... (continued - too many characters for one post).
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Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate
What I don't understand is all this complaining about "Liberals wasting our tax dollars" when the Conservatives just spent more than anyone in the history of the country.
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True, the Liberals could have outflanked the Conservatives on fiscal policy to appeal to the fiscal conservatives as reduce the Conservative party to their base of unelectable Christian-conservative theocrats. This move puts the Liberal party firmly back on the left of the Conservatives when it comes to fiscal policy. And that's saying something: there is no fiscally responsible party left.
That evaluation hinges on the assumption that this "stimulus package" will be pumping money into unsustainable industries, such as the auto industry which is going bankrupt because Jack's buddies in the CAW have managed to get paid more than what their employers can afford to pay them.
Personally, I don't think this package will do any good. In a way, telling consumers "the economy is so bad it needs a $30 billion injection from the government" is the worst thing for consumer confidence. Our economy is too linked to the rest of the world for it to matter. I do think now is a fantastistic time for infrastructure construction (which, credit to the CPC, is what they were planning on doing, whilst Stupid Stelmach is doing the opposite), as costs are down, but I don't think this package will create any long-term good for the economy... based on what we've heard it'll just prop up Jack's union buddies for a couple more years.
To me, the Liberals did the right thing to preserve their funding. They could have backed down at this point. I don't believe that this coalition is a necessary follow-through to prevent people from seeing it as purely motivated by greed - attempting to achieve political victory by silencing your opponents by bankrupting them is clearly against the spirit of democracy. They stepped up to protect Democracy and they won. Done.
Continue abstaining from parliament. You can say the Conservatives have a mandate and you respect it. Meanwhile, rebuild the party. Ignatieff (or even LeBlanc, since he's a harder target for the inevitable Conservative smear campaign) takes over in advance of the next election. Use the Conservatives campaign finance proposal to get your members to become more active.
Then in the next election you can smash the Conservatives to bits for passing the GST cut in the boom instead of income tax cuts in the bust. They blew their load too early and you nail them for it. Hit 'em hard for bringing the government to the brink of deficit with that ill-advised tax cut and massive spending increases before the economy collapsed, and say that this reduced their ability to pass an effective (!) stimulus package when it went down the toilet.
Ultimately this is the opinion piece that sums up my view on this perfectly:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/b...of-quebec.aspx
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Having been handed a political gift by Stephen Harper, the Liberal party is doubling down instead of pocketing the win. The Prime Minister’s plan to hobble opposition parties by ending their access to taxpayer subsidies has blown up in his face, much as such plans always do when evil geniuses try to take over the world.
The opposition had this thing won: They humiliated Mr. Harper, forced him to back down, and undermined his authority with his own caucus. But rather than accept victory and withdraw with honour, top figures from the NDP and the Liberals spent the weekend conspiring for more. They want to run the whole country, and they apparently don’t care what sort of sham government they have to put together to do it.
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I'll leave you with a bit of humour.
"Some people say Steven harper is a really historic figure. First he united the right and then he united the left."