Trudeau

Posted by: chupacabra

Posted by: ReductiMat

Posted by: chupacabra

This thread lacks any attempt at substance.

Because this place is a ghost town and the effort to create substance is a waste of time.  If enough fish bite however, I'll spend some effort on reeling them in.

Materially, how has your life changed since the change of parties?

Fair enough.  I haven't been on here in weeks.

It hasn't really, but countries are slow-moving ships and don't tend to turn that quickly.  Other than legal weed, most my concerns are typically long term anyway.  I voted Liberal, and would again quite honestly because the Conservatives cut taxes and then trim the good spending that creates revenue so it is never a surprise when they can't balance the budget.  The NDP is good at getting an articulate leader, but I don't trust them to not fall apart and squabble over minor details.  That is the nature of the left the further you go.  Right now, for me, the Liberals are the happy medium.  So I don't really care that they are slapping what's his face on the wrist for not going along on a whipped vote, they need unity on the issues they feel are of national importance and that is what it means to be in a party.  If Trudeau wasn't Trudeau (you know, the flowing hair and the soft touch of a drama teacher), the loud noises would not be so loud.  Like you said, "how has your life changed since the change of parties (or leaders)?"

So for long-term goals, the Liberals prefer science-based approaches and climate change is more important to me than anything else by a long shot.  My hope is that Trudeau is mainly pandering to the O&G industry.  Climate change aside, the future of this country cannot be O&G.

How has your life materially changed since Chretien was running the show?

Can you provide samples of, "good spending"?

As for O&G and the Liberal party, I think we might have a different understanding of what the word pandering means.

Do you think we should just vote for parties and they assign whoever they like to your jurisdiction?

On one of my questions, I'll give you one great answer. 

Chretien telling the American's to fuck off, we're not sending our people to die in your "war" in Iraq.  Remember when Don Cherry was saying we should send Canadian's to die?  It still pisses me off to this day.

good canadian boys should die eh and for what?

Harper was ripping apart Canada he closed the busiest  coast guard station in Canada at Kitsalano, they did all kinds of shit,  he used to start every campaign whistle stop with " we live in dangerous times "

can you imagine harper being in power noew with trump down there ??

Posted by: XXX_er

can you imagine harper being in power noew with trump down there ??

It would be a circlejerk of stupidity.

Posted by: ReductiMat

How has your life materially changed since Chretien was running the show?

Can you provide samples of, "good spending"?

As for O&G and the Liberal party, I think we might have a different understanding of what the word pandering means.

Do you think we should just vote for parties and they assign whoever they like to your jurisdiction?

My life has changed significantly since Jean, but I can't really say that it had much to do with government.  Like I said, I tend to think more about the big picture and what will happen long-term with politics, not how their day to day decisions will affect me personally in the short term.

Good spending is infrastructure, education and anything else that improves efficiency.  Of course, health and safety are in there as well, but that is usually more about not wasting money and can be a lot harder to nail down the appropriate costs.  

The Liberals are fairly pro O&G despite the campaign rhetoric, but the writing is on the wall for the future and betting the farm on the tar sands is stupid.  That is why I hope they are pandering and that they know the market forces will make the decisions for them.

No, of course not, but I also think if you did not vote for an independent you have to expect that your MP will have some votes that are expected to make for the party's priorities and that they can't always vote in the self-interests of their constituents.  If the MPs can just vote how they like all the time what is the point of even having a national agenda?  Good for him for putting up a fight, but at the end of the day it wasn't an issue that impacted his riding differently that other ridings, he just didn't agree with the bill, and I suspect, neither do you.

If Jean isn't long term, I seriously underestimated your age.  Regardless, if none of their decisions have manifested into anything significant it only supports my opinion that there is marginal difference between our two parties.  In my opinion, the two biggest ones that come to mind are NAFTA & No-to-Iraq.  The former would have worked itself out regardless, but the latter is serious kudos in my books.  I suspect that era is over however.  I suspect Justin and Co. will start buying missiles and such to, "protect us from Russia" when in reality we'll just be lining some defense companies pockets.  (Hint: If we want to protect ourselves from Americans and Russians, we're going to need to redirect our entire GDP for a good six decades building weapons to give us a fighting chance).

The party in power has shown they will align with their biggest donors.  The donors list between our two parties is pretty similar minus the fringe dollars like Jesus and The Gays (if that's not a new band name soon I'll be disappointed).

Your final paragraph is why we will never have nice things, and you "lefties" will always be at odds with "righties" regardless of ANYTHING.

"If the MPs can just vote how they like all the time what is the point of even having a national agenda?"

If the MP's can't just vote how they like what is the point of even having democracy?  Are we here for us or for political parties?

Posted by: ReductiMat

If Jean isn't long term, I seriously underestimated your age.  Regardless, if none of their decisions have manifested into anything significant it only supports my opinion that there is marginal difference between our two parties.  In my opinion, the two biggest ones that come to mind are NAFTA & No-to-Iraq.  The former would have worked itself out regardless, but the latter is serious kudos in my books.  I suspect that era is over however.  I suspect Justin and Co. will start buying missiles and such to, "protect us from Russia" when in reality we'll just be lining some defense companies pockets.  (Hint: If we want to protect ourselves from Americans and Russians, we're going to need to redirect our entire GDP for a good six decades building weapons to give us a fighting chance).

The party in power has shown they will align with their biggest donors.  The donors list between our two parties is pretty similar minus the fringe dollars like Jesus and The Gays (if that's not a new band name soon I'll be disappointed).

