This also applies to politics in Alberta. I have a feeling conservatives there in the next two years or so will have to disavow their connections to the alt-right even though kenney is not as buddy buddy with levant as scheer is.I think brown and other provincial conservatives parties don't have to worry about this to much, but the UCP definitely has to worry about their connections to the alt right.
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Canadian PoliGAF - 42nd Parliament: Sunny Ways in Trudeaupia
- Thread starter matthewwhatever
- Start date
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This also applies to politics in Alberta. I have a feeling conservatives there in the next two years or so will have to disavow their connections to the alt-right even though kenney is not as buddy buddy with levant as scheer is.I think brown and other provincial conservatives parties don't have to worry about this to much, but the UCP definitely has to worry about their connections to the alt right.
Derek filderandt is now in trouble for double dipping meal expenses. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmon...ccused-double-dipping-meal-expenses-1.4246981
Random Human
They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
Yup, you said it well. Every time there's some alt-right protest or something, Sheer is going to be asked to disavow it.
matthewwhatever
Member
Reminder to our resident NDPers that they only have a few more days to join the party if they want to vote in the leadership contest. Deadline is August 17th.
Kenney's efforts at rebranding himself as a "rock star" in ethnic communities probably helped insulate him from some of that, but every so often the mask slips -- in 2008, it came out that he'd been caught on tape during the 2000 election talking about Sikhs playing the race card, as part of a larger conversation about how neo-nazis had taken over one of their Ontario riding associations. I don't think he's as in thrall to the alt-right as Scheer is, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some connections there.
And on Ezra & Rebel Media...
I hope that people don't let him get away with it. He's been pushing far-right ideas for years, so for him to say that he hasn't is appalling. I hope voices like Michael Chong and Dough Schweitzer hold weight in the CPC, though I'm not too optimistic they will be, given the trend of Conservatism in recent years.
Kenney's efforts at rebranding himself as a "rock star" in ethnic communities probably helped insulate him from some of that, but every so often the mask slips -- in 2008, it came out that he'd been caught on tape during the 2000 election talking about Sikhs playing the race card, as part of a larger conversation about how neo-nazis had taken over one of their Ontario riding associations. I don't think he's as in thrall to the alt-right as Scheer is, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some connections there.
And on Ezra & Rebel Media...
I hope that people don't let him get away with it. He's been pushing far-right ideas for years, so for him to say that he hasn't is appalling. I hope voices like Michael Chong and Dough Schweitzer hold weight in the CPC, though I'm not too optimistic they will be, given the trend of Conservatism in recent years.
Also, Brian Lilley has just left the Rebel. He was the sanest of the bunch (that's not saying much I know).
They've been working really hard to distance themselves from the alt-right/white supremacists the last few days, but it's their audience now. If they go back to Trudeau's nannies, their view count will drop to where it was a year ago before they went full infowar.
They've been working really hard to distance themselves from the alt-right/white supremacists the last few days, but it's their audience now. If they go back to Trudeau's nannies, their view count will drop to where it was a year ago before they went full infowar.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Are you guys following Australia? This citizenship thing is fucking amazing. You have the government calling the opposition traitors because they are using New Zealand contacts to invalidate the candidacy of the deputy PM.
This is before you even get into the stupidity of the marriage equality mail in non-binding referendum.
This is before you even get into the stupidity of the marriage equality mail in non-binding referendum.
Speaking of the NDP, this was an unexpected endorsement: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/0...-charlie-angus-as-next-ndp-leader_a_23076971/
What's the vote looking like for the "Angus vs. Singh & Also Two Other People Extravaganza"?
EDIT: Ezra needs to own what The Rebel is: A dog whistle for bigots such as him to whine about their inadequacies and racist views. That's what it was and will continue to be. That is what Ezra is and will be until the day he dies.
What's the vote looking like for the "Angus vs. Singh & Also Two Other People Extravaganza"?
EDIT: Ezra needs to own what The Rebel is: A dog whistle for bigots such as him to whine about their inadequacies and racist views. That's what it was and will continue to be. That is what Ezra is and will be until the day he dies.
