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How many gay angels can dance on a homophobic pinhead?
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Oct 27, 2015 04:33
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Sedge and Bee posted:Are we seriously in for 4 years of lamenting the socialist utopia of Mulcairistan that could have been, alternating with bitter cynicism? For variety I will periodically make tl;dr posts about how Mulcair is not left wing enough. tekz posted:Didn't the NDP run to the right of the liberals this election Rhetorically they kind of did but in terms of policy not really, the NDP platform included two ambitious new government programs - pharmacare and day care - and it redirected more federal cash toward transit whereas the Liberal transit plan mostly revolves around loaning municipalities money through specially created banks.
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Oct 27, 2015 06:39
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The Land Transfer Tax is a good policy. Even if it wasn't, you yokels forced Harris on us twice and wrecked our beautiful Metro government with MegaCity, so now you get to enjoy the political equivalent of having a warm bucket of piss slowly dumped over your head by a government that actively disdains you.
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Oct 27, 2015 16:10
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Ikantski posted:I'd actually argue that it's people that are like that now. Newspapers don't influence readers, readers influence papers. People will buy the paper that reinforces their world view. As people got more polaraized by Harper, so did the papers. They're an outdated medium precariously teetering on the edge of profitability so you kind of expect them to pander to their readers and be a bit biased. While I don't entirely disagree with this analysis I think you're overlooking the extent to which unprofitable newspapers are maintained by their owners so that they can be used to influence political outcomes. For instance, if the Toronto Sun (or the Globe for that matter) was exclusively catering to the bias of it's readers then why would it continually endorse a party that has only won a single seat in Toronto (that it held for less than a full term) since 1999? For that matter, why would The Star have pursued an extended war with Rob Ford when many of it's readers are (or at least were) Ford supporters? From what I've heard The Star lost a lot of readers over the Ford saga, but they seem to have pursued that conflict anyway, perhaps because their editorial and writing staff and ownership personally disliked Ford and wanted to damage him, even if it cost them money to do so. As the profitability of the print media has declined I think that their editorial dependence has also declined, which means that they actually have less scope for catering to the prejudices of their readers. Instead they now respond to the desires of their owners, since if they didn't there would be no point in keeping them in circulation. Pinterest Mom posted:Who do you think should hold them to account? How? I would like to see much greater freedom of speech than Canada currently has, but in my ideal vision of society we would find some new model for financing the press and wouldn't allow wealthy individuals to control entire newspaper chains since it really undermines the effectiveness of democracy when a small handful of people (who invariably have other financial interests as well) have such a ridiculously disproportionate ability to influence political discourse.
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Oct 28, 2015 19:34
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If you drive then you can afford a cheaper house outside the down town core, and you might get additional work opportunities, so it's not quite as simple as saying cars are vastly more expensive.
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Oct 28, 2015 22:27
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Health Services posted:Bill Tieleman at the Tyee has a good analysis of the NDP's failure. In particular, he is absolutely right to contextualize this election as part of a greater, unsuccessful strategy: This article in the Tyee also rings true: quote:But the people who run the NDP are political junkies. The clutch of strategists who steer the party, incapable of thinking politically or historically, were convinced that the breakthroughs in 2008 and 2011 owed to the fact that they'd suddenly gotten better at sending emails, were suddenly running more efficient campaigns. They favoured what was not only a purely national explanation for what was clearly at least partially an international phenomenon, but one that even more specifically rested on the story of their own personal genius. quote:
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Oct 29, 2015 01:33
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Giving a major cabinet position to somebody who ran against you would make JT's embrace of Eve Adams look like a brilliant strategic play. Tipps posted:Who cooked up these stats considering ~37% of people voted for the two parties which ran on platforms consisting primarily of anti-Muslim rhetoric. Racism isn't that one dimensional. You can have anxieties about foreign cultures without consciously wishing ill will upon foreigners. Hating someone's cultural is intolerant and primes you to be politically receptive to xenophobic policies but it's different from 'old school' racism that emphasizes biological inferiority. Obviously these questions get very complicated, all the more so because people are so uncomfortable discussing these issues to begin with, but I don't think it's very analytically useful to treat all prejudice against culture as being synonymous with what we conventionally label "racism". Of course this also works in reverse: some people revere "foreign" cultures or practices while remaining racist. At bare minimum I would think discussing Canadian racism would require some kind of graph with two axes on it instead of a single line going from 'racist' to 'not-racist'. You only have to go back very far in our history to find times when much uglier and more explicit forms of race baiting were acceptable in public discourse. Old John A Macdonald wanted to take away CI's right to draw a penis on his ballot, for instance, based on explicitly racialist arguments. To be clear I agree Canada is a very racist country (and it's grimly funny that Canadians are convinced otherwise) but it's a very 'post-modern' form of racism compared to a generation or two ago.
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Nov 3, 2015 22:09
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quote:TORONTO (AP) — The company behind the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the U.S Gulf Coast has asked the U.S. State Department to pause its review of the project.
