NDP Leadership #90

http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/News/Local/2012-02-10/article-2892189/NDP-s...

I know when my friend told me of her conversation with the Topp campaign, I passed it on to Tom's campaign manager. Although it's a public attack Topp has used before, I wanted them to know it was part of their phone bank messaging. Stock... don't have too much of an issue pointing out the differences or liabilities in other candidates... IF accurate. We're New Democrats, not Liberals or Tories. I just don't think it wise to have someone say they're supporting a certain candidate then use a negative line with them on the phone. Sell your candidate! It sort of backfires in my opinion. Different avenues for different campaign tactics. As I said, Nash's campaign was quite respectful. If I had Topp's campaign on the phone who started spouted crap about Tom after I told them who I was supporting, they would have had an earful... and turn me off of Topp even more.

The main stream media are scum, to be sure.  I recall being at an anti-poverty protest, and a reporter from the Star asked me if I was surprised by the large police presence there.  I stated no, that historically the establishment has always been opposed to the working class and poor and thus such demonstrations typically got a large police presence.  She asked my name and I gave it.  Someone else beside me started railing about how yes, there was definitely more police here than ever before.  She asked for his name, but he declined.  Later, the Star reported his comments as being mine (since they were looking for a quote along the lines that he had given, but he had not given a name).  So yes, sometimes when they want a story and a quote to support it, they'll go out of their way to get it.

Anyway, I'd be surprised if Saganash were to back Topp in the future.  He seemed quite opposed to Topp's plan to raise taxes on the wealthy (those above $250,000).  I myself feel it's a good idea for decreasing the gap between the rich and poor, but Saganash obviously didn't.

Interesting story about Mulcair in the Star today:

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1129531--ndp-policie...

I have to say that I simply disagree with Mulcair on the issue of taxes.

"It’s not smart politics for a party wanting to form government to talk about taxing the rich or anyone else without first looking at the books, NDP leadership candidate MP Thomas Mulcair said Friday.

In a not-so-veiled swipe at competitor Brian Topp, who has called for a new federal income tax bracket of 35 per cent on incomes in excess of $250,000, Mulcair told the Toronto Star editorial board that kind of boilerplate policy does nothing to attract more people to the party.

“Canadians who are going to be making a choice in the next election … have to be reassured that the person who is asking them for their votes and says they want to form a government — that person has to look the Canadian voter in the eye and say … ‘The last thing that is going to be imposed on you as an individual is more taxation unless there is no other way,” he said.

Mulcair said even if the tax bracket was pegged at $1 million, “the only thing the voter will hear ‘is these guys want more taxes.’”

Mulcair said his NDP government would bring in a cap and trade or polluter-pay system that he says would pump tens of billions of dollars into government coffers and reduce pollution at the same time."

I just DON'T agree. First of all, I don't think Canadians are complete idiots who think that raising taxes on people making over $250,000/year is some sort of secret code for rasing taxes on everyone. If Barack Obama and all kinds of middle of the road Democrats can openly call for raising taxes on the top 1% - why the fear of the NDP calling for the same thing??

Second of all, I just don't buy this idea that the "hocus pocus" of cap and trade will miraculously raise BILLIONS of dollars and give the federal government fiscal room to be able to address all these problems and that not a single individual will pay more tax.It just doesn't add up. Its also not sustainable - eventually as companies start to actually reduce their GHG emissions (which is the ultimate goal of cap and trade) they will pay less and less in cap and trade and eventially the federal government will go bankrupt!

There is a lot that I admire about Mulcair, but I also am at a loss to figure out what he actually stands for beyond cap and trade, cap and trade, cap and trade...If he becomes PM, will he actually DO anything??

 

dacckon: "I was completely unaware that a majority of Canadians know and have read multiple books on how to apologize."

This is very, very funny. Thank you. You've made my point far better than I'm able to today.

