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Slim MacSquinty

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Everything posted by Slim MacSquinty

  1. And as if it weren't bad enough that they twisted the rules using this clearly corrupt semi-sponsorship scheme, when it didn't seem to work on the polls they reverted to "classic liberal tactic No. 1" smear campaign. Call the conservatives bigots it always sticks! And in a classic demonstration of the contageon of stupidity, it appears to be working! Man what's happened Ontario used to be a place to be proud of?
  2. If you do not live in the 416 area code it is not in your or your families interest to vote Liberal in this election and here is why: Environmental Policy: The Liberals have pursued policies which are designed to make city people feel good about the environmnet, however many of those policies come directly at the expense of people in the country. A couple of examples are the Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM)Policy, and a number of changes around water regulations. The ORM Policy is long and drawn out and contains lots of statements about protecting various things like groundwater and other meaningless motherhood statements. However it actually protects the interest of a small group of people involved in the construction and sand and gravel industry. Even though people who live there have piles of restrictions that are generally designed to limit the number of people who live on the moraine so that eventually it will be significantly cheaper for the sand and gravel companies to acquire the land. The boundaries of the ORM line up perfectly (and I mean Perfectly) with the boundaries of the Aggregate resource maps produced by the MNR. Gravel extraction permits are exculded from the policies of the ORM and indeed do not require local municipal approval, gravel companies can remove trees, regrade the land create huge excavations and operate heavy diesel equipment within a meter of the water table with virtually no restrictions, yet a farmer may have reams of red tape just to add a barn or drive shed. There are virtually no municipal water systems connected to the oak Ridge moraine aquifers except a few small towns which serve only locals. So the premise is BS and the execution similar. Green Energy Policy: Windmills and solar panels make excellent poster and pamphlet material and knowing they are out there makes lots of city people sleep better at night, but should they have to look at them they have so far been successful making sure that they don't have their own views spoiled. If the wind energy was in any way viable the rates would not have to be overblow ten fold or more to support them, and we would not have to make secret deals with foreign companies to get them built. There are no rural municipalities that support having these stupid behemoths built in their jursidictions but Dalton will force them down your throat, because Toronto wants them and you'll have no say. Thr e truth is Green energy (unless its hydro generation) is not economically viable and will only increase your already expensive hydro bill. Immigrant hiring subsidy: Toronto loves immigrants, Peterborough and small town Ontario not so much, maybe I have that wrong, Immigrant love Toronto. At any rate hard economic times have hit all of Ontario, probably small town Ontario worse that the big cities, but thats not news. But regular Ontario people should take second place when it come to finding work? I have a son who has a skilled trade, he's an eighth generation Ontarian he makes $12/hr after being out of work for about 6 months. He got his education right here in Ontario, has paid taxes here since he was able to work, and yet when it comes to finding a good job he should be at the back of the line? That is just plain offensive. I know he or I don't mind competing fairly but I don't think we deserve to be back of the bus. Executive Powers for Police: I'm not talking about all that G20 business, as offensive and sectretive as it was, but things like the .05% rule. When you have 0.05% alcohol in your system you blow a warning on a breathalyser, 0.08% is breaking the law. Although I'm not much of a drinker I take offense when the police are allowed to tow my car, take my license and cause my insurance to go up even though I have not broken a law, furthermore there is apparenty no way to fight it? This was enacted without any discussion just on Dalton's signature. I know some are going to say, hey this person is in favour of drunk driving, which of course is just a variation of the "so have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question. Here is why I take offense to it, how it unduly hurts rural people and how it demonstrates how Dalton has no respect for due process. In the city you have taxis and public transit, if I go visit my family or neighbour up the road and enjoy a glass of wine, I have no transportation choices available to me, I have to drive. A hundred pound woman might be subject to having her car taken away, license suspended and being treated like a criminal after having done what most people feel is a pretty normal activitiy. That's just not right, yet it appears that this is a more and more common way to deal with things in Ontario, give authorities extra judicial powers that take away your rights, Dalton feels this is OK, you should not. There are more reasons, maybe I can get to them later. And I just am not going to buy the scare tactics about religion and other things circulated in smear campaigns by the Liberals, or their extra legal special interest groups like the working families coalition, cause it's BS. Thanks
  3. This is all really a bit of a diversion, there are many good public service workers who do a decent days work for a decent amount of pay, union or no union. You just aren't going to get a better value privatizing alot of those jobs (even if you could). I agree that much of the public grevience with regular folks of all stripes is the apparent rise of in the increcredible incomes of the top 1%. Taxes are in no small way responsible for this but not how you think; corportate taxes are rightly kept low, this encorages investment and retained earnings which allows for various distribution. Where the problem starts is personal taxes, our marginal tax rate maxes out around $128K which means that you pay about 29% on your income above that threshold even if you make $2Mil. What that encourages is, for those individuals who can, to take the cash. This then translates into the silly salaries of the top 1%, if personal taxes got more progressive at the very high levels, say over $250K it would encourage these people to keep their money in their businesses. This has a double benefit, they would be interested in the long term value of the companies, since they would be investors not just payroll, and it would keep that money in productive use in the economy instead of wasteful savings or foolish spending on excessive luxury goods.
