Moonbox

I need numbers man. You still won't go over them. Don't even bother arguing if you can't give me numbers. CTF is showing $23 Billion over 2 years for Martin and $31 Billion over 3 years for Harper. Martin increased spending faster than Harper. Do the math. Until you do that you're just blowing hot air. You've already shown us how Harper increase spending faster than Martin on a SMALL FEATURE of the overall budget. What you've failed to refute is that Martin did indeed increase spending faster than Harper, which the numbers show he did. It kind of blows your whole "Liberals are responsible" theory right out the window, especially considering how much the Liberals wanted to spend in October and how adamant they were about stimulus spending.... It was sarcasm. I was making fun of you for what time periods you picked to reflect the LPC's strong record of fiscal management. As far as your argument is concerned, Jean Chretien's reduced spending is the only record that we can use to rate Liberal spending policy. Martin, Dion, Ignatieff and Trudeau don't matter? but so were Martin's spending promises, and Dion's. Now we have to wait and see what Ignatieff's plans are. We'll see. Those aren't the total spending numbers. Those are a small part of the overall budget number. This is you squirming and avoiding the real and total spending numbers. You've taken a miniscule part of the overall budget and tried to present it as the final number that actuall affects people's wallets, which it isn't. If I'm wrong, go over the numbers with me. I'll gladly eat crow if I'm wrong. You generally refuse to go over numbers with me, however, because they're harder to play smoke and mirrors with.

Oh please. You've got yourself so confused and fooled up over the Liberals it's not even funny. According to you, $23B spending increases over two years under Martin, a 2008 election platform based on spending increases, December's demand for stimulus spending and then being the ONLY opposition party to vote in favor of $30B in stimulus all add up to mean the Liberals want to reduce spending.... Wait...none of that matters because 14 years ago Jean Chretien balanced the budget and what past Liberals do is more important than what present Liberals are doing....as long as you don't count Pierre Trudeau.... The simple fact is that Martin increased spending by $23B over two years. Harper (according to the CTF), increased spending by $31B over three years. Even if the 2008-2009 spending figures are several billions higher than so far recorded, Martin STILL spend on average just as much or more than Harper. That's WITHOUT adjusting for inflation. Go by the numbers Jdobbin. The numbers shall set you free.

I think people are just upset that the Liberals are able to raise money PERIOD now that Dion is done as leader.

