Big Surprise; NDP Has Only White Candidate In Edmonton-Millwoods

[Anonymous]

The NDP might very well win every single seat here in Edmonton. Latest opinion polls put them at something like 64%. They could even form a minority government.



What would a Rachel Notley government do you ask? A reversal of the very timid cuts to our bloated public service, higher taxes($1.1 billion in the first year alone), an acceleration of Alberta's dubious distinction as the province that spends the most per capita on civil servants and activists such as the Parkland and Pembina Institutes and the David Suzuki Foundation setting economic and energy policy.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/04/20/ndp-government-would-be-more-leftist-than-campaign-suggests">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/04/20/n ... n-suggests">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/04/20/ndp-government-would-be-more-leftist-than-campaign-suggests

[Gay Boy Roberto]

Perhaps Shen Li should move to China - where taxes are low, and the people always smile

[Anonymous]

Perhaps Shen Li should move to China - where taxes are low, and the people always smile

Don't need to Bob. We will bring our low tax, high growth, happy, smiling facesformula to Canada through immigration.



You're going to love working for us. ac_razz

[Anonymous]

The spend, spend, spend, debt, debt debt crowd seem to have forgotten hundreds of billions of dollars the Ontario government has wasted trying to jump start their near decade and a half long decline. Governments and individuals have been adding a lot of debt which is putting us on a dangerous trajectory.

A justifiably self-satisfied federal Finance Minister, Joe Oliver, rose in the House of Commons late Tuesday afternoon to bring down Ottawa's first balanced budget since 2007.



Oliver even took time to fire a snide tweet in the direction of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. Last year the Grit boss insisted that as PM he would not have to worry about deficits because budgets balance themselves.



On Tuesday, Oliver quipped "I assure @JustinTrudeau that this budget did not 'balance itself.'"



While that was a well-deserved jab at the lightweight Liberal leader, Oliver should also have taken time to tell the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to shove it.



Last week, IMF director, Christine Lagarde, a former French finance minister, urged world governments to ignore balanced budgets and growing national debts, and spend, spend, spend to stimulate their economies, even if that means raising taxes and going further into debt.



Unless they are broke, she urged, governments need to "use fiscal policy" to grow their economies. That is code for spending like drunken economists.



Her remarks mark a mad return to Keynesian economics – the dominant economic theory of the 1970s and 1980s that landed most Western governments eyeballs-deep in debt. It's a theory that sounds really appealing to politicians who want to believe they can ride in like saviour-knights and prime their countries' economic pumps without suffering any adverse consequences.



The problem with Keynesianism is, of course, that governments are second-rate pump primers. Or even third rate.



In order for governments to get the money for Lagarde's scheme, they have to squeeze it from individuals and corporations – both of whom are better primers – in the form of taxes. Or they have to squeeze out investors by borrowing heavily in capital markets.



No thanks, Ms. Lagarde, Canada will be much better off sticking to Oliver's plan.



Following the Lagarde strategy – ignoring basic fiscal and economic rules – is how a country gets to be Greece.



Fiscal conservatives have not always been pleased with the Harper/Flaherty/Oliver approach to budgeting. The federal Tories didn't cut government fast enough (or at all) after replacing the Chretien/Martin Liberals nine years ago. And they increased spending too much and too fast following the fiscal crisis in 2008. (You'll recall, though, that at the time then-Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, NDP boss Jack Layton and head separatist Gilles Duceppe were threatening to overturn the results of the 2008 election if the Tories didn't open the public purse.)



On balance, though, the government of Stephen Harper has for the past nine years spent far less and managed public finances far better than any other party would have.



That's not a ringing endorsement, but it's not faint praise either.



As Oliver asserted in his Trudeau tweet, getting to the point where Ottawa is running a surplus has been tough economic <BEGIN ITAL>and<END ITAL> political work. Most of Canada's chattering political, academic and media classes would be only too happy to follow Lagarde's spending-money-we-don't-got formula.



But the Harper government has raised spending enough as it is. Since coming to office in February 2006, the Tories have grown program spending from $175.2 billion to a staggering $288.9 billion. Even after accounting for inflation and population growth, that's a jump of 29%. Not very small-c conservative.



They have also jacked up the national debt from the $481.5 billion left behind by the Liberals to about $617 billion by the end of this year.



That sounds outrageous, but it is really one of the great successes of former Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and current FinMin Oliver. Adjusting for inflation and population growth, that is just 0.3% more per capita than when the Tories came to power.



The Tories have been lucky with interest rates. Previous governments have been double-bitten by rising debt AND higher interest rates. But because interest rates have been low for a decade, the Harper government has managed to bring debt-servicing costs down from $34 billion a year to $26 billion despite adding more than $135 billion to the nation's credit card.



Indeed, despite ramping up spending, the Tories have managed to bring the federal debt down from 38.3% of GDP when they took office to just 30.8% this year, on its way to 25.5% by 2019. And interest charges on that debt, which were 2.6% of GDP are now half that – 1.3%.



Even personal income taxes on a per capita, inflation-adjusted basis have risen just 0.8% under the Tories.



The Harper government's budgetary record could be better. But if Canada followed the IMF's advice (or the NDP's or Liberals'), the record would be much worse.

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/04/21/a-fine-balance">http://www.torontosun.com/2015/04/21/a-fine-balance

[Anonymous]

The Wynn and McGuinty train wreck is the poster child for why the don't worry about national deficits, just keep spending is so dangerous.

[Anonymous]

I stand corrected, the Communist party candidate in Edmonton Millwoods is Naomi Rankin. ac_toofunny  ac_lmfao

[Anonymous]

The dippers are now at 38% in the latest opinion poll with less than two weeks to election day. Alberta is too important to Canada's economic health to be fucked around with by the dangerous social experimentation of the dippers. It's not good for Canada to have our chief bereadwinner becoming like Ontario.



BC and Saskatchewan, be prepared for us to return the favour when you guys elected dipper madness. We are moving to your provinces if that cunt Nothead becomes premier. OMIGAWD!! ac_wot  ac_wot



As one writer succinctly put it.

While it is obvious in Edmonton that the NDP are heavily concentrating their politics of envy with apparent success, this provokes thoughts of a possible scary reality. In Canada, the NDP have always used the promotion of hatred for corporations and the rich to gain a foothold in bad economic times. By serving up onerous information that only promotes their hidden socialist agenda, which is light years away from economic reality, this results in the swaying of an eneducated electorate. The problem with this in Alberta is ramping on resource revenue rates with increased taxes on an already depressed oil industry will only discourage any further investment, which in turn has an even more negative impact on everything that generates the province's revenue. This being true should make one wonder how Rache Notley's could possibly balance the budget by 2017.