The Ontario Liberal majority government has allowed them to show off all their worst attributes. The main thing that Ontario Liberals seem to like to do is to waste billions and billions of taxpayers' dollars on boondoggle gifts to their friends in the private sector. (Of course, if they didn't, those private-sector scum would enthusiastically pour all their resources into the Tea-Baggers in the Ontario PC Party.)
But that's no excuse. When corporate criminals are extorting you and trying to get you to destroy the living standards of hundreds of thousands of people, you should use the legislative process to break their power. Not cave-in to them.
Why didn't Andrea Horwath pull the plug on the corrupt, contempt of the legislature Liberals when she first had the chance? Because Horwath knows that the electorate HATES elections. The robotic corporate-servo-drone McGuinty had resigned in a fit of pique and Kathleen Wynne, not (directly) personally tainted by the gas-plant fiasco might very well have forced some people to be accountable for this criminal (whatever partisan hacks have to say about it) misuse of the people's money. That alternative appeared better than forcing an election for what the voters (in their ignorance) would have thought was an unimportant scandal.
Surprisingly, the scandal had legs. People knew that three-quarters of a billion dollars is a lot to spend for purely partisan purposes. (Despite what shameless Liberal hacks might think.) And, no doubt, partisan hacks of the Progressive Conservative persuasion never hesitated to vent to Horwath about this disgusting Liberal arrogance, criminal waste and anti-democratic behaviour. (I can just hear them in their self-righteous, hackneyed fury.) Horwath started to believe that she should defeat the Liberals. They were in contempt of the legislature after all. But defeat them and give the just-as-contemptuous-of-the-legislature PC's power?
What to do? What to do?
In my mind, she played it all wrong. Wynne was able to put a lot of genuinely good proposals in that budget of hers. But it was accompanied (as we see now, and many should have at the time) with all sorts of privatization and other failed neo-liberal policies. Horwath came out against the budget without negotiations, and saw herself painted as "voting against the most progressive budget in years."
She should have negotiated.
She shouldn't have campaigned from the right. She could have talked about being a good steward of the people's taxes, but without antagonizing the public sector unions (which she did). She shouldn't have taken the concerns of small business to heart while once again leaving the working poor hanging out to dry. Small-business has its own parties.
She should have stuck to her guns about the Liberals privatization and PPP-swindles.
But first and foremost, she should not have defeated the budget based on anger about a scandal she had a chance to attack around half-a-year ago. She should have consulted with the party's base (including all those activists her advisors derided as self-interest, out-of-touch codgers).
But Horwath is, herself, mired in the stink of stupid party politics. The permanent staff of the NDP has got to be the most useless, clueless, hopeless, mediocre fuckwads ever assembled. Decade-after-decade, these contaminated doofuses preach moderation, middle-of-the-road-ism, and slavish devotion to whatever flotsam and jetsam gets washed ashore as the party's leadership. They dissipate the activist spirit and it was only the implosion of the federal Liberals that gave them a new lease on life. Horwath listened to them (and her own centrism) and lost touch with the people who voted NDP year after year. She then abused the party's democracy by foisting the nauseating Adam Giambrone on the Scarborough-Guildwood riding association in a dubious decision that the brass has refused to investigate and explained away with the most obvious bullshit excuses.
Thanks to the total ineptness of Tim Hudak, the Liberals stormed to the majority whereupon they proceeded to cover-up and lie their way through exposes of their treasury-busting corruption and incompetence.
Such is politics in Canada.
But that's no excuse. When corporate criminals are extorting you and trying to get you to destroy the living standards of hundreds of thousands of people, you should use the legislative process to break their power. Not cave-in to them.
Why didn't Andrea Horwath pull the plug on the corrupt, contempt of the legislature Liberals when she first had the chance? Because Horwath knows that the electorate HATES elections. The robotic corporate-servo-drone McGuinty had resigned in a fit of pique and Kathleen Wynne, not (directly) personally tainted by the gas-plant fiasco might very well have forced some people to be accountable for this criminal (whatever partisan hacks have to say about it) misuse of the people's money. That alternative appeared better than forcing an election for what the voters (in their ignorance) would have thought was an unimportant scandal.
Surprisingly, the scandal had legs. People knew that three-quarters of a billion dollars is a lot to spend for purely partisan purposes. (Despite what shameless Liberal hacks might think.) And, no doubt, partisan hacks of the Progressive Conservative persuasion never hesitated to vent to Horwath about this disgusting Liberal arrogance, criminal waste and anti-democratic behaviour. (I can just hear them in their self-righteous, hackneyed fury.) Horwath started to believe that she should defeat the Liberals. They were in contempt of the legislature after all. But defeat them and give the just-as-contemptuous-of-the-legislature PC's power?
What to do? What to do?
In my mind, she played it all wrong. Wynne was able to put a lot of genuinely good proposals in that budget of hers. But it was accompanied (as we see now, and many should have at the time) with all sorts of privatization and other failed neo-liberal policies. Horwath came out against the budget without negotiations, and saw herself painted as "voting against the most progressive budget in years."
She should have negotiated.
She shouldn't have campaigned from the right. She could have talked about being a good steward of the people's taxes, but without antagonizing the public sector unions (which she did). She shouldn't have taken the concerns of small business to heart while once again leaving the working poor hanging out to dry. Small-business has its own parties.
She should have stuck to her guns about the Liberals privatization and PPP-swindles.
But first and foremost, she should not have defeated the budget based on anger about a scandal she had a chance to attack around half-a-year ago. She should have consulted with the party's base (including all those activists her advisors derided as self-interest, out-of-touch codgers).
But Horwath is, herself, mired in the stink of stupid party politics. The permanent staff of the NDP has got to be the most useless, clueless, hopeless, mediocre fuckwads ever assembled. Decade-after-decade, these contaminated doofuses preach moderation, middle-of-the-road-ism, and slavish devotion to whatever flotsam and jetsam gets washed ashore as the party's leadership. They dissipate the activist spirit and it was only the implosion of the federal Liberals that gave them a new lease on life. Horwath listened to them (and her own centrism) and lost touch with the people who voted NDP year after year. She then abused the party's democracy by foisting the nauseating Adam Giambrone on the Scarborough-Guildwood riding association in a dubious decision that the brass has refused to investigate and explained away with the most obvious bullshit excuses.
Thanks to the total ineptness of Tim Hudak, the Liberals stormed to the majority whereupon they proceeded to cover-up and lie their way through exposes of their treasury-busting corruption and incompetence.
Such is politics in Canada.
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