The long knives will soon be out for the “leader” of the NDP. He is now the British Columbia version of a lame duck, a limp Dix.

Yep BCRacer and get over it! Get over the fact that the people of BC remembered what the NDP did and couldn’t chance them doing it again. They remembered how many premiers had to step down, they remembered someone back dating some documents and that someone couldn’t be trusted again. Just like the kid that shop lifts from a store, the store owner never trusts that kid ever again!

So you need to get over the fact that the NDP failed themselves by electing the wrong leader.

Although I could not reward the liberals miserable economic performance with my vote, I’m pleased they they have another 4 years. As the economy crawls along, jobs languish, and real estate goes through its necessary correction, I won’t have to hear ” it’s all the fault of the NDP”. People give government too much credit for the economy. Perhaps Christy will be able to pull Victoria back towards her Centrist routes. But I doubt it. The rise of taxes and fees are only beginning, it will be a tough slog. The province and the country have growing debts that must be serviced. Someone has to pay the piper. That someone is us.

You’ve got it, govsux. Soon as the sacrificial lamb who has to give up a safe Liberal seat for Christy to make it into the legislature has done that, (and been amply rewarded), and the by-election is over with the intended result accomplished, we’ll get “austerity”.

“Perhaps Christy will be able to pull Victoria back towards her Centrist routes”

In my opinion she has already gone a considerable distance in the last two years with that. Most of the MLA who ditched in that period were from the right of the party. Many perceived it as the party falling apart. In my opinion, they could not have been more wrong. It was the party being rebuilt after the potential right wing leaders were defeated.

In the current analysis circles, I have yet to see anyone look at that aspect of this “comeback”. It was started when Christy took over.

Remember, the local MLAs did not support her. They supported Falcon. However, both Shirley and Pat recognized they backed the wrong horse and supported the new Premier.

I believe very strongly that if Falcon had won the nomination, the NDP would be in power today, even with an uncharismatic leader such as Dix.

The only reason Dix lost was because he opened his mouth and reminded voters that a vote for the NDP WASN’T just a vote AGAINST the Liberals. Soon as he did that his lead started to collapse.

Christy Clark and the BC Liberals are completely bereft of the ability to have an original thought. Especially one as to how to lower our COST of living, which is still advancing ever faster than our standard of living.

What we’ll get from them is most likely “austerity”, to begin with, and then, when that fails just the same as it failed when Bill Bennett tried going that route years ago, virtually the same things the NDP was calling for.

Socredible:”Christy Clark and the BC Liberals are completely bereft of the ability to have an original thought.”

They had enough original thoughts to conduct a successful election campaign, don’t you think? Never underestimate politicians!

Here is some more original history on Harper and his senate appointments, the ones he swore he would never make.

Harper spent a lot of time publicly slamming the red chamber. We’ve all heard his quotes. The Regina Leader-Post’s Murray Mandryk recently did a masterful job summarizing them….[the] same Reform MP/opposition leader Stephen Harper who told then-Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien that “we don’t support any Senate appointments,” called the Senate a “dumping ground for the favoured cronies of the prime minister” and said “Canadians … are ashamed the prime minister continues the disgraceful, undemocratic appointment of undemocratic Liberals to the undemocratic Senate to pass all-too-often undemocratic legislation.” Sadly, when Harper became prime minister, he continued the “disgraceful, undemocratic appointments” this time with “undemocratic” Conservatives. To date, 58 in total.

So, Socredible …. you are pounding the Social Credit theory to death on here and you are accusing someone else of not being capable of having an original thought …..

You make me laugh!! :-)

The NDP would have stood a far better chance if they had drafted Gregor Robertson, someone much closer to the middle of the political spectrum.

The emergence of a Green party that can actually elect an MLA might be a good thing for the province. It will act as a counter balance to the far right(i.e.Cummins) that splits off from time to time. This will slow the wild swings from far right to far left, Kevin Falcon and Adrian Dix and allow someone like Christy Clark to come up more in the middle.

“with an uncharismatic leader such as Dix”…. he’s the life of the party when compared to Bob Skelly

Alberta budget 2013 marked by billions in deficit spending, service cuts
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/07/alberta-budget-2013

And that from the province that has had it all to piss away and it has, from the looks of it, while BC was slowly rebuilding inspite of the global economic downturn and the collapse of the lumber market and forest inventory due to MPB.

