Oh My! We are blessed!

Nice photo op but I still won’t be voting for the “New” Lieberal Party

I wonder the age of all these lets bash the Libs people, must be either to young or now maybe to old to remember what it was like under the NDP.

It was just about the same as under the Liberals, zigzag99. People were just about as fed up with the NDP then as they are with the Liberals now ~ and that ‘just about’ reduced the inept ‘horde’ to two seats. Total annihilation of the corrupt, dishonest, and inept Liberals is a definite possibility. Will the NDP be ‘better’? Who can say, but the Liberals themselves have already defined ‘worse’ when compared to their predecessors.

I wonder the age of all these lets bash the Libs people, must be either to young or now maybe to old to remember what it was like under the NDP.

So Stuart flies to Victoria for a scarf give-away on the steps of the Legislature. Patty’s idea maybe ? Is Stuart off to Ottawa next week to collect more pictures ?

I’m old enough to remember the BCR Scandal, the HST fiasco, a premiere with a criminal record, the Vancouver convention centre overrun, the bogus carbon tax, BC being the only province that makes those over 65 pay for medicare, unfair pharmacare and lots of hidden tax ripoffs. Not to forget the missmanagement of BC Hydro to the advantage of government friends. Not saying the NDP will do any better, but don’t give me the holier than thou Lieberal attitude.

We all remember what it was like under the NDP. Some of us are even old enough to remember what it was like under the Liberal(dominated)- Conservative Coalition that WAC Bennett’s Socred’s deposed in 1952. And if there’s any one thing that can be said of the Liberal Party in BC, it’s that they’ve been consistent all through their history. Consistently corrupt and dishonest and self-serving of their elite inner circle. Some things never change.

Yes, the NDP made many bone-headed mistakes in their ten years in the ’90’s. But they were still an improvement over the first time they held office, under Dave Barrett ~ the worst Premier in our history. Until Gordon Campbell came along, and topped in three months the damage it took Barrett three years to wreak.

Mike Harcourt wasn’t much of a Premier, Glenn Clark only marginally better. Dan Miller, who didn’t want the job, did it quite well in the time he was in. He and Dosanjh were hardly ‘socialists’ ~ more like would-be ‘capitalists’, only without any capital.

But that was then, and this is now. We’ve all seen enough of what Mrs. Christy is all about to realise she’s living in a fantasy land, and we’re going to be tapped ever deeper to pay for it. LNG revenues and a BC Prosperity Fund? Families first? Whatever happened to, “Tax cuts work!”, anyways? They DO, too. But only when they actually increase the purchasing power of the average citizen. Not enrich further the already bloated coffers of the nouveau rich of downtown Vancouver. While the average citizen pays more and gets less than he was getting before.

Time for the heave-ho. Long past, actually. And if Dix is no better, he couldn’t be all that much worse. And we can always dump him, too.

“he couldn’t be all that much worse”

And why would you say that?

Just when Alberta is in financial trouble once more with low tax, high spending and not enough income since they are so dependant on a resource which continues to have ups and downs since we do not really know how much we have and, as prices go up, world economies slow down to compensate.

The time is likely about to come when BC may regain some momentum and recall some of its people who went to Alberta to earn more and spend more without actually moving forward.

Sure, that is the time to upset the applecart once more, as we so well know how to do. And if it will be upset, “we can always dump him, too”. Great idea!!

Like the frog climbing up the well …. if we are lucky, three frog lengths towards the top of the well and two lengths sliding backwards ….. if not, then two up and three backwards … and once more further away from prosperity, sustainability and happiness.

And the prosperity from the games the average PG’er is getting is an increase in taxes to pay for the games.

Let the games begin in the city known for its pot holes and crime.

I wany to throw up when I hear about the games and the Liberals and the NDP. Cosequently, I now feel quite nausious. If there is a Conservative running in this election, that’s what I vote. No Conservative — I ruin the ballot. I will not waste a vote on any party that has proven themselves to be deviant, lying bastards. Any one who votes for either of these parties doesn’t care about BC or has something to gain by their vote.

traveller: “Any one who votes for either of these parties doesn’t care about BC or has something to gain by their vote. “

Anyone who makes such a statement is trying to influence how people vote in a clumsy inept way.

I realize we’re going to get Glen Clark’s right hand man in the next election. I also remember the NDP in the 90’s, Harcourt, Clark, Dosanjh, and all the gang.

The only question is how long will it take BC voters to see how ridiculous the NDP are and how big of a mistake it was to let them back in? I bet one term.

It’s a mistake to let EITHER of those two Parties in again. But we’re going to be stuck with one or the other of them, because there’s currently nothing else. Nor will there ever be, so long as the Liberals dominate the supposedly “free enterprise” side of the political scene. Destroying actual “free enterprise” under the guise of being ‘for’ it, when they’re really no more than monopoly global capitalists still seeking to “get while the gettings good”, and to Hell with the consequences later.