Look at the NUMBERS. PLEASE. Stop merely repeating snippits of commentary supporting your position. Look at the NUMBERS from the CTF showing program expenditure increases. I've already acknowledged your 14% figure. What I'm saying is it's a less meaningful figure than OVERALL spending. OVERALL Martin increased spending from $153B to $175B in TWO YEARS. Harper increased it from $175B to 206B in THREE years. The figures you're providing are almost certainly in regards to the size of the bureaucracy and the actual GOVERNMENT. ACTUAL spending is what MATTERS. It's what affects our wallets. If you look at ACTUAL OVERALL spending Martin didn't do any better than Harper. There's virtually no difference. Look at the NUMBERS. The CTF protests spending increases. Big surprise. What I'm talking about is the RATE of SPENDING INCREASES. Martin's rate was 14% over two years in increases. Harper's was 14.8% over two years. That's less than a 6% increase. Again, you're interpreting numbers in a way that suits your position. I'm interpreting them realistically. Spending is one way the budget is affected. When the budget was made last year they didn't account for revenue falling out from underneath them. Poor planning? Sure. Were the spending increases bad? Sure. Would the Liberals have done better? Well they promised to increase spending also so I think it's safe to say no. I think you're intentionally ignoring everything I'm writing. Harper's 100% to blame for his own mess. What I'm saying is that the Liberals were in on it all the way and it's an absolute joke for them, and anyone else, to take any stock in LPC criticism of Harper spending. You can pretend it's not the case all you want, but they overspent before Harper, promised to increase spending in the 08 election, DEMANDED spending in December and then signed on to $30B worth of stimulus after demanding the stimulus in the first place. You've made fun of Dion like everyone else and you acknowledge that the LPC are in no shape for an election. That's as far as I've seen it go. I've almost never seen you acknowledge their glaring policy shortfalls. Partisan can imply different things. When your opinions deliberately ignore relevant facts to the discussions your partisanship starts to look more rabid and personal. Like I said, I can't and won't try to say that Harper's been a sound fiscal manager. We have a two year record showing he wasn't. On the same note, however, we have Martin's equally dismal record to go on prior to that and then an impotent Liberal opposition showing the EXACT SAME penchant for spending. I'm not speculating in this. This is right off the Liberal platform and their December stimulus demands. You've decided to pull the wool over your own eyes and pretend that because the budget was balanced 13 years ago that means that the more recent past and present don't matter. Okay what are you getting at??? The party with the even worse economic platform lost...great. They still don't have a superior economic platform. I'd be more than happy to start a thread with you on the general incompetence of Parliament Hill in terms of the economy since Chretien. They're all brutal. I'm waiting for a fiscally conservative government. If that's a new Reform, a non Harper CPC or an LPC that abandons social engineering I'm all over that. Put your glasses on. I can't even count how many times I've had to say this. I'm not blaming the LPC. I'm blaming the CPC and saying the LPC was in on it all the way. You're fixated on a small portion of the overall federal budget because you found someone who said something anti-CPC. You've now implicitly refused several times to look at the OVERALL spending figures, which I'll repeat once again are the ones that actually MATTER to taxpayers. I've brought the numbers up like 5 times now and you've yet to acknowledge them. This is what I mean when I call you hack partisan. You won't even respond to FACTS that don't support your position. It's like they don't exist. Again, you're ignoring what I'm saying and refusing to acknowledge VERY CRITICAL points in my argument. Harper made up an environmental plan for the sake of having one. You can't say in an election: We have no position on the environment. I agree that cap and trade is stupid. Carbon taxes are better. The Green Shift was not. As you can see, Harper has not moved on the cap and trade and I fully expect that not to change. You and I can revisit this but I can bet you there'll be no changes until we're out of the recession. It's a moot point. Regardless, the LPC was fully prepared in October to move forward with aggressive new income redistribution/environmental taxes in the beginning of a big recession. That was a catastrophe in waiting. WELL. I must apologize! YOU DID LISTEN! At any rate the environment is DEFINETLY not what's keeping him from a majority. It's the alienation of Quebec and the Martimes. As far as the environment is concerned, my worries are based more on ground and water polution. Tailing ponds and such need to be cleaned up considerably. As for carbon emissions and global warming, I'm really not convinced and I think it could wait for the economy to recover. He did. I don't support Mulroney. I think he was a crook. At the same time he did not run CONSISTENT OPERATING DEFICITS for many years at a time like Trudeau did. Do you know what that even means? What it mean is that other than the first three years he ran nominally balanced budgets. In 1988, for example, he ran an operating budget of $2B. Unfortunately, the cost of supporting the $157B debt (~$130B of which was Trudeau's) was about $31B. Trudeau ballooned our debt to the point where supporting it cost 33% of revenue we collected each year. Realistically, 90% of our debt is Trudeau's fault alone. That's why the Liberals have not broken ground in the West for 30 years. Sh** goes downhill. I could care less. We need immigrants. If the productive ones are being expedited into the country, I'm happy. Period. Everyone has...except apparently NFLD lol. Hopefully Ontario stops getting a raw deal. We'll see. Enlighten me. Donation limits. I don't hate the Liberals. I voted for Chretien and Martin in 2004 and I voted for Mcguinty in 2007 Ontario election. My partisanship against the Liberals ended when Chretien proved he was the fiscal OPPOSITE to Pierre Turdeau. When you see me here on the forums arguing against the Liberals it's generally against silly, biased and irrational foot-stomping of hardcore Liberals like you and PT. I similarly called Mr. Canada out for the partisan hack that he was. I thought it was a joke how much the CPC was getting criticized for calling the election in 08. I thought Dion and the Green Shift was a joke. I thought December was a joke. You have to admit the LPC has been a travelling clown show over the last year and coincidentally that's how long I've been posting here. 'Then why have you and I had that discussion so many times already?