Derek fildebrandt now has to deal with a trial related to a hit and run in 2016.He asked for an adjournment to the trial until september to find some of the 22 witnesses that were with him when Amy Rawlinson claimed the hit and run occurred.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fildebrandt-mla-ucp-hit-and-run-expenses-1.4248562
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fildebrandt-mla-ucp-hit-and-run-expenses-1.4248562
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
all polls I can find show that among NDP members Angus has a large lead followed by Ashton in second.
matthewwhatever
Member
As Bonen says, the Mainstreet polls have consistently shown Angus ahead, with Ashton about 10-15 points back. Singh has been in dead last in each poll, a few points behind Caron. There's a pretty large number of undecideds, too.
However, Singh raised more money than everyone else last quarter (in dollars, but not in numbers of donors). Part of that is because he has way, way more max donors (he had 77, compared to 3 for Angus), but he's also claiming that he's bringing in lots of new members who don't show up in Mainstreet's sample. He's basically hoping that he signs up so many new members, he'll be able to swamp the existing membership and pull out a win.
As strategies go, it's pretty risky: he has to sign up enough people to make up a 25-30 point gap, and even if he's getting new NDP donors and members, he's not signing up *that* many new people. If I had to guess now, I think Angus wins on the second ballot.
How is this guy not resigning? Good god. Every day we get a new highlight of his incompetence.
He's gone.
Huh...kind of surprised Singh is floundering in the polls. I though it would be between him and Angus, honestly.
Well that was quicker than I expected. .. Wait Caucus? Does he still have a seat even if he's out of caucus? If so, resign your seat, shitheel.
It seems like a lot of NDP members think Singh is a closet Liberal and that may be impacting his support. For one thing Singh has proposed reforming Old Age Security but making it means tested. This is an important distinction from other candidates in that one of the primary areas of ideological differentiation between the Liberal and New Democratic Parties is that the NDP believe that universal programs are the superior method for implementing social programs whereas the Liberals favour means testing (phasing out benefits for higher incomes).
Singh's proposal is bit baffling from a political strategy point of view because it reduces the distinction between the Liberal Party and the NDP at a time when the Liberals under Trudeau have already moved left to be closer to the NDP. In the last election voters already had trouble discerning how the NDP were more progressive than the Liberals so you'd think the NDP should be moving further left in response. Adopting Liberal ideology and narrowing the distance between the parties at a time when progressive candidates around the world (ie. Corbyn, Sanders) are doing rather well doesn't seem like a good electoral strategy. If voters are presented with a choice between the Liberals and something that is sort of like the Liberals, they're going to go with the real deal they already know.
Aside from this Singh seems pretty good to me. I do wonder if this idea was a mistake that could really damage him.
Angus kinda seems like the Scheer of the contest in that he's boring, not taking a lot of risks, and represents what the party has always done.
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
As an outsider dirty American interested in international social democratic parties Singh seems like a really bad choice. He really doesn't seem that distinct from Trudeau and from what I've seen of the NDP debates he's the only candidate to really get attacked by the others for being insufficiently left. Shrinking the welfare state by means-testing it sounds like a pretty bad policy for a social democratic candidate to run on and he seemed to get attacked on his environmental policies by the other candidates as well. Running someone so centrist just seems like it would make the NDP less distinguishable from the Liberals and fail to present itself as any sort of alternative.
But I'm also a foreigner so I could be totally misreading the situation.
But I'm also a foreigner so I could be totally misreading the situation.
The problem is he's not the only one in the UCP that has to deal with legal issues or has done other questionable things. An edmonton journal article that was recently written says multiple UCP MLA's are involved in court cases currently. Jason Nixon also claimed thousands of dollars in living expenses in 2015 and 2016 while rooming together with derek. This is likely far from over.
Link to the edmonton journal article I mentioned above.
http://edmontonjournal.com/news/pol...debrandt-to-be-in-court-on-hit-and-run-charge
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Labour punted it when they were in power, so they're not blameless (Penny Wong apologizing for schilling against marriage equality is the definition of why politics is the worst lol). It's funny how unequivocal Turnbull was in saying he supported marriage equality though since he knows that the public is generally in support of it but half his party is homophobic and thinks Jesus will come to Earth and sink Australia to the bottom of the sea if they legalize gay marriage.
Yeah, I've heard the Singh is a Liberal/bad NDP thing myself. I think he might actually end up losing it if all the hard core people actually bought memberships and are going to vote.
