Evening Star

Hey, all JT had to do was answer the question!

I thought that some of May's strong points included: arguing that voter participation is a more serious issue than 'vote-splitting' or impractical Senate reform/abolition, making strong points on the Libya mission and problems with the current Iraq mission, raising the issues that were not covered in this debate, holding Harper's feet to the fire on his environmental record. She provided a lot of specific data on economic and environmental issues.

Neither of those points is new information, I would think? I guess I'd rank them: May Mulcair Harper Trudeau

Yeah, I was very impressed by May as well, enough to seriously consider the Greens. I thought Mulcair totally won the exchange on the Clarity Act, to be honest. JT's closing remarks were ludicrous: "you need to feel it in your bones"?

Cite? What does "or worse" mean? What social penalties are Tory voters experiencing, exactly?

Really? Voting for the party that has ruled the country for the last 9 years, that was endorsed by almost all print newspapers in the last election, carries the same sort of social stigma that homosexuality carried in 1975? Maybe I've just missed all the brutal Tory-bashing attacks and all the legal discrimination against the Tory way of life.

In Ontario in 1990, the NDP won a majority with 37.6% when the Liberals won 32.4%. That's the closest example to that I can think of. Is there one that's closer?

Really? The Tories could win a majority if they get 35% and the NDP gets over 30%? That might turn me into an electoral reform activist. I'd like to see this theorizing.

Dunno what to say. I see no difficulty extrapolating a Tory majority from numbers like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_in_the_Canadian_federal_election,_2011 but it's harder from numbers like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_42nd_Canadian_federal_election Doesn't mean at all that it's impossible but it would require a shift in public opinion.

Pretty much every poll showed a CPC lead in the pre-campaign period and during the campaign in 2011, right up to Election Day, going by the Wiki page. (In retrospect, the excitement of NDP supporters at the time seems a bit quaint.) The situation is pretty different now.

Ah, thanks. I see: Also, I see that they spelled out just how difficult abolition would (and imo should) be:

Do you have a link? I'm not doubting you; I'm just interested.

Which court? When?

Would it? I didn't think that there is anything in the Constitution that stipulates that the sitting government needs to recommend Senators to the GG. My understanding was that as far as the written Constitution goes, the GG is in charge of appointing Senators and that it is simply a modern convention that the PM recommends them. If there were some sort of agreement that they could be recommended to the GG in a different way, is there anything that would stop this?

Why is that hard? Duceppe was their leader when they were destroyed in the last election.

All of the Nanos, Harris-Decima, and Abacus polls from the few days before (Apr 28-May 1) accurately predicted CPC support, within the margin of error, using your own Wiki link. An indicator off by 4-6% to the left almost every time. Most of the polls you linked from the same time period predicted the NDP's support accurately, within the MOE, so I disagree with this.

You know, even if 40% of the population voted CPC on May 2, 2011, that doesn't necessarily mean that Forum was wrong to report 35% support on April 30 or even 36% on May 1 (with a 1.6% margin of error). People could have changed their minds in between those times for a number of reasons, even on Election Day itself. CPC voters could have been more motivated to actually go out and vote, etc. If your argument was "the CPC tends to do a little better on Election Day than the polls show leading up to it so we can adjust poll numbers a little to account for this", I could understand that. However, these factors would apply to all polls, including Mainstreet, unless you have reason to believe that something about the polling methodology actually underrepresents CPC support and that Mainstreet is doing something different in their methodology that fixes this. (Since you have admitted that you don't know much about Mainstreet, I don't think you can say this.) I don't think you can really say "the Mainstreet poll shows the CPC 10% higher than the other polls BUT we can automatically add 5% to CPC numbers in the other polls anyway so Mainstreet is not that far off".

Someone on another board has raised a valid doubt about the Mainstreet poll: Maggi of Mainstreet writes that those who have been following the UCCB very closely are "more likely to vote Conservative". CPC support among this group is given as 38% (while it is 23% among those who are not aware of the cheques). It seems unlikely, by simple mathematics, that the overall national support for the CPC could be identical to the level of CPC support among a sub-group that is identified as 'more likely to vote Conservative'. This suggests the possibility that a number had been copied incorrectly somewhere.

Wow.

By this definition, you could classify virtually any action by the government that benefits anybody as 'vote buying'. In the case of the Liberals, they've promised a more direct vote buying scheme where they will take more money out of those earning higher wages and then generously gift them to those making, not low wages, but middle class wages (up to $89,000). I'm not sure what else you could call all this other than buying popularity by taking spending other people's money. It's actually worse than this. They want to reduce the marginal tax rate for the portion of earned income that is greater than $44, 701 up to $89, 401 from 22% to 20.5%. Thus, anyone who makes more than $44, 701 will pay a lower tax rate on this portion of their income. Someone who makes $200,000 would save $44,700*1.5%=$670.50 compared to the current tax regime. Since it is only the portion of one's income that is in excess of $200k that would be taxed at the higher rate of 33% that the LPC wants to introduce, this person would not actually be subject to the higher tax rate and would only end up paying more if they made over approx. $202k. Basically, this plan means that anyone who earns less than $44,701/yr (i.e. 2/3 of the population) will see no change and anyone who makes between $44,701 and $202k will see a tax cut. I probably hate this plan more than you do.

I don't see how raising the minimum wage could be seen as vote-buying, actually, unless you mean that this is buying votes from government employees who make a minimum wage. Requiring employers, most of whom are presumably not the government, to pay a higher minimum wage does not in and of itself represent a government expenditure. Promising to do something in the future is also not really buying votes. Buying votes usually implies to me that a party is actually spending government money on specific demographic groups who are expected to develop a loyalty to that party and give their votes in return.

Hm? What I said was really not so different from what you were saying wrt deficits being acceptable during an economic downturn. Greece's situation, any way you slice it, is not the result of moderate Keynesian stimulus spending during recessions, which is what I was advocating. I was not advocating running large deficits year after year that are beyond the government's fiscal capacity to ever repay, nor was I advocating such a 'relaxed' approach to tax collection,

In fact, fanatically eliminating the budget deficit with no regard to the social cost, like the Liberals did in the 90s, is unconscionable imo. No progressive should advocate this. The Opposition should take MORE credit for forcing the government to borrow and implement stimulus measures during the 08/09 recession, even if it led to a deficit. What is more important imo is how we are investing the money that we are borrowing and how we are generating revenue: it is in these areas that I take issue with Conservative policy.

You're saying that modest deficits are OK sometimes, given that economies fluctuate, and that a perfectly balanced budget is a foolish thing to obsess over? I agree. Can we expect Conservative (and other) leaders to start saying this?

Where is the line for you, then? Pain that "can kill you", i.e. terminal illness? Because that is actually a different line than what the Supreme Court decided, which is that DAS is acceptable for people suffering from incurable, not necessarily terminal, illness. Or does the criterion have to do with whether other people have gone through the problem and managed to get over it? There are certainly people who have suffered serious incurable illnesses and still led meaningful and highly productive lives as well, e.g. Stephen Hawking. The difference might have to do with the supports that are available to the afflicted person - perhaps we need to look at the support and assistance we provide in terms of the quality of life of the disabled before we consider whether to help them commit suicide?