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Nov 3, 2015 22:42
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Mulcair's behavior is making me think that we dodged a bullet here. While I think there would have been material benefits to an NDP government it also would have been a huge validation of the Layton-Mulcair strategy of becoming the new Liberal party. While I suspect that the NDP's leadership and bureaucracy will try to stay on that course they've been discredited enough that there's at least some space to mount a challenge against the direction they're moving the party in. I can tolerate Bill Moreneau as finance minister if it keeps alive the (ghostly) prospect of a genuine leftist alternative party. I'm also increasingly coming to the conclusion that damaging the NDP's electoral prospects is a necessary sacrifice to get rid of Mulcair. The problem here isn't just his campaign team, it's him. He was the finance critic, he helped pull the party in it's neoliberal direction, he's praised Tony Blair and he never convincingly addressed his past praise for Thatcher (the fact the NDP treated this is an irrelevance rather than taking the opportunity to discuss how Mulcair's views had evolved was a major red flag about just how bad the party has gotten. A different leader could have used that moment as an opportunity to discuss their political philosophy, but Mulcair's only philosophy seems to be gaining power so he can administer a very slightly more humane version of capitalism. That's a suitable position for a Liberal leader, not an NDP one, and if that's what is currently required to get elected then the NDP should content itself with merely holding the balance of power and wait for the situation to change, as it always eventually does). In my opinion the NDP for the last decade has committed one of life's most dangerous errors: misunderstanding the causes of your own success. Misunderstanding why you fail is bad enough, but misunderstanding why you succeed can be truly fatal. And there's no reason to think the current leadership will ever gain a better understanding of what happened. If I had to be on it I'd say that the vast majority never will. Franks Happy Place posted:You are such a good poster. Want to start a politics blog with me? That's an extremely generous sentiment and offer. I'm cautious about taking on a project like that right now for personal reasons (I'm really busy right now) and because the last few years have made me more self conscious about keeping my real life and my internet life at arm's length. That having been said, if you have a way for me to get in touch with you then we should talk. BGrifter posted:We're settling in for a four year nap. There's nothing Mulcair or any New Democrat could do that would matter one bit four years from now. Mulcair could smear himself in chicken blood and streak through parliament screaming "Blood for the blood God, skulls for the Skull Throne!" and it'd be forgotten long before an election were called. To the contrary, the party can take this time to make some serious internal reforms and adjustments. For one thing, I'd like to see an actual discussion of whether providing "an alternative [to the government]" should even be the NDP's primary objective. I know it seems like obvious common sense that this is what a political party does: it makes a convincing case that it should be the next governing party. But actually two of the most consequential parties in our history - the CCF / Early federal NDP, and the Reform party, never formed a national government. Yet the CCF / NDP had a huge influence on the development of key social programs like Healthcare and the Reform party played a big role in jerking the country rightward and in giving Chretien / Martin the political cover to make such deep cuts into the welfare and regulatory state. Winning is obviously in the interest of MPs and their staffers but that doesn't mean it's in the interest of the party's actual membership, or Canadians in general.
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Nov 4, 2015 23:46
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cowofwar posted:Mulcair will get turfed at the member convention, the party doesn't have the power to force him to do anything until then. Don't take this for granted. If you (you being anyone reading this) are pissed off with the NDP and think you might want to see Mulcair go then get in touch with your local riding association and say you want to get involved (I don't recommend explaining your intention to vote against Mulcair at this point). Purchase a year's membership ($5 if you say you're low income) and make sure you know when the nomination meeting for delegates is. If at all possible get friends or family to sign up and come with you to vote for you as a delegate (or even better get them to also run as delegates and / or run for the riding executive positions). If you have enough time to waste on SA you almost certainly have the menas to get involved in a peripheral way with your riding association (actually travelling to the convention is obviously out of reach for a lot of people but if possible you should do it). Under no circumstances should you assume the party will change courses on it's own. Horwath ran a disastrous election and was still able to (narrowly) save herself by dumping a few advisers and bussing in a lot of supporters from out of town during the convention. Seriously guys. I know the NDP is terrible but the Labour Party in Britain and the Democrats in the USA are both way worse. And yet those parties now have their Sanders / Corbyn insurgents making waves because leftists in those countries stopped feeling so precious about their sacred votes and decided to hold their noses and actually get involved in the nitty gritty details of political organization building. If you don't like the NDP but sympathize with their historical political views then join up and do something about it.
