Doer stepping down

Unionist wrote:

George Victor wrote:

 

Cheer up fellas. Manitoba could go Conservative. That would fix things there. 

It was Conservative. They privatized the Manitoba Telephone System. But Gary Doer fixed that, I think.

Sure, no problem. You can sell me your house for peanuts, and I'll give you a cut off the top after I sell it in the market for some over-inflated price. Try and buy it back without going cap in hand to the banksters and avoiding a NAFTA sue job thanks to a previous federal Liberal government who sold us all down the Mississippi River with the dumbest trade deal in the history of the solar system. At what point does anyone finger our galactically stupid(and corrupt) federal Liberal governments for throwing a fuck into made in provincial Canada socialism? We need federal power.

sandpiper wrote:

 A shame it was sold, but now it's gone.

Sorry - where has it gone? Are you actually suggesting the people of Manitoba don't have the ability to buy it back, at a price set by the people of Manitoba? If being in power still leaves you feeling impotent, perhaps winning elections ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Quote:

Is this seen as one of the failures of Doer? To not buy back the phone company?

Naw, it was more his ranting and raving in opposition when the Conservatives sold it. He neglected to mention at the time: "Elect me, and I'll stop ranting and raving about it!!!"

Yeah, that is what I'm suggesting, Unionist. What's the process for nationalizing a corporation in Canada, if it doesn't mean buying it back at market prices. I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just an uneducated leftist.

I'm still not understanding you, Unionist. Sorry to waste valuable bandwidth, but if the government sold CN, or NS Power, or MB Tel at bargain-basement prices, why would a corporation be so stupid as to sell it back at the same price? Privatization of the public good fucking sucks, but how does a government bill get around buying back a company at a price the market does not dictate?

Yes, lefties, when did TC Douglas ever pull a Venezuelan style nationalisation at the provincial level? And even then they'd have to have unlimited powers for raising corporate taxes to make that bluff seem real to CEO's and shareholders, foreign and domestic all.

Can someone explain to sandpiper that governments can introduce legislation? And that's what makes winning elections and forming the government something of interest to political parties?

Perhaps someone can remind sandpiper of the time when government fixed the price of gasoline? And wages? And prices in general? And how it still does so in many spheres? Like marketing boards?

And how government expropriates people's homes which stand in the way of "progress", without paying the price that the homeowners demand (which is how it usually works in the so-called divine market, right, if you don't get your price, you don't have to sell)????

Sandpiper: The government passes a law enabling it to buy back MTS at [b]whatever price it likes[/b]. Of course, there are negotiations, you try to be fair, you maybe follow a process like I outlined above. But as is the case when they what to rip down your humble dwelling to make way for a highway, [b]not selling is not an option[/b].

Can someone help me please - or have we all turned into the kinds of wimps who think that it's easy for governments to sell our resources and all we have created, but impossible to get it back?

No offence, sandpiper. I guess I got frustrated having to explain that governments have the power to take over businesses, just as they have the power to give them away. Remember medicare? Public auto insurance in Manitoba? I sincerely didn't realize I needed to explain that point on this board. My mistake.

There's no blame, Fidel. There's just a conviction among some people here that governments can sell out, but they can't make things good again. If we believed that, we wouldn't even have minimum wage laws. FTA-NAFTA-the Nuclear Bomb would stop us dead in our tracks. We'd have to accept the lowest wages in the world - the invisible hand of the market. Fidel, I don't expect the Libs and Cons to stand up for Canada and for working people. I do, however, expect the NDP to walk the talk - not make up excuses for walking backwards.

Stockholm wrote:

Imagine if Judy W-L ran for the leadership and won and Gary Doer decided to run federally in her seat - just for the fun of it. Forget about any talk of Doer ever being federal leader - he speaks no French and that disqualifies him - no ifs, ands or buts!

I don't think that Stephen Harper spoke it too very well when he started out. If Doer's a good learner, it's possible. Assuming he wants the job, which is iffy. Provincial popularity hasn't translated too well to federal politics before.

