Reboot Alberta

Showing posts with label Danny Williams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Danny Williams. Show all posts

Monday, September 29, 2008

Polls Show 51% Oppose a Harper Majority - Let the Strategic Voting Begin

The vibrations about strategic voting are starting to pick up resonance in the land. Harper is “achingly close” to a majority with some poll and seat projector results last week. Harper’s new musing about wanting a majority was to be expected. Why is it reasonable to expect this?


Because at the beginning of the election Harper said just the opposite! He said when he called the election, breaking his own fixed date election law to do it, he said expected and would be “satisfied” with another minority government. We know from past experience that when Harper says one thing he means another…like not wanting a majority. Of course he wants a majority, and it looks like he will be getting it if current trends continue.


Get used to being afraid of your government’s power over you if Harper gets a majority. It could happen. Unless, of course Canadians wake up to that fact and realize what a mistake they would be. Harper is a one-man-band control freak and a misleading master manipulator. Canadians will have to stop him and that will take some strategic voting given the split in the Lib/NDP/Green voters.


The “appetite” for a Conservative majority is also at 40% and 51% would not be happy with a Harper majority and only 11% are not sure. This is according to a new Ipsos Reid poll released Sunday September 28. Harper is obviously a love him or hate him kind of guy. Those who love him are older and middle aged men and those who have him are younger Canadians.


This is a recipe for strategic voting, which will start in earnest after the debates this week. That same poll was showing 39% of us are in favour of strategic voting to stop Harper and 45% are against it. Some 16% are not sure what they think about strategic voting.


The strategic voters will tend to vote Liberal (44%) followed by NDP (26%) with Greens getting strategic voter support from 14%. Only 3% of strategic voters have not yet made up their minds. I expect the Green strategic voters in Ontario and Atlantic Canada will shift Liberal and the NDP vote in Quebec will shift to the Bloc.


The vote swapping websites and the anti-Harper websites and Facebook pages and anti-Harper Premier Danny Williams will all start to turn up the heat, volume and activity for strategic voting. More on how to do this will be in future posts.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Harper's Youth Justice Platform is DiscriminaTORY

Don’t be duped by the fabricated softer gentler, “I want to be your Daddy so make me your Prime Minister,” Stephen Harper. Once again he shows his true colours and his dark side. His very dark side.

Harper says that putting children in jail for life will be good for them and it will teach them a lesson they will never forget. That is true – but a life sentence for a child will not teach any life lessons we would want them to learn. Nor will they learn anything in prison that will serve them, and the rest of us, well in the long run. Those lifelong prison lessons will not prepare them to come out of incarceration and be ready to be well adjusted and contributing citizens to the benefit of society.

Thinking life in prison will be just the ticket to get bad kids to pull up their socks and straighten up is insane. Harper’s abject ignorance of the consequences of his policy and his well polished penchant for willful blindness is yet another character flaw and so disappointing to discover in such a well educated man. How can he simply choose to ignore the reams of research that overwhelming concludes the contrary outcomes of such a merciless policy? Blind adherence to a faulty political ideology it the key here, don’t you think

There is an astonishing level of personal commitment that Mr. Harper continues to show towards steering Canada into a neo-Republican authoritarian Bush/Cheney model of governance. This is epitomized by his youth “justice” election platform.

Harper's youth crime policy shows us just how opportunistic and shallow he truly is. Though this policy that is framed as getting tough on crime, Harper believes that, in his world, social justice concerns should have nothing to do with dealing with root causes of crime. Concerns over poverty, family violence, developmental disabilities and mental illness don't count. Addictions and even abuse of children are not in his repertoire of responses he needs be concerned with in dealing with children who may have committed serious crimes.

Currently there is a presumption of juvenile court status fr accused youth. That presumption can be rebutted thereby putting the accused child in an adult court. This is an evidence based objective assessment process and decided at the discretion of the Courts. And it works very well. Harper’s vision of Canada would eliminate any mealy mouth concern for such soft on crime issues of equity or extenuating circumstances for children who are accused of a serious crime.


There would be no stinkin’ judge making no stinkin’ judgment call about any concern of circumstances or consequences for bad kids in a Stephen Harper vision of Canada. No context or nuance in Mr. Harper’s family man facade of how to get tough on children who are bad. A bad kid who does bad things deserves life imprisonment. Pure and simple!

This policy is unconscionable, callous and once again shows that Harper’s governing style is one of atavistic authoritarianism. Harper’s Canada sees himself as more that a mere Prime Minister. He aspires to be a demagogue and the dominant source of political and public policy power, who will be free exercise total personal command and control of Canadian society.

Harper is also quick and easy to be discriminaTORY too. His youth justice policy is based on age discrimination. He is pandering in the most puerile of political posturing that is aimed directly at an appeasement of Quebec voters. Quebec voters actually believe in rehabilitation as part of a modern criminal justice system and so there are different rules for bad Quebec kids. The rest of Canada also overwhelming believes in rehabilitation as part of any modern criminal justice system. We do leverage more votes for Mr. Harper so the concerns in the rest of Canada don't count in Mr. Harper's vision of Canada.

A bad kid in Quebec has to be 16 before he deserves to be tried as an adult and sentenced to life in prison. A bad kid in the rest of Canada must turn bad earlier because he deserves life in prison at only 14 years old. This is a breach of the Charter and again shows the situational ethical standards ingrained in Mr. Harper. This is a man who sees politics trumping any other Canadian value as he pursues his personal quest to gain political power and dominion over all of Canada.