Find us that link because I don't think there was ever a favorable comparison made for Martin vs Harper. At worst Harper continued bad policies and did nothing to fix them. Sure he's spending MORE, but THE NUMBERS indicate barely so. No but they looked just as bad when Martin was running things under the Liberal name. Go by the NUMBERS please Jdobbin. I gave you that CTF link comparing program expenditures vs revenue. The difference is NEGLIGIBLE. To argue that Martin was better than Harper on spending is like saying it's better for you to eat 99 chocolate bars than 100. They both spent like crazy at almost the exact same effective rate. For the Liberals, this is forgettable because Chretien balanced the budget 13 years ago. For Harper, it's a catastrophe? Your criticisms for the Liberals are fairly limited and even then filled with party bias. Please see above. No argument. It was the Liberal's undoing in the 80's, it was the PC's undoing, Martin's undoing, and now it's Harper's. Your posting of news stories is almost exclusively anti-Conservative. Sometimes the news is so trivial it appears certain you're actually spending a lot of time digging up anything you can that somehow makes the CPC look bad. Interestingly enough, we see no such material regarding the many and various Liberal gaffs and disasters. What I'm saying is that your interpretation of federal political events, budget numbers and party platforms is EXTREMELY skewed by what appears to be a very personal dislike of the Conservative label and a deep affection for the LPC and what they did....13 years ago under Chretien...during incredibly good economic times. What I'm saying is that for 2 years the Liberals meekly passed these budgets with hardly a peep and in 2008, instead of criticizing the spending increases, promised additional spending rate increases surpassing those of the previous two years. If the Liberals were against the spending, they would have protested it and promised to reduce it in 2008. ALMOST EVERY indications shows a platform based strongly on spending increases similar or surpassing Harper's since 2004. You've cherry picked another number that looks good on the LPC. The fact that the bureaucracy grew faster under Harper doesn't mean that the TOTAL spending increased that much. Martin's program spending vs revenue ratio was over 83%. Harper's was 84%. Those are the numbers that count. Yes but as I recall you refuted that the Green Shift was also income redistribution, which numbers prove it was. You defended the Green Shift vs the cap and trade when to call it an 'environmental plan' was in itself a giant lie. It was a social engineering project with an environmental plan attached to it. In any event, I'm still waiting for Harper to make any moves on the environment, which he made pretty clear was not a priority. Obama won't do anything anytime soon either. Dion on the other hand based his campaign on it and wanted to implement it immediately DURING a recession. No. In fact the Liberals have the dubious legacy of selling out the country to finance Pierre Trudeau's legend. When he quintopled our national debt over 10 years and ran giant OPERATING deficitis virtually every year (good times or bad) he ran the government, he LED us to the deficit we face today. For most of Mulroney's term he ran fairly big operating SURPLUSES but Trudeau's debt charges forced us deep in the red. We are STILL to this day paying Trudeau's debt. When you say the Liberals have a proven track record you chose a very specific 8 years where Chretien slashed spending across the board and paupered the provinces. The Liberals before and SINCE Chretien were/are big spenders and EVERY indication is that this will continue. THE ONLY argument you have to support this claim is 1995-1996. Keep clinging to those days but you have NOTHING to back up the Liberals today. I'm not speculating. I'm basing my opinion on what the LIBERALS THEMSELVES are saying and doing. When they are promising more spending and DEMANDING more spending and VOTING IN FAVOR of spending increases that they DEMANDED, I rationally assume they want to SPEND. Originally Trudeau. Then Chretien. Now Harper, who was the one who cut off the corporate lobby avenue the LPC milked. I don't have a problem with immigrants. I like and have befriended/dated numerous immigrants. The CPC has tried to make it easier to accept skilled and educated workers. They're being allowed to bypass the queue of millions in favor of the horde of non-english, unskilled and un-educated immigrants who clog our welfare systems and who the Liberals depend on to maintain their GTA stranglehold. The whole idea of 'family reunification' at the Canadian Taxpayer's expense is an absolute joke. This is one of THE most impressive things Harper has done in my books. You're mistaken. Most conservatives don't like the FORMULA developed in the Trudeau years. Most conservatives are all for the decentralization of spending, just not if it's being collected federally and dished out unfairly. Once again, however, that will likely take constitutional amendments to change at the risk of totally alienating the teat sucking provinces like Manitoba/PEI etc. Nope. I just supported on the basis that it wasn't an equalization formula like the Green Shift was and that it was highly unlikely to be implemented anyways. Pragmatism! I didn't say I was objective. I said I was pragmatic. Right we have two parties who've both proven themselves to be bad spenders. Either of them is going to burn a hole in my wallet. One of them isn't entrenched into the bureaucracy after 11 years of croniesm and complacency and one of them is shaking up immigration and election laws in ways that I approve. You can call me partisan, but I've no loyalty to either party. I've voted both ways provincially and federally within the last 6 years and will continue to do so. I'll admit I vote from the right and I'm partisan in that regard, but not for any particular party. I don't make that claim. I make the claim that you cherry pick the news ONLY for what supports your party. My issue with the Star is that it's not a national newspaper and enjoys a symbiotic relationship with Toronto and the Liberal Party. To simplify: The LPC lets Toronto sit on its face. Toronto in turn loves the Liberals. Because Toronto loves the Liberals, the Star sells to mostly Liberal readers and has adopted a VERY pro-Liberal stance. I'm well aware of pro-CPC newspapers, but using the STAR as a reliable source for CPC bashing is about as smart as using the Calgary Herald for LPC bashing, as I've said on many occasions.