Canada will never have a Corbyn though. I don't think class politics is enough to unite the disparate interests in Canada, especially if you are leader of the protest party.
matthewwhatever
Member
Yeah, the rate at which everything came out makes it seem like it was part of an organized campaign to get rid of him -- which, if you'e Kenney/Jean and you don't want your party to be tied to the alt-right, isn't a bad idea.
If Fildebrandt were smarter, he probably could've turned it around into something that wasn't fatal to his political career. Back in the fall, CPC issues management specialist come and talk to one of my classes, and his focus was on dealing with scandals. The gist of his message was: get in front of the story by admitting everything right away, because you only get to apologize once. If Fildebrandt had reacted to the first story about him pocketing the allowance by, like, holding a press conference and saying he was resigning his seat because he'd spent too much time as an elected politician, and it was making him do things contrary to his conservative ideals, he may have been able to resuscitate his career down the line. By only quitting caucus (not even his seat) after days and days of bad news stories, he'll never get to do that. That's not a bad thing -- he's a horrible person and the province and the country will be better off without him anywhere near power -- but he's definitely putting on a clinic on how a politician shouldn't handle controversy.
I think Singh misread the race and his position in it. One of the implicit themes behind his candidacy (and something I've heard a few of his supporters state outright) was that he was different just by virtue of the fact he was the first POC to be a serious contender for a major party's leadership. It's kind of like the Obama approach, where because of who he was, he couldn't afford to be radically different on policy because it would just serve to emphasize his otherness.
That's less effective in a Canadian context for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Sikhs don't occupy the same kind of historical space in Canada as blacks do in the United States; even if they face bigotry, there are no (or at least far fewer) structural barriers designed to keep them from fully participating in society. Sikhs and Indo-Canadians are active participants in all three major parties, including the Conservatives, which makes Singh's run for leader feel a lot less groundbreaking.
For another, he's running for the leadership of a left-wing party at a time when a significant portion of its membership wants someone who comes off as a little radical. Playing it safe seems a lot less appealing when they're coming off successive leaders who failed after promising, essentially, that if they moderated their most extreme positions, they had a shot at power. Couple that with the perceived successes of Corbyn and Sanders, and it's not hard to see why hardcore NDPers -- which is to say, the people who'll be picking the next leader -- are a little leery leery of going with the person who's perceived as the least left-wing of the bunch.
I think you're right about the electoral chances for a Corbyn-type, too. Canadians generally identify as being right in the middle, politically (I read a study from a few years ago that, when asked to place themselves on the political spectrum on a scale of 1-7, something like 75% put themselves at 3, 4, or 5), which makes campaigning as a radical pretty much impossible. If someone like Ashton were to win -- which I don't think is likely, but it's not unthinkable -- it'd be interesting to see whether she'd stick with her hard-left approach, or if she'd moderate it a little in the hopes of not being wiped out in 2019.
Wonder if they'll a) show up anyway or b) go to a different school. (Queens, my money is on Queens)
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Is there anything to be made of Butts hanging out with Bannon? Conservatives seem to be jumping on that to show that Liberals are just as bad, but I'm not really sure that's a winning strategy.
Meanwhile we have an aboriginal veteran basically calling people snowflakes because they are offended that he called gay people "mutations". Fucking Canada.
I don't know what the function of the NDP is nowadays though. It's a choice between being baby Liberals or acknowledging the fact that there are limits to their politics and run on their more "extreme" policies. Neither will lead to any kind of electoral victory though.
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Welp, I guess I can never say anything bad about Canadian politicians again because at least we don't have idiots who do this:
[/IMG]
Meanwhile we have an aboriginal veteran basically calling people snowflakes because they are offended that he called gay people "mutations". Fucking Canada.
Yeah the race identity issue, for Asians (south and east) is kind of a bust because as you suggest, they are in all parties. That and there's a clear gap between the generations in terms of both social and economic values, which is why Conservatives lived on anti-equality policies for so long - even if it alienated some white Canadians, they got support from conservative Asian communities to make up for it.
This is the other issue. I totally understood why he was so wishy washy on the pipeline, because he thinks Alberta might still be worth trying to win, but I think it's clear that the Alberta NDP will be destroyed next election and that there will be little to no gains for the party federally there either. Right off the gate he came off as the centrist candidate, killing any momentum he might have had with the populist Leap manifesto crowd.
