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Title: McGuinty's Liberals grab momentum in Ontario election
Category: Provincial Politics
Posted By: BeaverFever
Date: 2011-09-14 10:27:13
Canadian

   

I can't believe voters would be stupid enough to give McSquinty another kick at the can.

He already screwed the pooch twice, third time supposed to be a charm or what?

   

In all fairness though, the Libs didn't win the last election so much as the Conservatives shot themselves in their own foot.

   

No doubt, John Tory is living proof being University educated doesn't necessarily mean you are smart.

   

It's not stupidity at all. It's "pick your poison" for most Ontarians. Even though most don't like McGuinty or what the Libs have done these past 8 years, we're still WAY happier with McGuinty than we were with either Mike Harris/Ernie Eaves or Bob Rae. Harris' Conservatives fucked this province worse than any parliament in our history and they managed to do so during the most prosperous economic times in our history. A vote for the Liberals isn't an endorsement of McGuinty. It's a fearful defensive vote against a Harris clone.

   

The problem is Hudak is not seizing on people's disdain for McGuinty coupled with his inability to make himself something other than Liberal lite. Hudak needs to find his balls, give them a good squeeze and start getting emotional about what's going on. He also needs to develop a platform with real conservative values.

   

Ontarians also have a tendancy to vote against the party that's in federal power, and Torontonians are disinclined to vote for a "triple-decker" governing party (i.e. Conservatives at federal, provincial and municipal levels).

Hudak's also decided to associate himself with Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and is likely trailing as a result. Not only because Ford's popularity is taking a beating right now, but Ford's outspoken, anti-intellectual, "Tea party" style is anethema to what even many conservatives want to see at leaders of higher tiers of government. People expect their Premiers and Prime Ministers to be educated, polished executive or academic types (who know who Margaret Atwood is, for example...even if most secretly don't care). Hudak's an educated guy, but the more he associates himself with Ford Nation and panders to that base, the more he risks branding himself as a directionless, single-minded Tea-Party idealogue instead of a pragmatic Harper conservative, which is not parituclarly appealing at the Provincial and Federal levels of government. He already has some tacky gimmicks and antics that come off as hare-brained and outside the mainstream, i.e. prison chain-gangs, excessive rants about immigrants etc.

   

The cycle continues.

Eventually, Ontarians will get tired of being taxed to death while watching their deficit rise and rise, they'll vote in someone to create change and balance the books and then complain about change.

McGuinty will get one more term to screw Ontario, then they'll vote in another party to clean up the financial mess, then complain how they're doing it.

   

You talk as if the ONLY way to "screw" citizens is to run a deficit or raise taxes. Citizens be screwed by "massive service cuts > tax cuts > more massive service cuts > (repeat)" that Harrisites run as well. Not to mention the massive give-aways like Harris's 407 ETR, and Ford's Don Lands proposal. And then as soon as a recession comes along, the province has no ability to take action except to runa deficit because it has alrady liquidated it most available assets, has little revenue for stimulus spending or investment, and the services that used to help in such times no longer exist or are greatly diminished.

Then you have privatization scandals like Walkerton, and gold-plated sweethart public-private partnership deals where the government assumes all the financial risk for project costs and the private sector keeps all the revenue, guaranteed under a 99-year lease.

   

That's a fair assessment all around, OTI. But I think you're throwing in the towel a little prematurely. I don't expect McGuinty to get that 3rd turn. It's likely to be a very close vote, but if I had to wager, I'd bet a Conservative government will be taking the reigns.

   

In the way Harris and Flaherty cleaned up the mess? BY increasing the poverty rate by 50%? By creating a shambles of both the education and healthcare systems?

By working hard at creating a deficit of nearly $6 billion in a time of prosperity when it could have been paying down debt?

By having more Walkerton and tainted meat deaths?

   

Studied a lot of what went on in Walkerton at an Ontario university as TA for 3 years in a course that covered such topics.

Stan and Frank Koebel were the main characters in the fiasco. Government policy had not changed with or without the Harris government (i.e. it was going to happen no matter who was in the government). Essentially these two fudged the records and did not do what they knew they were told to do. Blaming a particular government for the acts carried out by a couple of irresponsible jerks is absolutely incorrect and taking responsibility for one's actions is not in vogue in today's society.

   

You should consult your notes or lecture summaries.

Harris closed testing labs; reduced the numbers of inspectors and inspections and virtually removed effective oversight.

He nears greater responsibility than a couple of incompetent employees.

   

So they can be screwed either way.

People like you prefer to tax the shit out of people while still running up debt, then just pass the deficit onto the next generation.

It really depends on how you like it.

I know it comes to a shock to most of you, but it's time we live within our means. Now, I don't expect much as the majority of Canadians are massively in debt and live paycheque to paycheque so I guess they don't expect good financial management from their government if they can't do it themselves.

As for your Walkerton bullshit, get a clue. Both those retard Koebel brothers were government employees for 30 years who lied and put their own citizens at risk and were convicted of their crimes for doing so.

You also fail to mention it was the previous NDP government that loosened water standards on top of cuts being made during the Harris era.

   

You should consult facts.

The two idiot brothers had the test results and chose to do NOTHING.

It wasn't cause they couldn't get the water tested, it was because they got the negative results and sat on their ass.

Funny, you claim Harris did a bad thing here yet Walkerton, the only place with two idiots working there, and who did nothing when faced with bad results, was the only water problem in the entire Province.

   

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