SO true lol!

I don't expect anything of the sort. None of the prereqs for Presidency include: Funny and Original sense of humor. At least this shows he's not a tight ass bore.

Yeah I think this was a stupid thing to make a big deal about. Maybe it offended a few people but at least it shows that Obama is a regular guy that makes the same sort of jokes we all do.

I live in Guelph and I can tell you all that it's a garbage fringe newspaper that most people in Guelph neither read nor take seriously. Even as a child I remember how poorly edited it was. It's usually rife with spelling errors and grammar mistakes and the letters they publish to the editor are so far out that most serious newspapers wouldn't even read past the first few sentences. It's no surprise that something this dumb would be written in the Merc, but it's pretty surprising that someone would bother posting about it here.

Haha. Well said.

but it's still a silly document dreamed up by a junior official. The volume of trade Canada shares with Britain already (i think they're our 3rd or 4th biggest partner) indicates that we're doing fine with them and probably not a lot of attention is needed there.

I don't know how to make it any clearer. All I've been saying is Martin was just as bad as Harper for spending increases. The numbers, the CTF and everyone else agrees with this. The CTF's criticism of Harper was that he continued with spending increases after he took over from Martin, when he said he'd do the opposite. It's fair. It's also fair to say that Martin was no better. Right there is about where the Liberals lost their credibility as prudent financial managers. And they should lay it on Harper's desk. He's PM. He's running the government. Anyone who lays the blame on the Liberals without also blaming the CPC is stupid. The point I'm trying to make is that there is ALSO blame to be laid on the Liberals themselves for demanding stimulus spending and signing on for the budget. They had the deciding vote and they DECIDED on $30B of stimulus spending AND a deficit. Jdobbin I'm perfectly willing to admit that Harper hasn't done a great job managing our budget. A lot of your criticism for him is bang on. The problem with a lot of your posts is that your criticisms are so heavily flavored with pro-Liberal bias that those of us who aren't impressed with current-day Liberals feel the need to correct you and bring up comparisons. You quite obviously spend a great deal of effort unearthing anything anti-CPC and your dislike for them seems to come from an emotional level. If it wasn't emotional you'd acknowledge that the LPC has no leg to stand on criticizing the CPC on the $30B stimulus. They could have stopped it. They didn't. The CPC has not had carte-blanche since 2006. If you weren't a partisan Liberal, you'd acknowledge that Martin increased spending at almost the exact same rate Harper has been. That's a fact. I showed you the numbers. This dispels the myth that Liberals are somehow financial gurus because they balanced the budget 12 years ago. That really has no bearing on today, especially considering their 2008 election platform. The fact that you wouldn't acknowledge in October that the Green Shift was a thinly disguised equalization scheme and absolutely refused to go over any numbers pertaining to it is more evidence that rather than looking at things PRAGMATICALLY, you're perfectly happy to plug your ears to anything other than: CPC bAaad! CPC BAAad! I am not a hardcore Conservative. The fact that you'll label me as such because I offer comparisons to your beloved Liberals when you criticize the CPC speaks volumes of how reasonable your arguments generally are. The bulk of the arguments between you and I have usually been about fiscal policy and Harper's spending. Both of us would like to see a PM who spends less, pays down the debt and keeps us in the black. I would vote for a government that does that. Stephen Harper hasn't delivered that, but the Liberals seem pretty unlikely to either. They didn't control spending under Martin. Their election platform in October was to increase spending, they demanded spending in December and they voted for the $30B stimulus plan. Where in all of that do you see any indication of fiscal conservatism? It's not there and to cling to the Chretien years is just fooling