NDP #16

 Its pretty clear that Olvia has decided to be Mayor of Toronto. Its her choice and you need to respect that. Its an important Job. And we will keep Trinady and Spadina, I have no doubt about it.

 Its up to Olivia, not us, the people of Toronto are begging for Salvation from Ford and only Olivia can deliver it. Its not like the riding won't attract major local stars.

 And either way its up to Olivia, this is her life and it has to be her choice, one has to respect that. You can't force her to stay. Have some faith.

I think this article represents a VERY balanced and open-eyed look at how to replace Ford as Mayor.

http://www.thegridto.com/city/politics/omg-he-could-win-again/

 

... To actually beat him, his opponents need to defeat his politics at the ballot box—his corrosive anti-urban, anti-government, anti–city building ideas.

So how do you do that? Well, you could start by looking at the past two closely contested Toronto mayoral elections, in 2003 and 2010. Both those campaigns were won by candidates (Miller and Ford) with relatively low name recognition who polled weakly at the start of the race. This could be a sign that the current obsession with tracking how Olivia Chow and John Tory stack up before the race has even begun is misguided. There’s a prevailing belief that the anyone-but-Ford camp needs to unite behind a single candidate (whoever polls highest at the starting line, it may be assumed) before the race officially kicks off. But Miller and Ford won in crowded fields, and neither of them did it by watching their ideological opponents split the vote.

Instead, they did it by offering the best-defined visions for the city in their respective races. Miller, with his broom, his talk of a “magnificent city,” and his proposals to clean up the environment, City Hall ethics, and the streets, set the tone of the race and had everyone else debating his ideas. In a different way, Ford outlined a vision of City Hall as similarly out of touch and wasteful, and offered a small-government vision based around the theme of stopping waste and respecting taxpayer dollars (especially those of car drivers).

Olivia would be a great mayor, but we don't NEED her to run against Ford to get him out of there.

socialdemocraticmiddle wrote:

I think this article represents a VERY balanced and open-eyed look at how to replace Ford as Mayor.

http://www.thegridto.com/city/politics/omg-he-could-win-again/

 

... To actually beat him, his opponents need to defeat his politics at the ballot box—his corrosive anti-urban, anti-government, anti–city building ideas.

So how do you do that? Well, you could start by looking at the past two closely contested Toronto mayoral elections, in 2003 and 2010. Both those campaigns were won by candidates (Miller and Ford) with relatively low name recognition who polled weakly at the start of the race. This could be a sign that the current obsession with tracking how Olivia Chow and John Tory stack up before the race has even begun is misguided. There’s a prevailing belief that the anyone-but-Ford camp needs to unite behind a single candidate (whoever polls highest at the starting line, it may be assumed) before the race officially kicks off. But Miller and Ford won in crowded fields, and neither of them did it by watching their ideological opponents split the vote.

Instead, they did it by offering the best-defined visions for the city in their respective races. Miller, with his broom, his talk of a “magnificent city,” and his proposals to clean up the environment, City Hall ethics, and the streets, set the tone of the race and had everyone else debating his ideas. In a different way, Ford outlined a vision of City Hall as similarly out of touch and wasteful, and offered a small-government vision based around the theme of stopping waste and respecting taxpayer dollars (especially those of car drivers).

Olivia would be a great mayor, but we don't NEED her to run against Ford to get him out of there.

The key difference the article overlooks is that in 2003 and 2010, Miller and Ford were running in open fields where name recognition doesn't matter. Should Ford run again in 2014, he will have that to his advantage, and in municipal politics, it's nearly impossible to defeat a sitting incumbent mayor. Any advantage a candidate can use would be helpful, and Olivia Chow can capitalize on name recognition, knowledge of the issues, and a broad activist base throughout the city to help her.

I think the NDP's ascendancy in Toronto was helped by Miller's first mayoral victory. It signalled the NDP's ability to win and advance progressive, practical politics. If Chow wins in Etobicoke and other places currently not held by the NDP, what could that mean for the party?

This is what many NDP MPs have been up to or rather not up to Quebec NDP MPs say no to Diamond Jubilee medals

A quarter of the NDP’s Quebec caucus declined to accept medals intended to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.

