Live Free or Die.ca
Author:
Nick Ragaz
Inspiration:
Mike Barrenger
(via Ultra-Bright Burst of Light Marks the Death Throes of a Star Being Eaten Alive | Popular Science) Way too cool not to record here. h/t @acoyne
Tim Hudak’s “sneaky eco-tax” and “taxes yet to come” lines were the highlight of watching last night’s game. That and his vigorously nodding head and general resemblance to Andy of The Office. As a typography snob, I take particular exception to the straight-quote in “It’s” at the end of the ad — Not An Apostrophe(tm). Who takes this guy seriously?
McGuinty’s ad had far better production values and a far more positive message. If Wells’ rule holds — “the guy who auditions for opposition leader gets the job” — then McGuinty has this one locked.
Obviously, though, Hudak’s low production values are deliberate: he’s saying “I won’t waste your money — in fact, I don’t even know how to”. And the point he’s making about taxes is powerful and simple.
So before we go getting all existential about the end of liberalism and the centre in this country, let’s remember that the right has been making one simple, powerful point: you’re feeling nickel and dimed. That’s resonating with people, and they want to elect politicians who promise to do something about it.
Not politicians who repudiate Liberalism. Just this particular aspect of our record.
And after these right-wingers eliminate (or not) some of those taxes and fees, there will be other elections, and the rest of their record will become the issue.
Meanwhile, I think us Liberals should simply remember this lesson: try to avoid raising taxes and fees, and in particular don’t couple that with the perception of government waste. Particularly during a recession that’s coupled with high commodity prices, when people’s incomes are already feeling the bite.
In other words, this whole “rise of the right” is arguably very contingent on a small set of issues. On every other issue, it’s hard to see that Canadians’ opinions have changed.
On Monday, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page reported he’s still waiting for answers as to how the government is implementing a spending freeze first announced in the 2010 budget – 15 months ago. He reported that while recent government documents show more than 6,000 positions will be eliminated over three years, that covers only about one-third of the promised spending cuts.
What’s important to emphasize is how deeply some of these departments have already been cut. I’m not a strong believer in the “secret right-wing agenda to cut social programs” claim, but I do think that Conservatives are very misguided in believing that smaller government is a substitute for effective government.
The reality behind the Conservative budgets deserves far, far more attention than it gets.
Confirmation bias blogging on my part:
“The young protesters of the Jasmine Revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt, many of them university graduates, overthrew the old regime because it impeded or blocked them from careers that would offer engaging work and the chance for personal growth. The protesters did not demand more creature comforts or better infrastructure; they demanded opportunities to make something of themselves.
“These young Arabs were being stymied in two ways. To get any good job required connections with insiders, something that ordinary young people could not acquire. And securing some type of self-employment, such as selling fruit and other goods on the street, required licenses, which were limited.”
(The quote is from Columbia University economist Edmund Phelps, not Yglesias.)
I finally took the time to figure out how to enable comments on this blog, so please, fire away.
I was thinking more about Alf Apps last night and just why his speech made me so angry.
The problem is not the idea per se, which may or may not have merit. It is certainly a debatable proposition, in the sense of having points on both sides.
The problem is with the conception of how political parties work that throwing this idea out there (while serving as President of the Liberal Party) implies.
I think back to the last US election for an example.
Barack Obama ran on healthcare reform, which was a huge idea that was clearly opposed by many, many interests. But he didn’t win the leadership and then say “ok, the party is going to focus on healthcare reform”. In fact, every major candidate in the leadership primaries had also supported healthcare reform. And all of them had pretty similar plans for it. Because healthcare reform was an issue that Democratic activists, policymakers, etc. had worked on for years and years.
By contrast, John McCain ran a Hail Mary campaign. He was constantly seeking a big, defining action that would set him apart: calling a campaign suspension to address the financial crisis, or putting Sarah Palin on the ticket. These weren’t issues per se, but the point is that these ideas really didn’t have the support of the party and they didn’t resonate with voters. They came out of nowhere. And so the impression they created was “who the heck is this guy?”
Political parties are intended to channel social and economic desires into executive or legislative action. They don’t create those desires themselves. Small parties tend to have one defining issue; large, successful parties are capable of absorbing and creating coalitions between multiple issue constituencies.
In Canada, these constituencies often have a regional component. But they don’t have to be strictly regional: that, to me, is what both the Conservatives and the NDP have accomplished to different extents. They’ve taken the values and goals of their core voter groups and then identified other voters across Canada who think similarly, and given them a structure through which to channel their goals. Everybody feels happy — even when they are compromising the heck out of their original position.