  4. I wouldn't go so far as call that journalism, perhaps fiction is more accurate. The triumph of Harper's Conservatives is a revolution in Canada. Grumpy old men are happy but modernists, women, young people, immigrants, people fond of evidence-based policy will be much less so. It's the beginning of a kind of war, conducted in a dull, quietly agonising way. So there must be a lot of us grumpy old men here in Canada and by inference its really Grumpy old White men, doesn't look that way in most of the places I go? I guess I can take some solice in knowing that Ms. Mallick will suffer through a dull agonizing war beneath the rock she is hinding under.
  5. There are 308 Seats, 285 reporting. It looks like we're going to have a Conservative majority, weak but that's OK. For the many Harper haters, think of it this way, its like brussel sprouts, your Mother made you eat them, you hated them, but they're good for you, just like a conservative government. Thanks Ontario!
  6. Even without a majority the Tories have a good thing happening likely. The Liberals will be so week they will do anything to avoid an election for quite some time. At his point in time Iggy's fighting for his own seat. The right side of the Liberal party is about to get very vocal I would imagine, they won't have a hard time not showing up or quietly supporting Harper. That is a very likely scenario and probably a very good one for the country.
  7. Thanks to Paul Martin. No thanks to Flaherty, who has brought back deficits, and whose government has engaged and is engaged in reckless, unnecessary spending. Reckless, unecessary spending. how so? Interesting that you mention the stimulus spending. The opposition parties basically had to force Flaherty's hand on this. So does this contradict the previous statement since my recollection is that both Jack and Iggy scolded Harper not spending enough and not fast enough. So by spending more we'd have less deficit? As for the fear of the big bag NDP. This is not the 1990's, and this is not the same NDP. Please do elaborate, not the same maybe worse? In terms of where we stand economically after the recession there is plenty of credit to go around, and it probably starts with Michael Wilson who under Mulroney set the course which Paul Martin ultimately followed. Under Chretien, there was much not to like, but that government was fiscally conservative and nothing like what Dion/ Iggy have done to the party. There is little difference between the basic principles of the NDP and Liberal financial platforms, neither is a fiscal plan any more than 649 is retirement planning.
  8. First of all I have no disagreement with your analysis, however is that an adequate reason to turn your long running personal politics upside down, what does that say about your political philosphy? Clearly the two other options are miles from where you started. You do not choose who you will vote for based on which leader you figure is the "swellest guy", who would fit in with your drinking buddies best or would be most fun to golf with. You are choosing which party best understands where the country is at, where we need to go and has a plan to connect those dots together. We keep getting fooled by politicians who make us feel good, if the you think the government can do a better job of raising your kids, saving for your retirement and funding your healthcare, that's fine, I figure you must have low self esteem if you do, but so be it. But if you think they're pulling money outta their butts to pay for it you're a fool, the money will come from you and me, with a 20 to 25% surcharge for the cost of running it through the government machine. Jack and Iggy will tell you they are going to squeeze it from the tight fisted rich people and businesses, but your even dumber if you believe that, because those people and businesses will find a way to pass it right along to you and me, with a 10 to 15% surchage for the cost of doing business. The economy, taxes and business are all tied together and are far too complex to be summarized by a sound bite slogan, unfortunately that's about all we typically get in the media. No one has a greater interest in the wellbeing of you and your family than you, stop deferring to the government to look after these things on your behalf. You know the government and their minions don't really give a damn about you, otherwise they'd answer the phone when you called.
  9. The Star would never let the facts get in the way of pushing their agenda. Couple of interesting articles in there today, they have a full parade of soft headed left wing experts to quote with authority. We should all be thankful that those who look after their own money, your mutual funds and our pensions don't look to the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives for economic expertise unlike the Torstar.
  10. First off how is this any different than the kitten eater hidden agenda crap we've been hearing for years, except that there is indeed a morsel of truth at the center of this. Second if this is true then no wonder he's earned the name happy jack, since he's had fifteen years of borrowed time given the cops, who owe Jack Layton no favours whatsoever, have kept this under wraps. And no wonder he's happy, in 1996, living in subsidised housing, working part time as a professor at Ryerson and sitting on City Counsel, riding his bike to the rub and tug with his wife's permission, wow its every socialists dream! Now I wonder how we can work the hernia business into this scenario?
