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Chajusong, your first link got it monumentally wrong, and refers to anonymous sources to substantiate a claim that turned out to be monumentally wrong.
I do tend to find these kinds of sources are often next to what I call useless. And again, there is no sense of who pushed such a spin, and why.
The first piece claims it was understood that Saganash was going to announce his own candidacy but had suddenly decided to support Topp (though we now know that he in fact announced his own candidacy).
The second piece claims, hilariously, that Saganash's announcement was a surprise to everyone. I guess that's everyone who was convinced that the initial assumption had been completely canceled out by the second assumption, which turned out to be a mistake.
I do know it took some convincing for him to enter the race. I see nothing here to persuade me he was on the cusp of endorsing Topp when that endorsement was leaked by whomever for whatever reason. I believe that leak might have pushed him to announce his intentions, as his intentions had just been very publicly misrepresented.
I usually don't put effort into my posts here, but let me say this about The Star and its constant gloom and doom for the NDP. And I do warn people that I am recalling this from my rusty memory....
A long time ago, The Star exploded with headlines and stories of an implied increase of youth violence. But why was it talking about gangs and such when crime statistics were showing that juvenile crime was going down?
Because the right wing National Post was debuting.
The moral of the story is, sometimes newspapers will write garbage just to make some cash and that we should take note of their history.
All of these questions about cap and trade depend on the design of the program and the cost of pollution abatement.
Mulcair is cleary assuming that the government will make money by selling emissions credits and enforcing the rules of not over-polluting. He is also assuming that pollution will be reduced.
So what does this mean? That the government will sell emissions credits every year (at some base rate) and then companies can trade them? That the government will reduce the number of emissions credits every year?
That would be my guess, but Mulcair's policy is largely silent on the question of how he would price these emissions credits. That is, how much would they cost? would the price change from year to year? what would drive the price changes if the government was setting the price? etc
Few things about Mulcair's tax plan (or lack thereof):
1) Other than Topp, NO CANDIDATE--not even the supposedly most left-wing Peggy Nash--has promised to raise personal income taxes.
2) Mulcair does not rule out other tax increases; he was just talking about personal income taxes.
3) Unlike Mulcair, I believe a Canadian politician could insitute a "wealth tax" for those making over 1 million (or maybe even $250 000). Yet, the leader would have to have very strong communication skills to make that case. Based on Topp's performance so far, he does not have them.
***
As for Hebert's latest column, she clearly contradicts what she wrote earlier this week:
"Another misconception has been that reinforcing the NDP’s connection with Quebec and expanding the party’s reach in the rest of the country could be mutually exclusive propositions.
Over the past month, national columnists from the three major papers have separately suggested that Thomas Mulcair may be the safest gamble on offer in what could be a make-or-break leadership vote for the NDP"
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1128218--hebert-ndp-...
I am confused about what she is thinking....
I think the most positive slant i could cast on Mulcair's views as the Star describes them are that he now thinks he is the prohibitive frontrunner and he wants to avoid painting himself into any corners with things he says as a leadership candidate. If he decided to propose tax increases on the wealthy maybe he wants to roll that out once he is leader of the opposition within his own framing of the issue and not as part of a leadership contest.
Yeah, I could see the strategic reasons for wanting to be very careful with how you roll out a tax plan.
The good news is he DID promise to put out a tax policy proposal, presumably before the leadership convention. So we will get our answer from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
I think Mulcair wants provinces to have more autonomy than they would within the current NDP platform. For instance, the statement about childcare within one of his policy backgrounders is suspect (I already discussed it in a former post, so I won't repeat it here). So, if the promises he makes continue to be minimal, then perhaps revenue wouldn't be a huge issue in a Mulcair government.
Well that doesn't bode well for universal healthcare. :-(
So, after all these years the NDP can finally take power and do...drum roll please...NOTHING! Everything is either under provincial jurisdiction or cannot be paid for because there is no plan to increase any revenue - so all we really get to do is have a slightly less pernicious foreign policy, appoint some more small "l" liberal judges make a few nice speeches at climate change conferences and that's it. Sounds a lot like the Chretien years
Let's not jump to conclusions.
I don't think anyone answered this so I thought I would. I severely doubt that Mulcair would be able to bring the different parts or rather factions of the party together, seeing as many in the party simply can't stand the man. At first I thought it was nothing more than a b.s. mainstream media narrative regarding Mulcair's personality and the "mercurial" tag that seems to go hand-in-hand with his name in news stories, editorials and columns. But after talking with former provincial and federal candidates and staff from various leadership campaigns, reading the accounts of NDP members who have met and dealt with him, and disconnecting myself from the Babble bubble's constant Mulcair PR machine, it was depressing to learn (as someone who previously defended him) that a mainstream news narrative is true, that Mulcair is an asshole and that "he has burned all his bridges in the party", "holds personal vendettas against several MPs and party officials", "people would leave the party in droves" if elected, and that as leader "could cause a caucus revolt". It doesn't surprise me either then that the Mulcair bots on here act as his online Babble bubble PR machine while sliming several of the other leadership candidates. Assholes are attracted to assholes and this place reeks of it, a toxic cesspool of Mulcair worship while denigrating Nash, Dewar, Ashton, Saganash and Topp. Any and all endorsements or policy releases for any other candidate besides Mulcair are attacked and deemed "meaningless", while the altar of Mulcair is relentlessly defended. Well I'm done. The board is in a pretty crappy state and some of the contributors here really piss me off and I'm sure some of them will reply with their usual "OMG! How dare you say such things about Mulcair! Wah!" but really it's such a waste of time and energy.Funny, I've found this board to be considerably more anti-Mulcair than other audiences I talk to.
Lots of unanswered questions. My view on the whole childcare thing is that the NDP's previously proposed law for a national childcare plan was a bit of a sham. It said nothing about how one would pay for a national childcare plan or even how it would be set up really. It just insisted that childcare be public and not-for-profit. Translation: it needs to be run by unionised employees.
So for me, the bill was a fraud. It didn't create a national childcare system (beyond a mild exhortation), it just tried to enshrine in law that any childcare system would have to be run by the public sector...which is unionised.
Paul Martin's approach was different. He wanted to give the province's incentives, aka $/child care space, to sign agreements whereupon they would create childcare spaces. This is how medicare was created. So at the end of the day, the issue mark_alfred raises is about "how do you get the provinces on board?" Do you use $/spaces, as was done for medicare, or do you try and impose a central mandate on something that is clearly provincial jurisdiction?
Mulcair realises that Québec would never put up with having the federal government telling it how to run a childcare system that it already has in place. I think Layton was getting around to this idea too and talking about having a childcare system for Canada but providing compensation to Québec for the childcare system they already had in place. Now where would Layton get an idea for something like that?....oh yeah, perhaps the much maligned Sherbrooke Declaration, which gives Québec the opportunity to opt out of things like a national childcare plan with full compensation.
Of course...the Sherbrooke Declaration raises questions about this/childcare for other provinces. If Québec can opt out with compensation, why not Alberta? I'd bet dollars to donuts the Conservative government of Alberta would rather have the cash than the childcare spaces. So an incentive plan cuts out a lot of constitutional (and jurisdictional and Sherbrooke) nonsense and gets right to the point: do you want to creat childcare spaces or not? how many do you want to create? do you want to get paid for those spaces or not? the end.
And yes, that is how medicare was built. Brick by brick.
strikes me as pretty basically intelligent to avoid telling people that you're going to raise income taxes, particularly when people already feel overtaxed. let's wait for mulcair's econ position paper to look at how he intends to pay for his programs before we reflexively jump all over him.
Mulcair seems to be worried about spin and to want to go after the taxes that ordinary people don't pay so that the Tories can't win on half truths. Closing tax havens seems to be about making sure one pays what one owes rather than increasing the tax rate.
I don't know about taking personal income tax increases off the table, but I can understand the desire to wish to pick one's battles - especially with an opponent which has a history of distorting facts and getting away with it.
Mulcair and Saganash are both lawyers and both seem to figure that they can get quite a bit of money out of corporations.
I like cap and trade - not only does big oil have to pay money into it, but that money will be used to finance green alternatives to big oil. Ergo, big oil will be paying the start up costs for the businesses which will eventually replace them.
Saganash says he's not going to raise taxes on the wealthy. Everyone says "very interesting, not sure I agree, but I'd like to see those numbers".
Mulcair says he needs to look at the books before raising taxes. Same people say he's a neoliberal trojan horse, the next Chretien, Bob Rae, etc.
This is really dumb to me, and I'm not even pro-mulcair. Just pro-evidence.
"Ordinary people" do not make over $250,000 per year and there would be at no risk whatsoever of paying more tax under Topp's plan. That makes me breathe a sigh of relief. i make less than $250k/year so I know that the money won't come from me...it will come from those investment bankers and tycoons and surgeons and corporate lawyers who are in the top 0.7%!!
When a politician tells me he or she will NEVER raise taxes on the filthy rich - the first thing that goes through my mind is - I guess I will be the one paying more. The government is going to need more money one way or the other and they arewilling to get it from the filthy rich - they will find ways to get it from the average Joe by increasing iuser fees and making me pay out of pocket for more things i currently get for free and maybe even by raising regressive taxes like sales taxes etc...
I'm not saying that...believe me I WANT to like Mulcair...but I feel like yelling "where's the beef?". The biggest issue of our time is the incredibly concentration of wealth that is accruing to the top 1% of the population through the world - and canada is no better than anyone else. If Mulcair is averse to making people who can afford to pay more contribute one red cent to the social and economic deficit in Canada then fine - maybe he has some other strategy for attacking the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us. I am sitting on hot coals waiting to see it!
I actually don't think its a double standard...no one cared when Saganash said he wasn't sure it was a good idea to raise taxes on the wealthy because everyone knew he had zero chance of winning. That being said, Paul Dewar's comments on tax policy are not much better than Mulcair's and I think his positions deserve more scrutiny as well!
Why do you think it's the Sherbrooke Declaration, or just the Sherbrook Declaration that gives Quebec the opportunity to opt out. Isn't there a QPP? Although I think that applying the idea of compensation to the QPP may not be valid. And opting out with compensation is an idea that predates the Sherbrook Declaration by a couple of decades.
As Mitt Romney so eloquently shows, the problem with income inequality is not limited to income taxes. The wealthy are really good at getting out of paying taxes.
What Mitt does (and most CEOs these days) is take his compensation in stock options and stock sales. Stock options are not taxed. Stocks are only taxed when they are sold or pay dividends. These taxes are called capital gains.
Now here's the stunt the wealthy play: if you sell stocks and make a gain, you pay the capital gains tax; if you sell stocks and make a loss, then you get to deduct that loss from your income. So what the rich do is sell enough stocks to have $20 million in income, then sell enough stocks to have $20 million in losses. So their net income is $0 and the pay no income tax (but they still pay capital gains on the $20 million).
Then to complete the stunt, they buy back the stocks they sold for a $20 million loss, using the proceeds from the sale (e.g. I buy $120 million worth of stocks, the value falls to $100 million, I sell the stocks for $100 million recording a $20 million loss on my income returns, then I take the $100 million I got from the sale and buy back the stocks, so at the end of the day I have still have all my wealth in stocks [whose value changes] and the only money I lost was on paper; what's more, most investment portfolios are designed to have some stocks that will lose money when others gain, this is to balance risk, so the net effect of this stunt is to rebalance your portfolio aka kill two birds with one stone; first bird: pay no income tax but pay the lower capital gains tax rate [for Romney this is 15%], second bird: rebalance your portfolio after a year of changes in stock values)
And that is just the capital gains stunt. The wealthy are also experts at claiming every exemption, loophole, and route through tax havens conceivable to man. They also know which tax cheats are most likely to get them audited or sued. Why? They can afford to hire the best accountants (and, if necessary, lawyers) in the country. If they lose or don't have a leg in court, they can hire the best lobbyists to try and prevent the government from enforcing the law. I am always amazed at how many big companies/wealthy people owe back taxes but provincial and municipal governments don't collect because they are afraid a major employer will go out of business.
So the take-home point is, taxing the rich (or fixing income inequality) is not so simple. You need to figure out every angle. You need to understand every loophole, exemption, and shelter. These people are not rich for nothing. They've found every shortcut.
I think it's fair to be skeptical. Of EVERYONE.
But the worst thing you can do is to invent answers, instead of trying to get them yourself.
Tonight I went to an event with Thomas Mulcair.
I heard a rumor a while back that he was lukewarm on electoral reform. So I asked him point blank.
Me: "Tom, I don't just want to stop Steven Harper. I've voted New Democrat as long as I've been able, because I want to advance a positive progressive agenda. A critical way to achieve that, for me, is electoral reform. I want to know: how do we achieve that? Is that something that's going to be a difficult constitutional negotiation, or are you willing to consider legislative options."
His answer, and I'm trying to be as close to verbatim as possible, including what initially sounded to me like a waffle, but resolved itself quite nicely.
Mulcair: "The question, in case you didn't hear it, was about electoral reform. First thing I have to say, the only way to achieve electoral reform is to elect a New Democratic majority. And that has to be under the current electoral system. But to answer your question... electoral reform has always been a part of the NDP platform. To get there, we would need to campaign on a clear platform that includes electoral reform, which I fully intend to do. Our platform has always been to move to a system of mixed-member proportional representation. And as to what you said... We wouldn't need to change the constitution to do that, and we could get to proportional representation with the simple passage of legislation. But we would need to change the constitution to achieve senate reform. And it IS about time that the NDP decided to get rid of that archaic institution."
(Note: That's quoting more or less. If you were at the event too, and remember my question, please respect my anonymity.)
If I had another chance... I would ask him, front and center, about the tax issue. I'd be smart enough to know if he's taking a position I agree with, if he's taking a position I disagree with, or if he's trying to weasel his way out of giving a real answer.
I wish that everyone actually got off their asses and actually went to these events, and get the candidates on the record, instead of just making stuff up based on their own paranoia/biases.
I'm as worried about this stuff as you are. (I even have my own paranoia / biases.) But I'm telling you: the best approach to handling this stuff is to put the candidate on the spot.
Let's be clear here. I did not previously say he would release nothing. It was said by you and others after the Halifax debate that Mulcair would release his tax policy later. Based on past performance, I was skeptical, but I kept that to myself.
And even my private skepticism, I never thought that he would never say another word about tax policy
Now he says the same things again in an interview, without possibility of qualification this time [as there was in the debate], but still no policy paper. So after that I say, explicitly, are we ever going to see this policy paper?
Are you telling us what he said in an interview with a reporter counts as "releasing his policy?"
I'm perfectly willing to treat it as such, and you appear to be saying this is it.
Correct or not?