I was thinking more about the regional issues. Mulcair tried to play the middle and be a party that represented Quebec as well as Canada and we saw how that turned out. But yeah, I'm not surprised that most Canadians consider themselves moderates - it's why the Liberals and Conservatives aren't that dramatically different (well, to a pinko commie like me anyway lol).
I don't know what the function of the NDP is nowadays though. It's a choice between being baby Liberals or acknowledging the fact that there are limits to their politics and run on their more "extreme" policies. Neither will lead to any kind of electoral victory though.
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Welp, I guess I can never say anything bad about Canadian politicians again because at least we don't have idiots who do this:
matthewwhatever
Member
Reminder for NDP-leaning Gaffers: today's the last day join the party if you want to vote for the next leader.
Personally, I'd think it's good that the Trudeau government has improved our relationship with our largest trading partner, but if the CPC really wants to highlight how badly they continually botched the file, they're welcome to do it.
Like, I get that they're hoping to shake soft-left LPCers over to the NDP, but given that the Liberals are calling for NAFTA to include environmental and gender clauses, it doesn't seem like it's a very strong line of argument. (Though I guess it's worth noting that Mulcair, strategic genius that he is, thinks otherwise.)
I think the means-testing is another example of your first point. If universality is a core NDP tenet, it comes off as pretty tone-deaf to make one of your tentpole policies the complete opposite of that.
And speaking of Leap:
a) it's a little weird how none of the candidates are even mentioning it. It was endorsed at the last convention! It clearly has support amongst a significant portion of the membership! If it's going to be hung around their neck in 2019 regardless, I feel like it's better to proudly own it than to just pretend it doesn't exist.
(b) To your second point, it seems to me (as an outsider, to be sure) that the NDP should've used this leadership race as an opportunity to try and define themselves/figure out what they wanted to be. That's why leadership contests tend to get so heated -- because it's people fighting for the direction of the party. Given that their last convention saw Mulcair dumped, Leap adopted, and Notley and Stephen Lewis articulate drastically differing paths for the NDP, you'd think this would be the ideal time to have that conversation, but instead they've mainly been focusing on getting along with each other. It may help prevent attack ads in the future, but it doesn't do anything for setting an agenda and, like you said, giving themselves a reason to exist. The fact they're still millions of dollars behind the LPC & CPC in fundraising shows that NDP members kind of feel the same way.
Personally, I'd think it's good that the Trudeau government has improved our relationship with our largest trading partner, but if the CPC really wants to highlight how badly they continually botched the file, they're welcome to do it.
Like, I get that they're hoping to shake soft-left LPCers over to the NDP, but given that the Liberals are calling for NAFTA to include environmental and gender clauses, it doesn't seem like it's a very strong line of argument. (Though I guess it's worth noting that Mulcair, strategic genius that he is, thinks otherwise.)
I think the means-testing is another example of your first point. If universality is a core NDP tenet, it comes off as pretty tone-deaf to make one of your tentpole policies the complete opposite of that.
And speaking of Leap:
a) it's a little weird how none of the candidates are even mentioning it. It was endorsed at the last convention! It clearly has support amongst a significant portion of the membership! If it's going to be hung around their neck in 2019 regardless, I feel like it's better to proudly own it than to just pretend it doesn't exist.
(b) To your second point, it seems to me (as an outsider, to be sure) that the NDP should've used this leadership race as an opportunity to try and define themselves/figure out what they wanted to be. That's why leadership contests tend to get so heated -- because it's people fighting for the direction of the party. Given that their last convention saw Mulcair dumped, Leap adopted, and Notley and Stephen Lewis articulate drastically differing paths for the NDP, you'd think this would be the ideal time to have that conversation, but instead they've mainly been focusing on getting along with each other. It may help prevent attack ads in the future, but it doesn't do anything for setting an agenda and, like you said, giving themselves a reason to exist. The fact they're still millions of dollars behind the LPC & CPC in fundraising shows that NDP members kind of feel the same way.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
I know that NAFTA is king and all, but after the last few days I'm not sure being friendly with white nationalists/nazis is a good thing. I don't think it's possible to both be on the side of Trump while also condemning his statements and beliefs.