Meanwhile, a succession of recent Liberal Party leaders have taken the view that the goals of the party (not “political success”, but the actual legislative outcomes) should be determined either by themselves, or by a small group of people around them (since Paul Martin was himself incapable of determining anything). Then they’ve announced these goals in (very) sporadic emails to membership or in the heat of a campaign, and expected the party to rally around them.
These leaders have not really been open to either engaging in a discussion about those goals, or to letting other people pursue their own goals within a shared framework of values. (The irony being that they have simultaneously accused Stephen Harper of being a “control freak”.) So nobody feels happy, and since the party won’t help you accomplish your ends there’s a strong incentive not to participate constructively: to leak information, to undermine other party members (or the leader) and to ultimately stay home.
Without at all dismissing the energy and ideas of those who have particular issues they want to address through the Liberal Party, I’d suggest that the Liberal Party leadership should fundamentally be focused on identifying, engaging and supporting issue constituencies that share similar values (oh, and on little things like fundraising and operations), and not on narrowing the party’s focus to one small set of legislative outcomes.
Otherwise, we will continue to be a small party.
TEDxEast - Tyler Cowen - The Great Stagnation (by TEDxTalks) Since Tyler’s book is still not available for Kindle in Canada… this will have to do.
Good roundup of GHG data. This part stood out for me:
Inside Canada, provincial emissions results almost always generate some interest. Although Ontario is no longer Canada’s top emitter — a title it has lost in recent years to Alberta — the province is still probably the standout emissions story for 2009. Ontario’s emissions fell by 13 per cent from 2008 to 2009, moving the province to 7 per cent below its 1990 emission level — a result that (for now at least) puts Ontario ahead of its 2014 target , which is to reduce emissions to 6 per cent below the 1990 level.
Glad to hear that McGuinty’s policies are having a real effect.
Fascinating anecdote from M.S. at The Economist about how markets add costs to the American healthcare system:
A medical technology company is going public to generate the money it needs to advertise its products to hospital directors and insurance-company reimbursement officers. This entails significant extra expenditures for marketing, the new stocks issued to fund the marketing will ultimately have to pay dividends, banks will have to be paid to supervise the IPO that was needed to generate the funds to finance the marketing campaign (presumably charging the industry-cartel standard 7%)…and all this will have to be paid for by driving up the price the company charges to deliver its technologies. But beyond the added expense, why would anyone think that a system in which marketing plays such a large role is likely to be more effective, to lead to better treatment, than the kind of process of expert review that governs grant awards at NIH or publishing decisions at peer-reviewed journals?
However, the post closes by saying:
Which is why it wouldn’t be at all surprising if a board of 15 experts could play a major role in reducing expenses and improving care outcomes in the American medical industry. That’s what corresponding boards of experts in France, Germany, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and so on do, which is why their health-care systems cost half what ours does, cover everyone in their countries, and generally provide better care.
Our healthcare system only functions like this intermittently (primarily for new drugs and devices, which do have a review process). As things stand, though, the care that you receive in your physicians’ office is more likely to be determined by reimbursement decisions made during physician-government salary negotiations (and, of course, your physician’s judgment) than by an expert review of the options and evidence.
Having a more public and comprehensive expert review system for funding decisions would benefit both patients and politicians.
The red line, here, is a more reliable measure of national income than the blue line, which is the official GDP number. And it gives a sobering indication of just how devastating the Great Recession was: a drop of more than 7% in real GDP per capita between the end of 2006 and the end of 2009, with most of that decline taking place before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent financial crisis.
(via When will incomes return to their 2006 level? | Felix Salmon)
Great piece on the ridiculous logic underlying startup valuations:
Groupon has filed its S-1 and hopes to raise $750M in its initial public offering. Given they’re currently losing a staggering $117M per quarter, despite revenues of $644M, they’ll be burning through that cash almost as soon as it hits their account.
At the moment, it’s costing them $1.43 to make $1, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting any cheaper. They’re already projected to make close to three billion dollars in revenues this year. If you can’t figure out how to make money on three billion in revenue, when exactly will the profit magic be found? Ten billion? Fifty billion?
I realize this is a bit off topic for this blog. File under “the irrationality of markets”.
Meet the author
Nick Ragaz is co-founder and president of Healthcare Made Simple, a startup technology services firm based in Toronto. Nick is also a board member at the Sherbourne Health Centre.
