Austerity coming to Ontario 3

Do you ever contribute any posts to babble, Gaian, that don't have passive-aggressive, pissy little insults and attacks on other babblers in it?  Ever?  Just curious.  Do you have to work at being so rude, or does it just come naturally to you?

Understand that:

a) I have no interest in getting anyone banned.

b) I've never been a mod.

c) I think free speech is a value worth defending, even if the person talking has a different opinion than I do.

Having said that, I do not understand why Gaian is kept on a shorter leash than say {rolls dice} Maysie, RevolutionPlease, and Fidel. Can anyone clarify?

Thanks, ygtbk, but I'm afraid the fix is in. Reality hurts.

At risk of pissing people off--

I would not make the wage freeze the line in the sand. People are hurting badly and unemployment is terrible.

But we would not win an election if we forced one-- likely we would have the Drummond report in full and on steroids with the Cons in power.

My line in the sand would be much more modest and the government could do it to survive:

1) increase income to those on social assistance and disability

2) restore the money to Aboriginal Affairs

3) reconsider healthcare funding that will not cover current needs because the cuts there will affect the sick

Everything else is bad but let's cover the most vulnerable and avoid an election that would make things worse.

Then, let's do better in the next election so we have more influence.

The above is all we could get and to ask for more will get us nothing.

Glad you are still here Gaian.

And yes we should add long term care to my list above.

I do think that additional investment in LTC would in fact save as much as it would cost.

I need to be able to post here. It's the only forum in which I can find a modicum of understanding for the seriousness of the plight of our species in general, and my granddaughter in particular. So I will never again fall back on a description of the level of understanding on Main Street as the Great whatever.I don't need isolation at this time.

I do hope that my point about the need to keep the situation of the increasingly marginalized and the disposessed in election planning in mind, is well taken, however. I mention it from time to time as fundamental in steering me away from talk of revolution.

Several of Wilf's points are spot on, and the one about "longer wait lists for long-term care, with 30,000 Ontarians already on long-term care wait lists, a false economy that leaves scarce hospital beds clogged," was a personal project for the six years leading to my wife's death in March, 2011. The editorial page editors of two newspapers were very understanding in the face of a barrage of appeals along those lines. Unfortunately, the old psychological safety fallback positiion of denial is universally used not only to calm fears about our mortality, but avoidance of thoughts of infirmity as well. The sad fact about Homo sapiens Ontariocadensis is that only a third of the residents in the dementia ward receive visits from family or friend from Christmas to Christmas. Keep exercising your mind, take vitamins, whatever.

It seems to me that if Andria could win concessions on Long Term Care (the provinces are to receive 6 per cent increases in federal assistance for health care for a couple more years), and at least increases for social assistance matching cost of living increases - and perhaps restoring plans for increased assistance for children - justifies our support for this budget.

The media are already supportive of Andria's reasoned approach, and very critical of Hudak's savagery.

I guess there aren't as many crass, calculating opportunists in the party as you might have thought.

I'm glad you're still here too Gaian, and I hope it will always be thus. You're an important voice here and I'm glad I'm able to read your input. That said, if you care much about the future of our kids, grandchildren, I'm not so sure why you're so quick to insult revolutionary talk.

Solidarity Gaian, I also hope for a better future for all the sheeple.

RevolutionPlease wrote:

I'm glad you're still here too Gaian, and I hope it will always be thus. You're an important voice here and I'm glad I'm able to read your input. That said, if you care much about the future of our kids, grandchildren, I'm not so sure why you're so quick to insult revolutionary talk.

Solidarity Gaian, I also hope for a better future for all the sheeple.

Thanks, RP. If you would care to start a thread in the politics forum we could share ideas on the practicality/dangers of revolutionary action in old Canady.

It's shaking at this moment. :)

M. Spector wrote:

Note to those who believe in formulating policy and strategy according to public opinion polls:

30% of Ontarians support the NDP.

37% of Ontarians oppose the wage freeze.

Even the most crass, calculating opportunist can jettison every trace of political principle and every sense of what is right and what is wrong, and still be able to figure out that the NDP has nothing to lose by opposing the wage freeze.

Uhm, even if those are the right numbers, you get that the reason the NDP has moved up, and Consevatives down is EXACTLY because the Pcs have come out and said they are voting down the budget no matter what and the NDP has instead said they are willing to try to find comprimises and avoid an election if possible, right?  The movement is because they followed the exact opposite of the PC strategy you and others were calling the NDP to follow.  If you are looking for an argument to undermine your argument you just found the perfect one.

Life, the universe, everything wrote:

If you are looking for an argument to undermine your argument you just found the perfect one.

You conveniently ignore the fact that at least 7% of the voters out there are opposed to the wage freeze but do not support the NDP. By voting in the Legislature to make a wage freeze unanimous, the NDP will be missing out on a chance to enlist the support of those 7%.