Wake up Canada and be afraid of this man. He is famous for bullying political opponents inside to outside his party. His has descended to picking on children now…vulnerable children. Children who are most likely to be unable to defend themselves and who will usually lack strong advocates and any effective family support systems to help them in such devastating times. Children are amongst the most vulnerable citizens in our society. Children in serious trouble with the law are extremely vulnerable...but still innocent until proven guilty. Remembering of courae that the child soldier, Omar Khadr, is not included in that foundational principle of Canadian law in Mr. Harper's Canada.

This is more evidence that Mr. Harper does not want to become our Prime Minister just to serve our society and make it better for all of us. He wants to hold the most powerful office in the country and then use the discretionary power of that office to make laws that he is above and could well break at his discretion, yet again!

He broke is his own fixed election date law. And if he is not now breaking the electoin campaign advertising law, he is at the very least, wantonly breaking the spirit of campaign financing and advertising laws. Elections Canada thinks so and a court of law will soon determine the truth of the matter.

He has spent millions of dollars on producing a bunch of bullying attack ads all aimed at debasing Stephane Dion's leadership. All this was done and aired outside the election writ period so he did not have to account for the money spent. He still used tax deductible donated dollars and it was all designed to avoid the requirements of accountability and transparency that is required in our election laws. These are egregious character flaws are likely just the tip of the iceberg, especially if he wins this election.

Imagine what damage this man can do to the country, to you and your family if he gets his majority government. That means at least four full years of unchecked and unbridled Stephen Harper in absolute power and ostensible authority over so much of our lives. With his puppet caucus and trained seal cabinet obliging him every step of the way. I say four full years of power presuming he would actually obey his own fixed date election laws next time. One can only hope!
Be afraid of this man Canada. Danny Williams is right – vote Anybody But Conservative on October 14.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Lies Our Father Figure - Stephen Harper - is Telling Us.

In wandering around the various comments and posts in the election I ran across the posting today of Dr. Dawgs Blawg on the lies that Stephen Harper has used to hide his true intentions.

Harper is trying to show he has a softer, gentle, metro sexual side in some sinister misleading media manipulation of political packaging. He is trying to be our father, here to protect us and comfort us and lull us into a false sense of security under his paternal power. In reality he is no protector. He is just a mean-spirited power monger with a personal agenda to control us like he controls his caucus.

This election is not because Canadians want it nor need it. Only Harper’s hidden agenda of taking advantage of a disengaged electorate who he is betting will not show up to vote. To be lulled into complacency or fooled again by Rovarian cancerous political lies will only lead to giving Harper his domination over us. We centralize too much power in the PMO and Harper is out to take advantage of that.

Just look at his recent Supreme Court appointment. He made that personal appointment just before the election call. He cancelled the normal independent judicial review process and replaced it with a pure political process of MPs and then he disbanded that process and made the decision all by himself. that is just the start of how this man will abuse power if he get it...especially the majority government he is after.

He down plays his hidden desire for a majority but gives no reason why it is sound fiscal management for him to cost taxpayers $400,000,000.00 to run his election only to return another minority government. Don’t be fooled by this charlatan again. He is after a majority despite his talk to the contrary.

He is also out to break and bankrupt the Liberal Party of Canada and hopes it will disappear. He is after this goal just like he got rid of his other partisan hated political party, the former and now defunct Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Peter McKay, as mistrusted Harper loyalist, was the deceitful sock puppet of Harper who engineered that disaster.

Harper wants the Liberal Party of Canada to disappear next. That is another Harper hidden agenda behind his breaking of his own fixed election dates law and this waste of taxpayer money for his own personal political power purposes.

I don’t think Canadians are impressed with him – or any of the leaders. The polls show that. Harper is a special case…because he is not only unimpressive he is monumentally untrustworthy. Harper is actually dangerous to democracy given his real purposes in this election.

If you value your freedoms and love Canada, you will follow Danny Williams’ advice and vote ABC – Anything But Conservative.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Danny Williams' Win Has Major Messages for Stelmach

Premier Danny Williams shows the way to electoral victory and there are lessons for Premier Stelmach in Alberta. Williams campaigned on strength pride and determination…values that will resonate in today’s Alberta too.

He also took on Big Oil for a fair share and negotiated government ownership equity deals for off-shore energy projects. Alberta in the early days was much like Newfoundland and Labrador today. They had government ownership positions in various energy projects in the early days and they morphed into the highly successful Suncor, Syncrude and EnCana entities of today.

The political lessons for Alberta coming out of Williams getting 70% of the popular vote was in no small part from his taking on Big Oil in the service of the greater good of all the citizens of his province. Premier Stelmach can take heart form these results and the pending consequences of some serious political decisions he is about to make on royalties and the role, relationships and the responsibilities between his department of Energy and the energy industry.

Stelmach, when perceived as a ditherer, saw his party’s fortunes dropped quickly to 39% in recent polls. When the “Our Fair Share” Royalty Review Report came out and Premier Stelmach said he would study it and would make a decision on royalties in a month. No more Mr. Dithers and no superficial responses either. Premier Stelmach also said he would not be “intimidated” by Big Oil he jumped to 45% support. Big Oil has been trying to intimidate him ever since the "Our Fair Share" Royalty Review Report was released.

The major political lesson from yesterday's win by Williams shows that siding with the voters/citizens interests over Big Oil is the way to go. Making a carefully considered royalty decision with a long term view of getting a fair share of non-renewable royalties for current and future generations of Albertans will put Stelmach’s support in the Williams’ territory of 70%.

If Stelmach instead decides to call a snap election this fall he will forfeit all this upside potential.