Tommy Douglas wasnt afraid to expand public sector services and economy, because there were no neoliberal free trade laws in his day. It took the CCF, fighting the good fight, several terms in power to bring in socialized medicine. The doctors and medical associations and Liberal Party fought them every step of the way. What youre suggesting that Doer do today did not occur in CCF led Saskatchewan at any time. The CCF played by the rules and won by the rules. They made previous governments look like the bad managers of provincial affairs that they were, and the CCF was rewarded for it with five governments in a row. Neither Rome nor Saskatchewan was built in a day in the absence of neoliberal trade rules for globalization.

Youre trying to tell us that things in general are the same today as they were in the good old days of the CCF. I dont believe that. Tommy said there would come a day when Canadians would run out of heating fuel, and we'd turn on our kitchen taps to just trickles of water. I think Tommy could see the day when Canadians would be shackled by US-friendly trade deals like CUSFTA and NAFTA.

Fidel wrote:

 What youre suggesting that Doer do today did not occur in CCF led Saskatchewan at any time. The CCF played by the rules and won by the rules.

In 1975, NDP-led Saskatchewan announced that it would [b]forcibly take over the potash industry[/b] if the foreign owners held out for too high a price. With that legal gun to the owners' heads, it was able to negotiate very attractive purchase prices and the publicly owned Potash Corporation acquired the lion's share of the productive capacity.

Oh, but that was back in the day when our enemies were 95 lb. weaklings, and fearsome Socialism stalked the land unopposed.

Today, the slogan is: "Elect us, pretty please, and we'll do nothing because they won't let us."

But don't let historic facts interfere with your legend, Fidel.

Slow down, Fidel, and do try to discuss the issues. Just a friendly reminder.

Blakeney threatened the potash owners with expropriation, and they caved. Schreyer stared down the entire auto insurance industry and destroyed them overnight - with a law. Were you playing hookey when they taught that history?

Well reading this thread Fidel you are in fact saying that there is no point in electing any progressive government because their hands are tied by NAFTA etc.  So why should anyone care about the NDP then? Because our politicians accept your view of the world we are losing voters ever election because they are listening to the message and agree that there is no point to electoral politics. 

Since you clearly belief that an elected social democratic government can't accomplish anything meaningful why are you such a partisan?

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Well reading this thread Fidel you are in fact saying that there is no point in electing any progressive government because their hands are tied by NAFTA etc.  So why should anyone care about the NDP then? Because our politicians accept your view of the world we are losing voters ever election because they are listening to the message and agree that there is no point to electoral politics.

So why did dozens of Liberal government lawyers and Chretien even bother to sign NAFTA if it's just a loosely worded set of guidelines only that you two babblers suggest that it is? What was all that stink about Chretien making his party out to be the most anti-FTA and anti-GST party of any leading up to the 1993 election? Why did voter turnout in Canada drop off after Canadians realized the Liberals lied about opposing Mulroney and that wing of the party's very neoliberal agenda? Were the 1990's just a figment of all our imaginations?

Quote:

Since you clearly belief that an elected social democratic government can't accomplish anything meaningful why are you such a partisan?

Do social democrats in Sweden, Norway or Denmark have to deal with top-down federal-provincial politics and ridiculous trade deals between their countries and the USSA? I dont think so. There is something called federal and national level politics with real consequences for economic and social conditions  in Canada, and the rotten eggs roll downhill from Ottawa.

Unionist wrote:

Slow down, Fidel, and do try to discuss the issues. Just a friendly reminder.

Blakeney threatened the potash owners with expropriation, and they caved. Schreyer stared down the entire auto insurance industry and destroyed them overnight - with a law. Were you playing hookey when they taught that history?