Your final paragraph is why we will never have nice things, and you "lefties" will always be at odds with "righties" regardless of ANYTHING.

"If the MPs can just vote how they like all the time what is the point of even having a national agenda?"

If the MP's can't just vote how they like what is the point of even having democracy?  Are we here for us or for political parties?

What I meant by long-term, is long-term for the country, not me personally.  It is pretty hard to quantify how each government has impacted me over the long term, but I like to think that the Chretien Liberals with Paul Martin as Minister of Finance had a positive impact on this country both with the fact they lowered corporate taxes and that they maintained the banking regulatory system.  So if you look at it that way, they had a major positive impact on all of us.  I can't imagine if a Harper-style government took the place of the Liberals in the 90's we would have faired nearly as well.

The donors are a problem, but again, which party has made the most noise about allowing money in politics.  One the first things that Harper went after was public campaign financing.  I am all for routing money out of politics, but voting Conservative is not the answer.

So get rid of the parties too?  If that is what you want to do, then fine, but don't think for a second that all those MPs got their seats because of the local interests of the constituents.  I am as concerned about the national agenda as I am about my local agenda, and I am not alone.  Don't you righties love the saying "a rising tide raises all boats".  The Liberals, again, are way less interested in party loyalty than the Conservatives were, so I am not even sure where you are going with this.

I will say, this highlights the differences in our worldviews.  You keep asking about my personal gain/loss with the various parties, but I rarely think about that in politics.  Sometimes I vote against my best interests.  The Conservatives income splitting was a sweet deal for me since my wife quit teaching when my daughter was born in 2012.  The Conservative loss literally costs me thousands of dollars every year.  Thinking about your own interests too much is why WE can't have nice things. 

'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" - Mr Spock

I think in the history of Canada we've had two leaders go really out on a limb.  The guy that got us health care, and there was a guy in Winnipeg who spent a shitton of money to build a massive ditch around the city (so many decades later the city was saved hundreds of millions).

Other than that, the majority just sit on the ship for as long as they can doing their damnedest to not get kicked off.  And while they're there, get somethin' somethin' for when they are booted.

Now all that said, I think you think I'm someone I'm not.

"voting Conservative is not the answer"  "Don't you righties"

If I were forced to choose a political ideology, it'd be left of yours.  Some flavour of socialism.  That said, in my eyes it's the most fiscally conservative option out of everything.  At least until the majority of us aren't a bunch of shit-throwing monkey's who have little capacity for thought.  Until we transcend that, capitalism is an impossible dream.

So to recap, yes, get rid of political parties.  Concentrating power is not a good idea.

Posted by: ReductiMat

Chretien telling the American's to fuck off, we're not sending our people to die in your "war" in Iraq.

He did no such thing. He cut a backroom deal promising to do heavy lifting in Afghanistan in exchange for taking a powder on Iraq.

Posted by: ReductiMat

I think in the history of Canada we've had two leaders go really out on a limb.  The guy that got us health care, and there was a guy in Winnipeg who spent a shitton of money to build a massive ditch around the city (so many decades later the city was saved hundreds of millions).

Other than that, the majority just sit on the ship for as long as they can doing their damnedest to not get kicked off.  And while they're there, get somethin' somethin' for when they are booted.

Now all that said, I think you think I'm someone I'm not.

"voting Conservative is not the answer"  "Don't you righties"

If I were forced to choose a political ideology, it'd be left of yours.  Some flavour of socialism.  That said, in my eyes it's the most fiscally conservative option out of everything.  At least until the majority of us aren't a bunch of shit-throwing monkey's who have little capacity for thought.  Until we transcend that, capitalism is an impossible dream.

So to recap, yes, get rid of political parties.  Concentrating power is not a good idea.

Hey man, you called me a lefty first!  LOL

I totally get what you are saying and I think we probably agree on a lot of things, but to continue with the trusted ship analogy, maybe it is the ship and not the sailors.  It seems to me that every now and then you get a leader with big ideas that seems legit, say like Obama, and then they take the helm and realize that the waters are filled with icebergs and giant squid and the shiny ship is actually a piece of floating shit, so all they can do is make small adjustments to the course.  One leader might want to go to Hawaii, the other to Alaska, but the ship is heading to the huge garbage patch regardless.

Posted by: chupacabra

legit, ....... like Obama,

^^^^ oxymoron ^^^^

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/rising-star

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/justin-trudeau-adviser-stephen-bronfman-offshore-paradise-papers

Posted by: Sethimus

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/justin-trudeau-adviser-stephen-bronfman-offshore-paradise-papers

Yeah but unlike Harper and the Panama Papers, the Trudeau Crew will go after the rich this time instead of focusing on tax increases for the middle class!

Wait, you mean that happened during Trudeau's term too?

Oh, I see.  Hey, at least he's cute!

Posted by: ReductiMat

Posted by: Sethimus

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/justin-trudeau-adviser-stephen-bronfman-offshore-paradise-papers

Yeah but unlike Harper and the Panama Papers, the Trudeau Crew will go after the rich this time instead of focusing on tax increases for the middle class!

Wait, you mean that happened during Trudeau's term too?

Oh, I see.  Hey, at least he's cute!

LOL.  I don't expect any of these guys to be surrounded by boy scouts, but I do hope they do something about it.  The Liberals were sent to the wilderness to feel the shame of scandal once and it could happen again.