yourself. As far as money is concerned right now, neither party is showing any aptitude. I've stuck with the CPC thus far because I agree with a lot of other changes they've made. I like how they've changed immigration rules. I like that are sending money back to the provinces. Too much money goes to Ottawa when most of the services are paid for by the provinces. I also like that they've party fundraising more of a grass roots thing rather than a big corporate lobby machine like the Liberals had running. Big business had way too much influence on the government the Liberals ran. If the LPC were to campaign on reducing federal spending, I'd vote for them in a flash. This, unfortunately for you, has not been their platform for about a decade. All they've offered since the Martin days are increased spending and idiotic ideas like the Green Shift. I've said before I voted for Martin in his first election. I'll vote for the Liberals again if they come to the table without clowns like Bob Rae and Dion in the forefront. I don't hate the Liberals and I don't love the CPC. I dislike them both and I choose one over the other. My posting is a direct reflection of my pragmatism towards voting. I only care about what I feel benefits myself and my family and I'm not going to wet the bed like some people we know here just because the wrong color of snakes is running the government. Don't give me that rubbish that I'm hard core CPC. I'm not the one who's made it a mission to link every piece of party-friendly media available on the web for us to read every day.

Fox is the dumbest network on the planet. It's basically an extension of the idiotic far right of the Republican party. At least on a good note it's an embarrassment even to the average American but who the hell cares what Fox says? Everyone knows it's a freaking joke. Fox has no credibility.

It's a stupid article. The British even said it was drawn up by a junior official. Even if it was real the amount of trade Canada does with Great Britain isn't even really worth worrying about. Canada is and will continue to be a strong trading nation moving forward. The fact that we only have 33 million people living here automatically relegates us to the small-time but that doesn't mean we won't continue exporting like crazy.

You further discredit yourself with words like neo-con. It's a meaningless word that identifies you (probably realistically given your posting history) as a hard core Liberal ranter: short on facts but tall in scary rhetoric. You can just as much call Harper a neo-con as I can call Ignatieff an American torture-monger. Harper attacked Washington's spending. So what? We're attacking his spending and it's only HALF of what Obama is spending.

Jdobbin the difference is negligible. I'm not defending the spending increases, I'm saying that Martin did no better. It's never been my mission to convince you that Harper was a frugal PM. He's not. It's been my mission to dispel the myth that somehow Liberals are naturally more prudent financial managers. Granted, Chretien turned around the disastrous policies Pierre Trudeau started and Mulroney never fixed, but you can't cling to that still as evidence that current Liberals are also good at managing budgets. I have tried to show you that Paul Martin's spending policies were just as bad as Harper's. 14.0% is only 0.8% better than 14.8%. It's a meaningless difference. Given that Martin was spending at almost the exact same rate that Harper did, it's foolish for you to imply that under a Liberal government we would have somehow avoided the deficit we're facing today. The previous Liberal government spent just as much money as the current Conservative government and the election dialogue in October indicated that this was a policy set to continue. When the Liberals threaten to bring down the government for not doing enough (spending) to stimulate the economy and then they sign on to a $30B stimulus package, the only way you're going to convince anyone the Liberals could have or would have avoided a deficit is if you live in Magical Fantasy Land. If you're serious about wanting to avoid a deficit you DO NOT sign a $30B stimulus package. You're dubious opinion seems somehow to be that the Liberals WANTED stimulus spending, but not $30B of it, although they're totally fine signing for it????

