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Meh we are damned if we do we are damned if we don't I can understand all the consternation about a coalition and the optics of it, However personally, if harper is allowed ANY more time in power esp unckecked as has ahappend in the last 3 years we are fucked. We won't have to worry about being elected because there will be nothing left to govern. I guess it was wrong for Tommy to work with the libs to bring in medicare as well.
The point some are missintg is, Judges, public assets, making the public distrust(more) public office, privatization, deregulation. This is what we face if the cons are allowed to stay on, amounst other heinous thing...umm wire tapping. I believe there will be some kind of clause in there against some dirty back stabbing by the libs, remember if things go to shit our ace in the hole is a few bloc members come down with the flu
...oopsie I guess the house collapsed. Seeing as they are only supporting the ideas that are of benefit to the bloc(mostly left ideas we can all agree) it will keep the libs honest because there is a mechanism to shorten the length of the 'coalition'. No cabinet means the politcal damage is very small and may be positive if it is an example of poor faith bargaining on the libs part.
I have my worries, but the alternative is to me, much worse. As much as I dislike chretien and mcguinty, they have both governed a lot more to my liking than either harris or malroney. At least dalton finally raised the minimum wage, something the tories said they would never do! Less evil is still less evil....remember bloc=short leash for libs.
____________________________________________________________________________________ "Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it." Noam Chomsky
I respectively disagree. The majority in the coalition is the combined votes of the NDP-Bloc as together they hold 37 plus 49 which equals 86 votes to the libs 77. Remember the NDP comes with 49 silent votes but they are votes none-the-less.
______________________________________________________________________________________ Our kids live together and play together in their communities, let's have them learn together too!
No. He would be fucked. Never interupt you enemy while he is making a mistake.
Look, no one thinks the Liberals are angels. But no one who is against the coalition has actually suggested any sort of alternative. So, to enemy_of_capital, Left Turn, and anyone else who takes that position, I ask one simple question: what do you think the NDP should actually do?
Do you believe that Harper should be allowed to continue running the show? Do you genuinely believe the NDP could form a majority government if there was an election today?
And the NDP are angels, I suppose. The NDP should join this coalition. It would put the NDP one step closer to finally amalgamating with the Liberals. This will be a good thing, as it will clarify who is who.
In the long term, this coalition is going to be a very unstable entity, which will considerably hamstrung by the alignment it is composed of. So, the question is not what the NDP is "should actually do," but can they do anything, other than stop Harper from finally establishing that he is a right-wing authoritarian fuckwad? Stopping Harper is not much of a mandate to govern.
Furthermore, who wants to govern now, just as the tidal wave of the coming depression hits? Is an unstable government, with little mandate to govern really have the necessary power to do what is necessary to get the job done? Sounds like a recipe for disaster, both for the country, and for the fortunes of those who govern, in the long run.
Meanwhile, if Harper is outsted, and he manages to keep control of his party, he will have slipped past the noose of all that is bad that is coming down the pipe, and the Tories can claim that their initiatives were what was needed to avert the crisis, and the Liberals and the NDP who screwed up.
The optics for a Harper majority in the near future are very good in that scenario.
I've already listed in response to the same comment by you in another thread a number of likely moves a coalition would make that would be positive. The idea that they wouldn't do or accomplish anything is pretty absurd.
It's not a matter of denying the truth about the Liberals (at least, for me it isn't), it is a matter of the truth of the NDP.
As someone who lives in an NDP province, that sounds like a sick joke.
Not always a fan of the labour bureaucracy. Despite the good things they do, there are times when they act as an element of labour control and demobilize militant rank and file members in order to point the labour movement towards a low risk, no reward strategy of trying to get the NDP elected.
To the extent that you could say that about the NDP (actually, I wonder what proportion of workers, students and farmers are members of the NDP, considering estimates of the number of Canadians in any political party are generally at the 1-2% mark. It can't be more than 1%), you could probably say that about a lot of other parties too. The other parties likely also have workers, students and (especially with the Cons) farmers as well.
Actually, it does matter to the people who are affected by it, such as those who live in NDP provinces and simply can no longer support ideologies and policies promoted by the NDP which are contrary to their class interests based on some vague notion of the NDP as some sort of vanguard of the working class. And it matters to this discussion. What is the point of saying "no collaboration with the bosses parties" when the NDP is a capitalist party itself? Where are all these socialist principles in the NDP coming from?
Essentially, my problem with this principles opposition to the coalition is not that I don't agree with not cooperating with the capitalist parties in principle. I just find it bizarre that people are using that sort of principle to argue for a capitalist party to not cooperate with capitalist parties. Where the hell are these alleged socialist principles in the NDP the rest of the time?
You might as well be telling the Bloc not to cooperate with separatist parties based on their federalist principles, or the Liberals not to cooperate with capitalist parties based on their socialist principles. It is almost as absurd.
This whole analysis is based on a false conception on the NDP as an anti-capitalist party.
I saw that list. It wasn't much. Not like, say, something substantive like introducing a National Health Care plan. Think of this example, and tell me that there would not indeed be serious problems instituting that today with the Block in the position that it is? Certainly, they would take the money, but as far as having a national program with one standard of healthcare for all Canadians, overseen by the federal government, that would be very difficult.
Assuming that the Liberals, or the NDP even suggested such an idea, given how it would get tangled up in the FTA/NAFTA deal.
If you remember, this issue was central to the demise of the last Liberal government. On the fine point of the edge of the outline of the period at the end of the fine print.
You don't seriously believe that moving from having no plan on global warming to having, presumably, a rather serious one is a big move? Global warming is a bigger threat than privatised health care ever could be, and I would consider real action on global warming to be a tremendous accomplishment.
If your point is that a coalition government will not overthrow the social order, well, no, but I think anyone who expects the NDP to do that is rather naieve.
I certainly don't think the NDP is into overthrowing the social order. I also don't think that either of the plans submitted by the NDP or the Liberals in the last election were any good.
Now, do you have anything substantive to say about the problem of creating universal federal programs that further tie Quebec into the fabric of the Federal government, given the proposed formulation of the coalition?