The debates have basically been opportunities for everyone to attack the Liberals, which I guess is the general strategy that parties are supposed to use to maintain the integrity of the winning candidate (Trump being the notable exception). I can see that too because the party needs to seem to be a viable alternative... but I just don't see how they win over Liberals who are more likely to vote Conservative next time around (or abstain altogether) than vote NDP.
The OAS proposal sort of makes sense if you take a longer look at it and see how more money gets redistributed under Singh's proposal, but this really isn't the age of nuance anymore when we are literally fighting off Nazis in our country.
(I wonder if we can destroy Rebel Media by forcing them to register in Russia like people did with Daily Stormer)
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Also lol, another Australian senator caught up in the dual-citizenship scandal. That's 3 government politicians so far, and they're all refusing to do the right thing and step down even though they have been illegally elected. This has become a full blown Constitutional crisis and it's fun to watch.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
It was funny because there were two different editorials attacking them in The Toronto Star yesterday. Once you go Nazi, you can't go back.
Yeah. It's crazy watching the rebel melt down now.
For those of us who don't like to fill our lives with reading hateful garbage, can you explain what this actually means?
The kid Ezra hired to whine about muslims in the UK is destroying him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3UKAivWrio
Apparently, the whole thing is a scam and the CRA might be about to start an audit.
Gavin McInnes is supposedly leaving.
They're losing a shitton of ad revenues
https://ipolitics.ca/2017/08/16/ove...ow-pulled-ads-from-the-rebel-sleeping-giants/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3UKAivWrio
Apparently, the whole thing is a scam and the CRA might be about to start an audit.
Gavin McInnes is supposedly leaving.
They're losing a shitton of ad revenues
https://ipolitics.ca/2017/08/16/ove...ow-pulled-ads-from-the-rebel-sleeping-giants/
firehawk12
Subete no aware
People quitting, losing banner ad buys, a video of a recording showing Levant trying to pay someone off to remain silent, etc.
Everyone in the mainstream media seems fine with basically calling them out for their racism now, which is fun to see.
I made a thread about The Rebel's newest nail in the coffin: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1420624
Let this be the end of that wretched site and Ezra Levant.
Let this be the end of that wretched site and Ezra Levant.
That scum will weasel his way back into the media landscape with something new if The Rebel goes down. The worst ones always have contingencies for things like this
Charlie Angus: Currently the frontrunner of the race, Angus is most notable for his work with various indigenous groups and championing progressive values both prior to and during his campaign, most famously by voting in favor of gay marriage despite being told by his priest that he'd be denied communion and working . His French is not particularly good so that won't do much to secure the NDP's holdings in Quebec but he's consistently leading in the polls and the number of donors (not the amount donated but we'll get to Singh) so it remains to be seen if his support will carry over to the 2019 election.
Niki Ashton: The only woman in the running, Niki Ashton's platform is centered on social progress, in particular with justice for indigenous people (Kinder Morgan opposition) and the LGBTQ2S+ community (Non-binary government ID). That said, Ashton has made some questionable decisions as of late like apologizing for referencing a Beyonce quote on Twitter in acknowledgement that the NDP were shifting closer to the center, openly campaigning for Bernie Sanders in the U.S. during the 2016 election and has said she opposes basic income because...conservatives support it? She's currently second in the race but it's difficult to understand why when she's demonstrated herself to be less than capable a candidate throughout the race.
Jagmeet Singh: Probably the most well-known of all the candidates, Singh is the only candidate to openly campaign on federally banning carding. As great as it would be great to finally have a minority represent one of the three major parties on the federal level, he's not garnering as much support from the base as expected nor is he bringing in many new supporters outside of high donors, mostly due to him being seen as too centrist for a party that's increasingly seen as Liberal Lite. It's possible his support in Ontario is being underrepresented which is important in a "one person, one vote" race or that he could pick up more support as the race draws to a close but currently Singh is not currently performing as well as Angus or Ashton in the polls.
Guy Caron: The fourth and final person in the race, Guy Caron's platform includes a plan for introducing basic income on the federal level for families who spend more than 20% of their income on necessities like food and shelter. Like Singh, Caron is lagging far behind Ashton and Angus, mostly due to being a non-presence at most of the debates and lack of name recognition.