I only asked you how they might swing financing CCF style in the event that tiny Manitoba renationalises public utilities that have been privatized and even capitalized. I didnt think it was that tough a question for our in-house knowitalls. As for post CCF Saskatchewan and Ed Schreyer/pre-FTA-NAFTA era Manitoba, sure they could stare down insurance and potash industry owners. That was then and this is now. When Philmon's crooks pawned MTS, for example,  to well-heeled Manitobans, they made a fortune flipping MTS stocks on the market. Then the individual MTS shares fell into the hands of foreign corporations and investment jackals in the US. Shares went up some more, and so did requests from the newly privatized Man Telephone company to jack up customer rates.

And now that foreign investment jackals have their mitts on MTS, theyve established a foreign presence in Manitoba's telephone and telecom industry. Now if the government tries to compete or even force them out, they can sue all those taxpayers in tiny Manitoba for loss of current profitablity as well as future revenues theyve not yet gouged Manitobans for. And the trade dispute tribunal wouldnt be in Manitoba or even Canada for that matter. Guess where? Isnt NAFTA wonderful? It has little to do with free trade and is more about those private property laws you made reference to above. Things have changed since 1975, Unionist. Have you picked up a newspaper since then?

I'm afraid, u, that the meaning of the Chicago School, explained so patiently by Naomi Klein and by Robert Reich is quite lost on you.  I never see you reference them, so perhaps you have not tried to come to grips with their ideas. But I'd have thought that you would have been into Reich by now, since he has been writing for years about the disappearance of an effective union force in the U.S. They are talking about a period, beginning in the early 1970s, when international finance capital, using your and your union's savings, began to call the shots. And last winter, much of those savings went down the drain.

Unions began losing their swat, and the buying power of the average Joe and Jill stopped growing at the same time.  And in a convention in B.C., Tommy and a lot of other New Democrats stated that we were going to have to re-organize because the dumb assessment of the 1960s - that we were all going to have to learn how to deal with a lot of leisure time - was not going to happen. What a shock for us all.

Yep, suddenly the provinces were also competing for that capital, looking to entice the corporation that employed you (well, not you, because obviously the public service has been able to survive apart from the private sector collapse, so far) . Doer survived because he realized that Manitoba, with a good half of its population in Winnipeg, would not stand the chance of a snowball in hell unless business there could employ people.  It made sure that the cost of electrical power was the lowest in the country, and built on that.

Please cut the nit-picking, picayune and tiresome tirade about yet another New Democratic administration letting us all down. Read about what has happened to the structure of capitalism and try to discover with others how we can all weather the next few years as capital gradually comes to the realization that there is one force more powerful than itself - and the poor folks scurrying to save their pensions will have to come to this understanding as well.

Saving ourselves as a species in the face of environmental breakdown is gradually coming to be uppermost in the minds of many, if not most.  Just hope that the governing folks in your bailiwick are New Democrats and not neo-con as all come to that realization.

Catch up, u, with a reading break on the political economy of the present, please.

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As for Gary Doer, if he is in line for a posting in Washington, as the media scuttlebutt suggests this morning, then he commits the unforgiveable, just as Stephen Lewis did in '84 in accepting Mulroney's appointment of him to the U.N. ambassadorship - and then accepting testing of the cruise missile along the course of the Mackenzie River. And that would be taken as further proof of the perfidy of some social democrats, a failure of leadership that is letting down the cause.  As though a leader does not have to be elected from among the Great Unread.

Do you think they would have been elected if they had not given an ear to the Great Unread, Caissa? And now, with everyone rushing home from work to check up on their investments, perhaps times they are a changin' for social democrats, as Doer said yesterday?

I see Im late as usual with news... maybe its Harpers way to make up for his partisan senate appointments? But yeah do all NDP premiers have to end up going to the libs or tories? Or governing like them short of simply maintaining what little changes previous NDP'ers brought to their provinces? If the only ndp premiers that get elected have to run basically as libertories whats the point? Im wondering what Darrell Dexter has planned now... it doesnt seem like any reform is going to come from him... is it just about winning and staying in power?

Is the center so well defined in politics now that it is moot for parties to even try other than during elections or in policy platform that dont see the light of day in actual legislation? Have we all given up? Or simply have our parties tired of waiting for us to elect them on their official agendas?