Now BC is after the natural gas market. Hopefully we will not squander whatever gains we might make from that as Alberta appears to have been doing with oil revenues.

The thing I love about this is no matter how much the left wing media and pollsters tried to give the NDP the victory and convince everyone it was a done deal, the people who voted had other ideas.

What “original thoughts” have the BC Liberals EVER had towards how to lower our COST of living, gus? (Without lowering our standard of living more, that is). Virtually everything they’ve done since they were first elected in 2001 has been tried before, here and elsewhere, and FAILED.

“Tax cuts work”, was about as close to anything that could be described as ‘original’. IF they had been meaningful cuts given to BC CONSUMERS in a way that puts more purchasing power into their hands to spend into OUR economy. Not the way it was done.

The rest of it has all been a case of “paying more and getting less.” And what’s going to change, now that Ms. Christy is (almost) captain of her own ship? Will LNG make us all prosperous, as she’s predicted? Or be another example of all the previous resource bonanzas we were going to cash in on big time that we’re still waiting to pay off (in more ways than one!) Lets see now, there was north-east coal, an ‘endless’ Asian market for pulp chips, copper concentrates, lumber sawn to Japanese specifcations (that kept changing), lumber sawn to Chinese specifications (cheap enough), chopsticks, and ……

“IF they had been meaningful cuts given to BC CONSUMERS in a way that puts more purchasing power into their hands to spend into OUR economy.”

What’s meaningful to me is that the BCLiberals cut personal income taxes a lot and I have more purchasing power a a result. That enables me to spend more into the local economy for food etc.

I dare call that increased purchasing power, although someone may try to tell me that it I not.

So, what would the Social Credit agenda do if it were in the position to change whatever it wanted to.

We are already exporting copper, silver, gold, diamonds, coal, pulp, paper, logs, lumber, molybdenum, manganese, wheat, rye, beef, airplanes, trucks, passenger cars, nickel, potash, auto parts and so forth, there are hundreds of examples, perhaps thousands.

LNG in large volume is next, we are already exporting hundreds of thousands of crude to the USA daily. Why the gloom and doom because the Liberals are in and the NDP is not beats me.

PG: “Why the gloom and doom because the Liberals are in and the NDP is not beats me.”

A lot of it is just plain old sour grapes from the vocal minority.

I am still scratching my head over how a retired Prince George RCMP Superintendent and the Attorney General (BC’s top cop) got elected knowing the largest city in their ridings has been declared the most dangerous in Canada, three times in a row!

Maybe it was the criminal element who voted them in, because under their expert law enforcement watch, crime flourish here in PG and the North!

I am bamboozled … LOL

People#1, I am sure you are an NDP supporter – because where else would such an insulting comment come from? Just one more reason to shun the NDP as if it was the plague.

Sour grapes and then some!

PG:-“What’s meaningful to me is that the BCLiberals cut personal income taxes a lot and I have more purchasing power a a result. That enables me to spend more into the local economy for food etc.”

“So, what would the Social Credit agenda do if it were in the position to change whatever it wanted to.”

——————————————-

You “spend more into the local economy for food, etc.” not because you’re eating any MORE food, etc., but because the PRICE of all those things have risen. And for most of us risen faster than our incomes have risen over the period of time the BC Liberals have been in office. That isn’t an increase in ‘purchasing power’, it’s merely an instance of deluding yourself you’re more ‘prosperous’ because you’re conducting your daily business using bigger figures.

Increasing personal debt levels, for BC consumers on average now something like
$ 1.66 of debt for each $ 1 of after tax income, is bridging the ever widening gap. While it can. As that ratio grows larger, more and more people are going to be unable to maintain the standard of living it’s more than possible for ALL to have provided them ‘physically’, but is ever increasingly denied a greater number ‘financially’.

Neither the NDP, nor the BC Liberals have a solution to this problem. Nor do the BC Conservatives, nor the Greens. The NDP does admit it’s a problem, though, so they’re not totally Naturally Dumb People in that regard.

But they would try again here what’s already been tried here, and elsewhere, wherever a Party of the ‘left’ gets into office. Namely to attempt to have an ‘equality’ by means of a ‘re-distribution’ of what it sees as wealth (money, really) through taxation.