You're hearing what you want to hear then. You want to feel like your dazzling *cough* and level-headed intellect is actually affecting me. While you may evoke sneering contempt out of me that's about all you'll get and your arguments are just as badly thought out as PT's are. When we were going over the CTF's criticisms back in October I believe they said that Harper had done a bad job, but Stephane Dion and the Liberals were planning to do much worse. Would you care to dig that up again? THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE! That's all I'm going for here. I don't care if you criticize Harper. I don't think he's done a great job. What I take exception to in your postings is how one-sided and exaggerated your criticisms always are. Yes, they are exaggerated. When you say things like Harper's the biggest spending PM ever, you're totally exaggerating. That was Trudeau. You've proven on MANY occasions that you have immense difficulty interpreting numbers but when you say things like Harper's the biggest spending PM ever it really highlights how butt-hurt you are about the Conservatives running the government. Look at spending as a percentage of GDP, or compared to revenue generated for the government. I've acknowledged A MILLION times that I think Harper is a big spender Jdobbin. What I'm denying is that the Liberals are any better. They spent JUST as much when Paul Martin was PM (when you actually look at the numbers MEANINGFULLY rather than just take the actual dollar values and don't ignore the other relevant variables). Don't even try to continue this discussion until you acknowledge these numbers. All indications have been that the Libs would spend JUST as much right now as Harper is. Dion was promising just as much spending during the election. The Liberals threatened to bring down the government for not spending to stimulate the economy. Ignatieff and the Liberals signed on to the budget and the stimulus. Where is there ANY INDICATION ANYWHERE that the Liberals would be tight with the public purse?? There aren't any. You keep insisting that they would but the facts speak otherwise. To who? I'm not running for office. I could care less if I alienate the voters. Most of them are stupid. I'm not saying they're stupid if they don't vote for the same party as me. I say they're stupid because they vote without any understanding of the issues half the time and vote based purely on party or misconception. Part of the problem is dogmatic party hacks like you endlessly posting misinterpreted numbers and people accepting them without doing any research on their own. You're not the only guilty party. The Conservatives totally villified Dion and the Green Shift beyond what was fair. BTW that was another instance where you refused to look at the numbers with me. It doesn't seem like your strong point. That's not my intention. My intention is to make it clear that there is no room to criticize the deficit from behind the Liberal brand. They're in on it all the way. The current formula was Trudeau's invention. He increased it for everyone. Ontario has more money because of it. I'm not blaming him for that. I'm still blaming Trudeau and whiney have-not provinces for creating an equalization formula that would probably take messing with the constitution to fix. At least not with a minority! It certainly won't be the Liberals who change it either! The main beneficiaries of the transfer payments are the large municipalities and that's the only place they get votes nowadays!

It's a bad situation because it takes the market and future prospects out of the equation. Union contracts are based on things like past/current corporate profits. There's never a long term view on things. You've got CEO's concerned with short term profits and union members making demands on past performance and it's a perfect recipe for an inflexible and miscalculating system. The proof is in the pudding/auto industry.

