Article by Murry Dobbin

As I sit in my apartment in the Washington, D.C. area and read this article, I cannot but help to see the similarity between the Conservative campaign and the George Bush Republican campaigns over the last 8 years. Of course George used fear of whatever to really push his campaign, but he also pushed the family bit and other similar ideas as Harper is pushing. It clearly indicates that Harper must have some experts from the U.S. Republican party helping him in some capacity. As I am away during the actual campaign, I cannot tell if Canadians are noticing this. Surely the Liberals or NDP are pushing this point vocally?? Of course Harper does not have a Palin to boost his campaign but maybe he does not think he needs it.

Short term

Nothing I see relates to the "Brick Wall" we just ran in to. I accept that Dobbin very likely wrote most of this a day or so ago.
Correct me if I'm wrong but the major world economics system has just crashed?
About time since it never made sense anyway.
Our upcoming elections both here and the US are meaningless.
Signed:
Chicken Little

I think alot of us have, and

I think alot of us have, and whats more, the NDP have basically stolen ideas straight outta obama's acceptance speech, but at least those ideals make some sense to me. What I find funny is how as Canadians we tend to criticize the politics in the US but our train is on those very same rails. I can go no-where online without running into pundits, some of which call me out after ive made a comment such as this that they dont agree with and want to sway the general theme. I wish as Canadians we at least had better standards, but im not so sure we do.

I agree

I suppose we have to endure this constant biased political spinning.

Great way to pump up the family income - get junior a paper route and send grandma out to sling burgers at McDonalds.

CANADIANS ARE NOT BETTER OFF UNDER HARPER - as study after study shows. In order to afford even a modest home in Vancouver you need an income of what?

Maybe better 'sell' the baby.

family values candidates

I'd sure like those useless mainstream media organizations to tell us exactly how many "family values" candidates Harper is trying to include in his soon to be majority government. Most of Harper's MPs have views in lock step with Sarah Barracuda's but Harper has been successful in muzzling them aided by a compliant press. When NeoCon spokesmen are allowed out it is always one of Harper's handful of secular MP's like James Moore. I guess we will never know until Harper's new "family values" majority government bans abortion and makes creationism a required subject.

A quick review of the following should put the fear into us all.

http://www.walrusmagazine.ca/articles

/2006.10-politics-religion-stephen-harper-and-the-theocons/

Crap, R'man

Well you have to provide support for that one, considering that would be major news as it reverses a trend started under Martin and continued with maximum horsepower under Harper to raise the incomes of the richest 10% of families at the expense of the poorest families, dropping most on the poorest 10%.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070301.wpolicy0301/BNStory/National/home

As Nationmaster shows, (www.nationmaster.com, look at the economy figures) Canada's poorest have dropped back further in world income scales to 116th.

Canada's richest 10% have increased their family income by 30% while the poorest 10% have dropped in absolute terms since 1998. And the families in the middle who make use of the daycare program that you excoriate so soundly are working longer hours for the same or less pay, depending on which side of the median you're on. They're depending on it now, it's not a "nice to have" any more.

Some help. Running faster and faster just to stay in place.

Got any other bullshit you'd like us to shovel while you're at it? Truly, if Harper HAD reversed the income slide of the poorest at the expense of the richest, I'd be out stumping for him RIGHT NOW!. That would truly be the biggest news in Western civilization, unprecedented in more than 60 years. But he hasn't, and I'm sure whatever link you're going to bring up won't prove anything of the kind either, because nothing Harper has done has been at the expense of the rich.

(I'm not saying Harper's done nothing - he's been very courageous on two fronts and I wrote to tell him so, but in the majority of areas important to Canadians - family security, opportunity, and equality - he's been as dismal a failure as the Martin Liberals.)

[OFFENSIVE COMMENT DIRECTED AT WRITER REMOVED HERE... ]

First off the federal liberals had promised daycare for how many years? 6--7---8---9--years

Lets get this straight,there never will be universal(free)daycare,what Harper offered was real 1200.00

Edmonton,Calgary and vancouver have had huge surpluses provincially,time for Campbell and stelmack to step up to the plate.

What the hell has Harper done in just over 2 years? cut the GST--income splitting,transit pass tax write offs--tax breaks for sports for kids,40 billion of national debt paid down,the liberals got us into Afghanastan,ok he hasn`t embraced the kyoto accord, maybe Harper will get a cat and name it-"carbon sequestration"

The damn federal liberals that messed up the health care by killing provincial transfer payments,Harper has contributed to our money pit games! Hell Harper has even come up with 400 million for the evergreen line,400million more then Campbell! Harper has contributed to the Gateway,the Canada line,money to musqueam and squamish band for olympic related items.
The only thing missing from your "column" Dobbin is (paid for by the federal Liberal party)
Hey TYEE you sure have lowered your standards [...HERE...] your column is poorly written,reeks of partisan politics,VERY AMATEURISH

Maybe the federal Liberals have trained you [...AND HERE. ALL OFFENSIVE COMMENTS DIRECTED AT OUR WRITERS WILL BE REMOVED. PLEASE FOCUS ON THE CONTENT OF THE ARTICLE. -MODERATOR.]

Dobbin, you missed one subject

I'm sure Dobbin doesn't want to throw mud, but I will.

Harper's policy director is Darrel Reid. Scary, scary man. Surrounds himself with evangelical Christians of a type that make my church nervous as all-get-out. Had a campaign manager who insisted that the Jewish media was a conspiracy against Christians, among other things, and Reid claimed to know nothing of it until the very end of the campaign.

This isn't bafflegab - I know Reid's former campaign staff in Richmond very, very well. Nice people, reasonable, logical, and ultimately quite bent when you address any issue from a slightly different moral perspective than the one they own.

Try to raise your kids to accept wage-earning roles for girls and home-care roles for boys, and they claim you're damaging the kids because it isn't "Biblical" and will end up gay, drunk, drug addicted and on skid row. Tell them that you don't care about the Pride parade in the West End because it doesn't affect you out in suburban Surrey, and they say "Are you crazy? God will destroy our nation if we don't do something about it!". Ask them why the poor are poor, and the only answer you get is "Well, Jesus said they would always be with us" and the succeeding conversation only makes plain that they bear no responsibility whatsoever for the differential in opportunity or social connections that families offer to their kids. After all, dammit, as Christians they have RIGHTS that God gave to them because they BELIEVE!

I tell you, Reid and Giorno and "those others" are a scary bunch when you get up close and personal with them. They've got a "wealth theology" that would scare the pants off of Wayne Newton in his Joe Butcher role.

Makes me ashamed to carry the message that I thought Christ brought to the poor and underprivileged, sometimes....

C'mon guys, this is Harper's Director Of Policy! This is who tells him what to think, and from a Biblical perspective, yet.

Cold Fish

Sorry folks, but I was ready for a new "Leader" and an election, the day I saw Mr. Harper shaking hands with his kids their first day of school in Ottawa.
His followup cuts to social programs and flip-flop on income trusts iced it with me.
He did however increase funding for the most wasteful and destructive art: THE ART OF WAR!
Crabs and lobsters shed their their carapaces annually but like Harper, they remain bottom-feeders.

The Socred/Reform outfit,

The Socred/Reform outfit, operating under various other names, has the best mind benders, who realized long ago that the Harper gang can not get majority on their sordid record and secret policies, so they invented the personality cult racket to sell their puppet to the public.

And it is working!!!!!!!!

With a Harper majority we'll get the SPP, most likely the NAU, and the replacement of the worthless US dollar, plus ours and the Mexican peso, with the Amero, with their pimping political stooges here and in Mexcico jumping to the rescue of God's empire.

