be in play, even some the Conservatives won by over 50%? Here in BC the polls show that Conservative support has fallen by even more. This suggests to me that some of their "safe" seats might not be. Can someone tell me what is wrong with this analysis?
And I very much appreciate the explanation of the attack ads against Trudeau. It appears that, as usual, the Conservatives are better at political strategy than the rest of us. Sigh.
adolan
The popular vote numbers are misleading. Moving from those small-sample size results to seats is a tricky process and is based on a lot of assumptions. Hence the margins of error around projected seats based on popular votes are very wide.
Macb423
Yes, I think I understand that piece. But it still seems if the Conservatives are losing 8 points on average throughout Canada, some of their "safer" seats should be in danger. I mean if you drop from 50% to 42%, the seat will be in play. But of course, our so-called opposition parties won't cooperate very well with each other, so maybe I'm dreaming.
Wwallace mud
If many of those who voted Conservative in 2011 in ridings that were already sure wins for the Conservatives are now answering that they won't vote Conservative this time the naatioinal numbers would go down for the conservatives but on a riding by riding basis that type of drop wouldn't effect the seat total outcome.
deathtokoalas
yeah, but that's not how you'd expect to distribute it. the safe seats are safe because they're safe. rather, you'd expect that 8% drop (and it's more like a 10-11% drop) to be disproportionately distributed to seats that have swung in the past. this is why you can see a 20% cut in bc and almost stable numbers in alberta; that balances out to lower national numbers, and should actually indicate a *greater* impact than 8% in bc.
it depends on the riding, obviously. it's tricky to try and do anything uniformly when it comes to this. but, the way this is being interpreted here is not the right way to interpret it, it's flatly backwards. these seats where he got 45% should be expected to fall to between 25-35%, whereas seats that he got 65% in are the ones that should not be expected to move much at all.
we can certainly talk of safe conservative ridings, but when we do so we should talk about seats that have been conservative for decades - not new ridings with mixed populations that have shown wide movement in the past.
it's not at at all unheard of for a riding to swing by up to 20 points in canada from election to election.
the numbers in ontario are fluctuating, but it's looking like he's down about 10%. but, that's misleading. you would expect all of that 10% is in the gta - which makes it more like 15%. rural ontario makes up some of his safest seats. and, that likewise takes that 45% in the 905 down to 30%.
it's just all backwards...
take bc, for example.
harper won 45.5% of the vote in bc in 2011; the ndp won 32.5%, the liberals won 13.4% and the greens won 7.7%. current polling has harper around 20-25%, the ndp around 40-45%, the liberals around 20-25% and the greens around 10-15%. that's a big difference.
for you to point out the ridings and say "gee. in order for the ndp to win this seat, harper would have to lose 20%. that can't happen" is kind of foolish of you when the polling suggests that harper has in fact lost 20% in the province.
you're ignoring facts out of an inability to come to terms with them.
with numbers like that you would expect a reversal in outcomes. with a 20% swing, you should be looking at seats where harper won by 60% last election as in bounds.
as i pointed out in the article: the idea here is correct. you're just really not being remotely scientific in the way you're approaching it. if you begin with the assumption that people will vote the same way they did in the last election, of course you'll end up with the results of the last election.
a big win here and there does not a "safe seat" make. a "safe seat" has to have a long history in a single party. the margins could fly around all over the place. it's the consistency that is more important. and, yes - the conservatives have a significant number of them. but, it adds up to a minority of the seats in the parliament that is a far cry from declaring them the favourite.
you're half right in explaining the attack ads, but you're not pointing out that they're not working. both the ndp and the liberals are up relative to the previous election, and the biggest shift in voting intention seems to be from the conservatives to the liberals. them's the numbers: despite harper's effort, he's losing votes to trudeau. direct polling has pinpointed c-51 as the dominant factor in the collapse of the liberal vote towards the ndp earlier this year.
but, i would not expect the conservatives to expend much energy on the ndp for the reason that there's almost no swing between the conservatives and the ndp. the swing between the conservatives and liberals is about 5-10%, and mostly in the gta - it could, in theory, win them the election if the liberal vote didn't collapse so badly on the left. the swing between the ndp and liberals is as much as 30% by some estimates, and distributed widely across the country. it's the important part of this election, and has been the dominant factor since paul martin purged the liberal party. and, i would expect this to be the first election where a measurable swing between the ndp and the greens begins to open up.
the only way you'll see harper start to nail mulcair is if the ndp gets so far ahead that the best conservative strategy is to try and swing votes from the ndp to the liberals in order to split the vote. and, that's a long ways away. he'd have to be solidly over 35% nationally.
thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/17/New-Dem-Battlegrounds/
Macb423
But I recall that in 2011 the conservative media, led by the Post and the Globe and Mail, puffed up the NDP and trashed Mr Ignatieff, nicely splitting the votes in Ontario so the Conservatives won their majority. I think we can expect the same as this election unfolds. Maybe in the other direction, as you say. I'm not sure the NDP needs to be above 35% to make this a winning strategy for Mr Harper, since this election, he won't have his 39% but will be running at 35% or less himself.
deathtokoalas
i don't think that the attack ads made much of a difference. i was in that liberal/ndp split category at the time, and i came to my own conclusions on ignatieff by reading some of his writing. he was unelectable on his own merits. the conservatives didn't have to tear him down. and, when i voted for the ndp in that election it was a conscious decision of conscience to not vote for a pro-torture, neo-liberal war monger.
ignatieff was to the right of harper on a slew of issues. you don't have to blame it on anybody. he was a poor candidate. and he didn't appeal to liberal voters because he didn't believe in liberal party values.
by contrast, i voted for dion. and, while it's unlikely that i'll vote for trudeau, it has little to do with the attack ads.
in fact, i voted for paul dewar - who was articulating a more principled foreign policy perspective that i was in greater agreement with.
but, i want to stress this point. because the liberal "intelligentsia" does *not* understand what happened.
michael ignatieff did not lose in spite of his great intellect and brilliant writing. he lost *because* of his poor foresight and the opinions he expressed as an academic.
canadians were not brainwashed into not voting for him because he spent time out of the country. canadians looked at his record, weighed it carefully and rejected it as inconsistent with their value systems.
this does have something to do with the time he spent away. he didn't understand the political movement he attempted to lead.
and, as bad as harper has been, we are lucky he disappeared. ignatieff would be standing shoulder to shoulder with obama as he blows up half the world - and without any of the good political sense that harper has to keep it at arm's distance.
sorry. one more add.
the media is going to tell you that the race in toronto is between the conservatives and the liberals - even if the numbers are split. the logic is by looking at the past results of the ridings, which often have been liberal-conservative battles with the ndp in distant third.
however, if you follow what i'm saying and you look at the numbers closely, what emerges is a close three-way battle.
the reason is that the conservative rural ridings in ontario are very safe. so, if they're down 10% province wide, they're down more than that in the cities. but, the liberals are still struggling to reach their 2008 levels in ontario. conversely, the ndp are up by well over 10% on their 2008 levels. but, because the ndp are the opposite of the conservatives - more of their votes are in cities than rural areas - that means they're up disproportionately. a 10% bump province wide suggests a 15-20% jump in urban centres.
current polling numbers don't suggest that's enough to put the ndp ahead, comfortably. it suggests a tight three-way race. even if the liberals can get back every single vote that they lost to the conservatives in 2011, they will still lose a lot of votes to the ndp - many more than they will gain back.
and there lies the crux of the problem. taking the conservatives down to 35% doesn't help if neither the liberals nor the ndp can get over 33%. and, while there's clearly been a lot of movement from the liberals to the ndp in these ridings, there's a breaking point - because a lot of these ridings are quite wealthy. compounding the problem is that the liberals' election strategy is itself bounded - appealing to moderate conservatives can only take you so far before party politics prevents you from cutting deeper, and it alienates you from the other side. in the end, the perception that these races are between the conservatives and liberals could allow the ndp to dominate from the margin. and, that has been the general movement of voters over the last decade or so - as a result of the liberals endlessly pursuing this strategy.
this is why i float the 35% number. it's about the breaking point that's necessary. if the ndp are polling 30% over all of ontario, they're probably polling around 35% over much of the urban spaces. if the conservatives are polling 35% in all of ontario, they're probably polling around 30% over those same spaces. if the liberals are polling 30% over all of ontario, it's probably close to a wash. but, these are rough numbers subject to a lot of randomness and a lot of toss-up races - 33 here, 37 there....
if the ndp can get to 35% over all of ontario, it suggests they're polling closer to 40% in the urban cores. and, then the two-way result and urban/rural split is complete and clear.
until or when or if that magic number appears, this race remains exceedingly unpredictable, as the three-way dynamics throws everything around all over the place in key areas. but if it does appear, it's done.