Calling me hyperpartisan doesn't change the fact that you don't know what you're talking about. If I'm hyperpartisan conservative than you're hyperpartisan Liberal. Whoopy. We've both labelled each other and we haven't gone anywhere. There was no personalizing in the last post. What you see as anger is actually thinly disguised contempt. Jdobbin i've commented on numerous occasions how poorly you interpret the numbers you use. As usual, you interpret them as a hack Liberal supporter. Saying Harper is the biggest spending PM ever is absolutely meaningless considering that can be said of almost EVERY PM we've ever had. Other than 1995-1996 spending increases by billions EVERY year. This is because the economy is growing. If you want to look at meaningful measures, take income versus program expenditure. In 2004-2005 after the biggest spending increases in Canadian History, Martin Liberals spent 83% of income on program expenditure. In 2007-2008 Harper had increased that to 84%. Martin spending went from $153B to $176B in ONE year. How were you not pulling your hair out over that??? The interesting thing to note is that GST under Harper dropped 2% and without that government revenue would be significantly increased and the ratios would look better. So yes, Harper has increased spending, but relative to income and taking into account the tax cuts, the difference between Harper spending increases and Martin spending increases is negligible. Look at the numbers: CTF - Revenue vs Expenditure I haven't denied any of Harper's broken promises. He's a champ at broken promises. With that said spending really hasn't terribly outpaced inflation. Spending increased slightly in 2008-2009...something like 3.4%. That's not really far off inflation at all. On the flip side, Paul Martin increased spending by about 13% in 2004-2005, so your theory of tight Liberal pockets really falls apart there. Yeah UFO museum. What the hell? Anyways, it's an exaggeration to say $3B was spent on things like that. A big one. I didn't deny it. I'm refuting the conclusions you derive from your numbers because they're exaggerated and ignoring important variables like revenue increases and tax reductions. This is all in the interest of hack partisanship. I'm not saying it's the Liberal's fault. I'm saying it's the Conservatives AND the Liberal's fault. Nevermind who the electorate blames. 90% of the electorate probably couldn't even name their own MP. No, I'm not really upset with him. The Liberals paupered the provinces, who provide most of our services, in order to finance Trudeau/Mulroney debt. Harper helped the provinces a bit. I'm angry at Trudeau for coming up with the idiotic/unfair equalization formula in the first place. The provinces that are avoiding deficits are the ones who generally suck the federal teat. Manitoba, for example, is one of the hardest suckers. Who cares if you balance your budget when you are getting proportionally like 25% more federal transfer payments than we are in Ontario? That's like congratulating a welfare mom for being a sound fiscal manager. Congrats Octomom. You're the epitome of financial acumen.

Another useless comment by a Liberal hack. We can both play that game. Noted. Now you're just making stuff up Jdobbin. This is another case where you've failed to back up your useless nattering with actual facts. The first year Paul Martin was PM federal program expenses increased from $153B to $176B (2004-2005). That's a $23B spending increase over ONE year while revenue only went up by $13B. That was the biggest single year increase in spending we've ever seen. From then until 2008-2009 spending only increased by another $30B after that. You do the math genius. Oh my GOD the federal government is breaking even while reducing my taxes! THE HORROR!!! I do recall the weeks leading up to the election call. I also remember that Dion's Liberals were promising to match or exceed Harper's spending promises. At this point a lot of the infrastructure promises can be considered pre-emptive stimulus anyways. Politics are always about comparisons. You can complain about Conservative spending and I'd be right with you in doing so but you've somehow deluded yourself into thinking the Liberals do better when Martin proved and Dion promised them to be every bit as bad or worse. It's your implicit position as a hardcore Liberal hack that compromises your criticisms. I have no idea who Andrew Cohen is nor have I read anything he's written. I'm NOT saying it's THEIR fault. I'm saying as the official opposition they had every chance and opportunity to do something about it and they didn't. Certainly Harper's Conservatives can be blamed for the giant stimulus deficit but given that the Liberals held veto power the whole time and didn't use it you can hardly make the case that they were against a deficit. We're not talking $1-2B dollars here. We're talking $30B here. That's enough money to get the opposition off their asses to vote against the government. Again, they didn't do it. Okay he changed the story. Let's go over things really quickly then. The Liberals threatened to bring down the government for not doing ENOUGH to stimulate the economy. In January the conservatives announce $30B in stimulus. The Liberals support this budget and back down from coalition talks. What sort of conclusions would a RATIONAL AND INTELLIGENT person make? If the Liberals are threatening to bring down the government for not spending and then support it after big spending announcements I'm PRETTY SURE we can say they're in all the way as far as deficits go. This is not Trudeau or Mulroney majorities we're talking about here. It takes at least two parties to pass a budget these days, and this year one of those parties was the Liberals. I've no major complaints. The fact that they ran the country in the best economy we've seen in 50 years helped I think. Hey in normal times I'm with you on that. I live in Ontario, however, and now we need help. We've been bankrolling your mooching province for decades now and you're up in arms now that the economic machine that's supported your sorry province needs some backing. K-W right now has almost 10% unemployment. Ouch. In good times we should be paying down the debt. Chretien did a good job of that and to a lesser extent so did Martin/Harper. Both of them could have done better. Now, however, we're faced with a totally different environment. The 'deficit is evil' mentality is too black and white to really have a place in modern economics. Every government everywhere is running massive deficits and that's because it's sound and proven short term economic theory.

