Who is the greatest Prime Minister of all time?

[jbg]

whaaa! Ya, ya... that's it, that's the only reason!

hey cybercoma... is there an option to turn this poll into a visible option... I'm curious to see how many new members have just registered and voted - you know... Harper PMO guys!

"Sir, you had the option". Brian Mulroney, 1984.

[Guest Manny]

He's never even been a member of the party.

But he enjoyed many a sleep-over at the Mackay chalet.

[Rick]

whaaa! Ya, ya... that's it, that's the only reason!

hey cybercoma... is there an option to turn this poll into a visible option... I'm curious to see how many new members have just registered and voted - you know... Harper PMO guys!

More than a few I'm betting.

Take this poll in 25 years time and I'll bet Harper gets the same amount of respect as Mulroney is in this one.

Or what Mike Harris gets in Ontario...

[Evening Star]

To be fair I think accepting cash from dubious characters in hotel rooms is what has forever tarnished his image even if he technically did nothing illegal. If he was simply judged on his record (GST, Free Trade, Meech Lake etc) then he would have faired much better.

I'm a little sceptical about this. Mulroney consistently scored poorly in opinion polls about past PMs even prior to the revelations about Airbus. The GST was probably good policy but it did not make him popular. Also, I don't think the failures of Meech Lake and Charlottetown and the resulting fallout (Hello BQ!) have endeared him to the public.

I actually doubt that Harper will suffer the same fate.

Edited December 31, 2011 by Evening Star

[Evening Star]

"Rae Days" meant that all public servants would get some unpaid days off each year, i.e. their hours were reduced very slightly, not that they worked for free, which would have definitely been unconscionable. I maintain that it was a good policy with poor PR: it's the least painful way they could have made cuts. The cuts were spread around and those who made the least lost the least. Plus, it worked: Harris got to take the credit for the savings. The unions reacted short-sightedly and got to deal with Harris-style cuts instead imo.

Otherwise, you basically seem to be agreeing with me that his weaknesses relative to the Manitoba NDP had to do more with confidence and preparation than with a major ideological difference.

Oh Star, Rae's term was worse, far worse! He was totally unprepared to win! Some of the steps he took to address the recession would have been funny if the effects weren't so sad.

I'll give you some examples with which I have first hand knowledge.

Within a couple of weeks of Rae's win, we had a situation in Hamilton over what is now called the Red Hill Creek Expressway, which was to provide a rapid highway link between upper and lower Hamilton, connecting at one end to the 403 and at the other down to the QEW at Stoney Creek.

Although polls had always shown overwhelming popular support for the project,well organized protest groups had managed to block the expressway from being built, with claims that it would cut down several millions of trees and have asphalt pavement from one horizon to the other, with squirrels and small animals trapped in the tar with their asses sticking up, to be run over by wicked automobiles.

Anyhow, at that time the Ontario NDP was a champion for such groups. When you don't expect to win and deliver you can take your support from anywhere, I guess.

Anyhow, the project had finally been approved, building contracts issued and bulldozers had begun taking out scrub cedars and other trees. Contrary to the propaganda of the activists, the trees involved were anything BUT giant sacred native sequoias.

After only a week or two in power Rae's government suddenly cancelled the project! The people of Hamilton went ape! Thirty years of delay had made traffic a genuine pissoff in Hamilton and had been a major obstacle to attract new business to the manufacturing plants that had been closing down and leaving the city, taking their jobs with them.

Rae's spokespeople seemed to have no idea of the consequences of their action, or the negative reactions of the Hamilton townspeople. I saw Rae's transport minister on television, saying "We will investigate alternatives, like perhaps Highway 27."

Leaving aside the mistake in citing Hwy 27, which is in Mississauga, when he meant Highway 20, his statement revealed his ignorance that all alternatives had been studied 10 times over during the 30 year delay. There WERE NO other practical alternatives!

Worse yet, the contractors all were holding signed contracts which had been arbitrarily cancelled. The lawyers threw a party for themselves as they commenced litigation against the government.

The public outcry eventually grew so loud that Rae's government held a public meeting at a banquet hall in Stoney Creek, which I attended. Our new MPP, Mark Morrow, was there. Mark was a rookie who rode the wave into office. He had had maybe two election signs, which I think his mother put in for him. Yet there he was, our new man! It was similar to the last federal election in Quebec, I guess.

They put up a microphone at either side of the room, saying that people on both sides of the fence could line up and take their turns alternately at the mike. We were warned quite severely that a person would only have one opportunity to speak at their microphone, so make it good!.