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Nov 4, 2015 23:55
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BGrifter posted:I agree about the need for serious internal change. I just don't think it has to happen overnight under a majority government. I'm fine with Mulcair playing the Bob Rae role as interm leader while the party does a little soul searching. If Mulcair doesn't lose the leadership vote in 2016 there's absolutely no reason to think he won't stick around for the next election. Also Bob Rae made a fine interim leader because he very much embodied the sort of politician that the Liberals wanted as leader. If you happen to agree with my analysis that Mulcair is the wrong kind of leader then there's no reason to want him in charge for even a day longer than necessary. Why would it make any sense to provide power and influence to someone with different goals than your own? If you want a left wing party then don't support Mulcair. As Pinterest Mom has pointed out the NDP membership tends to be conflict adverse. So I would suggest to you that unless somebody actually starts doing something about the current state of affairs there's good reason to think that Mulcair and/or his team (i.e. people who think that Andrew Thompson, Nathan Cullen and Don Davies should be the face of the party and that folks like Ann McGrath and Brian Topp should be its brain trust) will remain in control. The time to take action is when the defeat still stings, the failure of the party leadership is fresh in everyone's minds, and the party's constitution creates an opening. That moment is coming up soon, not in three years. Your suggestion would be to remaincomplacent and not to worry until after it would be much too late to do anything. Mulcair got his chance and then blew it. Then instead of addressing his failures he and his supporters have given every indication they don't think anything was actually wrong with their campaign or the direction they lead the party in. I'm sure there will be some small gestures of conciliation leading up to the convention but barring a really dramatic show of contrition at this point I think it's safe to conclude that the party is not gearing itself up for a serious debate on what went wrong. Instead the people who hosed up are looking for the best way to spin their failures. pubic void nullo posted:Have you listened to any of the documentaries about what happens to people Canada deports to Somalia? You might as well just call kidnappers to come pick them up at Pearson. You must be new here if you're actually trying to appeal to Cultural Imperial's sense of empathy.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:08
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Cultural Imperial is great and I'd never put him on ignore. The way he combines utter contempt for 99% of human life and a fixation on consumption based lifestyle indicators is endlessly enjoyable. It's like David Brooks and Benito Mussolini had an ethnically Han love child. I do wish he'd move on from using "SJW" so much, it's become even more played out than "Craftbeer Marxist". My humble suggestion for a new term would be "Cannabis Communists".
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Nov 5, 2015 01:31
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I am a big enough man to admit when I have been bested, comrade.  
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Nov 5, 2015 01:35
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My thoughts Re the monarchy: I think Canada should recognize a pretender to the British throne after Elizabeth dies. The simplest way would be for the Canadian parliament to annul the ACt of Settlement of 1701 and recognize Franz, Duke of Bavaria, or as we would refer to him: "Francis II, by the Grace of God, King of Canada, England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc.". Alternatively we could elevate a Canadian. Perhaps Shatner the 1st, by the Grace of God, King of Starfleet. vyelkin posted:TPP's words on expropriation actually sound reasonable to me, but IANAL so who knows. I don't have the time to actually look at the text so I'll have to withhold judgement but the biggest issue with the TPP is almost certainly going to be the system for resolving disputes. The ISDS approach they seem to be going with will largely cut out the Canadian legal system and shift power to largely unaccountable tribunals run by the same corporate lawyers that the large multinational firms pay millions of dollars to. The checks and balances within a system of governance tend to be a lot more important than the formal rules. If you look at the Soviet Union (or plenty of other dictatorships) it had a lovely constitution guaranteeing all kinds of freedoms. But because of the way power was concentrated in the USSR there was no meaningful protection or enforcement of those freedoms and in practice the system was quite repressive to any kind of dissent. It didn't matter that the Soviet constitution technically entitled everyone to freedom of press, association, conscious, assembly and religious worship. Slightly Toasted posted:By most accounts the royals spend the majority of their time on philanthropy and charity work and their assets are shrinking in a world where they're less relevant than ever. I'm not sure I really understand the hostility. The Queen is a neat lady that's been in her position for an unprecedented length of time during which her influence has been mostly positive. I think it mostly comes down to the fact that while the Royal Family is mostly a harmless curiosity today (though they theoretically have some very real constitutional power) they represent a genuinely evil institution. If you ever want to feel thoroughly depressed then pick up a copy of Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis. The British Empire didn't just kill people in the process of conquering their countries, in the 19th century it actively contributed to famines (and withheld relief explicitly on the grounds of not violating free market principles, going so far as to discipline local governors who tried to distribute food) that resulted in millions of deaths, especially though not exclusively in India (though Ireland is the example we actually think of most of the time). British controlled countries in the 19th century were exporting food for profit while people literally starved in the streets or resorted to cannibalism. In terms of moral intent, scale and impact it's entirely comparable to the crimes of men like Hitler. Personally I don't really think it's worth wasting the political capital on such a symbolic issue as the monarchy but I entirely understand why people don't like what the Monarch symbolizes. And bringing up those 19th century famines is just one small example in a long multi-century story of the British raping, killing and impoverishing the rest of the world while flying the royal colours. BGrifter posted:I think we have a chain of succession in place! "It's an outrage! I'll have to sleep in the same room as my wife."
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Nov 5, 2015 18:54
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Do it ironically posted:the circle jerking in this thread is painful. This is definitely a big deal in the bizzaro alternate universe where the Health Minister is a personal fitness instructor for the entire province rather than a paper pushing bureaucrat.