The Rebel debacle keeps getting better: https://www.pressprogress.ca/exclus...d_foreign_funding_from_anti_muslim_think_tank
matthewwhatever
Member
I totally get the desire to stick it to and/or freeze out Trump. I worked at the US Embassy for 7 years, and I was sending out résumés to every single person I could think of the day after the election, since I knew that there was no way his presidency was turning out any other way than it has, and I wanted no part of that. Even though I know quite a few people who are still there, I can't help but be suspicious of why anyone would willingly work for Trump, either directly or indirectly, any longer than they have to.
But there's a big difference between that and establishing a professional relationship with the top advisor to the president of our neighbour and our largest trading partner by several orders of magnitude. However disgusting or repellent the President and his team may be, the fact remains that they were legitimately elected, and we do need to work with them and maintain good relations with them -- particularly at a time when we're renegotiating a trade deal that impacts pretty much every aspect of our economy. I get that it'd be more instantly gratifying to pull a Mulcair and just call them names, but that's just not realistic.
Besides that, we try to maintain relations with lots of other countries who are led by governments that are far worse than that our neighbour to the south. When the Canadians were held hostage in the Philippines last year, Trudeau had to deal with Duterte. There are some pretty appalling governments leading EU member states, and we just reached a trade deal with them all through CETA. We're currently putting together a trade deal with China. We're fairly friendly with India, and Modi has some pretty shady stuff in his past. Are you saying we should cut off ties with all those countries too?
And as a sidenote, the NYT article said that Butts told Bannon to raise taxes on the rich as part of a middle-class agenda. That's hardly Pétain leading Vichy France. In fact, if you looked at everything else the Liberals have been doing since Trump's election, you'll notice that they've been making a pretty strong effort to target state governments, and de-emphasizing our country-to-country relationship (see all their lobbying of state governments as part of the lead-up to NAFTA, or the Canadian Government statement after Trump said the US was pulling out of NAFTA). Just because they're not loudly condemning everything the US and Trump does, it doesn't mean that they implicitly support it.
Personally, I don't think that means-testing is an inherently bad idea (replacing the Universal Child Benefit with the Canada Child Benefit seems to have worked well, and it's sort of means-tested), but as I said: if the NDP just affirmed their commitment to universality last year at their policy convention, expecting members to reverse that seems a little over-optimistic. (And, of course, I imagine such a proposal would be suicide in a general election.)
Ezra being responsible for something sketchy? I'm *shocked*.
Caz' summary is pretty good. To add a few points:
Angus is an aging punk (he and a former NDP MP were bandmates back in the '80s), and he makes a big deal about only owning cheap suits. He's pretty folksy, but his French is abysmal.
Ashton wants to be the Bernie/Corbyn of the race, and I'm informed by people who know her that she's very smart, but she's not great at connecting with people. If you remember "Elbowgate", she was one of the people who helped turn it into a farce with her overreaction.
Singh has been fairly good at fundraising (at least by NDP standards), but his numbers have been driven by lots of big donors concentrated in/around Toronto. He's also faced criticism for being less left-leaning than any of the other candidates.
Caron is a Quebecois economist pushing basic income. He's not winning.
Random Human
They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
What a twist.
I'm glad I'm not the only who doesn't understand the Ashton thing. I think it is great to have a proud feminist in the race, but she just doesn't come across as a good leader. There's something about the way she speaks that bothers me, she's simultaneously passionate and dull, like she is a boring school teacher yelling at me.
I wonder how much of her success is because she branded herself as the Canadian Bernie.
I'll say it again, I used to be a big fan of hers, then she went off the deep end in twist negater of elbowgate and apologizing for the Beyonce song. Couldn't take get serious after that
My NDP leadership hot takes:
Angus: Dull, can't speak French. Old school and appeals to NDP traditionalists. Seems to be pulling the Scheer strategy of winning by being vaguely inoffensive to everyone.
Ashton: The millenial SJW candidate. Her dumb comments during Elbowgate is evidence of her terrible political instincts. Better politicians would have quickly realized Elbowgate was a complete non-controversy with no legs. Promising free tuition and an incredible amount of new tax increases.