The Liberals have had three terms already, and just where is the improvement to the average citizen of BC?

They started out on the premise that, “Tax cuts work!” And they do, when they’re applied in a manner that increases consumer purchasing power in the economy.

We got a tax cut, alright ~ a personal Income Tax cut ~ imposed right after Campbell took office, and BEFORE he’d even calculated what he’d need to maintain government services AFTER he simultaneously moved to cut them. Which turned out to be a lot more than he’d anticipated.

Since personal Income Tax is a graduated tax this across the board cut benefited those who had the highest earnings the most relative to its benefit on the average wage earner.

Those people already have most everything in the way of consumer durables they need or want, so they don’t spend their tax saving back into the BC economy, they tend to invest it. But not in BC. Because, at that time, some of those newly globalised foreign economies, like that of Ireland, for instance, (which is in rather desperate straights today), looked to be offering more promising returns on investment than anything here did. So WE got minimal benefit from it ~ about the price of another case of beer every week or two for the average income earner.

Why did he not cut the PST instead, which was at 7% then, and he shortly RAISED to 7.5%? Along with a litany of other RAISES to fees for Medicare, Driver’s Licenses, Ferry fares, Hydro rates, and a whole gamut of other things. Along with cuts to services. Which collectively more than took back all the savings of the Income Tax cut. Right out of the pockets of BC consumers.

That ISN’T the way ‘tax cuts’ are supposed to work, and in fact, done that way they WILL NOT EVER work. The Liberals were handed a golden opportunity in 2001 to govern for the greater good of ALL the people of BC. They blew it completely, and should have been turfed after term one. And would have been, save for the bogeyman of the NDP. Now they’ve had two more chances to get it right, and what have we got? Throw them out! We can endure one term under the NDP, and hopefully what will come out of that will be the formation of an actual “free enterprise” coalition that offers some positive policies for advancement of ALL British Columbians, rather than just a select few.

so to simplify it in a nutshell, we don’t vote parties in in BC, we vote them out, thats logic. My cupboard has food, my kids are healthy, my work boots are by the door for monday and my bills are paid, what the hell lets put the same group of people back in power who put us in a recession 10 years ago, and I voted NDP back then so I’m no diehard Liberal but I know who I’ve prospered better under and I ain’t rockin the boat by cutting my nose off to spite my face.

The NDP didn’t put us in recession, zigzag99, the ‘Asian meltdown’ did that. The recession would have been far worse, for far more people, if they had taken the Liberal’s approach of “austerity” ~ which they should have learned from the experiences of the early 1980’s under Social Credit, wouldn’t work. What the Liberals have given us since taking office in 2001 is no more than inflation in the guise of prosperity. One day, soon, WE are going to find out the difference. No matter who gets in.

socred: “The NDP didn’t put us in recession, zigzag99, the ‘Asian meltdown’ did that.”

Is that better or worse than the worldwide economic collapse of 2008?

Well, Johnny, since the NDP have never promoted themselves as “businessmen” in the same sense the Liberals have, if the Liberals were truly what they made themselves out to be they should really have learned from the NDP’s mistakes of becoming too dependent on volatile export markets.

I think we should have expected better from them. Campbell, after all, had an MBA degree, and was Opposition Leader with as close an inside view of the ‘Asian meltdown’ as anyone outside the NDP government could ever have. But what did he learn from it?

Instead of the ‘fiscal prudence’ so often preached, they ran up a massive amount of debt to pay for Olympic stimulus spending, inflating prices in the process, building ferry boats offshore, (which actually takes money out of this province, and removes it as purchasing power here, even if the boats were supposedly cheaper), and had a number of projects where there were serious cost over-runs.

I believe the overage on the Convention Centre in Vancouver alone topped what the NDP was over on for their FastCats. And then tried to cover their errors with a growing dependence on volatile export markets.

Compared to WAC Bennett’s handling of Provincial finances, EVERY premier since has been a rank amateur. No one is saying that the same conditions under which WAC operated could be repeated again, or that everything he did was perfect either ~ but he LEARNED from past mistakes, including his own, and didn’t repeat them.

That’s the difference between a guy with a UBC MBA degree who trades solely on his ‘book learning’, and a guy who realises his business will go bust if he doesn’t learn how set up the books, and use his intuition to make sure the figures therein are representing reality.

The big problem, especially for the Liberals, is they’re living in the past. There simply is no vision of the future that encompasses modern reality. And what worked in the past isn’t going to cut it in the future. It’s akin to trying to fight a repeat of the trench warfare of World War One in World War Two, ignoring the fact that the tank had already made that kind of fighting obsolete 22 years before, and, worse, that your opponent has become a master at fast-moving tank warfare. The best the Liberals can come up with is a succession of Dunkirks, and how do we advance that way?