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Nov 5, 2015 20:30
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Do it ironically posted:god forbid a health minister know anything about nutrition, or medicine, or had worked in a heatlh related finance capacity What exactly are you afraid is going to happen that a thinner health minister would have avoided? Is she going to replace all the food in Alberta's school cafeteria's with chocolate or something? Pass a law closing every gym? Spend her entire office budget on Mars bars?
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Nov 5, 2015 20:49
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PT6A posted:No, I just find it hypocritical and unpleasant that she's making moves to restrict and tax my bad habits while indulging in her own. Leaving aside the fact that fatness is usually more complicated than just "bad habits", she is almost certainly just a pawn for her party and is executing whatever initiatives she's told to execute to the best of her ability. Would you really, in any way, feel better if the person government ministers implementing sin taxes on you were a health nuts?
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Nov 5, 2015 21:00
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ChairMaster posted:No it's not, you fat sack of poo poo. My go to meal is quinoa and beans and one of my favorite past times is chilling out to an audiobook while going on a long run. Then again even when I spent years being physically inactive and eating junkfood I never had any problems with my weight so honestly I mostly assume my fitness is a function of genetics. Either way you're going to have to find a different angle for why we apparently disagree on the causes of obesity. And if obesity is just an issue of personal morality then what exactly happened in the 1980s? Millions of people simultaneously just lost all their self control? You don't think there's any evidence here of some underlying social or medical factors that go beyond some trite condemnation of other people's moral problems.
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Nov 5, 2015 22:35
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Brannock posted:Actually, yeah, you're not too far off there. Companies have been getting much, much better at designing processed foods that are difficult to stop eating. "Once you pop, you can't stop", right? In addition to this people tend to report higher levels of stress today than they did in the past, and a greater percentage of the population live in auto-dependent suburbs. My physical fitness is likely correlated in part with the fact I was raised eating home cooked meals and lived in a densely populated urban core where walking and cycling were more convenient than driving. I didn't even bother to get my driving license until a few years ago, whereas most suburbanites I know get one as soon as they turn 16. quote:The other thing here is you're conflating population-level issues with personal-level issues. The solution to solve a population-wide problem is very rarely going to be the same solution to solve personal problems. Telling all of North America to suck it up, eat less, and move more isn't going to solve poo poo, but it will absolutely work for an individual as long as that individual is honest with themselves and honest in their effort to change. To the contrary I think it's you guys who are conflating the two. Sure if you're an individual who is fat then instead of doing an in-depth analysis on the social determinants of health you should probably start count your calories, eat fewer carbs and become more physically active. However, we're talking about whether somebody is suitable to be an over-glorified pencil pusher mostly enacting someone else's agenda at the top of a government department. I don't think their personal fitness is relevant to their qualifications for the job, much in the way that I would not give a poo poo if she were a smoker. Call me when you uncover some evidence of either job-related incompetence or corruption on her part and then I'll be concerned. PT6A posted:Genetics can make you thin, because as you point out your body can process things very inefficiently, but it can't make you fat, because it can't create calories where none existed before. It can impact how you process food or how easily you exercise. It might also give you a predisposition toward addiction.
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Nov 5, 2015 23:00
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I know someone who suffered a knee injury (also was also caught up in a highly stressful and intense work project that required constant attention for many months) and they got quite fat as a result. Then they had trouble working off the weight because of their injury and also because they were now fat. They then entered a pattern where after months of inactivity they would become super active for short bursts. This would simply cause them to injurer themselves and then they'd slide back in a malaise. Their work-life, mental health, as well as a certain degree of "path dependence" (i.e. once you get fat it's harder to become thin again) all combined to create a very real challenge for this individual that went beyond a mere personal failing. Even though their behavior and actions obviously play a big role in their weight I find it reductive and somewhat misleading to boil this problem down to a mere lack of self control. People don't get to exercise full control over their life circumstances and when somebody under a lot of pressure slips up I don't find it helpful to place all the pressure on them, much in the way I don't think good drug policy gets developed when you ignore all the social factors behind, say, heroin or meth usage. And again, all of this is just a distraction from the fact that her weight has no bearing on her actual job performance.