The difficulty with this is that by doing so they are trying to ‘re-distribute’ something that is collectively insufficient in the first place in respect of all the ‘price values’ of goods and services available that are expressed in it. No matter how hard they attempt to ‘equalise’ that won’t ever work because they are attempting to equalise the wrong thing ~i.e., the amount of ‘money’ each citizen has, rather than an equalisation between the total flows of ‘prices’ expressed in money and the actual money available as ‘incomes’ necessary to fully liquidate them.

Now you ask what Social Credit would do if it were in a position to do anything, e.g. we had a Provincial government of that name dedicated to the original principles of Social Credit. And this poses immediately a bit of a dilemma, because we are still not, as a Province, Constitutionally sovereign in any more than a limited way in regards to matters of credit-creation and currency, banking, etc. So we would have to use some alternate methods to better relate the flows of ‘prices’ and ‘incomes’ to the advantage of BC consumers. One possible method would be to impose an export tax on those resources we’ve been told overseas buyers are just salivating at the prospect of our supplying them, the Enbridge oil, and all this LNG, etc. Only instead of taking that tax and adding it to general revenue, for the ‘government’ to (largely, it would seem) waste as it sees fit (trying to buy our votes at election time, or caving in to further excessive public sector wage increases ~ which may not be excessive in terms of what it now costs to live, but are certainly excessive compared to what can often be paid in the private sector for similar work), Social Credit would directly rebate BC consumers with it on their retail purchases, to LOWER the cost of similar products sold here.

So rather than having what we certainly will have, if either Enbridge or any of the LNG developments go ahead, or site C, etc., which will be an INCREASE in the price of all consumables sold here in BC, (through ‘inflation’, which will accompany these projects as sure as God made little apples), we would use the revenue generated from this tax to keep those prices effectively lower here for our own citizens.

Aww.. come on PrinceGeorge you are reacting like I am some kind of political troll.

If it were two NDP candidates, who had extensive law enforcement back grounds that got voted by/in the most dangerous city in the country I would still be laughing!

Don’t try a politicize this when it’s the law enforcement backgrounds and most dangerous city in Canada that provide the irony here! NDP, Liberal, Conservative, Green… who gives a flying ___ what political party they are from?

If this happened anywhere else in Canada, I would still be laughing about it! Take a pill and chill out… wow!

NDP didn’t have much chance in Prince George. If you look at federal election results, the federal NDP and federal Liberal votes (added together) is almost equal to the federal conservative vote for Dick Harris in PG. For BC NDP candidates to win they should have attracted both those groups of voters.

Dix did a bad mistake by inviting Federal NDP Mulcair to campaign with him. After joint campaigning, the 20% divide between Dix and Clarck parties evaporated. The federal NDP support in BC is less than 40% and BC NDP instead of inviting Mulcair should have tried to attract the federal Liberal voters, fed up with corruption (e.g. renaming the BC NDP to BC Liberal Democrats).

In the rest of BC, Dix did the same strategic mistake of James in not approaching Green Party to come up with a tactical voting strategy and instead went head to head with James eliminating BC Green leader in election. BC Green party is now around 10% compared to 2% of previous decade and it is splitting the anti Liberal vote in BC. BC Liberals should be really thankful to Greens and for 12-13 seats in the 2013 election (in addition to bad analysis by NDP team in fighting in 2 fronts against BC Greens and BC Liberals).

QUESTION: Will NDP and Greens learn from their mistakes in 2009 and 2013 elections? Will they repeat it again in upcoming BC by-elections?

Will the Federal Liberals and Federal NDP learn from the mistake of NDP in BC and come up with a tactical voting/candidacy in the next federal election to increase their chances to win more seats? Or they will split the left vote and give Harper and right another majority?

socredible; While I agree with your assumptions about rising personal debt, I wonder if we are ignoring the elephant in the room?

Provincial accumulated debt is my big concern, Since 2002, BC’s provincial debt has risen by $23.1 billion dollars. My understanding is that it currently sits at around $67 billion dollars. The NDP claim it is higher because $800 million in debt hidden in BC Hydro.

Our provincial debt is so high, Moody’s Financial Investment Services has recently downgraded BC’s debt rating from stable to unstable. Further signs of trouble looming is BC’s GDP to Debt ratio, which has fallen to 7th in Canada. I believe the BC’s Debt to GDP ratio is around 26% to 27%.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/12/12/bc-debt-rating-lowered-moodys.html

My apologies for the source, but despite what some poster’s claim, I look at the CBC being a reliable source on this topic, at least.

CBC, that is a laugh riot. That news biased outfit costs the taxpayer more than the F 35 everyone batches about.

Well, People#1, we never get an accurate accounting of just what all that debt has been incurred for. Governments don’t do their accounting the way private businesses do, with a Balance Sheet showing the Assets, the Liabilities, and the equivalent to a ‘Capital Account’. And how these three things change over time. All we ever see is a figure representing the Liabilities, (the public debt).

Instead they show us a Budget of what the government plans to spend in any one year and how much it estimates it will take in in revenue over that same period. And an illusion is created in the minds of the public that if revenues equal expenditures the Budget is balanced and we’re not going into debt any further. But this isn’t necessarily so, and, in fact, over time it couldn’t be so at all.

“Aww.. come on PrinceGeorge you are reacting like I am some kind of political troll…Don’t try a politicize this…”

You are acting like a political troll because you are the one who politicized this issue by posting it on this thread – the headline of which you can find by scrolling to the top of this page! I suggest you take several pills. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not me.

You are right socredible, the NDP in the last two years in office claimed a surplus budget and yet both those years our provincial debt went up. Our provincial debt in 2008 was about the same as in 2001. If it wasn’t for the housing crisis and global recession we would more than likely be around the same point as 2001 in provincial debt.

Watched the building of a hydroelectric dam on ‘build it bigger’ and there was a question ‘which country has the most hydroelectric dams?’ and the answer is China…go figure (bit of trivia and not related to the topic)

When you sell a crown corp like say a railroad, the books should be balanced for a couple years I would think.

At least socredible has some suggestions on how to get out of this mess,. Seems others think that a decrease in income tax puts more money in your pocket, however they overlook the increase in gas, plus the carbon tax, plus the MSP premiums, plus the increased cost of consumer goods, because of the increased cost in gas, plus the increase in Hydro costs, etc; etc; etc;
Plus the two years of skinning us on the HST.

We got nothing from the Liberals when they were in power other than a huge increase in living costs.

I jokingly told a person if things get worse for seniors they could still go back to eating cat food, as was done by some in the past. They stated that cat food is now more expensive than some of the stuff they buy.

Unless we look at how Government programs, and spending effect all people, we will never solve this problem.

Increasing wages for higher income people while holding the line on lower income, is a recipe for **real** trouble down the road.

Have a nice day.

If you think the NDP would have done a better job or could do a better job, you’re dreaming. And the people who voted agree.

Palopu and others are still very bitter about the HST and wanted to see the government punished, no matter how bad the alternative was. Good thing they didn’t get their wish.

Have a nice day.

The people of B.C. were recently given an opportunity to vote on the HST (a rarely practiced democratic choice!) and as a consequence it was abolished. What’s there to be bitter about! Also, scenario one lowers people’s income taxes and prices go up all over. Scenario two does NOT lower people’s income taxes and prices go up all over.

Given a choice, would people go for one or two?

Selling BCRail was a broken promise and it netted only 400 million after its 600 million dollar debt was written down, so no way did it have a huge impact on the overall budget.

It’s all over for now for the next 4 years. Hopefully there won’t be another 2008 style global meltdown to force the province to borrow even more money to keep things going. After all, how much control do we have over global affairs? Just about zero.

“socredible on May 19 2013 4:01 PM”

Thank you for your in-depth explanation of what a Social Credit government would be able to do and what it would be unable to do.

Actually the impractical and impossible seem to outweigh (in my opinion) any overall benefits as after a while those who charge the prices (which are too high) will simply raise them even more as they are aware that they can take advantage of the fact that consumers are getting a rebate – the more the rebate the higher the prices.

Then there is the matter of global competitiveness, NAFTA and the WTO and retaliation from others who are capable of inflicting damage on Canada’s trade and international relations.

Complicated situations usually require more than simple solutions and perhaps we are not very good at continuously examining our complicated affairs and tweaking them to new realities.