So they run from the left and rule from the right ... or center... as we probably mostly all fully expect them to do now... at least until we have a real depression that can again move things forward?

Wilf Day wrote:

Odd that a man with his background has been able to be seen as centrist and anti-labour. When I first saw him at an NDP convention, he was a bit of a rabble-rouser.

I first encountered him at a CLC Convention in Montreal - in 1984 I believe - when he was still president of the MGEA. Although I don't recall meeting him personally, he seemed a polished speaker.

One event stands out. A couple of Manitoba delegates spoke to issues with the Pawley NDP government (cutbacks in social services - fairly minor if memory serves - being too close to the business community on something or other, etc.). One mentioned some sort of conflict between the government and the MGEA (representing Manitoba public service workers), involving job cuts and pressure during collective bargaining. When he was done, Gary Doer took the floor and said, "these delegates do not speak for the MGEA" - and proceeded to praise the provincial government.

Two years later, he rejoined the NDP, got elected, and was immediately named to Pawley's cabinet.

I think its a good appointment. Now that Obama and the Democrats are in power in the US, it makes sense to have a Canadian ambassador who is going to have good chemistry with the administration in Washington. I wish Doer well and I think he'll be good for the job for years to come - esp. once the opposition coalition atkes power in Ottawa after the next election.

Unionist wrote:

But I don't want to continue this conversation, because if the NDP can't nationalize the wealth of a province (even the wealth that was given away the day before), it shouldn't run for office. Or, it should truthfully explain to voters: "We hate what the Tories did, but if elected, we can't fix it." Trouble is, that's not the truth. They can fix it, but they're scared of what that would mean.

Did they campaign on buying back the MTS? And would this really have been a priority? We know that a position like this would not have helped them get in power bcause they got in power anyway. Might it have hurt their chances? Some people here don't care about their parties actually getting into a position of influence. It's all about the "principle", and being Principled while standing and shouting from the sidelines.

I think Doer's NDP has been about maintaining and growing the things that are working for the province while walking the centre-left line to remain in power. As far as I'm concerned that's how you do it. And that's how you get to change public policy. By remaining in power and making changes slowly and steadily. Maybe that's a Manitoba way of doing things.

Under the NDP, Manitoba Hydro has grown, investing in Wuskwatim dam, committing to two new projects, a new transmission line, and finding new markets in the U.S. while also experimenting in other sources like wind. Manitoba Hydro is publicly owned and will bring in revenue for the province for many decades to come, as long as it remains publicly owned.

remind wrote:

Male privilege and their feathering their own nest is always of primary importance, the greater good never is, when considering advancement moves.

 

You may well have a point. I was thinking of Audrey McLaughlin going to work for the NDI, but that was pretty minor and long after she left the leadership. Nothing to compare with the nest-feathering of Schreyer and Doer, of course!

Since this thread will close soon, I've opened a new one and would appreciate hearing babblers' comment:

[url=http://rabble.ca/babble/national-news/ndp-premier-quits-become-harpers-e... premier quits to become Harper's envoy to Washington[/color][/url]

jas wrote:

Under the NDP, Manitoba Hydro has grown, investing in Wuskwatim dam, committing to two new projects, a new transmission line, and finding new markets in the U.S. while also experimenting in other sources like wind. Manitoba Hydro is publicly owned and will bring in revenue for the province for many decades to come, as long as it remains publicly owned.

Too bad they used what is essentially a P3 to build the wind farms - instead of being owned and operated by Hydro it is owned by a private company and Hydro is obligated to buy the power from them.  I talked to a guy from Hydro about it, and he admitted that there is no technical reason for this arrangement, it is solely a political decision.

But we will have to be able to return to a position of political sovereignty over resources and social services someday as the global pressure on both areas comes to demand it. 

Right?

Heck, the U.S. practices it now (see China's attempts to muscle in on their resources...more successfully in Canada).

But how do we institute a U.S. nationalism (without the flags and drums) here in fearsome old Canuckistan?(excuse the drift)