It doesn't matter where Chrysler goes. The corporation itself is going bankrupt as a whole. It doesn't matter if the Canadian subsidiary goes down first because Chrysler as a brand has a 1/100 chance of surviving. Protected bankruptcy is the best they can hope for and I think that's overly optimistic. We'll see some popular brands sold off and the rest of the company is probably just going to fold.

If taken on its own merits, the post is not worth much comment. Polls mean practically nothing unless you're approaching an election. Ask Joe Clark. Because we have a new "Ignatieff is the messiah" post coming from you almost hourly and because of how blind and CONSTANT/ENDLESS your nattering about him is, I feel compelled to match that with a heavy dose of sarcasm/derision. Regardless of your lifestyle, which I'll agree is none of my business, I'm still amazed by your endurance. You're every bit the match of Mr. Canada disregarding his completely opposite (but similarly silly/biased) positions on virtually everthing political.

so do other provinces

Jdobbin you don't have the slightest clue. I'll grant you that Harper had a lot of stupid spending increases, particularly in the 2008 election budget, but it's 100% retarded to say that these were the 'cause' of the current deficit. One detail that you've always avoided to acknowledge Jdobbin was that Paul Martin's spending increases as PM more or less matched Harper's. Whether it was a Liberal or Conservative government, we would have had those increases. When you're in danger of losing confidence in minority government it's almost impossible to keep a tight wallet. The fact that none of them ran a deficit during this period is at least worthy of credit. The reason we're running a deficit now is that revenue fell through the floor. The Liberals ABSOLUTELY insisted on a deficit. It's easy for a snivelling opposition (and their hack supporters) to claim hindshight today but we could have used this information a few years ago. Let's look a few simple facts: 1. Paul Martin's Liberals increased spending at pretty much the exact same pace that Harper's Tories did while they were in charge. It's all about public opinion in a shakey minority. 2. Despite a CPC minority and innumerable chances the Liberals had to bring down the current government in the last several years, they did nothing. If they were serious about creating 'reserves' and curbing spending, they would have made an issue about it. They didn't. I wonder what Canadians would have been more receptive to. Tax decreases and increased spending OR no tax decreases and no spending increases? 3. Months ago I provided links where Liberals were clamoring for $30B in direct stimulus spending and accusing Harper of not doing enough for the economy. Given that the only way to pay for $30B in stimlus was to run a deficit, your claim that the Liberals weren't insisting on a deficit is not only wrong but also flat out retarded. I eagerly await to see how you'll squirm your way around these arguments. Are you going to take the 'Don't personalize' approach or the 'let's get anal and semantic' approach? Either way I'm excited to see how you're going to convince us all that the Liberals would have spent $15B per year extra paying back debt or saving money in 2006-2007 given that every indication from back then was pretty much pointing to the opposite. Hindsight is precious isn't it?

God will cure AIDS when people stop having sex outside of marriage. I mean, it's not like there's anything totally natural about having sex. It's not like our bodies are engineered to want to do the dirty. It's an evil and dirty thing.... :angry: