Same as the old boss, if a lot less thrift with our money.
Neil Macdonald, with a cynical view of the Liberals. What’s interesting isn’t that the Liberal policies mirror the Conservatives, it’s that he admits that the Conservatives are the same as the Liberals.
Course, that’s something that anyone arguing with a Harper hater could have told you two years ago.
Neil McDonald is out to lunch:
“Everyone knows by now about the disasters that pigheaded austerity-for-the-sake-of-austerity programs have wrought in Europe.”
Such as which ones, exactly? To be sure, Greece did lots of pissing and moaning about proposed austerity,which then precluded the enactment of any actual austerity.
Check out the Baltic States, which eschewed Keynesian Stimulus, cut govt spending and did REAL (as opposed to the pig-headed, pretend kind) austerity and are now growing at +4% a year, more than double the rates of the “non-austerity countries. You can look it up: they call Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania the Baltic Tigers now.
Here’s a hint for all you Keynesian Kool-Aid drinkers – Stimulus does not work: the much vaunted “multiplier” is negative (i.e, $1 of stimulus spending yields less than $1 of GDP).
The Liberals are JUST like the Conservatives except for their mendacity, incompetence, media conspiracy, union alignments, cronies lining up to the trough, climate change fantasies, selfies, refugees on military bases, blowing $15b more, way less experienced, way less situational awareness, did I say media cover, and have a cabin boy rather than a captain in charge of the ship of state.
Except for that and no more than five thousand other things, they are EXACTLY alike.
BTW, in CBC language that means the Tories would have done the same thing, got the same results, but with more compassion. So that’s why they’re the same but better eh? Facts need not enter the discussion.
The Liberals are JUST like the Conservatives except for their mendacity, incompetence, media conspiracy, union alignments, cronies lining up to the trough, climate change fantasies, selfies, refugees on military bases, blowing $15b more, way less experienced, way less situational awareness, did I say media cover, and have a cabin boy rather than a captain in charge of the ship of state.
Except for that and no more than five thousand other things, they are EXACTLY alike.
BTW, in CBC language that means the Tories would have done the same thing, got the same results, but with more compassion. So that’s why they’re the same but better eh? Facts need not enter the discussion, just cover for the Grits.
I have a bunch of superficial email and letters from the CPC almost every day asking for money. My riding association announces a meeting 13 days in advance to select candidates for the May AGM in Vancouver. None of this contact seriously solicits input from the membership. This is the same top down BS that existed during Mulroney and the reason we started Reform in the first place. People wonder why Trump is so popular!
When the Conservative Party starts asking for my vote because they are simply ‘smarter’ than the Liebels then they have lost my support. I see no philosophy and no desire for grassroots input. Sadly I am beginning to think that this party does not have the same values I do.
I assume that the next leader will be from eastern Canada and that will pretty much do it. I have not trusted the way the party has operated ever since they merged. Any close look at how the last federal campaign was run indicates an internal split along progressive lines. I also find it strange that potential leadership candidates are silent.
It was so good the first time, Shamrock, it was well worth posting it again.
Where on earth is Lance coming from?
The Headline ” Meet the new boss…” is taken from a Who song. The scary part is that the populous miss the “…won’t get fooled again.” part. The Canadian voter can be seduced by shiny ponies and promises of unicorn farts.
Cynical?
Neil is stroking the Liberal Liars while claiming the Conservatives are just as stupid and dishonest.
Nice normal CBC drive by slime..
Screw CBC they sold the current package to the voters, they own the failure of their product.
However if you insert “Eastern Voters” where Neil refers to canadians or voters, his claim of voter tolerance for debt, borrowing and government theft is true.
While the conservative support is currently deflated and cynical, leaderless even.. we either need to reengage or do something completely different.
Economically tiny Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have all disproportionately benefited from (1) massive EU transfers (e.g. 20% of GDP in Estonia), (2) the highest levels of working-age out-migration in the EU (fewer workers = artificially low unemployment), and (3) stable trade relationships with their economically much larger and more prosperous geographic neighbors (Poland, Scandinavia, etc.). Absent these features, their austerity-driven “recovery” remarkably unremarkable. And even then, their EU-leading recoveries still amount to a fraction of their EU-leading crashes in 2008-09, meaning austerity for them has hardly been a miracle.
Re: fiscal multiplier, even the IMF (long the transnational champion of austerity conditionalities) is admitting that they might have been wrong: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/10/12/imf-austerity-is-much-worse-for-the-economy-than-we-thought/
More evidence of the negative impact of austerity on growth:
– onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecoj.12332/abstract
“I have a bunch of superficial email and letters from the CPC almost every day asking for money.”
Ditto here, and everyone gets into either the virtual or garbage trash. One can tell by the few snippets of info that have come out that we are being set up for an eastern leader and a return to “progressive” values, in other words, just like the Liberals, no values other than maybe a little more fiscally so. At this point I am just watching to see where this goes, but do not hold out much hope, as Preston Numbnuts is advising becoming Liberal Lite and embracing Al Goreacle’s religion.