We'll also get frozen OAPs, already tried by Mulroney, whio chickened out, but Harper is a cold blooded fanatic. Privatized, for profit healthcare
as a "harmonizing" measure with our great friends who are looking at Medicare as a "trade distortion". As an "efficiency measure" and "freedom" of course.

We'll also get "free to work" legislation, to wipe out the unions, the "free movement of labour" between the NAFTA countries, to replace Canadian workers who have "priced themselves out of jobs" according to the long standing Reform platform.

Our military absorbed by the US, total loss of citizens' rights, a la Patriot Act, and governments by the self admitted "pseudo parliament of the North American Competitiveness Council".

We'll also get a long planned economic collapse and global depression to force a desperate humanity to beg for corporate dictatorship, patterned on 1933 Germany, where the granddaddies of the same gang put Hitler into power.

With bank deregulation the ruling class have "created" unlimited amounts of imaginary capital from the air to take over and control the world's resources and are now ready to crash our economies and take over.

The present major bankruptcies are part of the plan, and we can rest assured the big bosses will come out smiling, with our politicians building their future strings of directorships in their service.

Ed Deak.

Zalm

Here's one:
http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil05a.htmHere's another:
http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil21a.htm

This one shows that in the 18-64 age group there was a drop of low income Canadians between 2002 & 2006 of 39,000. Virtually every group of low-income Canadians was smaller by 2006.
http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil19b.htm

There's tons of data out the Zalm and one almost has to be an academic to wade through it all. The facts speak for themselves, if one takes the trouble to look. This reporting period is also over a period when there has been almost no inflation, so the figures are even more encouraging.

Zalm

Did you say Crap? When you say:

"As Nationmaster shows, (www.nationmaster.com, look at the economy figures) Canada's poorest have dropped back further in world income scales to 116th."

Take another look! The top of the list is the poorest. That means that Canada's poor are richer than the 116 countries above!

Methinks you'd better re-write that Zalm.

You may call yourself

You may call yourself "realist", but are selling screwball, faith based ideologies to bring on dictatorship, disguised as freedom and democracy.

The typical communist/capitalist collectivizing program.The brothers under the skin.

I'm basing my words on personal experience under all forms of ideologies and over 60 years of historical studies specializing on the "common denominator" of history's tragedies".

All this has happened hundreds of times before. The patterns and the players are always the same predator class, yet humanity, like some fools on these blogs, are still either falling for it, or are paid off by the crooks who are pulling the strings.

There are "lies, dam lies and statistics" and Harper, as a brainwashed economist and religious fundamentalist, is the master of all three.

Does anybody, but a bloody fool, believe that the presently ongoing financial crisis
is an accident, caused by errors?

The multinational corporate/banking mafia are no fools to make such mistakes.

They're now in majority control and can do what they want to get it all.

By 21 I was living under the 5th monetary system and my wife under her 6th by 20.

This is what monetary systems are about: To achieve total control and steal .

With bank deregulation money has become a licence for the control of energy, issued by a special interest class for its own benefit.

People have been fooled to "invest", so they can be stolen blind.

With our experiences we invested only in our own businesses we controlled, and in land, equipment and tools to achieve the highest degree of self sufficiency, which we have.

Wealth can not be created, only taken from other sectors, the environment, or the future.

Harper and his masters know this all well and are playing their wealth creating cards from a deck under the table.

Anybody who falls for them is either a fool, or paid off crook.

Pick your choice, while I go out and do some work on my own land with my own equipment and tools.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Well it is going to be tough

Well it is going to be tough for middle and low income families for the next 4 years. It looks like a Harper majority is imminent.

It is weird how many low and middle income people do not vote or vote for a monster like Harper who will make their lives more miserable.

Elitism Ruling Media

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Murray Dobbin and the Tyee for telling it like it is. Canada's financial and political elites have handily monopolized our media so "mainstream" media like CanWestGlobal etc etc (read: right wing) dominate our airwaves and magazines. The same propaganda gets repeated over and over and over again. It's how oligarchies work. It's pretty basic. Democracy becomes undermined and irrelevant. Such is the world we are living in today. And it's time for a change!