All MPs and senators automatically received the medals last year, but data released by the Governor General’s office show that 16 NDP MPs are missing from the list of those who accepted them.

Though 14 of these MPs were from Quebec, anti-monarchist sentiment didn’t seem to factor into decisions to refuse the baubles.

Some thought they shouldn't receive medal for "just doing the job" they were elected to do. Some regifted their medals to deserving constitutuents in their ridings.

The NDP stayed classy here!

Aristotleded24 wrote:

We're talking about the possibility of losing Nathan Cullen and Olivia Chow to more local and regional causes, but the potential for more caucus departures does not end there. There's a good chance that Megan Leslie will be called in to pick up the pieces after Dexter's impending electoral defeat in just over a week.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves

janfromthebruce wrote:

Walking down memory lane one may ponder how well a federal MP does going provincial.

You mean someone like Ed Schreyer?

Here's the NDP proposal to do with youth unemployment: [url=http://www.ndp.ca/news/ndp-puts-forward-measures-to-tackle-youth-unemplo... credits for hiring.[/url] Where did this idea come from? If this is the best idea the party can come up with, then that's pretty sad. The answer may be complex, but no business EVER makes a decision whether or not to hire someone based on whether a tax credit will be offered.

The NDP has aleeady promised support for inforstructure, green investment, 800 million to help with university debt, and a bunch of bunch of other stuff. Heck even lowering the age for retirement back to 65 will help youth unemployment by creating job vacanies.

 The hiring tax credit will create jobs, especially for small and medium businesses that want to expand, but find hiring more people something they can't afford. Still its not the main thrust of the NDP's youth employment plan, but it makes the NDP appear more moderate 

North Star wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Here's the NDP proposal to do with youth unemployment: [url=http://www.ndp.ca/news/ndp-puts-forward-measures-to-tackle-youth-unemplo... credits for hiring.[/url] Where did this idea come from? If this is the best idea the party can come up with, then that's pretty sad. The answer may be complex, but no business EVER makes a decision whether or not to hire someone based on whether a tax credit will be offered.

It's using neoliberal approaches to try to deliver progressive policy solutions. We don't even know how long these supposed jobs would last or if they would really pay a living wage.

Or if the person's 26th birthday present on behalf of this company comes in the form of a pink slip as the tax credit expires.

Brachina wrote:

The hiring tax credit will create jobs, especially for small and medium businesses that want to expand, but find hiring more people something they can't afford.

It would seem to me that a business in a realistic position to expand would already have the resources to hire more staff. If it's a real issue, then a better approach would be to look at existing assistance programs for businesses and seeing what can be done there.

The other problem with this approach is that it grants "small businesses" social and political capital they don't deserve. The voice of small businesses, the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, is a very right-wing organization that fights very hard against improvements to workplace standards, and they are effecitve particularly because of the worship of "small businesses." Nobody would listen to Wal-Mart or McDonalds campaigning against increasing the minimum wage, but small business owners are always up in arms about the increased costs, and people believe these business owners. (Not to mention that many such business owners live in fancy houses and drive nice vehicles, but that's another point.) If we're looking at support for businesses, we need to look at other business models that have objectives other than how much money these businesses can make for their owners, but that is an entirely different discussion.

I've been in a position to decide staffing levels, and can assure you that businesses do everything they can to get the job done with as little staff as possible, regardless of the actual resources they have available. Bringing on more staff is done when there is no other option, and individual tax credits will have no bearing on this whatsoever.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

We're talking about the possibility of losing Nathan Cullen and Olivia Chow to more local and regional causes, but the potential for more caucus departures does not end there. There's a good chance that Megan Leslie will be called in to pick up the pieces after Dexter's impending electoral defeat in just over a week.

And with that post, you raise a question that will be crucial to both the NDP's electoral prospects AND it's chances of governing competently and getting re-elected if if DOES win the next federal election:

What lessons should the federal Dippers take from the humiliating defeat Dexter is about to lead his party to in Nova Scotia, and the Harperite economic and budget policies he carried out that are going to be the cause of that defeat?