Well Star, immediately I started to chuckle! There must have been 400 people, lined up and out the door, to speak at the microphone for those opposed to the NDP's action. Meanwhile, there was less than a dozen speakers who supported it! I witnessed this with my own eyes!

After a while the moderators had a problem. They ran out of NDP supporters with hundreds of those on the other side still waiting to speak! So much for "you better make it good!" They decided to let both sides alternate and those few who supported the government got to take turn after turn after turn.

It was an obvious put-up job trying to mollify the populace. Mark Morrow made the greenhorn political mistake of obviously paying no attention to the speakers. At one point a woman attacking the decision stopped and started to demand that Mark at least pay her the courtesy of listening to her words! Mark acted like he didn't understand why she was upset, like a teenager who hasn't yet learned proper courtesies and graces.

It's not hard to understand how the situation came about. I can imagine a plausible scenario. I doubt if Bob and his people had any idea of what was happening in Hamilton! Why would they? Hamilton has always kind of been "Nowhereville". They hadn't even had time to set up their desks and find the washroom when some of their Hamilton eco-warrior activist supporters call Bob up and say "Bob! They're killing trees down here! You better come down and stop it! They're HURTING THE PLANET!"

I'm sure Bob was not completely a rube and would have asked "Are you sure there won't be any negative political repercussions?"

"Don't worry!" the eco-warriors would have told him. "The whole city is on our side and will love you for it!"

So poor Bob and his crew would have been rushed into a hasty decision that exploded in their faces.

When Bob's term was finally up, construction of the Red Hill Creek Expressway immediately started up again. The project was finished and few drivers in Hamilton would ever want to go back! Recently, several large enterprizes have come to Hamilton and given in toto nearly 10,000 new jobs. All of them cited improved transportation links as one of the reasons they decided to come here.

Another thing I witnessed was new policies at the Highway Dept. I had a personal friend who had worked there for years and had climbed a fair way up the ladder. He told me that Rae's people had decided the Highway Department had to hire several thousand casual workers, immediately! These workers were only to be kept until they had accumulated enough paid weeks to qualify for EI.

The problem was that this left insufficient time for safety training sessions, which had always been mandatory for any and all new hires. Rae's people waived it!

Also, they had no work of value for them! So the word came down from Queens Park that they were to be put on crews building and repairing concrete overpasses along the QEW from Hamilton to Niagara.

Star, it was the dead of winter and well below freezing! Hardly the time to pour concrete! By spring all the work was so frost damaged it had to be done over.

It was about that time that my friend had enough and went back to the family farm in Binbrook. Before that he and the other old hands had always assumed that although they could always expect a bit of political silliness it was understood that the roads had to be kept plowed and the bridges in good repair. Rae's people showed them that their political masters considered such ideas to be irrelevant. Large numbers of other workers like my friend quit at that time.

Rae's NDP also showed total ineptness with how finances and businesses worked. Before Rae, companies were required by law to match employee pension contributions in large, unionized businesses. Due to the recession going on at the time, the NDP decided to give companies like Stelco some cash flow relief, in order to retain jobs. Stelco was allowed to let their contributions "slide" for an unspecified amount of time. 10 years later Stelco was nearly bankrupt and up for sale. It was discovered that one of the problems with being sold was that there were hundreds of millions of dollars delinquent in outstanding pension contributions! Potential buyers didn't want to assume that debt!

Then there were the Rae Days! To try to balance his books, ole Bob came up with the idea for everyone in a government job to work a few days for free each year, to afford some necessary savings. It would also mean that fewer workers would have to be laid off. Rae seemed to expect that his good report with CUPE and others involved would mean they would cheerfully accept the idea.

Instead, they went screaming yellow zonkers and refused to comply!

And on and on and on, Star! I'm willing to grant their hearts may have been in the right place but they were total boneheads in how they governed! They never expected to be in power so they had no preparation or experience to apply.

No Star, McGuinty has done some goofy and expensive faux pas but he's nowhere in the Bob Rae/NDP league!

Edited December 31, 2011 by Evening Star

[jbg]

"Rae Days" meant that all public servants would get some unpaid days off each year, i.e. their hours were reduced very slightly, not that they worked for free, which would have definitely been unconscionable. I maintain that it was a good policy with poor PR: it's the least painful way they could have made cuts. The cuts were spread around and those who made the least lost the least. Plus, it worked: Harris got to take the credit for the savings. The unions reacted short-sightedly and got to deal with Harris-style cuts instead imo.

Don't unions always do that? Courtesy of unions, in the private sector, we have dead factories throughout the upper Midwest. Even some in Detroit with trees growing through them, if I'm not mistaken.

Always take too much, and heedless of realities.

