NDP Newbie

Let's be objective here: If the Liberals and the PCs didn't want public employees to demand better salaries and benefits, they would have led by example and not have given themselves a massive pay raise.

I wish the UN would stop cheering on the Drug War, tacitly endorsing homophobia, and marching to the drumbeat of the "Rah! Rah! Go China!" cult.

Nader's PARTY? He's an indie this time, not a Green. The Greens are too scared of the Conmannder in Cheat to run a serious candidate against the Democrats. I think they'll continue relegating themselves to municipal races in costal Cali for the time being. :-P

The U.S. is a joke. In some states, you lose the right to ever vote again if you're convicted of smoking marijuana. Sieg Heil.

Many Castro-haters fail to release that his predecessor was even worse. I compromise and dislike both Castro and Batista, as I do with Bush and Chirac. :-P

Layton 46.3% Mills 28.8% = Tory in 3rd. Before taking into account the 4 or 5% that 3rd parties will win, the Tories only have 24.9% of voters left. That actually wouldn't be a bad CPC showing in that particular riding. I'm a New Democrat, but I'm at the point where just about anything that weakens the Liberals is encouraging, although I feel the CPC is nothing more than a Canadian asspiece for the GOP.

If you're either serious or mocking me, you're wrong. I could see the NDP sweeping Quebec should the separatist movement ever collapse, but only because the NDP is the only party that isn't an asshole to them. (God knows they deserve it, and I'd probably be kicked out of the NDP if someone important found out that I'm ideologically even more hard-line anti-separatist than the CPC, but from a Machiavellian perspective, the NDP is smart to not treat them like the shit that they are.)

Layton speaks better French than Chrétien...lol...Bouchard speaks better English. Layton does have Quebec roots though, but they ain't conservative.

I agree (obviously...lol)...And mixing it with representational democracy will ensure no change to the voting process for the end voter and will also ensure that issues on a more local scale are given due focus by the federal government.

After considering the pros and cons of a number of different ways in which Canada's process for electing the House of Commons can be reformed, I have come up with the following requirement: The end goal of any attempt at reforming Canada's electoral process must lead to a HoC whose composition mirrors the aggregate will of the Canadian electorate as accurately as possible, while still possessing the following characteristics: 1. Some level of local representation to ensure that the smaller concerns of the average coommunity is met and that the diversity of Canada's parliament reflects the diversity of its regions. 2. A voting process that will be identical to the current one: It is very possible to reform the HoC in such a way as to ensure that any changes are transparent to the mechanical process of voting. The current system of voting is easy for the average voter to understand, systems such as instant run-off voting and approval voting, are a little more complex, and other systems still, particularly Condorcet's Method, are fun for number crunchers like myself, but require some knowledge of game theory to be understood. 3. The will of the voters takes precedence over the will of party insiders. 4. Any reforms shall allow voters to vote their conscience without any sort of strategic penalty. With these goals in mind, I propose the following reforms: 1. Giving the HoC 300 MPs, but realigning constituencies so that only 50% of MPs are elected by representative first-past-the-post democracy and that the other 50% are distributed to the different political parties so as to ensure that each occupies a percentage of the Parliament proportional to the popular vote it receives. 2. Rather than voters electing a "roster" of candidates appointed by party insiders, each party's top non-winners (by vote %) in the different constituencies are given seats in Parliament. Should the party's leader not be among these proportional winners, the lowest proportional winner shall give up his/her seat so that the party leader may sit in Parliament. 3. There shall be no threshold of popular votes or seats required to enter government. 1/308th of the popular vote shall guarantee a party 1/308th of the Parliament. Allow me to provide a hypothetic example of the proposed reforms in operation: Following the May 2004 election, the Liberal Party of Canada wins 42% of the vote and 78 constituencies, the Conservative Party wins 27% of the vote and 35 constiuencies, the NDP wins 13% of the vote and 15 constituencies, the Bloc Quebecois wins 10% of the vote and 20 constituencies, and the Green, Christian Heritage, and Marijuana party each win 2% of the vote and no constituencies, the Natural Law Party wins 1% of the vote and no constituencies, and each of the other parties/independents is lucky to win 0.1% of the remianing votes. At this point, the Liberals control 52% of the HoC inspite of winning 42% of the vote, the Conservatives, 23.3% of the legislature in spite of winning 27% of the vote, the NDP, 10% of constituencies in spite of winning 13% of the vote, the Block, 13.3% of constituencies in spite of winning 10% of the vote. The other parties are self-explanatory. At this point, the Liberals will be given the number of non-winners / 150 necessary to make 42% of 300, and so on, until Parliament represents the will of the people. Any seats not won can be left vacant or something. :-P

The right-wing pro-China pan-Blue Coalition has fielded a ticket consisting of a delusional Chinese guy who beats his wife and cheats on his taxes (Lien Chan, aspiring president) and a fascist who was routinely involved in censorship and in the suppression of democracy activists during the 1970s. (James Soong, aspiring VP) Both candidates are not real Taiwanese. The cente-left pro-Taiwan pan-Green Coalition has fielded a former human rights lawyer (Chen Shui-bian, incumbent president) and a democracy activist in the 1970s and 1980s. (Annette Lu, incumbent VP). Both candidates are Taiwanese The Pan-Blue Coalition is supported by big business, people in Taiwan who benefit from their history of corrupt patrongage, the Chinese Communist Party, the Republican Party, the DLC, and Jacques Chirac. The Pan-Green Coalition is supported by an array of progressive and non-corrupt conservative interests, as well as most NGOs, who are concerned about the Pan-Blue/Kuomintang history of human rights violation. Hopefully the Hakka and the Aboriginals wake the Hell up this year and crush the Cult of Chiang once and for all.

The same "extremist leftist" agenda that has defended the rights of Rush Limbaugh, the Ku Klux Klan, some Nazi party (I think it was in Illinois), and even the Christian Coalition. My biggest beef with the ACLU is perhaps that they need to do more to defend cyber-liberties. Given the utterly pathetic record that both the American left and the American right have had on this issue, I don't think anybody could call them extremist for doing more to fight against the DMCA and other similarly draconian legislation.

I can see it now: Liberals win 140 - 145 seats and need NDP support to govern. Jack Layton offers to let the Liberals govern any way they want, provided Martin is willing to support an electoral reform plan that produces either proportional representation or proportional/constituency mixed (Preferrably the latter, but that's besides the point.). If the Liberals do this, however, they're tombstoning their years of lopsided political dominance. Who's over-represented in Parliament? The Liberals (To the point where it's lmost as ridiculous as the Union Nazional (sic) winning a 6 seat majority in Quebec's 1966 election while losing the popular vote by nearly 7%.) and the Bloc Québécois. Now who's under-represented? But of course, the CPC and the NDP. What does this mean? ALLELUIA!!!!! Our political parties, knowing that no amount of snap elections will ever be likely to yield a majority govrnment, will finally be forced to learn to work together in coalitions, adding more integrity and accountability to the political process. (After years of Mulroney and Chrétien, God knows it's needed.) Sadly, I can nearly guarantee that every goddamn electoral policy wonk in the LPC has already thought this through.