Ken
I would expect this to be the first election where a measurable swing between the ndp and the greens begins to open up~This has been the problem all along the greens propped up by the Liberals and Cns to split the NDP votes! Where else does the greens get money to run all of their candidates and advertise? Mostly from the Conservative as greens are small C cons no where near a leftist party! To limit EM to just one debate and to vilify the other parties is the best advertising for the Greens. GO NDP GO
deathtokoalas
the greens are serious about stopping pipelines and pulling out of free trade agreements. the ndp are not. it's a different kind of left - the ndp have traditionally been a worker's left, whereas the greens are a libertarian left. the economic realities of the present and future indicate that worker's parties are a thing of the past, because we no longer have workers. the result is that the ndp have moved into the center-left, and have become indistinguishable from where moderate liberals used to sit.
the green party is the new left. they're going to have to make some changes, which will include replacing elizabeth may with somebody that's not a pro-life minister. but, that doesn't change the facts of it.
the new left is going to prioritize a transition out of fossil fuels, a greater focus on local economies at the expense of global trade and more political power at the local level. the planks of this new left were developed in the alter-globalization movement of the mid to late 90s, and have been further developed through the occupy movements.
up until this point, this new left has been split between the ndp and the greens, and has also included a lot of non-voters. this swing is going to open up because the ndp are in the process of completely abandoning it. it will mostly be composed of traditional "workers left" types that are stuck between the past and the future.
ken
it's a different kind of left and funded by whom from Harper or who ever pull's the strings of the media to refuse EM joining the debates where May takes a shot or two at Harper but her main thrust is the NDP! She gets many of the sympathy vote from the how dare you crowd not allowing her to debate, when she is not up in the seats in parliament to be invited, If she shut downs everything then what and the NDP is lead by an environmentalist in Tom Mulcair who will go all out green in time and give them a chance to change over from fossil fuels you can't make everyone live in the dark ages by stopping it all over night! now you are telling me that the Occupy movement was all green? I was there and I am NDP does that count to you or are you just fluff & stuffed with spin?
deathtokoalas
well, her main target ought to be the ndp at this point. they're shredding their policy conventions in public, and making it clear they're going to govern on the right. that's not what ndp voters are signing up for. the ndp has created this problem themselves by moving to the right and alienating their supporters. if they don't want to lose support on the left, they should stop abandoning it.
i'm not a partisan green party supporter. i'm a libertarian socialist that makes arms-length pragmatic voting decisions based on what's on the actual table. i'd rather see the party system abolished, frankly, and have everybody run as an independent. i'd prefer direct democracy on a wide range of non-specialist issues and technocratic rule under a wide range of specialist ones.
as such, my voting decisions have been partially riding based; i voted for john manley a few times under chretien, then ed broadbent & paul dewar when paul martin took over. i swung back to the liberals to vote for dion, even though i knew dewar would win the riding. i knew at the time it would probably be the last time i ever vote liberal, so i felt it was important to try and give them as much leftist support as they could get before they caved. and i understand that the green vote won harper the election in 2008, which i'm still rather bitter about. this was legitimately stupid. there was absolutely no reasonable reason to vote for a fifth party when the natural governing party had adopted it's platform and the leader of that party had endorsed them. but, we're in a different situation today; muclair is throwing around transparent rationalizations to cement the ndp as another neo-liberal party. dion was different, but i wouldn't expect mulcair to govern differently than harper. i then voted for dewar again in 2011. i've since moved out of ottawa into another safe ndp riding, but the candidate here is a backbencher for life. that said, i would not consider actually voting for a green candidate out of protest until i learn a little more about that person as an individual.
conservative supporters will follow the party wherever it takes them. the rest of the canadian spectrum will not be lead, nor will it follow. it expects to chart the course and for the politicians to listen to them. so long as canadian politicians think they can warp public opinion and ignore their policy conventions, they will continue to be thwarted by a public that demands they start listening.
--
Macb423
Puzzling, though. Polling across Canada shows the Conservatives running about 8 points lower than their 2011 totals, with little chance of improving those numbers because they are almost no one's second choice. Wouldn't that suggest a fair number of seats should be in play, even some the Conservatives won by over 50%? Here in BC the polls show that Conservative support has fallen by even more. This suggests to me that some of their "safe" seats might not be. Can someone tell me what is wrong with this analysis?
And I very much appreciate the explanation of the attack ads against Trudeau. It appears that, as usual, the Conservatives are better at political strategy than the rest of us. Sigh.
adolan
The popular vote numbers are misleading. Moving from those small-sample size results to seats is a tricky process and is based on a lot of assumptions. Hence the margins of error around projected seats based on popular votes are very wide.
Macb423
Yes, I think I understand that piece. But it still seems if the Conservatives are losing 8 points on average throughout Canada, some of their "safer" seats should be in danger. I mean if you drop from 50% to 42%, the seat will be in play. But of course, our so-called opposition parties won't cooperate very well with each other, so maybe I'm dreaming.