[cybercoma]

Why is it always the unions' faults with you people? The unions don't manage the businesses. They're simply an organization for labour to bargain with the management. You blame unions as if there's no negotiation or agreement between parties. The only way jobs would have stayed in the midwest is if people would have gone back to working for $3 per 12 hour day. If that's not unreasonable to you, if you don't believe that someone who works an honest fulltime workweek should be able to make a decent living and provide for his/her family then it's impossible to have any sort of discussion about labour relations with you.

[regroup]

I chose PET but it was a tossup with Sir John A. Macdonald. I guess a lot depends on your definition of "greatest".

[Rick]

People who wanted the things that he was promising, and are pleasantly surprised that he's actually doing them.

Which confirms what Bill Barilko said then.

Thanks for clarifying that.

[regroup]

Why is it always the unions' faults with you people? The unions don't manage the businesses. They're simply an organization for labour to bargain with the management. You blame unions as if there's no negotiation or agreement between parties. The only way jobs would have stayed in the midwest is if people would have gone back to working for $3 per 12 hour day. If that's not unreasonable to you, if you don't believe that someone who works an honest fulltime workweek should be able to make a decent living and provide for his/her family then it's impossible to have any sort of discussion about labour relations with you.

Union bargaining is the equivalent of corporations engaging in price fixing.

Labour rates are a price that should be set by the market for that labour. Just as it is illegal for corporations to engage in price fixing, it should be illegal for unions to 'fix' prices with collective bargaining.

[Wild Bill]

Otherwise, you basically seem to be agreeing with me that his weaknesses relative to the Manitoba NDP had to do more with confidence and preparation than with a major ideological difference.

No, just brains, Star! Lots of people lack confidence or preparation. I'm going by what approaches they dreamed up.

A high school student council could have done a better job!

[Shakeyhands]

WOOHOOO Boster Club!!!!!

[Rick]

WOOHOOO Boster Club!!!!!

:lol:

It'd be interesting to know how many of the recent influx of Harper votes came from new users with no posts to their name and an IP matching one already registered here...

Ya ya.. I know how easy it is for them to grab a proxy and do it too...

[Guest Manny]

:lol:

It'd be interesting to know how many of the recent influx of Harper votes came from new users with no posts to their name and an IP matching one already registered here...

Ya ya.. I know how easy it is for them to grab a proxy and do it too...

You have to wonder who would be dumb enough to waste their time doing that, and for what good reason too.

I know I know, CPC partisans...

[CPCFTW]

Why is it always the unions' faults with you people? The unions don't manage the businesses. They're simply an organization for labour to bargain with the management. You blame unions as if there's no negotiation or agreement between parties. The only way jobs would have stayed in the midwest is if people would have gone back to working for $3 per 12 hour day. If that's not unreasonable to you, if you don't believe that someone who works an honest fulltime workweek should be able to make a decent living and provide for his/her family then it's impossible to have any sort of discussion about labour relations with you.

If you believe that unions would have had to accept $3 per 12 hour day, then it's impossible to have any sort of discussion about labour relations with you.

The problem with unions is that they hold management hostage. They can cost a business millions of dollars by going on strike, so management accepts terms which are not sustainable. Then the company either goes bankrupt, or management outsources the work to avoid being held hostage again. Either way, everyone (but the Chinese) loses when unions get involved.

The reality is that manufacturing can certainly exist in North America, but non-unionized workers would have to be compensated at near minimum wage. I don't see how that is any worse than having those workers working in Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Subway, etc. for minimum wage. Do you only approve of minimum wage when someone's making you a hamburger and not a component of a car engine?

Edited January 1, 2012 by CPCFTW

[Wild Bill]

:lol:

It'd be interesting to know how many of the recent influx of Harper votes came from new users with no posts to their name and an IP matching one already registered here...

Ya ya.. I know how easy it is for them to grab a proxy and do it too...

Rick, we have good news and bad news. You're not crazy and paranoid!

However, there is someone after you...

:lol:

[Rick]

Rick, we have good news and bad news. You're not crazy and paranoid!

However, there is someone after you...

:lol:

As far as I push the envelope and speak out against the fascist right, Bill... I'd be shocked if there weren't

[cybercoma]

Union bargaining is the equivalent of corporations engaging in price fixing.

Labour rates are a price that should be set by the market for that labour. Just as it is illegal for corporations to engage in price fixing, it should be illegal for unions to 'fix' prices with collective bargaining.

The market is broken. You have people here competing with people that can survive in developing nations on a few bucks a day. World trade is killing the working class.

[cybercoma]

If you believe that unions would have had to accept $3 per 12 hour day, then it's impossible to have any sort of discussion about labour relations with you.

