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Conservatives simply are poor managers of the public's money


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It's this kind of garbage that the moderators should be keeping tabs on. Stop with the personal insults already.

You mean like this one:

I understand you're still young, incredibly naive and largely ignorant of what one should do when they see hard times coming financially....

but only an uneducated moron would fail to grasp the concept that pissing away what is in the savings account is not a good idea.

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You do realize that is due to the scrapping of the severance pay? Last year when the public service union voted on a new contract they decided to give up the severance pay, this means that instead of waiting till a person retires to give them severance they offer it in the present and stop the severance program. From now on there is no more severance pay. Until now I believe severance was 7 days of pay for every year worked and once you retire they give you the sum. The Conservatives are not adding anything they are in fact cutting this program which was started I believe a few decades ago and thats why they are paying it out at once so they can end the program.

This is a non issue because they are blaming the Conservatives for paying out a program that another government started many years ago, accumulation for severance ended last march I believe which means that the conservatives are saving a lot of money in future severance pay to all employees of the federal government. If you only knew as much as you THINK you know this wouldn't be so embarrassing for you.

I can see why you'd want this to be a non-issue considering that you're defending the neo-cons who:

1 - threaten public servants with layoffs

2 - offer buy out options to public servants who have been in fear of loosing jobs

3 - increase the public attitude that public servants are greedy and lazy bums

4 - make departments performing public service inefficient

5 - make departments performing gov. over sight ineffective

6 - increase public scepticism about the public service being a waste of money

7 - increase the deficit - thru severance pay buy outs

8 - create the perception that all government, public service and unions is bad

9 - sweep in with privatization to save the day and increase profits for their friends.

And again, toss even money to their friends pet projects (super jails) while crying poor and professing the need for more austerity measures...

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I can see why you'd want this to be a non-issue considering that you're defending the neo-cons who:

1 - threaten public servants with layoffs

So you want to keep people in the government even if there is no work for them?

And source?

2 - offer buy out options to public servants who have been in fear of loosing jobs

Source?

3 - increase the public attitude that public servants are greedy and lazy bums

Source?

4 - make departments performing public service inefficient

How so? And By the way Source?

5 - make departments performing gov. over sight ineffective

Like which once? And how did they make them ineffective?

6 - increase public scepticism about the public service being a waste of money

What?

7 - increase the deficit - thru severance pay buy outs

The severance pay was on the books for a long time, what the conservatives are doing is saving money in the long run.

8 - create the perception that all government, public service and unions is bad

How so?

9 - sweep in with privatization to save the day and increase profits for their friends.

How so? Source?

And again, toss even money to their friends pet projects (super jails) while crying poor and professing the need for more austerity measures...

I don't know about you, but common sense dictates you keep criminals in jail rather than the general public. I wouldn't want Michael Rafferty or Russell Williams as my next-door neighbour...

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Signals, the savings you claim will be made are based on the idea that someone will stay with the civil service for 30 or more years when in fact, many won't.

Again...This is nothing short of the Harper government using this as a means to bribe the same folks who's jobs they have threatened to cut. Or a means of intimidation so the workers fall in line with the government message...

You can spin this to justify it all you want but at the end of the day it's been shown that these jackasses cannot manage money with the way they pissed away the surplus and failed to see the recession everyone knew was happening... they have absolutely no business tossing even more money out the window to pay people off based more of Flaherty style math....

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Signals, the savings you claim will be made are based on the idea that someone will stay with the civil service for 30 or more years when in fact, many won't.

As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about.

The severance pay was written into public service contracts a long time ago, I believe it was to make up for the fact public service salaries were frozen (they were frozen for many years). It is owed to public servants now, and there is nothing legal the government can do about that. What the tories are doing is ending the program. That severance will no longer accumulate. But they have no legal alternative to paying it out.

It's interesting you use this column, btw, to support your arguments. When I read it I thought it was the most blatantly Tea-Party conservative column I'd read in Canada in a long time. And yet, you appear to agree with it.

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Signals, the savings you claim will be made are based on the idea that someone will stay with the civil service for 30 or more years when in fact, many won't.

Im in the military, no more severance for us either and many of the members DO stay for 25-35 years.

Again...This is nothing short of the Harper government using this as a means to bribe the same folks who's jobs they have threatened to cut. Or a means of intimidation so the workers fall in line with the government message...

Don't see how that works, they bribed people, we will increase your salary by a quarter of a percent if you give up severance and many in the civil service had maxed out severance and voted for the raise(get their cake and eat it too)

You can spin this to justify it all you want but at the end of the day it's been shown that these jackasses cannot manage money with the way they pissed away the surplus and failed to see the recession everyone knew was happening...

The Surplus was "pissed" away to keep Canada afloat, and thanks to the Conservatives and Mr Harper we are much better then many in the western world.

they have absolutely no business tossing even more money out the window to pay people off based more of Flaherty style math....

I don't know if you are ignoring facts on purpose or not, but this was instituted decades ago, they are cancelling this program, would you prefer if they cancelled the program and told the unions that the agreement they had until this point will be removed and replaced with no severance and any severance earned to this point will be forfeit to the government, would that make you happier?