Read what Wilf Day said at #46 above.

And that's just the crass, calculating, opportunistic argument.

The real reason the NDP should fight the austerity budget is because it's the right thing to do! It just happens to be popular, to boot.

Life, the universe, everything wrote:

Uhm, again you get that by your numbers 63% presumably support the wage freeze.

Please read this thread before you go making things up. Look at Wilf's post at [url=http://rabble.ca/babble/ontario/austerity-coming-ontario-3#comment-13350... above. The poll says the support for a wage freeze is 47%, and 16% are undecided.

We have two parties in Ontario that support the wage freeze. If they share the 47% and the NDP gets the 37% who oppose the wage freeze, and a proportional amount of the undecided vote, how is that bad for the NDP?

Quote:

You also get that you can't assume that all of the NDP vote is against a wage freeze, or that all of the support for the PCs and Liberals support a wage freeze, particularly within the Liberal cohort.

I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption to make, but even if you're right, there is obviously room for movement of voters from one party to another during an election campaign on the issue of austerity. For example, if 100,000 public service workers voted Conservative in the last election and are now facing a wage freeze under either a Liberal or a Conservative government, what greater opportunity could there be for the NDP to win them away than by being the only party in the race supporting their right to collective bargaining and opposing a legislated wage freeze and pension cutback?

Or are you prepared to give up entirely on ever being able to change voters' minds? If you're not, then the best time to make them change their minds is when it's demonstrably in their own material interest to do so.

Quote:

And again you are ignoring that what is moving NDP numbers seems to be the willingness to find compromise and avoid an election less than 6 months after the last one.

Well, you don't know that. The poll was conducted less than 24 hours after the budget was announced, and at that point the NDP was far from clear as to whether it would support the budget or not. It could just as well be that people are starting to realize that the NDP is the only one of the three parties that could possibly put up a fight against the austerity agenda (even though it is now apparent that the party has no heart for such a fight). Remember, there are millions of people who will be adversely affected by it.

Quote:

Think about all the teachers that voted for Mike Harris. I know lots and lots of them who did, even the 2nd time around.

That thought obviously terrorizes you far more than it does me. Those hard-core Conservative teachers you mention are already in Tim Hudak's camp and voted for him last election. There are thousands more teachers who voted Liberal or Conservative out of naiveté, or habit, or didn't vote at all, but whose minds are going to be focused pretty quickly by the reality of having their salaries frozen by McGuinty. Buyers' remorse will set in. Who will earn their votes?

Funny how I seem to be the one who sees a positive opportunity for the ONDP, while the perennial party-boosters are suddenly overcome with doom and gloom at the thought of millions of Ontarians starting to look for a party that won't make them pay for the tax cuts and bailouts for the rich!

I"m not a perennial party booster.  I only joined the NDP for the federal leadership race.  But folks like you can't seem to get that if you say something positive, or call out untruths you aren't some kind of sell out or uncritical in our support.  Your assumption of stupidity and lack of thought by anyone who disagrees with you is constant, but somehow if you reflect that mirror back at you it is a transgression in babble moderation land.   I have supported the NDP in the last couple of elections, but that is based on my local candidate.  I helped form the Greens in Ontario after returning from Europe what seems like a lifetime ago now, which I guess it actually was.  Then I watched them be taken over by pro-market Tories with composters.  I am not a big fan of the NDP on many issues, including their kool aid drinking anti-environmental support for the GEA- an issue that means the NDP won't win a single seat in rural Ontario by the way.  But to me they have become the best of a bad lot.  That's hardly party boosting.

You have this simplistic view of how stats work and how most people out here in 3D land are viewing the world these days.  It really isn't worth trying to convince the unconvinciable.  Thankfully much clearer thinking heads than all of us seem to devising NDP strategy.

Quote:

An interactive voice response telephone poll of 843 people across the province, conducted Thursday, is considered accurate plus or minus 3.38 percent, 19 times out of 20. The poll found that over two thirds of respondents – 68 percent – would like to see corporations pay their fair share to help reduce the provincial deficit, with 19 percent opposed and 13 percent uncertain. Almost as strongly, 58 percent of Ontarians supported returning corporate tax rates to 14 percent and 74 percent said they support raising taxes for individuals earning over $250,000 a year. But perhaps most concerning to the McGuinty Liberals, and most telling for opposition parties, is the fact that 58 percent of Ontarians support taking the issue of fair taxation to a provincial election.

[url=http://ofl.ca/index.php/news/index_in/new_poll_finds_strong_majority_sup... Federation of Labour[/url]

Thanks for these posts, North Star. They give me hope that clearer heads such as yours will prevail.

Yes it is about the choices you make with what you have.

Of course you need to ask yourself as well what having an election right now means.

Greg Sorbara met with RosarioMarchese at a midtown Toronto coffee shop on Sunday afternoon.