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Nov 5, 2015 23:12
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EvilJoven posted:Improved mental health, better work life balance and shorter commutes will go a long way towards better health among the populace. It's way easy to let yourself go when you're always loving mentally exhausted and want nothing more than to curl up on the couch watch a movie trying to escape the reality of your bullshit existence for the few precious hours you have to yourself. When I was a kid my Dad used to pick me up from daycare every Friday and take me to the Royal Ontario Museum, which was free. That policy got shitcanned under Mike Harris and the admission price went up to something ridiculous like $20 (I think a couple years ago they started to reduce the price somewhat from it's peak but it's still pretty steep). It's honestly kind of surreal to go back not that far into the past and find a genuine (albeit imperfectly implemented) social commitment to providing affordable access to entertainment (not to mention high culture) to a wide swath of the population. Nowadays it's become widely accepted that "the market" should determine access to everything, which in practice means that if you're poor your idea of a good time can easily end up being a joint, a McDonalds meal and some illegally downloaded television. Going out (or even living in a community where "going out" to enjoy art, culture, night life, decent food, interesting spectacles, etc.) is increasingly out of reach for a lot of people, who end up living depressing and socially atmoized lives that revolve around the internet, television, work and a small circle of personal acquaintances. Personally I think a lot of our other problems as a society come in part from the way that politics, economics and urban planning have all too often demolished pre-existing social communities and then seemingly salted the earth so that nothing else can grow. It's no wonder to me GamerGate idiots think their hobby is a "culture" (indeed a lot of internet geek communities seem to be little more than simulated ethnicities for neckbeads and shut ins) worth viciously defending when they've got so few social prospects. Combine this tendency toward the unravelling of communitarian feelings (and the economic destruction of the conditions that lend themselves toward new forms of sociability outside the internet) with the increasing stressfulness of modern life and I think you create a very dangerous situation. Perhaps I'm glamorizing the past here too much but honestly the direction our culture is moving in seems totally incompatible with any kind of popular self rule, let alone individual self control. Our entire economy and society is built around buying and selling poo poo and the best consumers are insecure and filled with self loathing. Unfortunately the kind of people who are good consumers aren't very good citizens.
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Nov 5, 2015 23:55
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*puffs joint, passes to the left*
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Nov 5, 2015 23:56
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PT6A posted:While I agree with all of this, and I do see it as a problem, it doesn't change my original point, which is that I find it extremely hypocritical to have an obese woman telling me I can't smoke menthol cigarettes if I want to, and that I have to pay extra for smokes and booze. I'm not saying that it's easy to lose weight, or even that it's a moral imperative to try and lose weight. Being overweight and/or choosing not to do exercise is amoral in my view, as is the consumption of substances like alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, heroin, etc. I just find it galling that my vice gets attacked before hers, and, if I'm being honest, the Ministry of Health both can and should do more to combat obesity, because as has been discussed, it's a society-wide problem and it's going to be very ineffective to try solving it at the individual level. As has already been pointed out long term medical studies seem to indicate that something like 97%-98% of obese individuals don't return to a healthy weight, or if they do then they very quickly end up being obese again. By contrast cigarettes, supposedly one of the most addictive legally available substances in our society, have a relapse rate of something like 4% after about two years. The point here being that it's totally spurious to cite her weight as hypocrisy when you don't know what her personal experiences have actually been. She may, for all you know, have struggled to reduce her weight, in which case I don't see calling her a hypocrite as being particularly fair. As for the choice of taxing cigarettes as opposed to junk food, there's a couple justifications for that. For one I have never heard of a family resorting to cigarettes as a substitute for actual food. I have, however, heard of many parents relying on junk food not just because it's cheap (and makes your angry pissy screaming child happy) but also because it's fast and time is a very scarce resource for a lot of poor parents. So I'd argue that cigarettes are a better candidate for taxing than any kind of food, at least in the short term (that having been said I agree that stuff like banning trans fats should be on the agenda). The other issue, however, is strategic. The NDP in Alberta has to pick which battles they fight. A lot of the heavy lifting has already been done when it comes to convincing the voting populace that it's acceptable to tax cigarettes. By contrast there's a lot less acceptance of the need to tax or regulate junk food. So targetting cigarettes to raise revenue instead of junkfood is probably just following the path of least resistance so that they can raise additional revenue to pay for their spending promises. While it's not ideal that this is how policy gets made it has nothing to do with the Alberta NDP or Sarah Hoffman, it's got everything to do with the way the political sausage gets made, and other parties don't act any differently. The real issue here may be that you're just not that sympathetic to the goals of the NDP: if you were more concerned about ensuring the NDP fulfill it's spending promises then you might be more likely to accept this tax as a necessary evil. I suspect your general (and seemingly reflexive) dislike of the NDP is colouring your opinion of their behavior. This is, not coincidentally, why I'm always making long spergy posts about the importance of organized vs. disorganized interests in politics. The groups that get together and collectively push for or against policies tend to have outsizesd influence and the push-and-pull of competitive organized interests is a better way to explain (or critique) policy outcomes than the personal morality of individual government ministers. PT6A posted:Nothing? That's why I find it hypocritical and insulting that she hasn't taken action on it, while moving to restrict and further tax my vices right away. At least when Klein increased sin taxes, you knew it was hitting him as hard as anyone! This isn't really true because of what economists call the marginal utility of money. A price increases hits you very differently when your income is 100,000 a year than it does when your income is 20,000 a year.
