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This save McGuinty's ass deal is pathetic...just pathetic.
Indeed
"Stabilize industries like horse racing" Really?
The alternative would have been an election which would almost certainly have led to a Tim Hudak minority government. Do you think that would have been any better?
"almost certainly"?
You obviously have no faith in the ability of your party to present an alternative to the austerity agenda of the Liberals and Conservatives.
Maybe because they don't have one.
At least with Horwath's abject capitulation we have 100% certainty - of the implementation of a Liberal austerity program.
Horwath was on P&P tonight, and said spending the money on debt reduction was not her preference.
Sid Ryan: "And I want to say this to our friends in the NDP. I want to be clear about where labor stands on the right to strike, on free collective bargaining, and where we stand on corporate taxes. But I want you to make no mistake where we stand on social assistance. We stand with the people on social assistance and no political party worth its salt can walk away from the table and not see an increase in social assistance. It is absolutely shameful that we'd be saying to people on social assistance that you have to pony up and corporations who are making money hand over fist get away scot free. That is not on in this province, that is not on with this labor movement and I hope to God when this final deal is done on Tuesday that we can at least hold our heads high and say that folks on social assistance to share were not called upon to share the unfair burden that the corporations should be taking on."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmBUFkbNbvA
That's bullshit. Why have elections when we can make decisons based on cherry-picking poll results that support a previously held position? radiorahim has it right. Horwath's deal is pathetic. Even more pathetic is a party that seems so determined to convince potential voters of their own unelectability.
Well, boo hoo! It was enough to make her decide to support the budget.
Saying it was not her preference is simply an admission of failure in the negotiations.
What exactly did she get that was her "preference"? More money for child care and disability support programs? Oh wait - that was money taken from the education budget.
I was thinking the same thing, MS. Not one of Andrea's better interviews. She seemed to concede to McQuinty.
As far as NDP leaders go, from my side of Lake of the Woods, I'm happy to see an NDP leader at least openly talking about raising taxes on higher income earners. That principle is on the table, even if it doesn't go as far as it needs to right now. It's much better than here in Manitoba where our (supposedly) NDP government won't even consider tax increases.
I'm also impressed to see the OFL fighting hard for the working people and those on social assistance.
I hope they have the stomach to take on one of their own.
There was a little more that was gained earlier. Also, if you want less money to go to bondholders and Bay Street, reducing the deficit is a good way to start. Reducing the deficit by increasing their taxes is even better.
It's unfortunate it has come to this. About a third of the NDPs seats are from Northern Ontario, and those will surely be going Conservative Blue in the next election if the NDP sticks by this budget that kills thousands of jobs in the North (Ontario Northland). At the very least Bisson, Gelinas, Campbell, Mantha, and Vanthof need to abstain from voting, but even then. The North is increasingly becoming a 2 party district (NDP - CON) and this is going to hurt them tremendously. I can already picture the adds "Bisson did not vote to save Ontario Northland".
The conservatives are even more outspoken about wanting to kill Ontario Northland nd I don't know where you get this idea that northern Ontario is a NDP/PC duopoly, in the election last October the NDP took 5 seats in the north, the Liberals took 4 and the Tories just 1
Ontario Unions Try to Provide Cover for NDP's Support for Austerity Budget - by Carl Bronski
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/apr2012/cana-a23.shtml
"the NDP, in the name of 'making parliament work', is preparing to support sweeping spending cuts. Saturday's show of opposition to the Liberal cuts is political theater meant to disguise the fact that the unions and the NDP are preparing to prop up McGuinty's minority Liberal government, ensure passage of its austerity budget and surrender before its two-year public sector wage freeze.
The NDP has for weeks been 'negotiating' its support for a budget that is even more draconian than the attacks launched on working people under the Conservative government of Mike Harris..."
All these NDP critics just wanna see another election and vote split, and then Hudak's conservatives slither up the middle to phony-majority dictatorial rule in old conservative Ontario.
We know who the real enemies of the poor are.
Yep. Every single MPP at Queen's Park.
Yep, every single one of them sounds better than just the Harris-Flaherty-McGuilty tripartite axis of doom since 1995. Gotta squeeze the NDP in for a proportional share of the disaster in old bankrupt Ontario.
The Tories once ruled Ontario for 42 consecutive years non-stop during the most ideal cold war economies this hemisphere had ever known. Ontario used to be a net exporter of electrical power to the Northern U.S. Cheap electrical power was the backbone of their glorious capitalist expansions. And it all came to an end for them after decades of mismanaging everything within their grasp. Old Tory Ontario still managed to ring-up nearly a billion dollars in debt for every year they were in power. Pinocchio's Liberals have been about the worst of the two fiscal Frankenstein parties with even less to show for their spending like drunken sailors on corporate welfare programs and tax cuts for rich friends of the party.
Voters in Ontario will wake up. Some day.
Indeed, while those on social assistance will have to make due with a measly "increase" that is below the rate of inflation (and will thus see their standard of living decline), the NDP MPPs making over $100,000 a year (and in the top 5% of income earners in Ontario) won't be "sharing the burden." 1 percenter Dalton McGuinty isn't even going to be hit by the tax increase for $500,000+ earners.
The NDP will live to fight the next budget. We should be better prepared for an election then when Ontarians have a better understanding of the Liberals gross mismanagement of the economy and province in general. Voters will be more informed of the issues and more able to decide that they should swing NDP instead of carrying this wooden doll of a Bay Street premier another full term.
And I've said it before, snap election calls and democracy are incompatible period. It was a window of opportunity for neoliberal extremists on the right to wage the full monty version in Ontario.
The Hudak Tories are not able to take advantage of the vote split just seven months after the last farcical FPTP election fraud perpetrated in Ontario. The poor in Ontario have avoided a near miss with Hudak, a Mike the Knife Harris clone if we ever heard one.
I don't get why some here thought going to an election would be better for NDP and those who support the ndp, and for the programs and services the NDP advocates for. I just don't get it. I'm trying to understand because I didn't see the NDP winning and more to the point, I saw the Cons winning even with Hudak just because their campaign message is simple - cut cut cut!
The people and folks who support the NDP are the same folks losing jobs, taking cuts and so on, so thinking we'd have money to have a have decent campaign is well, scary. The Cons on the other hand, will get money from those with the money.
I agree. The NDP are looking good as a result. Voters will tire of the same old song and dance with the other two parties.
I think we have Andrea Horwath to thank for Ontario avoiding another Mike Harris style neoliberalorama under Hudak. It might well have happened with this flunky electoral system. I think a snap election call would have been disasterous for the poor in Ontario as well as the NDP. It would have been a major fail for the modicum of democracy we have in general.
It appears the NDP has Pinocchio's Liberals on democracy watch for now. Andrea and the NDP will live to fight another day and perhaps be better positioned for a not so snappy election call next time. And with these wishy washy Liberals we know there will be a next time. They will require pushing and prodding every step of the way and hopefully the NDP will be better positioned to push them over an electoral cliff.
What snap election? A snap election is not any election held within a relatively brief period of time of the previous one. A snap election is when the governing party decides to call an early election or order to take advantage of a perceived window of opportunity. That clearly is not the case in Ontario, where the governing Liberals had the most to lose by going to the polls. But despite sitting in a position of strength, Horwath completely fucked-up negotiations by telegraphing her aversion to triggering an election and allowing Ontarians to vote on whether they want austerity, ulitmately managing only to get a few token concessions from McGuinty. By Monday it almost seemed like he was saving her, rather than the other way around. But keep sticking to your script... letting people vote on things that will have a profound impact on their lives is bad for democracy.
So now the argument is the NDP can't win, we must stop Hudak, etc. Why the acceptance of the logic of the strategic voting folks here?
The one good thing that came out of this is that the issue of higher taxes on higher income earners is now on the public radar, even if the current proposal does not go as far as it needs to. Obviously there were some compromises made on the part of the NDP. Giving Andrea the benefit of the doubt (she was partially constrained by the fact that McGuinty didn't need that many more votes to pass the budget, so was able to offer crumbs), this is the first time she has handled such negotiations. I hope that she can learn from this experience and grow stronger and have a better negotiation next time.
I am also encouraged to see the OFL put pressure on the government to raise social assistance rates.
Bay Street instructs the property party when to call snap elections. Remember their saying that markets don't like instability in government, and that's the situation right now at Queen's Park. Bay Street and bond salesmen prefer phony-majority dictatorships running the show for four years at a time uninterrupted.
Bay Street calls the shots as to when snap election calls are made for short-term political gain not their hirelings in government or the official phony opposition as made evident with the leaked Lisa Raitt tape when it was revealed how our big banks are running the federal Liberal Party.
Pinocchio McGuilty has nothing to do with it. The markets want "stability", and they prefer phony majority dictatorial rule. Liberals and Tories have a few different rich friends to cater to when in government, but other than that they are one and the same property party with two right wings. And Bay Street runs them both.
Snap election calls for short-term political gain have nothing to do with democracy. Voters have a right to be informed over the course of adequately funded election campaigns with actual issues presented and party platforms laid out for all to see, just like the last election seven months ago.
Right, they're basically the Liberals and Tories are basically the same party, but we need to support the Liberal government to stop the Tories.
I never said our's is a modern democracy churning out democratic results. That was your first wrong assumption.