NDP House Leader Gilles Bisson told the Globe he plant to meet with John Milloy, Liberal house leader to explore the budget. "This is not going to be a shopping list of a whole bunch of new spending, but there has to be an equity in how we balance the Budget," Bisson said.

Sorbara simply said that he knows with "absolute certainty" that, as the Globe reported it, "90 per cent of Ontarians are in no mood to go to the polls."

Gaian wrote:

Greg Sorbara met with RosarioMarchese at a midtown Toronto coffee shop on Sunday afternoon. NDP House Leader Gilles Bisson told the Globe he plant to meet with John Milloy, Liberal house leader to explore the budget. "This is not going to be a shopping list of a whole bunch of new spending, but there has to be an equity in how we balance the Budget," Bisson said. Sorbara simply said that he knows with "absolute certainty" that, as the Globe reported it, "90 per cent of Ontarians are in no mood to go to the polls."

The most interesting part of the Globe article is the part where they describe the absolutely intransigent stance the Liberals are setting up. They won't consider spending one additional penny. They won't consider raising taxes. They won't consider anything that will postpone their phony timetable for ending the deficit.

Globe wrote:

Mr. McGuinty set the tone for the negotiations on Friday, when he said he is "eager" to talk to the New Democrats about any "constructive" suggestions they might have, as long as they do not involve more money.

"If you come to us with any new spending, that's not on," Mr. McGuinty told reporters. "If you come to us with anything that's going to delay the day on which we balance our budget beyond 2017-18, that's not on."

Don't hold your breath waiting for any meaningful outcome from the negotiations.

Meanwhile, Horwath's plan to use her "opinion poll" to sell Ontarians on the need to jump on the austerity bandwagon to avoid upsetting the 1 percent seems not to be working out quite the way she envisioned it. It seems a lot of people are telling her she can't vote for the budget and has to force an election:

Canadian Press yesterday wrote:

The NDP was "flooded" with 10,000 responses to a toll-free hotline and a website set up to solicit feedback, but the only clear theme to emerge is a lack of support for the budget, Horwath said.

"The responses have been all over the map, so we're taking our time to get that information and think about it seriously," she said. [b]"A lot of people don't want an election, but many, many people think it's worth having one over this budget."[/b]

Brachina wrote:

She's also pressing Dalton to increase income taxes, a minor increase, easily sellable as reasonable. Dalton is effectively caught in a pincer. If he gives into Andrea she can brag about it and Tim can have a field day attacking it, if he refuses he looks unreasonable...

But "Dalton" has already drawn a line in the sand at no tax increases, no additional spending, and no delays, as I pointed out above. Want more money for civil service pensions? It's going to have to come out of someone else's budget, like the disabled and poor. Want more money for welfare payments? Then health care is going to have to take a bigger hit. This is his position.

He knows his main competition on the pro-austerity side is Tim Hudak, so he wants to out-Hudak Hudak by being the austerity bully, to keep right-wing support from going all over to the Conservatives. This is the guy Horwath is "negotiating" with. Good luck to that.

Does McGuilty look "unreasonable"? Well, of course he does. He proposed the austerity budget in the first place and is tenaciously defending it. But it hardly makes sense to say, on the one hand, that McGuilty has to look reasonable, and on the other hand, to say that the public is solidly behind the austerity program anyway and will gladly vote for the Conservatives if there's an election.

Either the voters are looking for [b]reasonable[/b] or they want [b]vicious[/b]. Which is it?

I saw some of the Horwath's press conference today.  It's a step in the right direction.  I hope she's serious about putting some real changes to McGuinty.  I'll believe it when I see it, but at least she's making the right noises.

Brachina wrote:

I think if Dalton doesn't move, doesn't show a reasonable effort at comprise here were going to an election and as the only one who made any effort to get things done, Andrea could take it, I mean 30 NDP 30 liberals and 34 tories is a three way race is a situation where Andrea comes off as the reasonable one, and the Liberals find themselves trapped by thier own foolishness and Hudak just looks useless.

How refreshing to find another babbler who doesn't flatly insist that an election could be nothing but disastrous for the NDP and would definitely usher in a Conservative majority government!

I did say "another" babbler. I know there are a handful of us around, but the predominant consensus above in this thread and in the Ontario Budget thread seems to be that forcing an election over the austerity budget would bring apocalyptic voter rage down on the heads of the NDP. It's nice to know there are thousands of voters out there who are telling Horwath what the real mood is.

Andrea was looking awfully tired on TV yesterday. Exhausted, actually.

I believe it would be a good time for Tom Mulcair to repeat that Ontario's joblessness, like Quebec's, is part of the bigger, changing historical monetary picture of natural commodities like oil doing a number on the loonie.

It's about time New Democrats began framing the bloody picture for a traumatized electorate filled with the hopelessness that Conservatives know how to grow.