Is "cleaning up the mess" worth essentially wasting the first four years of a federal NDP government?  Is it going to be worth breaking the hearts and crushing the dreams of almost everyone who will vote NDP in 2015?  This is a vital question, because virtually no one who will vote NDP next time will do so in the actual HOPE that a federal NDP government will mean four years of brutal austerity.

I'm going to start a separate thread on that...if the mods fold it into this one, so be it.

It's a proposal for the current government to put some sort of focus on youth unemployment, rather than the sole employment policy position for a future NDP government.  In the NDP policy book under "Industrial policy:  Supporting Strategic sectors" there are plenty of ideas for creating jobs.

socialdemocraticmiddle wrote:

Truthfully, there aren't a lot of great ideas out there for job creation. There's the Conservative approach (blank slate for corporations) which is actually part of how we ended up in this crisis in the first place. And the Liberal approach (lipservice to more education, and a blank slate for corporations) which also doesn't work and is insulting to the most educated generation in the history of the world. And no, this isn't a cue for more discredited ideas from planned economies in the past.

It plays into the mythology of businessmen as "job creators," when the truth is that businesses are in it to make money for their owners with the least amount of staff possible.

socialdemocraticmiddle wrote:

The Great Depression taught us that the government spending money on jobs will get the economy going. Back then, it meant huge projects like hydro-electric dams, railroads, and other infratructure. Now, it might mean high speed railroads, urban public transit, green power plants, and internet cable. Some kind of big project that would give us tangible benefits, while employing a lot of people in its construction. Speaking for myself, I also find the scale and the technology of that project to be inspiring in of itself.

I believe it was actually Sweden that was the first government out of the Depression, because of its public spending. Germany was the second, due to build-up of the war. The US fell behind on its recovery because after moderate success lowering the unemployment rate, Roosevelt then introduced austerity which caused unemployment to rise, and thus the US couldn't completely recover from the Depression until entry into WWII.

Some facts about The Great Depression that are not common knowledge.

 Personally I'd love to see that union formally known as the CAW get a loan from the government to buy the big three automakers and turn it into a cooperstive.

Definitely only saying that in light of recent scandals. Ford has his loyalists, but there are enough people annoyed and disappointed that they'll support anyone who comes across as competent and confident.

Brachina wrote:

The NDP has aleeady promised support for inforstructure, green investment, 800 million to help with university debt, and a bunch of bunch of other stuff. Heck even lowering the age for retirement back to 65 will help youth unemployment by creating job vacanies.

 

 The hiring tax credit will create jobs, especially for small and medium businesses that want to expand, but find hiring more people something they can't afford. Still its not the main thrust of the NDP's youth employment plan, but it makes the NDP appear more moderate 

Boutique tax credits are inefficent job-creation mechanisms and a poor use of government reveune.

Tom Mulcair was speaking at the University of Alberta Wednesday (2nd). He said the trickle-down economics started by Reagan and Thatcher has been a monumental failure. Direct quote: "people are tired of being trickled on." He criticized the economic ideology that holds that wealth and jobs can only be created when investors and corporations are given extra cash.

If the NDP is serious about turning back supply-side economics, they need to come up with something better than a tax credit.

Harper and Clark are winners, and winners promote jobs.

I hope that the federal NDP has learned from the recent BC election that saying "NO" to jobs is a surefire way to lose elections.

Christy Clark is beating the drum for jobs - LNG, the new Massey Bridge which will start just before the 2017 election in BC, and if even one or two of these proposed LNG projects go ahead the BC Liberals will be in power for the next 20 years in BC.

And federally Harper is pushing for lots of jobs in relation to the oil patch such as the Enbridge pipeline, and even the Keystone project in the USA.

What exciting job-creating big vote-getting projects are the NDP promoting because it is pocket-book issues which decide elections whether people like it or not.

NorthReport wrote:

Christy Clark is beating the drum for jobs - LNG, the new Massey Bridge which will start just before the 2017 election in BC, and if even one or two of these proposed LNG projects go ahead the BC Liberals will be in power for the next 20 years in BC.