  11. Well it seems that the editorial boards of a number of Canadian newspapers went out of their way to discuss Harper's competance, contrary to your well reasoned and ambitious opinion. As for contempt of Parliment, that was so weak that it refuses to resonate with either the electorate or the news media. In reality the only contempt of Parliment was the poor behaviour of the venemously partisan and imbecillic Parlimentarians who made up the majority of those committees.
  12. Not true, the only the National Post has supported the Cons since day one, and they can, and have. dredged up links to many Liberal follies from days gone by. The Star never tires of finding a way to make reference to Mike Harris when refering to any Tory in any jursdiction. So to say the NDP are being treated unfairly because people are asking questions about linkage to past failed policies is just not true. Bob Rae is an intesting case, like many Steven Lewis era socialists his association with the left wing cause might well be attributed to a salving of the conscience based on his silver spoon - trust fund upbringing. Bob, who likely never had to balance a chequebook his entire adult life until he was confronted with a provincial budget as the unexpected Premier. If you read his books you would likely come to the same conclusion as I did. His experience as Premier lead to his (partial) conversion to capitalism, this was such an epiphany for him that he actually wrote a book about it, of course the comedy of this, for anyone who learned to prepare and maintain a budget in our teens as a necessity, is that he did not actually learn this fundemental lesson until middle age and was so suprised by it felt the need to share it to enlighten the rest of us! Bob's turned into a sort of well meaning, overly ambitious twit. I expect he now realizes he is never likely to succeed at either of his ambitions, to lead the Liberal party or to effect the merging of the left wing parties. He will likely fade into obscurity if we're lucky, if not he might occasionally emerge from the shadows as an entertaining diversion. If you really want to hear from him he does rent himself out: http://www.speakers.ca/rae_bob.html
  13. here you go Mr Bluster, I'll do it for you: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita As you can see we would have to increase the incarceration rate by a factor of six to catch up, so how would a small increase in the length and frequency of incarceration rates for violent and abusive criminals either ruin our country and make us the least bit like the US? Please make a reasoned arguement based on some credible fact. Just stupid talk really isn't it?
  14. Yes I also heard that the Star will endorse the NDP, not really a big suprise, they know that Iggy's done, they couldn't say anything nice about the Cons if the sun shone out of their *sses. Interesting times, may not be so bad for the Cons afterall though, with a fairly strong minority (say 130 to 140 seats) and a small rump of Liberals (say from 15 to 30 seats) they should be able to count on liberal support as the liberals will not want to go back to the polls for a very long time, depending on the exact numbers it may be sufficient to carry them through with few if any compromises. Four or five years as the official opposition should be sufficient for the NDP to demonstrate enough lunacy to send them to the back of the line for a while. This may prove to be a relatively stable arrangement that will eliminate the hysterical whimpering of Mark Holland and Scott Bryson and allow the conservatives to get out of protective mode and run the government in a reasonable fashion.
  15. Another poorly researched post, to compare our justice system to that of the states is highly inaccurate, please research the incarceration rates per capita and re-post your theory. Lets not use the Tyee as reference as though it was actually a legitimate news source, why not just directly link to rabble.ca?
  16. Classic stupid rhetorical thread posted by a left of center baiter, really why bother. Fact is there is really no equivalent to Republicans in Canada, wish there was. Problem with the foolish dogma of the left is that it is just that; foolish. All I can say is that if the NDP gets into power, hide your assets, its only a matter of time till they come after them, I'll be liquidating shortly after May 2nd depending on the outcome. Oh and start clearing off your debts, because jobs will get very scarce and interest rates will inevitably get much higher as government taxes (yes even corporate taxes) combined with spending and the inevitable debt spiral will fuel inflation. Whereas your typical democratic capitalist wishes to solve issues like hunger and poverty by providing opportunities and employment, our left of center friends will create the need for social programs and welfare by removing those opportunities.
  17. No, the Left is relying on getting its money from ME. There are two main problems with the Left. One is it likes to take as much money as possible away from productive workers in order to encourage non-productive people to be even less productive. The second is their habit of presuming their superior morality, and insisting on bringing in laws to make people conform to that 'superior' morality. Exactly! Jack, Bob Rae and Iggy all suffer from a similar malady, as if their guilty feelings about being born into wealth and power would encourage them to give away their own money, not so but they're content to give away mine!
  18. Are you guys on Crack? Religious freedom may be what the Muslim minority uses to push people around here, but in much of the rest of the world they are the religious bully. But its your left wing nutter quasi judicial human rights tribunals that have bent over for them, perhaps a government department will balance that out. Now it seems that those who love to hate Harper can simultaneously suck, blow and whistle. You criticise Harper for defending Isreal (which despite being the jewish homeland has a secular government), give him hell for sending troops to Afganistan to fight Muslim tyrany, accuse him of being some fundamentalist Christian wing nut with a hidden agenda and just about every other crazy idea short of being alien spawn. Now you think he's a tool of some Muslim conspiracy to impose Sharia law? Take a look at your hero Jack's policies and try and figure out what he stands for, or more accurately what doesn't he stand for? Jack's pretty quick on his feet and comes across as a witty regular guy, but he is certainly not capable of being all things to all people and if your worried about your job or the ecomony now, your gonna need sedatives in short order if happy Jack gets anywhere near the levers of power. Those of us old enough to remember the Jack and Olivia show in Toronto would be happiest to see him some distance from real power.