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Wrong, all three were personal insults posted by you.

Despite your self-denial and obvious ignoring of the moderators repeated requests that you cease from doing so.

You have no knowledge of history since you seem to ignore what led to an event you just complain about the consequences, you don't care what brought on the crisis and that no matter who was in power the surplus would have been gone and most likely would have been a worse deficit you sing to the same old tune of the big bad conservatives.

You have no "good fiscal sense" because from what you have been saying most of the ideas you support make no fiscal sense for the country.

Last one is my personal opinion based on your posting history.

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Rick you seem to have the same type of thinking as the europeans do, let me tell you something, the euros are broke and are going to be for along time. And I and many others do not to go that way so you can get what entitlements you think the goverment owes you. Like it or not the changes are coming and people are just going to have to pull up thier socks and deal with it. I am tired of all the crying from the left about every damn little thing you can think of. Time to get back to what made this country great, hard work and being proud of it. The time for getting paid large for doing very little are coming to a end.

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Rick you seem to have the same type of thinking as the europeans do, let me tell you something, the euros are broke and are going to be for along time. And I and many others do not to go that way so you can get what entitlements you think the goverment owes you. Like it or not the changes are coming and people are just going to have to pull up thier socks and deal with it. I am tired of all the crying from the left about every damn little thing you can think of.

Time to get back to what made this country great, hard work and being proud of it. The time for getting paid large for doing very little are coming to a end.

Ya ... Tell that to the richest 1% will ya! :D

The richest and the corporations have been riding the gravy train on the public dime and THAT's why the debt and deficit have bloated under Harper ... like $65m to FRAUDULENTLY promote the oil sands via FRAUDSTER Bruce Carson.

He's duping you too. There is no 'crisis' demanding 'austerity' for Canadians. There is only a FRAUD being perpetrated against the Canadian people where money is being sucked out of the public purse and into private pockets while we are stuck paying the interest on unnecessary debt and the bankers are laughing all the way to the Caymans!

You are being duped. We all are.

Edited by jacee
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You mean the Global Financial crisis which Harper and Flaherty said didn't exist when it was obvious to all....

You're pretty tiresome, the point is, the eventually spent a whole bunch of money to counter the recession and that increased our debt, you're arguments are terribly dishonest.

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A $13B surplus says to me the Liberals accumulated it by overtaxing Canadians. Why in hell would a government run a large surplus anyway if not to spread the money around to their friends at opportune times and bribe voters around election time with promises of entitlements. Sheesh!

or by downloading a lot of government expense to the provinces

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The last 15 years or so of Canadian fiscal policy has been Keynesian economics to a "T": government should spend to stimulate the economy in tough times, and then pay back that money (usually debt) during the good economic times. Chretien gov started paying down the debt with surpluses, and then with the recent recession hit the Harper gov did what most other Western countries did and ran deficits & to provide stimulus for the economy.

You can't blame Harper for doing what just about any other federal party would have done, including the Liberals under Chretien/Martin I'd be willing to bet. That isn't to say some of the Harper gov spending hasn't been moronic, but deficits alone doesn't make them "poor managers of the public's money". One can argue they handled the recession decently.

Edited by Moonlight Graham
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A $13B surplus says to me the Liberals accumulated it by overtaxing Canadians. Why in hell would a government run a large surplus anyway if not to spread the money around to their friends at opportune times and bribe voters around election time with promises of entitlements. Sheesh!

I'd disagree. The surplus is used to pay off the debt. And, if there is no more debt to pay off, a surplus can be used to create a sovereign wealth fund.

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The surplus is used to pay off the debt.

Maybe so. Yet, once governments would eliminate the national debt they'd simply build it up again to pay for their pet projects and offer carrots to voters at election time.

And, if there is no more debt to pay off, a surplus can be used to create a sovereign wealth fund.

I can imagine what the unemployed and overtaxed middle class would think about creating a sovereign wealth fund.

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I'd disagree. The surplus is used to pay off the debt. And, if there is no more debt to pay off, a surplus can be used to create a sovereign wealth fund.

I agree. I was against the tax cuts. I wanted to pay down the debt until it was gone.

If Alberta wasn't run by morons they'd have a huge sovereign wealth fund by now, instead of yearly deficits.

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Man! This was all SO predictable! Someone should have sealed an answer in an envelope to be opened after a few years.

At the time Mr. Harper made his statements that there was no impending economic crisis, only someone in Grade school would have believed him. The US stock market took a massive crash, the US and Canadian economies are so closely linked, it was inevitable that a hit in the US was going to have rather a large ripple effect in Canada. We saw this most of all in Ontario, the manufacturing sector is still embattled and beleaguered to this very day. Other commodity and resource based economies like those of Alberta, SK and to a lesser extent BC fared quite a bit better.

Long story short Bill, it was disingenuous at best of Mr. Harper to launch a statement that there was no economic crisis in Canada. This above all is what bothers me about the whole scenario, as the saying goes "don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining".

Apparently, the critics have conveniently forgotten that they castigated the new Harper government for not recognizing a coming recession and DEMANDED zillions of dollars of stimulus spending!