And federally Harper is pushing for lots of jobs in relation to the oil patch such as the Enbridge pipeline, and even the Keystone project in the USA.

What exciting job-creating big vote-getting projects are the NDP promoting because it is pocket-book issues which decide elections whether people like it or not.

 

I'm starting to take a more holistic view than "jobs jobs jobs". I think the NDP can lose an election if it fails to talk about jobs. But it doesn't mean that focusing on jobs will allow them to win the election. They have to be a party of the moral high ground, with bigger vision. There has to be a broader feeling of reform, not just a promise to move the needles on job growth.

Conservatives, NDP only true choices, Liberals ‘stand for nothing,’ says Lavigne

Building the Orange Wave: The Inside Story Behind the Historic Rise of Jack Layton and the NDP, by Brad Lavigne, Douglas & McIntyre, pp. 286, $34.95

“What this book does is actually proof positive. It is evidence that anybody who suggests that polls two years out from an election campaign are any predictor of its outcome is meaningless. The story that the book tells is that hard work, focusing on what really matters, building the party, building its infrastructure talking to voters on the issues that they care about, those are the things that have been the most successful,” Mr. Lavigne said.

Wise words and thoughts

In an interview last week with The Hill Times, Mr. Lavigne, now vice-president of Hill & Knowlton, said that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.), who won his party leadership in April, is enjoying an extended honeymoon period support. He said that what’s important to watch is whether Mr. Trudeau will be able to maintain this support up until the election day in 2015. 

Mr. Lavigne pointed out that former Liberal leaders Michael Ignatieff, Stéphane Dion (Saint Laurent-Cartierville, Que.), and Paul Martin enjoyed similar support in the public opinion polls after they became party leaders but by election time in May 2011, October 2008 and January 2006, respectively, their support collapsed.

“If history has taught us anything, it is that Liberal leaders who enjoy honeymoons are not a predictor for how voters will respond in the next election. If that were the case, Paul Martin would still be the Prime Minister. If that were the case, Stéphane Dion would be Prime Minister, if that were the case, Michael Ignatieff would be Prime Minister. Unfortunately, that thinking ignores everything about what has happened in the past,” said Mr. Lavigne pointing out that Mr. Martin won only 103 seats in 2006 losing the election to Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and after that Mr. Dion won only 77 seats in 2008 and under Mr. Ignatieff, the party was reduced to only 34 seats in the May 2011 general election.

Thought Lavigne's response was a good come back

And asked about the criticism of Mr. Mulcair’s strategy and NDP strategists in last week’s issue of The Hill Times, Mr. Lavigne said he didn’t need to take lessons from “Liberal operatives who have so recently failed so spectacularly on strategies on how to defeat the Conservatives.”

snip

Said Mr. Lavigne: “The New Democratic Party is a party that sees the long game, that recognizes the importance of constant building. We’ve never succeeded when we bought into the Liberal leaders’ honeymoons of which there’ve been many.

“Mr. Martin had a very long honeymoon and we were told he was to wipe us out. Mr. Dion had a nice honeymoon at which he reached support in the 40 per cent in public domain polls. Mr. Ignatieff also enjoyed tremendous honeymoon support only to take his party to its greatest loss since confederation. What the lessons in the book are about, what the story of building the Orange Wave tells us is that learning from one’s mistakes, building on the lessons of the past, focusing on what’s important to the voters at home has enabled us to take a party from fourth place to official opposition to a serious contender for government and that’s what this story is about.”

The sky is falling, the sky is falling, many people will say, and I say hogwash to that. At least on the federal scene the NDP has a Leader who knows how to win elections, and has a Leader who wants to win elections, and most importantly has a Leader who knows you can do a lot more to further your agenda by being in power than sitting on the sidelines in the opposition benches.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/15/tom-mulcair-expected-to-move-ndp...

Yeah, once again, the headline has nothing to do with any of the proposals. I find the "center / left / right" stuff to be obnoxiously devoid of substance, no matter who says it, especially the media. But if there's any consolation, people can look at things the NDP has been saying for 10 years and know that the National Post considers that the new political center.