Tut, Tut

Potty mouth comments aside, my post was rather tongue in cheek. You see, I have been hearing various left wing (and often right wing, too) groups telling me the sky is falling for as long as I can remember and so far it hasn't. The left in particular tends to, in my opinion, amplify things in order to advance its agenda. They feel very passionate about the agenda and feel others should, too.

This has been a completely unsuccessful way of getting one's point across. The left's share of the vote has remained more or less constant at around 15%. Real issues that need to be address tend to get ignored because the shrill doom saying the left is known for has failed to materlialise so often that 85% of the electorate has tuned it out. David Suzuki makes some excellent points on this issue if you wish to delve into some of his readings.

I am not a Harper fan in any way. But I do realise that he has figured out a way to become more palatable to more voters, a sufficient number to get him into the PM's chair. If any political party really wants to oppose Harper (and this is good thing, in my opinion) it is also going to have to go for the mainstream vote. Successful political parties are coalitions of people with diverse views, not hard line ideologues.

Harper has recognised this and that is what got him to 24 Sussex.

Harper didn't figure out

Harper didn't figure out anything. He has the best propaganda machine working for him, paid for by big business. I've been working for years on the busting of Soviet propaganda and can easily recognize and predict the future steps.

He's nothing more than a stooge, who will be rewarded with more and better directorships than Mulroney. Cargill and Monsanto among them.

As far the "sky is falling" concerned, Canada is living off the sale of the country, no different than when somebody sells a house, or some property, and then lives high on the hog, till it lasts.

The Canadian economy is now in very poor shape, controlled by foreign owners from abroad.

The sale of resources is not an income, but the idiotic sale of capital.

The manufacturing base, the mainstay of all economic wellbeing, has been destroyed by NAFTA and the WTO, making us incompetent.

Our governments, including our local Socred/Reform gang under the phony BCLiberal name, are taking orders from their foreign masters to sell off and colonize more and more of the country, in secret, while calling it "democracy" .

With Harper foreign banks will be able to come in and "create" capital for more foreign takeovers, calling it " direct investment"

Ed Deak.

Sanamark Tutting

Sanamark's comments, while not supported by the evidence, indicate curiosity about how society actually operates. One hopes that Sanamark's curiosity (and other readers)will expand and that these indivisuals consider reading some of the more robust texts regarding implementation of social agendas. Naomi Klein's No Logo and Shock Doctrine are very timely, as is Chomsky's & Hermann's Manufacturing Consent. Without a grasp of how power operates in society, discussions of "doom sayers" and "shrill agendas" are misleading and uninformative.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey, I have indeed read these books and largely agree with them, although the Kleins sometimes go over the top. Manufacturing Consent is in particular a brilliant piece of work that should be mandatory reading for all high school students. However, I don't see that happening any time soon.

However, you missed the point of my post and it relates to the repeated statements of the falling sky and how it relates to getting one's message through in a way that people actually listen to it.

sanamark

Of course from our perspective we have been hearing for 24 years how great everything is when we can see a number of major problems with our own eyes. But the Right simply ignores the problems.

So from a Right-wing perspective the Left is Chicken Little whereas from the Left-wing perspective the Right is nothing but a bunch of Pollyannas.

Every now and then however the Right admits there are huge problems. This occurs like clockwork the day after an NDP gov't is elected anywhere and of course when they lose money. Then all hell breaks loose until the gov't comes up with enough money to bail them out of their troubles.

A rare event, however....

Unfortunately, Frank for the reasons that I have stated above, this is a rare event. It has happened only three times in BC and never federally.

sanamark

Its also happened in Sask, Manitoba and Ontario.

Each time the wailing and the cries that the Apocalypse was upon has been heard across the country even before they took office.

Decima

The following is quoted from a Decima survey in Quebec :

“Interest in the NDP as a second choice has increased since the election began,”

“This is largely due to the fact that BQ voters and Green party voters have become more likely to say if they switched it would be to the NDP, rather than the Liberals.