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Nov 6, 2015 00:53
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PT6A posted:You know what else keeps angry pissy children (well, teenagers) happy? Liquor and smokes. But we don't let you give your minor child one of those under and circumstances, and I think you'd have a few people look askew at you if you said, "oh yeah, I just let Aiden have a few beers whenever he's in a bad mood, or he'll just complain to no end!" even if it's technically legal. I think you're very effectively making my point for me: we've already done great strides to combat the public health risk of alcohol and tobacco. Now, we're facing an obesity crisis, and it's time to roll on it instead of coming up with excuses. You're comparing apples and oranges here. It kind of makes me think you just don't have much knowledge of the dilemmas that low income parents face or that you're just so entirely unsympathetic to them that you don't actually care. quote:This is an incredibly important issue to fight for, though! Obesity will be the major public health crisis of our time, and the Alberta government is choosing to eke another few cents per cigarette out of smokers instead of showing real leadership and tackling this issue. Well yes, instead of starting a controversial fight about junk food they'd rather start a controversial fight over deficit financed infrastructure spending. Given the economic situation in Alberta following decades of Tory misrule I think that's a reasonable choice to make. Developing better public health policies to deal with obesity is a worthy goal as well but for all kinds of contextual reasons the need to deal with austerity and to get Alberta's fiscal house into order without laying off shitloads of public servants is a much more pressing issue. jm20 posted:While we are on this food derail, let me point out that obesity will become a major healthcare cost for our Country in the years ahead, and we should actually start enacting policies or programs to save ourselves. It will bankrupt us. I agree entirely but I also don't think that "why aren't you fighting obesity!" is a particularly compelling argument against taxing cigarettes. It's a fight worth having but there's the matter of where you spend your limited political capital. I'd be thrilled to see an obesity fighting program but the lack of a decent public health strategy on obesity is immaterial when it comes to discussing whether we should be taxing alcohol and cigarettes and it really has nothing to do with the weight of the Health Minister, which is what kicked off this entire discussion. I mean personally I wish we could move entirely away from the (misconception) that government's are financed through taxation (they aren't, much in the way that bank loans don't actually come from people's savings) but in the context of a government fighting strong political headwinds to reverse a highly damaging myth about government austerity I think I'm willing to cut the Alberta NDP some slack.
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Nov 6, 2015 02:30
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Pinterest Mom posted:What's Keynesian about JT's program? Given that Keynes' General Theory (especially as interpreted by John Hick's in "Value and Capital") essentially created the modern field of neoclassical macroeconomics I think it's fair to say that "Keynesian" ideas (though not necessarily the ideas of Keynes specifically, since the major interpretations of his work don't always capture what he himself believed) form the terrain upon which all three major parties and most prominent economists argue and debate. Similarly, I'd caution posters here from treating neoliberalism as antithetical to Keynesianism. The real story is a lot more muddled and confused than that. While it's true that neoliberalism is - politically speaking - an attempt to reduce the power of the post-war welfare state it isn't really an anti-Keynesian theory. Milton Friedman was very much working within a modified Keynesian framework, he just emphasized monetary policy over fiscal policy, but in many regards he's much closer to Keynes than he is to, say, the Austrians. Ultimately both supply side and demand side economics are derived in large degree from interpretations of Keynes and the economists working in his legacy. Much in the way that Newtonian physics or Darwinian evolution work within the channels laid out by their founders despite have changed significantly, modern macroeconomics carries over a lot of ideas worked out in the mid-20th century by Keynes and his followers. Brannock posted:What grade are you in? The economic system, and the dominant way of understanding it, have tended to change every few decades. The economic debates of the 1870s (i.e. the time period when Henry George was writing, when Marx penned Capital, and when the early marginalists like Alfred Marshal and John Clark Bates), as well as the economy of that period, had changed dramatically by the 1930s. And the received economic wisdom of the 30s and 40s was upended again in the 1970s. A lot of our contemporary economic ideas are still largely pitched toward problems that emerged in the 1970s like stagflation, a powerful labour movement, and the growing reach of the regulatory state. Given that many people are now more worried about deflation, a vanishing labour movement and a state that is too weak to properly regulate the economy, and given the changes in the global economic balance of power, I don't see why its ridiculous to speculate that economic theory and policy will change again. In fact we're already seeing the growing prominence of fringe theories such as Austrian economics, so called "chartalism" or "modern monetary theory", behavioral economics, etc. While I doubt neoliberalism will be ditched wholesale anytime soon you can already see his ideological hegemony getting weaker than it was even a decade ago.