That’s the irony of the situation, Johnny. Most of us KNOW that the NDP wouldn’t or couldn’t do a better job if they’re determined to follow the path they’re still on.

But what we’ve had, and likely will get in the future, from the BC Liberals is going to take us down that exact same path.

They’re not advancing anything NEW that would deal with the basic problem of how to stop our ongoing cost of living from continually accelerating faster than our standard of living.

Instead they’re still fighting a staged retreat from the continual advances of a bureaucratic socialism. While their leadership is touting the very things which will only advance it further. Things that will lead to their eventual defeat when the promised ‘prosperity’ doesn’t materialise meaningfully for the average citizen. And we’ll be forced to again endure a more honest application of all the miseries even further bureaucratic socialism entails when the other guys take over.

I don’t believe most British Columbians are against the kind of mega-project developments the Liberals give open or tacit support to. That if we have a surplus of some resources far beyond our own likely needs there is no sane reason why we shouldn’t develop those resources and export them, and provide jobs and incomes from those activities.

But how long is it going to take us to clue in to the FACT that every time we do this, every time there’s a great flurry of economic activity generated this way, WE end up getting hit with HIGHER prices for all the things we need and want? How does that really advantage US?

We’ve already had considerable negative experience when we’ve gone through this previously. The worst when it happened when WAC Bennett’s long time government fell, largely as a result of uncontrolled inflation that was hitting the average British Columbian hard in the pocketbook, and seriously compromising his or her ability to share in the ‘Good Life’ as was promised and expected. And we got Dave Barrett’s NDP for three utterly disastrous years.

The process has been repeated several times since. How many times are we going to go through the same thing again before those on the ‘right’ of centre, (and I would describe myself as being one of them) clue into where the problem is and insist it be corrected?

It is my personal belief that the downtown Vancouver clique who controls the BC Liberal Party will NEVER move to address this problem because they are comprised of people to whom personal ‘greed’ has no boundaries. Their mentality continues to be one of, “Get while the gettin’s good, and as long as I’ve got mine, who cares what comes next.” They are buttressed by fools who believe they’ll be able to emulate them, to a lesser degree, (who’ll soon find out otherwise), and other fools that think Christy Clark is a centrist softie who controls ‘Today’s’ BC Liberals because she holds the ‘trappings’ of power. They’ll soon find out differently, too,

Prince George, you sometimes truly amaze me.

How can getting a ‘rebate’ on any product possibly cost you more?

NAFTA and WTO concern themselves with national or provincial subsidies and tax policies which favour a nation’s PRODUCERS.

Things giving them some unequal advantage over the PRODUCERS of the same, or similar products in the nations we are ‘trading’ with.

What is there in NAFTA, the WTO, or any other trading agreement we’ve entered into that prevents an export tax being applied to any product we’re exporting?

Indeed, the Softwood Lumber Agreement we currently have with the United States CALLS FOR us to apply an export tax on softwood lumber under certain conditions to RAISE ITS PRICE to try to equalise it with the cost of US produced softwood lumber. Countries we trade with object when we move to LOWER our export prices through government policies, not when we RAISE them.

By doing as I’ve suggested, and that is only ONE way what we need to do could possibly be done ‘Provincially’, we are not in any way subsidising our Producers. We are, in effect, subsidising our CONSUMERS ~ each and every one of us, because whether anyone works as a ‘producer’ or not, we are ALL still CONSUMERS.

Our ancestors came to this country, mine did anyway, to have “life more abundant”. To be able to take advantage of the land and resources that were here to have a higher standard of living than they were ever likely to be able to obtain in Britain. If you told them, way back in the mid 1800’s, after they’d endured all the hardships of a six month voyage in a leaky sailing ship around Cape Horn against the wind, that they’d have to pay ‘world price’ for whatever was here, whatever they worked for, do you think they’d have bothered coming? What would’ve been the point? They could’ve stayed put, and paid ‘world price’ (which they could no more afford there, than here), for all those things right in Britain. They had their priorities right way back then. Do we have ours right today? Or have we been dumbed down to the point where we’re so focused on creating a ‘job’ we’ve forgotten completely what we’re supposed to be working for ~ that life “more abundant”.