Who are u supporting for NDP Leader, how will u mark your ballot, and why? #9

I'm voting:

1. Cullen

2. Mulcair

I dont agree with Cullen's proposal for joint nomination meetings, but I give him credit for advancing, and sticking to, a principle he believes in.  I also think Nathan is the leader for the future: smart, creative, courageous, warm and electable, and he deserves to be encouraged.

Mulcair is clearly not without flaws - but he puts together more of the skills we need right now than any other.  Mulcair is:

a) smart

b) articulate

c) bilingual

d) experienced

e) elected

f) tough

g) courageous

h) most likely to hold Quebec seats

i) electable in the ROC

j) able to grow our support from the 30 percent we got last election to the 39 percent we need if we truly want to form government.

On the last point, let's be serious:  broadening our base and appealing to the next tranche of voters is essential to form government. Repeating old bromides will not get us there. A fresh approach based on sound social democratic principles is what we need, and what Tom Mulcair will deliver.

The thing is, Howard, also, that for me, context doesn't actually matter too much when you talk about "lower taxes" and "smaller government."  Is there any context imaginable in which a New Democrat should be advocating those things?

TheArchitect wrote:

Howard wrote:

TheArchitect wrote:

Howard wrote:

Don't take the bait. Architect likes to ignore your arguments then forward unsourced arguments of their own, that often do not bear the scrutiny of facts. Then there is the glass house that their favourite Brian Topp inhabits. Can someone help me find Brian Topp's comments on the garbage workers strike in Toronto and the nurses in Saskatchewan?

I'm not sure how quoting Mulcair's comments about "lower taxes" and "smaller government" is either unsourced-the source is the edition of the Chomedey News published on May 5, 2005-or, for that matter, an argument. Mulcair himself has never denied making those comments. Criticizing me over the matter is just shooting the messenger. If you have a problem with comments about "lower taxes" and "smaller government," then the person to criticize is the guy who made those comments, and that's Thomas Mulcair.

Also, I don't think I've ever been dismissive of criticism of Topp-indeed, I've leveled some myself. While, based on his strong debate performances and his endorsements from New Democrats I respect, such as Bill Siksay, I ultimately have decided to support Brian Topp, I certainly would never deny that there are plenty of reasonable criticisms of Topp.

How bizarre. Usually babblers provide a link to an article or some kind of online source when they have a point to raise, but you have the exact date of a newspaper with a circulation of maybe 20,000. Do you keep a news clipping on your bulletin board? Do you work for a rival campaign? Of course, you will not answer these questions.

Anyhow, how about this: a full quote, full context, full date and some explanation of how Mulcair's quote from 2005 has any relevance to what he is saying in 2011.

Here's the relevant question from the interview. (The emphasis is my own.):

The Chomedey News wrote:

 

TCN: According to recent polls, the Liberals are not doing very well in Quebec or the rest of Can- ada at the moment; after only a couple of years of government, why do you think there is so much negativity surrounding the party? Do you believe the Liberals will be able to win back their former popularity in the case of an election?

 

Mulcair: I'm convinced we're going to win the next election, and I'll tell you why. What we promised to do in 2003 is exactly what we did. And we promised to take care of health, and we reinvested mas- sively in health. Waiting times for operations on knees are down 50%, we have huge reductions in wait for those types of surgeries, hip surgery, cataract surgery, all the waiting times are down and the number of operations have gone way up. We've got a massive reinvestment in education. Those are the two key areas.

What we promised to do in the Liberal party is that when we had to cut, we would cut in the bureaucracy but not in the direct services to the population. Take my Ministry, for example. When I arrived, I immediately cut my own budget by 8%, but I haven't affected the service on the ground level. Across the province of Quebec, I've still got wonderful teams of men and women actually performing more inspections than they used to do with regards to the environment.
So it's a simple question of management. We have a business-like approach; we're managing the government. The PQ doesn't know how to manage. So what people will have at the time of the next election is a smaller government, lower taxes, better services. A winning solution.

Who's against this? Who's out there fighting? The unions. To give you an example: in some hospitals we had as many as 50 different unions or accreditation units. You were paying with your tax dollars union representatives to be off all the time because when they work at the hospital then they go off for a day of reunion, they get paid for it. So we're going to be saving $50 million dollars. But the unions aren't happy because the $50 million doesn't transit through them anymore.

So they're giving us a tough fight but unions don't rule the province, our government does. And in another three years, that's when the next election has to be held, in three years, you'll see the public will be on our side because they'll have realized that we delivered on all our key promises.

Much better.

All the NDP candidates have advocated lower taxes. Lower taxes and tax credits for small business is something trumpted by all the candidates. For a while there were talks about eliminating the GST. The 2011 platform states that corporate tax should still be lower in Canada than it is in the U.S.

Striving for lower taxes isn't a right-wing idea. It's just that for the right wing, it comes at the expense of good social services. For New Democrats, it should come where there's no damage to services (or, in a crisis, as little damage to services as possible).

The debate should be about services, not taxes. And all the candidates are on the moral side of this debate, even Mulcair.

socialdemocraticmiddle wrote:

All the NDP candidates have advocated lower taxes. Lower taxes and tax credits for small business is something trumpted by all the candidates. For a while there were talks about eliminating the GST. The 2011 platform states that corporate tax should still be lower in Canada than it is in the U.S.

Striving for lower taxes isn't a right-wing idea. It's just that for the right wing, it comes at the expense of good social services. For New Democrats, it should come where there's no damage to services (or, in a crisis, as little damage to services as possible).

The debate should be about services, not taxes. And all the candidates are on the moral side of this debate, even Mulcair.

A while back Brad Lavigne was trumpeting that the Manitoba NDP had cut taxes and small business taxes in particular. Brad Lavigne said the Manitoba NDP was a good example of taking care of the priorities first (health care, education) and then cutting taxes afterwards when you could afford them. I saw this on CTV and could look up the clip. Then there was the example of the Romanow government where Brian Topp was chief of staff. After a grueling austerity regime, they balanced the budget and then Romanow adopted a policy of spending 1/3 of all surpluses on social programs, debt repayment, and tax cuts respectively. It was considered such an effective or popular mix, that Paul Martin tried to copy it when he became Prime Minister....however, Jack Layton stopped him by having Martin cancel his corporate tax cuts and negotiate a $4.6 billion NDP budget.

Boom Boom wrote:

Caissa wrote:

I voted: 1) Topp, 2) Ashton, 3) Nash, 4) Mulcair, 5) Cullen, 6) Dewar, 7) Singh.

I'll post who I voted for if anyone is interested - otherwise, no.

Well, BB, since this is a kind of show-and-tell/bare-it-all thread, don't be coy.

CFL