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Nov 6, 2015 22:31
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Pinterest Mom posted:That's not really a useful definition, you know better. Why not? quote:I was being a dick, mostly: Keynesian economics in the modern sense is usually understood to refer to countercyclical fiscal policy - spend more (and run deficits) in bad times, spend less and pay down the debt in good times. The LPC is proposing to run a deficit at a time when the economy is doing pretty well, so their motivation for it is clearly not stimulative. I strongly disagree with your assessment of the economy. I think it's been under-performing for a long time. There's a reason that people were attracted to the rhetorical pivot that Wynne and Trudeau have used to re-position themselves as big spending lefties. And the trouble with your definition of Keynesian economics is that it's misleading: that might be the textbook definition, but it isn't accurate in practice. Since the 1950s most governments in North America have run deficits of varying size every year, regardless of economic conditions. From Pearson to Mulroney the Canadian government ran consistent deficits and then since Mulroney it's managed to run surpluses in about ten years give or take. Whatever you want to call that, it's not really a record of counter cyclical spending. Instead it seems like the size of government and the deficit mostly expanded or contracted for other reasons, probably having more to do with the hegemonic ideology in Ottawa at the time rather than any kind of technocratic commitment to counter cyclical spending. quote:The actual reason to do it is: we need this infrastructure spending, and rates are so low now that you might as well do it now - there's unlikely to be a better time. People who are arguing that it's for stimulus reasons are just parroting arguments in favour of stimulus spending from 2009, which is clearly v. different from now. They're parroting arguments that the government has been making since the 50s because Really Existing Keynesian Policy has, at the end of the day, often just turned out to be a rhetorical exercise by government to justify what it already wants to do (or what it feels compelled to do in the case of Harper). Even right wing governments in Canada talk about infrastructure projects in terms of the jobs they'll create and advertise tax cuts as a way to stimulate business investment, all of which is right out of the Keynesian toolkit.
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Nov 7, 2015 03:43
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"main street media"
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Nov 7, 2015 07:38
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James Baud posted:That you would laughingly dismiss something like this despite the readily available information regarding nonstop historical high level corruption in most everything rail and infrastructure related says more about your biases and a certain bit of "but that doesn't happen any more" naivety than anything else. There's nothing implausible about the idea that Obama's opposition to the pipeline is motivated by corporate lobbying but that graphic is still pretty funny.
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Nov 7, 2015 07:49
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Brannock posted:My friend is slowly losing the vision in his eye and Canadian healthcare doesn't cover the surgery needed to correct it. It'll run him something above five thousand dollars to pay for the procedure. He can't afford it for a while yet so has to live with decaying and double/triple vision, among other things. Government welfare programs aren't based on any kind of comprehensive plan or principle. Rather they're the by-product of struggle and conflict in the past between competing interest groups. Since the 1980s the most successful special interest has been businessmen and their allies who want a small government and a population that relies on the private market for it's well being, hence why the massive gaping holes in our safety net (lack of pharmacare, optometry, dentistry, mental healthcare, etc.) have never been addressed. Canada doesn't have a more comprehensive welfare state than America because Canadians or their government are inherently more benevolent. We just had a better labour movement that fought for comprehensive government programs rather than concessions from employers, and our labour movement used to have a political arm (the NDP) unlike the American unions who were simply one competing part of the Democratic Party.
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Nov 8, 2015 18:36
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It's a real pity that when the ONDP actually had a chance to win against the Liberals their most visible promises were "pocket book" issues like cutting taxes and a commitment to to cut 600 million a year in government spending instead of attacking the Liberals for their long history of mixing corporate welfare and austerity.
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Nov 8, 2015 20:18
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PT6A posted:The only way out for the CPC at this point is to swing slightly to the left on social issues while maintaining hardcore economic conservatism, and to silence the loonies who go on about gays burning in a lake of fire. If they don't elect a leader that's willing and able to do that, they are going to be very hosed for a very long time. Being progressive on social issues and conservative on economic issues has been a strategy for thirty years running and is getting a little long in the tooth these days, which is why recent succesful Liberal campaigns have tended to rely more on promises to increase government spending and raise taxes, and to reverse (or in teh case of an incumbent government like Wynne, to prevent) Tory cuts to services. As the average age of the country rises more and more baby boomers are relying on public healthcare and other services to look after themselvse or their aging parents. And most people see the solution to gridlock as more spending on transit. And a lot of people are worried about themselves or their children getting jobs an a lovely economy and are thus more receptive to activist government interventions that will create jobs. The NDP has pretty much tried to be the fiscally conservative but socially responsible and progressive party and it's been a disaster for them. If anything the Conservatives were aided by their socially conservative policies because it motivated their base. This idea that a fiscally conservative policy book is the way to win an election in Canada in 2015 seems misguided to me: you might be able to win despite having a fiscally conservative platform but I can't imagine anyone winning because of such a platform. Even Rob Ford, who did campaign on a hard right fiscal platform, actually promised that he wouldn't cut services. And he originally lost support not because of crack (that came way latter) but because he tried to cut the budget for libraries and firefighters.
