Belinda.ca manouever

[Argus]

Linda McQuaig praises Stronach for allowing the budget to survive amid vicious attacks from outraged right

At the risk of giving short shrift to the juicy themes of betrayal and treachery in the great Ottawa morality play, I'll deal first with the substance.

By crossing the floor, Belinda Stronach — hero or political whore, depending on your perspective — allowed the budget to survive.

With the extra $4.6 billion in social spending insisted on by the NDP, this is the most progressive federal budget in 30 years.

This, in essence, is why the NDP will never form the government in Canada. Because to the NDP the more money you spend, the better, and even more moral you are. The NDP has never come to terms with the fact that the money spent by government comes out of ordinary people's pockets. They seem to believe it all pops out of thin air, or at least, comes from big corporations they hate or rich guys they despise. That extra four and a half billion dollars is not money which was created out of thin air. It is money taken from me and others like me, money we worked for, and it will largely be spent on nothing that will help us and nothing that we believe we actually need.

[Argus]

My opinion is that Belinda was born with a gold spoon in her mouth and is used to daddy buying her anything she ever wanted, but he couldn't buy her the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, and Belinda simply cannot accept the idea of losing to anyone.

Convervatives were thrilled to have her join the CPC party - her personal background was not an issue until she decided to join the Liberals.

They were thrilled until they actually saw her perform. The thrill was soon gone, except among the "progressives", for whom style is far more important than substance.

[willy]

They were thrilled until they actually saw her perform.

Belinda was and is like a puppet on stings. She has a team of pr advisors and strategists that design her few lines that she then repeats regardless of questions asked.

The first time I heard her speak it was embarrassing. I brought a number of friends out to a Vancouver bar to show off the party and gain their interest. Belinda was 2 hours late and then had the most pathetic 60 second speech I have ever heard. "Big pie, big economy, need your support for the big pie." I spent the rest of the night apologizing for wasting peoples time.

She has no substance but she was useful to the party as she was to her backers because she was a symbol, representative. (the Liberals are using her as a symbol as well and it will hurt them soon enough) Hopefully soon we have a new symbol that can also walk the walk for fiscal conservatives and socially liberal people in the party. In a two party state, parties are always coalitions and it is time for some Liberals to cross the floor to a party that better reflects their views. Harper has always had time for her politics, but many in the party were concerned with her competency as I am sure he was.

[Guest eureka]

The extra comes from the reserve and from paying down debt. The debt does not need to be paid down in this way: it never did. Most of the industrialized nations have adopted a more gradual approach and put more onto the social programmes that we are rediscovering through the push of the NDP.

[Argus]

The extra comes from the reserve and from paying down debt. The debt does not need to be paid down in this way: it never did.

It doesn't? So you know the good times will always roll? There won't be high interest rates ever again, and high unemployment? There will be no recessions, let alone deep ones?

Had Trudeau and Chretien not taken a nearly debt-free nation and run up a huge whopping debt just in time for double digit interest rates and a deep, world wide recession, Mulroney would not have had to devote something on the order of $40 billion per year out of the budget to servicing that debt. That means he wouldn't have had to borrow anywhere near as much as he wound up borrowing, and we wouldn't have this enormous debt load now. If we don't get his debt down and we do have another high spike in interest rates we'll very quickly wind up into deficits again, and the debt will only build higher.

Not that you care. You're old and you appear to not have a problem with running up huge debts to leave to your children. I have a different view.

[bigdude]

We could change that overnite by not allowing any advertising for any election campaign.

The reason we are constantly saddled with these right wing governments is that these right wing parties are in bed with the mainstream media.

During the last provincial election in BC I was at a fund-raiser where the former NDP premier Dave Barrett was the guest speaker. He had researched and discovered donations to the BC Liberals in the last year the statistics were available, 2003 I believe, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the mainstream media. And we wonder why this media is so biased.

This is a very serious breach of our democracy NOT to have a free press, and Canadians are paying a huge price because of it.

[Guest eureka]

It does!

As for a different view, it might help if you opened the blinds. Other countries are reducing the debt of the Conservative years without sacrificing civility. There is no reason that we could not have done so. Our economic performance has not been notably enhanced.