Singh: The Trudeau candidate that launched his candidacy with a shallow GQ article about how well he dresses. Probably the only guy that can actually grow the party, but apparently not left wing enough for the base.
Caron: Dull policy wonk from Quebec. No one seems to care.
The Conservative leadership contest had a ton of candidates that were all vaguely the same, pushing the same timid ideas, with a couple of mavericks with ”zany" ideas (Bernier, Chong). The NDP doesn't have anyone that in my view is really sticking their head out, and everyone is suggesting the same left wing, socialist policies that we've seen before. If Singh's step away from universality in old age pensions is the most controversial idea in the contest then that is truly pathetic.
Aside from being out of step with the typical NDP position on old age pension universality Singh supports many socialist, left wing policies so the accusations of him not being left wing enough seem overblown to me. He is in favour of universal dental, childcare and pharamacare programs, and proportional representation after all.
I have a hard time seeing anyone other than Singh or maybe Caron growing the NDP seat count in a federal election.
Angus: Dull, can't speak French. Old school and appeals to NDP traditionalists. Seems to be pulling the Scheer strategy of winning by being vaguely inoffensive to everyone.
Ashton: The millenial SJW candidate. Her dumb comments during Elbowgate is evidence of her terrible political instincts. Better politicians would have quickly realized Elbowgate was a complete non-controversy with no legs. Promising free tuition and an incredible amount of new tax increases.
Singh: The Trudeau candidate that launched his candidacy with a shallow GQ article about how well he dresses. Probably the only guy that can actually grow the party, but apparently not left wing enough for the base.
Caron: Dull policy wonk from Quebec. No one seems to care.
The Conservative leadership contest had a ton of candidates that were all vaguely the same, pushing the same timid ideas, with a couple of mavericks with ”zany" ideas (Bernier, Chong). The NDP doesn't have anyone that in my view is really sticking their head out, and everyone is suggesting the same left wing, socialist policies that we've seen before. If Singh's step away from universality in old age pensions is the most controversial idea in the contest then that is truly pathetic.
Aside from being out of step with the typical NDP position on old age pension universality Singh supports many socialist, left wing policies so the accusations of him not being left wing enough seem overblown to me. He is in favour of universal dental, childcare and pharamacare programs, and proportional representation after all.
I have a hard time seeing anyone other than Singh or maybe Caron growing the NDP seat count in a federal election.
Am I crazy to think Mulcair could potentially be a better leader than all of them? If he didn't try to do this faux-smiley thing in his campaign and instead doubled down on Angry Tom, he could have retained his advantage at the beginning of the campaign.
The whole Rebel Media debacle made me realize how scary the world is. It appears they were receiving huge millions dollars worth of donations from rich American racist think-tanks. I guess rich people truly rule the world and will spend their fortune to spread their hatred.
Random Human
They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
Honestly... based on what's been going on in the world, I think the only surprising thing here is they were getting American money and not Russian money.
This is actually an interesting thing that I've been hearing about more and more on the Left. Here is a good article about it:
https://newrepublic.com/article/143758/mark-zuckerberg-gets-wrong-ubi
It's about Zucc's advocating of the idea, so US based context, but still applies here on a theoretical level.
Basically the right-wing approval for UBI comes from an understanding that you'd dismantle the welfare state, since people would in theory no longer need it. But that would actually be disastrous for the poor.
There is also the idea that UBI will promote a Player Piano type society where most people are given a basic stipend by the government, but have no jobs or prospects due to automation, and the 1% just continue to get insanely rich because they're the only ones actually participating in the economy.
The alternative that I've heard, that makes more sense to me (but is also a lot more cumbersome and socialist-sounding) is to decommodify basic needs. We already do this with health care - just take it out of the market (at least on the patients' end) and guarantee it to every citizen. We could do the same thing with other necessities like food ('food stamps for all' as I've heard Americans say) or housing or child care or elder care.
Anyway it's not completely crazy for a leftist to be against UBI, although obviously it is contentious and I don't know where I fall on the issue personally.
In general I do like Ashton but she does seem like a bit of a neophyte. I'm not sure she has a strong enough ideological or moral theory of government - maybe a little too susceptible to prevailing social mores and such.
I honestly have no idea how I'll vote, other than Singh will be last.
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