  19. OK who looks like the stupidest guy in the room now? Bob Rae, hey where is Bob these days anyways? Heck if he stayed where he was he coulda been a contender! HA!
  20. I was disapointed, not because I think Harper did a bad job, I think he did fine, he was relaxed almost bored, like "please just ask me a half way important question about a real policy" kinda thing. I was disapointed that Mansbridge was a one trick pony, thinking he was going to trip Harper up with the stupid coalition stuff. Never really got to anything important. Our Media suck, they just parrot what the Politicians say, which in this election is not much of substance.
  21. most enlightening interview yet, I wonder if Mansbidge thought Iggy would perform best if he annoyed him and riled him up, you know the "rise up" BS. Mansbridge is know to be a "friend" (and golfing buddy) to several Liberal leaders. Iggy is the archetype elistist, as though he is saying "I'm smarter, better and more important than you, defer to me now", seemingly annoyed at being questioned, I could sense disdain and fear coexisting in his expression. His personal hatred of Harper clearly fueled by the attack ads, "he questions my patriotism" so smug with himself that he is naive of the process of election campaigning and yet unaware of the hypocracy of his own attack and smear campaign. Layton is relaxed and self confident, a little too much like a car salesman, but certainly more likeable and transparent than what I saw tonight. Looking forward to Thursday night.
  22. Back when the election was in "positive mode", the Liberals based their campaign around 4 main pillars: -the "Learning Passport", a bursary to help students obtain post-secondary education. -the "Early Childhood Learning and Care" fund. -the "Family Care" plan, a package of EI-like benefits and tax benefits to support Canadian families who are caring for elderly relatives. -the fourth pillar of the Liberal plan is the plan to pay for these 3 major plans by cancelling a scheduled 1.5% corporate tax cut. Learning passport, we already have ways for parents to save for their kids education, and the truly gifted no matter how poor will get educated, do we really need to pump out history and sociology majors to serve us burgers and coffee? If you want your kid to get an eduction and (s)he's not a genius then save your money or let them pay for it themselves, I did. You have kids they're your responsibility, keep your hand outta my pocket. Raising your babies is not my business, and think about it, do you want me raising your kids? The Cons sorta started something like this, short term for emergencies and not too often, seems to be a good back door support of the choking health care system. Do not raise taxes, in fact the less money the government can get their grubby hands on the better off we'll all be, do you really think the fat cats in Ottawa can make better decisions with your money than you can? We need to have a competitive economy, lower taxes is one way of helping that, greater incentives for productivity enhancements is another. I'm tired of hearing the two faced comments outta Iggy's mouth about how bad the Con's handled the economy and how the deficit is so bad, does't anyone remember Iggy decrying the Con's fiscal cruelty when they didn't shovel enough money out the door fast enough? In fact he and Jack were going to monitor the progress to make sure it went out fast enough, to listen to him talk now just makes him look like an utter moron. The scary point that you left out that is buried and unaccounted for in the back half of the red book is the cap and trade deal, this is an economy killer especially if our biggest trading partners aren't doing something similar (which they are not), Canadian business better speak up about this or they're slitting their own throats. Finally the thing I really hate about the Liberals in every election, they presume to tell me and you what constitutes Canadian values (as if there were such a thing). And to make matters worse it usaully comes from some upper class twit from a University near you. It's bad enough you want to have your hand in my pocket, now you wanna mess with my mind, bugger off!
  23. Yes pretty sick, what about Iggy saying over and over in the dabate about Harper being all about the politics of fear? Have you seen the latest Liberal TV ads? By god if we don't vote Liberal there appears to be a very good chance some sort of Conservative brown shirts will show up at my door with growling dogs to take away my rights. Fact is our slow decline into socialism has already been largley achieved in a gentle voice re-assuring me that it's for my own good. It breeds in the hearts of the misinformed good intentioned mindless followers who cling to state imposed health care and baby bonus cheques as s sign of our superior civilization.
  24. What a silly thread, there needs to be some due process in casting ballots, this is not a high school election, this is considerably more serious and should be treated as such, the cons where right to question and elections canada officials were put in a tight spot by some over zealous kid at university. Electing your government is not some game you play by having a flash mob. How irresponsible for the leader of a national party when confronted with an issues such as this, instead of confirming the seriousness of an election, opts to take cheap shots at his opponent. And shame on the stupid people who blinded by partisan hatred gobble it up.
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