“Liberal voters are also increasingly likely to say the NDP, not the Conservatives, would be their second choice.”

Race for Stornoway

According to Ekos overnight poll the Libs and NDP are only 5% apart

Cons - 38
Libs - 23
NDP - 18
Greens - 11
BQ - 10

Improving the electoral system

Interesting article in the Times-Colonist about why bother to vote when our system doesn't count most of us.

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/comment/story.html?id=41d1d4c4-fca7-4f94-aeaf-ed9539ece7b1

If Harper gets a majority

If Harper gets a majority it'll make little difference who is second. Canada is cooked and sold.

Ed Deak.

Ed

The phrase you are looking for is "reverse mortgage".

Canada has become the mother of all reverse mortgages, and we all gotta pray that we die before it's all used up......

An NDP victory would bring

An NDP victory would bring on the military occupation of Canada by the USA, with Canadian brassbands leading the way.

They would be officially invited by Harper to "preserve our freedom and democracy".

In other words, the sale of the country.

The best scenario would be a minority government with a strong NDP, something like 50 seats, voice.

Unfortunately, it won't happen and the sale will kick into high gear.

Ed Deak.

Ekos retention poll

Fascinating (to me), this is from the following web site

http://www.ekoselection.com/index.php/2008/09/retention-rates-%E2%80%93-a-deeper-analysis/

Where its explained much better

84% of the people that voted for the Cons last election say they will again.

74% of Dipper voters say they'll vote NDP again.

71% of Bloc

68% of Greens

And only 62% of Liberal voters say they'll vote Liberal again.

In the case of the Libs 11% of their supporters from the last election have gone to the NDP but 13% of Dippers say they'll vote Liberal.

7% of Dippers and 8% of Liberals have left to the Greens

Very good news for harper

Frank--According to that chart it looks like a slam dunk for Harper.

Not that I am a big Harper fan but I couldn`t vote for Dion or Lizzy May and my riding on the sunshine coast has,at this time NO NDP CANDIGATE.

Since I do not believe in Global warming I will be voting Conservative (check out the article in todays SUN and Province papers about the 740.000 year permafrost that didn`t melt when the north was 3 to 5 degrees warmer then now,I am for capping big polluters,people will buy clean cars and gizmos when they are available,I am sick and tired of the libs,green,arguing over how much to charge average Joe.

The Liberal party campaign is nothing but a boondoggle from start to finish maybe the libs should hold their next leader convention in the Vancouver convention center or on the fast ferries down in "boondoggle bay" CHEERS

garden bay

I can understand your position, Dion and May don't float my boat either. However, I'm sure the NDP will have a suitable candidate found asap for the Sunshine Coast. Lots of Dippers over there, especially in the Powell River area where I noticed they won every single poll in the last provincial election.

As for the chart, its too bad to see 18% of the Liberal vote going to the Conservatives, but not surprising.

Harper and family values

Apparently, given pee wee's failure to dismiss his Agriculture Minister for certain inappropriate remarks, he's into situation ethics in a big way.

The deal is, I guess, that anything goes in private...now I wonder what he really told his minions to offer Chuck Cadman?

The man is a moral wreck...which is hardly the only reason not to vote conservative.

Lets face facts

Layton can`t win!

May can`t win!

The Liberals havn`t been out long enough and the "green shift" is absolutely pathetic, Worse then that Dion reminds me of my brother in law and I would like to pummell my brother in law,he thinks(my brother in law) the fact he speaks pigeon french and my brother in law is a FEDERAL employee that he is better then the masses,well his job with fisheries is a joke,his dad was a federal employee,and his son is in a french immersion school to make sure he can carry on the family tradition of being a useless,entitled,better than you and I "federal employee" yes and they always vote liberal NO MATTER WHAT

My vote has switched back and forth both federally and provincially, true party loyalists are whats wrong with Canada and the USA!

so who can win?

garden bay:
I am sure that we all sympathize with your frustrations about your brother-in-law!
So whatever you do, make sure to NOT vote as he does!
I have a neighbour who votes conservative so I will have to vote for something else,
tough world we live in!