This is a rather fortunate turn of events for the CPC of the time, their original budget was doing nothing to address the crisis that didn't exist. This way they can claim all the credit, and none of the criticism because the devil (ie. the opposition parties) made them do it.

Being in a minority situation at the time, Harper had no choice but to go along with the demands.

Untrue, they did have a choice. What they didn't have was, as is ALWAYS the case with minority governments, was the ability to do as the pleased as a majority government does. They could have chosen to proceed as they were and lost the government as a result. The reality is they DID have choice. They chose power over principle. I don't fault them for this in the least, it's the choice most would make given the choice, but to say "they didn't have a choice" is utterly untrue.

A few years later, those same critics are now screaming that Harper put us into a deficit!

And so it cuts both ways. The CPC chose power over principle, because they didn't stick to their principles they have to deal with the fallout of that. They CHOSE to spend into deficit. Yes there are a myriad of reasons and justifications for it, but at the end of the day this is what they CHOSE. They are to be held responsible for their choices. Let us never be so naive as to absolve them of this simply because they were in a minority situation. "They had no choice" is drivel, they had a choice of sticking to their principles and likely pay the price of losing government. They chose to keep government at the cost of compromising their principles. That too has a cost, and a little bit of criticism, whether it is undue or not, is getting off easy.

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I was against the tax cuts. I wanted to pay down the debt until it was gone.

I'm not qualified to determine whether the tax cuts were ill advised or not. Of course, the concept of more money going into the treasury is not a difficult concept to grasp. In this respect reducing the GST was not a good move but I don't doubt it helped get the Conservatives elected.

In a speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto, Flaherty said he wants to focus on getting spending under control, and that means getting rid of programs or initiatives that do nothing for the economy. He did not name any specific federal programs that might have to be cut, nor did he say where Ottawa is looking to reduce its spending.

"As we do every year, we will hear from various groups including the Opposition, calling for more spending, new programs and bigger government," Flaherty said.

However, the finance minister reiterated that the Conservative government plans to stay the course on deficit cutting and tax reduction.

"By sticking to our target of eliminating the deficit in the medium term and finding savings within government operations, we will follow through on our pledge to Canadians, while focusing on what truly matters: jobs and growth."

Flaherty's remarks came as the government reported it is on pace to beat its budget deficit target of $32.3 billion for this fiscal year, thanks to higher-than-expected tax revenues.

Federal revenues were up $4.3 billion, or 3.9 per cent, in the first half of the year, almost all from taxes of individual Canadians. Corporate tax revenues rose about $900 million, but revenues from the GST fell $1.4 billion.

---

Earlier Friday, the Conference Board of Canada issued a report declaring the country's economy fundamentally sound and predicting further expansion barring a European meltdown.

The Ottawa think-tank's latest analysis of provincial economies says the economy will expand by 2.4 per cent next year and 3.3 per cent in 2013 — above the consensus of most economists.

http://www.globalnews.ca/time+to+pay+down+canadas+debt+flaherty+says/6442529355/story.html

As one who has only a rudimentary understanding of fiscal issues, my sense is that the positives of our economy can be attributed to a number of factors, i.e. sound economic policies by past and present governments mixed with a bit of luck.

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At the time Mr. Harper made his statements that there was no impending economic crisis, only someone in Grade school would have believed him. The US stock market took a massive crash, the US and Canadian economies are so closely linked, it was inevitable that a hit in the US was going to have rather a large ripple effect in Canada.

A lot of people now say that it was obvious/inevitable that the world was heading for a major financial crisis. Unfortunately, as usual, none of these pundits were telling us that before it occurred. Otherwise they'd all have made a huge killing on the stock market.

This is a rather fortunate turn of events for the CPC of the time, their original budget was doing nothing to address the crisis that didn't exist. This way they can claim all the credit, and none of the criticism because the devil (ie. the opposition parties) made them do it.

True, but only to a certain degree. But given most of that criticism of them running up the budet is coming from parties, or the supporters of parties which were clamouring for massive financial incentives the accusation wears pretty thin.

And so it cuts both ways. The CPC chose power over principle, because they didn't stick to their principles they have to deal with the fallout of that. They CHOSE to spend into deficit. Yes there are a myriad of reasons and justifications for it, but at the end of the day this is what they CHOSE. They are to be held responsible for their choices
.

They're whores, like all politicians. But given the opposition was demanding these huge incentives the fact is we were going to have them no matter what the Tories decided. If they'd stuck to their 'principals' the opposition would be the government, but we still would have had that spending. So really, they had no way of stopping it.

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So you approve of the "I see nothing", Sgt. Shultz, stick your head in the sand approach then...

Fero too remained calm....too busy fiddling while Rome burned....

Point of order here. Your analogy falls apart somewhat. Emperor Nero was largely insane and was directly responsible for Rome burning. He wanted Rome to burn as this was necessary so that he could rebuild it as he saw fit.

The CPC by contrast did not cause the economic crisis. They didn't actually start to address it either until it came down to a choice between sticking to their principles or power. Choosing power they realized that meant they had to actually compromise with the other parties. Hence we're in our current situation today for better or for worse.

Edited by Dave_ON
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