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Nov 8, 2015 22:16
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PT6A posted:While I do agree with the bulk of what you've said here, the NDP had a much tougher road than the CPC would to sell a fiscally conservative platform, because no one who wanted fiscal conservatism trusted them to deliver. A revitalized PC party would have a much easier time selling that platform. Would it be enough to win? You're right, it probably wouldn't be; still, the NDP's lack of success is a different matter. They weren't trusted, they were still strongly against pipeline building, etc. These are problems that probably would not afflict a version of the CPC that moved away from evangelical Christian nonsense and tough-on-crime bullshit. I don't really see what a party with a base of 30% is going to gain by alienating one of its most vocal and energized groups of supporters, especially since they already command the support of plenty of fiscal conservatives without needing to abandon the conservative social policy dog-whistles that keep their Christian supporters mollified. A Conservative party that tries to run as Blue Liberals doesn't strike me as any more likely to succeed than the NDP has been by running as Red Tories. To quote two conservative activists who have discussed the very issue you're raising: "Failure to give social conservatives a seat at the table will mean another eventual schism and, along with it, a failure to offer Canadians a true political alternative to Liberal statism" (Tasha Kheirdin and Adam Daifallah, "Rescuing Canada's Right", 2005, chapter 13). Of course those same authors then go on to advocate that Conservatives soft peddle any social conservative rhetoric or hide it behind dog whistle statements, but their main point stands: the conservatives risk another split if they don't make the SoCons feel included to some degree. Also note that the worldwide conservative parties that are succeeding the most are going in the opposite dirction to the one you advocate: they're doubling down on nationalism, racism and social conservatism. Most voters are not you: i.e. they're not young, rootless men with decent incomes and no children. Most people in parliamentary capitalist countries are losing out from the current incarnation of capitalism and to attract their votes conservatives need at least a patina of SoCon or racialist rhetoric and policy.
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Nov 9, 2015 00:55
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Chow has always been a candidate with good ground game but terrible speaking skills and not much in the way of inspiring vision. Also she ran in a newly formed riding that had a lot of downtown condos (presumably) full of Liberal voting yuppies, and her new riding lost The Annex, which is a giant reserve of pointy headed university types who might have voted for her. More than anything, though, she got swamped by the Liberal wave in Toronto after Mulcair imploded himself with his bad campaign. Remember that voter turnout went from about 63% to 68% this election, and most of those new voters went to Trudeau. It should still be pretty embarrassing just how badly Chow did but ultimately nobody in Toronto was able to hold on after Mulcair's inexplicably bad campaigning decisions. Also keep in mind most provincial NDPers in Toronto already got taken out by the provincial Liberals in the last election so this seems to be part of a broader trend.
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Nov 9, 2015 18:31
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(Thank you for the nice comments upthread, you're too kind) Have a story about two people who should have died. If I didn't know better I'd say the quotes from the doofus quoted here, like, were, like, from, like, an onion story or whatever. quote:BANFF, Alta. — A couple of young tourists from Ontario managed to get away safely after doing nearly everything wrong in their encounter with a grizzly bear in Banff National Park.
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Nov 9, 2015 21:54
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The least bad option would be using our historically unprecedented levels of wealth and technology to come up with a better solution than dumping raw sewage into a river.
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Nov 10, 2015 04:09
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PT6A posted:I'm sure they'd love to hear your recommendation. I hear a lot of "there must be a better option" but not a lot about what to actually do. I don't think we should treat this as a sustainable solution, but with a lack of better options in the short term, what can we do? We should work to improve, but in the meantime, what should we do with all this poo poo? Spend a lot of money on building new sewage treatment plants and related infrastructure, and fire anyone who complains about it into the sun. We've never been richer as a society. The only justification for not spending whatever money is necessary to avoid dumping raw sewage into a waterway is lack of political will to raise the necessary funds.
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Nov 10, 2015 05:27
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 Trudeau is gonna pacify us with dope quote:20% of Canadians smoked pot last year, but more than 30% would if legal, poll suggests
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Nov 10, 2015 21:51
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With the Senate, House and most state governments firmly in Republican hands it's gonna take a lot more than a single successful presidential campaign to affect much in the USA. I wish Bernie all the best but I wonder if his supporters fully realize that they need to be building a permanent movement, not going all-in on a single long shot candidate who is already stalling in the polls far below where he'd need to be to actually win the Presidency. The real question of the Sanders' campaign should be: after Bernie inevitably losses what happens to the people supporting him? Do they drift apart again and go back to their pet causes or their private lives, or do they stick around and keep fighting? Sander's greatest legacy will be if he leaves behind a functional movement that can carry on the fight for many years to come.
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Nov 11, 2015 04:32
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crowoutofcontext posted:http://ipolitics.ca/2015/11/11/tepid-tom-the-new-democrats-survey-the-wreckage/ On the subject of "what went wrong"? I think the following article is easily the best analysis of the NDP's defeat. It expresses several points that I've found myself struggling to articulate. quote:Untangling the #hashtagfail-lings of the NDP campaign Unfortunately changing strategy in the direction she advocates is almost impossible to imagine under the current leadership...
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Nov 12, 2015 18:40
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Why do I have a terrible feeling the thread is gonna be hijacked by people pointlessly dogpiling do it ironically's posts? Please read his user name and move on folks.
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Nov 12, 2015 18:41
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