The problem with unions is that they hold management hostage. They can cost a business millions of dollars by going on strike, so management accepts terms which are not sustainable. Then the company either goes bankrupt, or management outsources the work to avoid being held hostage again. Either way, everyone (but the Chinese) loses when unions get involved.

The reality is that manufacturing can certainly exist in North America, but non-unionized workers would have to be compensated at near minimum wage. I don't see how that is any worse than having those workers working in Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Subway, etc. for minimum wage. Do you only approve of minimum wage when someone's making you a hamburger and not a component of a car engine?

Have you ever worked in an auto-factory? I grew up in Windsor, ON. There isn't anyone in their right mind that would do it for 40 hours a week on minimum wage. Even at $15-18 per hour, over half of new recruits quit before their 90 days are up because they can't handle the job. It's not as easy as you think and it certainly isn't worth doing for minimum wage.

[CPCFTW]

Have you ever worked in an auto-factory? I grew up in Windsor, ON. There isn't anyone in their right mind that would do it for 40 hours a week on minimum wage. Even at $15-18 per hour, over half of new recruits quit before their 90 days are up because they can't handle the job. It's not as easy as you think and it certainly isn't worth doing for minimum wage.

Have you ever worked in a McDonalds? I grew up in Anytown, ON. There isn't anyone in their right mind that would do it for 40 hours a week on minimum wage. Over half of new recruits quit before their 90 days are up because they can't handle the job. It's not as easy as you think and it certainly isn't worth doing for minimum wage.

[cybercoma]

Since you think working at McDonalds is analogous to McDonalds, I'll take that as an admission that you haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about.

[CPCFTW]

Since you think working at McDonalds is analogous to McDonalds, I'll take that as an admission that you haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about.

Judging by this sentence it doesn't appear that you do either.

Anyway over 7% of the workforce is unemployed in Ontario. I'm sure if ei andd welfare weren't so generous people would gladly work in manfacturing for 20k/yr. Hell, I'd prefer if the government dumped 5k/yr into an resp for people working for a manufacturer than pay them to loaf around drinking beer and watching maury.

[cybercoma]

I'm sure if ei andd welfare weren't so generous

Stop perpetuating myths. You've been shown many times that welfare and social assistance is not generous. You get a few hundred bucks a month ($530 for someone in Toronto). More to the point, a person is required to show that they have absolutely no means to survive and they're subjected to a thorough and intrusive financial audit before they're even considered for welfare. For that matter, EI is a completely different program. It's temporary and an insurance scheme that protects employers from lawsuits. People on EI are audited frequently and must be looking for work. It's not some walk in the park. It's meant to prevent people from losing their homes if they unexpectedly lose their jobs.

I don't care if you have particular criticisms about the programs, but you seem to have no idea how either program works (ie, implying that EI is some sort of government handout) and carry around this destructive notion that neither of them should exist.

[CPCFTW]

Stop perpetuating myths. You've been shown many times that welfare and social assistance is not generous. You get a few hundred bucks a month ($530 for someone in Toronto). More to the point, a person is required to show that they have absolutely no means to survive and they're subjected to a thorough and intrusive financial audit before they're even considered for welfare. For that matter, EI is a completely different program. It's temporary and an insurance scheme that protects employers from lawsuits. People on EI are audited frequently and must be looking for work. It's not some walk in the park. It's meant to prevent people from losing their homes if they unexpectedly lose their jobs.

I don't care if you have particular criticisms about the programs, but you seem to have no idea how either program works (ie, implying that EI is some sort of government handout) and carry around this destructive notion that neither of them should exist.

EI premiums make it more expensive to employ people.

$530/mo is very generous for doing nothing.

Stop perpetuating the mindset that leads to what is happening in Europe right now. Want to talk about a destructive notion? Look at what a strong "safety net" has done to Europe.

Edited January 2, 2012 by CPCFTW

[cybercoma]

EI premiums make it more expensive to employ people.

The EI premiums are set by a tripartite board which has equal representation from employees, employers, and government. It doesn't make it mor expensive to employ people because EI is insurance against being sued by employees.

$530/mo is very generous for doing nothing.

In Ontario, you certainly don't do "nothing." Perhaps you should have a look at the Ontario Works page. In order to qualify, they do a highly intrusive financial audit to determine that you are in dire need of money right away to pay for food and housing. You can't just walk into the office and get handed a check by signing a few documents.

Stop perpetuating the mindset that leads to what is happening in Europe right now. Want to talk about a destructive notion? Look at what a strong "safety net" has done to Europe.

You have no idea how the safety net works or its purpose. It's there as much to protect the rich as it is to support the poor.