The facts speak...but remain unheard

This one shows that in the 18-64 age group there was a drop of low income Canadians between 2002 & 2006 of 39,000. Virtually every group of low-income Canadians was smaller by 2006.
http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil19b.ht

There's tons of data out the Zalm and one almost has to be an academic to wade through it all. The facts speak for themselves, if one takes the trouble to look. This reporting period is also over a period when there has been almost no inflation, so the figures are even more encouraging.

Your Statscan figures are absolute, and you have failed to adjust them either for inflation or changing low-income levels. The first, income before tax, shows that over five years, families have increased their income by 4% while CPI inflation has increased by 14% over the same period.

A better indicator than CPI is the GDP deflator - a measure of inflation summarized by the devaluation of the money supply against the GDP which turns out to be a more accurate measure of the market than the so-called "basket of goods and services" that underweights transportation and heating fuels and overweights entertainment. This GDP deflator has averaged 3.2% over the past few years, which puts families in the hole by 17% - their 4% raise cannot hope to make up the difference.

The last link compares a marginal drop in poverty against that same CPI basket of goods and services that underweights fuels, and does not consider property, theft and all-perils insurance at all (which increased 70% in the same period to cover reinsurer losses from 2001 onward) to name just two items in that most unrepresentative of baskets. If this were compared against a more representative measure of low-income, do you doubt that the statistics would change?

But that's OK, you can believe in "no inflation" if you want to. Lemme know how you make out paying 2002 prices for fuel at the pumps.

Does he wear a sweater when meeting First Nations?

Funny how a First Nation on island is endorsing John Duncan (in order to have an mp in government-assumption?).

When the Conservatives have people expressing their racism (see latest Tory gaff) towards First Nations people.

Of course with Harper you can say what you want as long as you are behind closed doors (Ritz: "death by a thousand cuts, cold cuts that is!").

And need I mention Conservative insider and advisor Tom Flanagan at the University of Calgary?

Obviously, you haven't seen

Obviously, you haven't seen and experienced Canada in the 50s and 60s, or even about halfway in the 70s, when this was still an independent country, with thousands of small manufacturing outfits opening up every year, paying decent wages and making a living. Including mine. Now completely impossible.

There were some soup kitchens, and druggies, but a small fraction of the present, no food banks, no homelessness and people could survive even on minimum wages, but generally, wages were going up with inflation. The first foodbank opened in 1980, I believe, now the numbers are increasing every year. This is what the "economic boom" brought us.

Harper called an election,calculating that duped and ignorant people will fall for his pussycat and personality smear campaign and so he can start selling off the country.

All kinds of secret deals are in the making, all designed to make Canada into a colony of big business. Like the SPP and the NAU, and now even "deep integration" with the EU, with the negotiations for the complete sale of our independence starting 3 days after the elections.

Just imagine the fantastic line of multinational directorships, beating even Mulroney's, waiting for him after he completed the deals.

Ed Deak.

conspiracy theory

The present collapse in USA and the following bailouts, also include permission for giant conglomorates to merge!
This may be a conspiracy theory, but please consider if this whole mess is not manufactured in order to circumvent those restrictions?
To me it seem entirely possible that the greedy few arranged to become even more powerful this way!

You're correct, alive. This

You're correct, alive. This whole thing has been planned for a long time and the deregulation of the banks gave them the tools to take control with imaginary funds and now to set up a worldwide, capitalist Soviet.

The US government is now bailing out more of the banks with $1. trillion, that doesn't exist, worthless and is issued by a bankrupt system.

Meanwhile our dear politicians are running to sell this country to "help our great friends and best trading partners" by giving them our resources, paid for with the same, worthless Dollars and Euros.

Ed Deak.