Wwallace mud
If many of those who voted Conservative in 2011 in ridings that were already sure wins for the Conservatives are now answering that they won't vote Conservative this time the naatioinal numbers would go down for the conservatives but on a riding by riding basis that type of drop wouldn't effect the seat total outcome.
deathtokoalas
yeah, but that's not how you'd expect to distribute it. the safe seats are safe because they're safe. rather, you'd expect that 8% drop (and it's more like a 10-11% drop) to be disproportionately distributed to seats that have swung in the past. this is why you can see a 20% cut in bc and almost stable numbers in alberta; that balances out to lower national numbers, and should actually indicate a *greater* impact than 8% in bc.
it depends on the riding, obviously. it's tricky to try and do anything uniformly when it comes to this. but, the way this is being interpreted here is not the right way to interpret it, it's flatly backwards. these seats where he got 45% should be expected to fall to between 25-35%, whereas seats that he got 65% in are the ones that should not be expected to move much at all.
we can certainly talk of safe conservative ridings, but when we do so we should talk about seats that have been conservative for decades - not new ridings with mixed populations that have shown wide movement in the past.
it's not at at all unheard of for a riding to swing by up to 20 points in canada from election to election.
the numbers in ontario are fluctuating, but it's looking like he's down about 10%. but, that's misleading. you would expect all of that 10% is in the gta - which makes it more like 15%. rural ontario makes up some of his safest seats. and, that likewise takes that 45% in the 905 down to 30%.
it's just all backwards...
i just did a political poll for the canadian election.
94% liberal
93% ndp
91% green
79% communist
5% conservative
the poll was pretty inaccurate in terms of the way it assigned positions. for example, it claimed the ndp were in favour of nationalizing the oil industry, which hasn't been true since before i was born (and which i'm in favour of, fwiw). and it claimed the liberals were in favour of national pharmacare, which has been voted on at the liberal convention but never taken up by the party (and which i'm also in favour of).
i'd say my preference right now is: green (probably about 90% agreement), ndp (about 70%), liberal (about 60%) - and conservative is not an option. but, on the key issues to me, only the greens are legitimately appealing at this point. i'm not quite a communist, and i'd never vote for any kind of mlm or trotskyist or any other variant. bunch of fascists, really. but i'm some kind of anarchist. and, taking the authoritarians out of the spectrum, i'm just listing from left to right. even the liberals are pretty much out of my sphere, but i just can't drop them. i have a lot of respect for what pierre trudeau was able to get through into law, even if a lot of it was with heavy ndp prodding.
it's actually surprising that i got such a high rating on the conservative side. i did a us poll a few years ago where i agreed with romney on 1% of issues. that was 1 out of 100 issues. the 5 indicates that our right is a wee bit more moderate.
i'm a politics nerd. i'll be buzzing around this until it happens, and likely even for a while after it - depending on the outcome. but, i want to get some more work done tonight.
this is from the last election, and you can see how the canadian spectrum works a little. the bq is a quebec separatist party that only runs candidates in that province.
since then, though, the ndp have moved to roughly where the liberals are in that picture, and the liberals have crossed the economic axis (while remaining roughly steady on the social axis).
i hope the cbc runs a vote compass this election, and it's accurate, and people use it. it may be enlightening to people.
94% liberal
93% ndp
91% green
79% communist
5% conservative
the poll was pretty inaccurate in terms of the way it assigned positions. for example, it claimed the ndp were in favour of nationalizing the oil industry, which hasn't been true since before i was born (and which i'm in favour of, fwiw). and it claimed the liberals were in favour of national pharmacare, which has been voted on at the liberal convention but never taken up by the party (and which i'm also in favour of).
i'd say my preference right now is: green (probably about 90% agreement), ndp (about 70%), liberal (about 60%) - and conservative is not an option. but, on the key issues to me, only the greens are legitimately appealing at this point. i'm not quite a communist, and i'd never vote for any kind of mlm or trotskyist or any other variant. bunch of fascists, really. but i'm some kind of anarchist. and, taking the authoritarians out of the spectrum, i'm just listing from left to right. even the liberals are pretty much out of my sphere, but i just can't drop them. i have a lot of respect for what pierre trudeau was able to get through into law, even if a lot of it was with heavy ndp prodding.
it's actually surprising that i got such a high rating on the conservative side. i did a us poll a few years ago where i agreed with romney on 1% of issues. that was 1 out of 100 issues. the 5 indicates that our right is a wee bit more moderate.
i'm a politics nerd. i'll be buzzing around this until it happens, and likely even for a while after it - depending on the outcome. but, i want to get some more work done tonight.
this is from the last election, and you can see how the canadian spectrum works a little. the bq is a quebec separatist party that only runs candidates in that province.
since then, though, the ndp have moved to roughly where the liberals are in that picture, and the liberals have crossed the economic axis (while remaining roughly steady on the social axis).
i hope the cbc runs a vote compass this election, and it's accurate, and people use it. it may be enlightening to people.
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