Agreed. And it's clearly not a case of a reporter slanting a candidate's position or something. Mulcair answered in the same exact way in (at least) one of the official debates: he first tossed aside the appropriateness of reforming taxation at the top of the scale and then relied solely on cap & trade as a potential revenue-raising measure.

I am not working for any candidate, but if I met a party member who said they were supporting one of the candidates whose French is lousy, I would politely ask if they were not concerned that picking a leader who speaks really bad French wouldn't essentially mean flushing 58 Quebec MPs down the toilet.

I'm a strong believer in "caveat emptor". If the next leader is someone who speaks lousy French and the news is received really badly in Quebec and the party drops into single digits....I don't want to have party members who helped elect that person as leader come up to me and say "but no one ever told me that so and so couldn't speak French. i thought he was supposed to be bilingual".

I think that people voting in this process need to be 100% aware of the facts about all the candidates. The problem is that if you are a unilingual anglophone - you probably can't tell the difference between the quality of Mulcair's French and Dewar's and you might actually cast a vote with the best of intentions for a candidate without knowing that they have a "poison pill"

I want to give Mulcair the benefit of the doubt. He probably spent hours talking to the editorial board of the Toronto Star and that article could be a very unrepresentative sampling of everything that was discussed.

Stockholm, thanks for the link to the Star article.  Not only do I not buy what he's saying about the saleability of raising taxes on the top 1%, I also don't think it's wise to try and sell increasing social spending on the back of a cap and trade program.  The revenue is not meant to be sustainable (it's meant to reduce carbon, and thus revenue from it will be expected to be reduced over time), so stating that long term social programs can be promised on the back of this is false.  Revenue from cap and trade should go to stuff like environmental programs like home retrofits, etc., and not for social programs.  Plus, I don't feel it would provide enough revenue for the long term social programs that the NDP should undertake.  Also, the Conservatives would have a field day with this like they did with Dion's Green Shift. 

The Tories will attack the NDP for having a "hidden agenda" to raise taxes - whether we promise it or not. I would rather be explicit about who will pay more tax and who will not under an NDP government and let people either take it or leave it - then try to make pie in the sky claims that we can bring on all kinds of new social programs etc...and that its all free and that NO ONE will have to pay a dime more for it - because all the money is going to come from a few big bad polluters. It just doesn't pass the smell test.

The source on that story was actually Alec Castonguay of L'Actualité, and he seemed to have done his homework. He had a thorough piece on Saganash's pending endorsement of Topp, including a bit where he went to the Mulcair camp and they told him they were aware of Saganash's decision, the timeline of when and how the decsion was taken, and confirmation from several sources. Then, once Saganash announced he was running, he ran a second piece explaining some of the reasons he changed his mind and featuring quotes from anonymous party insiders saying they were surprised. It seems pretty solid to me.

More doom and gloom from Hebert.  No surprise for me.

I never said that.

The thread had drifted to convention conspiracy theories, and I passed on one I had heard.  True or not, you have to admit it's a good story! :)

What worries me the most are not attack ads that say that "horror of horrors" the NDP wants to raise taxes on the top one half of one percent that makes over $250k/year. I'm more concerned about attack ads that the NDP has a laundry list of worthy promises to address lots of social problems and no credible plan to pay for them at all...its just going to be done with make believe funny money!

Just got back from a Thomas Mulcair event. I have a lot of positive things to say. But I agree that the tax issue raises legitimate concerns.

The point of cap and trade is that the punitive costs of polluting are supposed to discourage pollution. Does he mean to tell me that he expects them to keep polluting more than ever, while the federal government rakes on tax money, and doesn't even spend it on clean-up?

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. The mainstream media has a terrible habit of misquoting depending on the story they want to present. He didn't explicitly rule out taxing the rich, only that "we need to look at the books first", which I hope he's doing right now.

It's imperitive that Mulcair put out a tax policy soon. A lot of rank-and-file New Democrats want to know for certain where he wants to take the party on this issue.