Friday, November 16, 2012

Only a Conservative...

...would find joy in putting large numbers of people out of work.
"We said we would eliminate 19,200 positions within the federal government and we are doing what we promised to do. In just six months, we have already achieved more than half the reductions set out in the budget. A leaner, more affordable government is good for taxpayers and it's important in terms of our ability to return to balanced budgets."
- Tony Clement


25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Given that half of them perform no meaningful work other than to harrass, screw over and generally make life difficult for working regular working people (and I know of many cases) I say good riddance.

Peter said...

Funny how the left only laments putting people out of work when they have public service jobs.

bcwaterboy said...

Way Way makes a good point, only he has identified the wrong people to be targets of austerity it would make more sense for the electorate to lay off the likes of Tony Clement and Steve Harper (flying vehicles over seas, really?)>

Owen Gray said...

It's amazing that Tony Clement manages to survive. Who says you need to know a lot to go far?

Anonymous said...

Peter....of course. People with public service jobs are more equal than people like my parents who acutally work more than 8 hours a day to build up and maintain a small business.

Gloria said...

Harper has already, sold huge chunks of the tar sands to Communist China. China gets all of the jobs too. When Harper sells the bulk of the tar pits to China, very few Canadians will get jobs. Harper has permitted all company's to hire that cheap labor.

American oil workers are coming to take jobs. The Americans won the contract, to tear down the old smelter in Kitimat BC. They are also building the new smelter. They brought their own workers with them.

Northern BC has seven new mines coming in. The American owned mines, will bring their own workers. Chinese mines will bring their own workers. There are already 200 Chinese miners here working right now. With the new mines, we expect 2000 Chinese miners.

Harper's main objective is to, make sure Canadians don't get jobs. We have thousands of, University and College grads with huge student loans. They need good paying jobs. However, they are not going to get those jobs.

Boris said...

WWU,
Just how do you think you'll do with a half-strength public service trying to perform the duties of a full staffed version?

Peter, provide examples or I'll just have to keep laughing at the inaneness of your comment.

Boris said...

Also, WWU, public service employees are people with families, mouths to feed, rent and mortgages to pay, retirement to save for, and so on. Somehow this seems lost on people who bray and whinny about the virtues cutting gov't spending by cutting jobs.

Anonymous said...

Boris,

Too bad for them. My parents and I have families, mortgages, bills and retirements to save for too. Why should public sector workers be special?

Boris said...

They aren't better or more deserviing than your parents WWU, and they work a lot harder than you realise. And the remaining public service employees will now have to work even harder to pick up the extra work from their laid off peers. Like I said, your shitty experiences with public servants are about to get shittier - even by your own cheerleading.

Further, when we 'leftists' criticise the cutbacks to welfare, increases on the middle-class tax burden, mishandling of the economy especially during a recession, etc ad nauseum, we're arguing for making things easier and more prosperous for your parents and their business!

:)


Anonymous said...

No thanks. We already had a taste of what it was like trying to run a business under a Bob Rae's NDP in the '90's in Ontario.

Boris said...

Apparently you're still in business despite what some Dipper gov't did in Ontario 20 years ago and notwithstanding what the sucessor did to the province afterward.

Anonymous said...

Apparently....so we would trust an NDP gov't again because.....?

The stress they put my parents through is disgusting....and unforegiveable.

Anonymous said...

We actually did pretty good under the Conservatives. I know you don't want to hear that as it flies in the face of your bellief system. The Liberals have their moments. I'm open enough to at least give them a chance. Having said that though, we're ecstatic McSquinty is gone. As for the NDP, sorry. They have a lot of work to do to earn our trust. Just saying.

Boris said...

WWU, you did well under the Cons unless you were poor, in school at any level, working for minimum wage, concerned about deficits, in need of health or social services. So while you and your parents might have done well, there's a whole lot of other people who did not. But I guess they don't matter sfa to you just as long as you got yours. Which, at the end of the day, really is the problem.

Anonymous said...

Wrong again. I was in school, living off student loans and working a minimum wage job in the service sector for a good chunk of that time, actually.

Boris said...

Well, that doesn't seem to have bothered you. Bully for you, but it doesn't excuse for giving the finger to a whole lot of other people because yours did well.

Anonymous said...

It does when they make life difficult for me.

Anonymous said...

Running a small business in any province it a lot of hard work and I resent the implication that they are greedy and only out for themselves. This is offensive to say the least. Obviously you have never run a business before.

There are tons of groups and organizations in my home town that get public money doled out to them every year. Public money. My tax dollars, my parents' tax dollars and I find this disgusting. The amount of money wasted by government on junkets, orange juice, arts groups and useless air craft is truly sickening.

But of course, why should politicians care? Some of them need small business owners so they have someone to dump on and paint as greedy exploiters of the masses in order to prop up their ideologies.

Fuck them! Let them make their own damn money.

Boris said...

WWU,
Sigh. I am not saying small business people are all greedy and in it for themselves, I am saying you are, by your own words.

Further, you appear to be conflating politicians self aggrandising spending and large wasteful capital projects with the spending that goes to making your community a better place. There's a part of me that really would like to see how supporters of your argument would react if they really did stop spending money on all those roads, hospitals, emergency services, business initiatives, arts, etc that you find so disgusting. You'd have no market for your wares, your roads would be cracked, hospitals closed, and you'd have very few entertainment options.

Anonymous said...

Sure I"m greedy Boris. If that's what you want to believe then, fine, whatever. You're second paragraph is just bizarre as I never said anywhere to stop spending money completely on all those things. We already have horrid roads, emergency services and entertainment options here anyway. Costs go up yet no improvements here. But hey, its just taxpayer money there, hey?

Purple library guy said...

Ya know, WWU, I don't actually believe you about the school/minimum wage thing, or you wouldn't be claiming the Harris government never hurt you but the Rae govt. did (like how?). Maybe I'd be more inclined to trust you if you weren't pulling a dishonest rhetorical trick (nobody implied anything about small business people as a group and you know it perfectly well).

But this small business VS government schtick is moronic. I'd love to see those small businesses succeed without roads or plumbing, without police, without contract law, without deposit insurance. Heck, take away just one government service (health care) and, we see in the US, massive bankruptcies result. Some small businesses would benefit in the moment if minimum wage and other labour laws disappeared, but lots of poor people is not overall helpful to small business sales.

As a side note . . . All the big ticket items in your "Oh noes what taxes go for" list were Conservative waste, and none had anything to do with employing civil servants.

Anonymous said...

Purple Library Guy.....feel free to not believe me. Really, I couldn't care less.

Conservative waste.....Liberal waste...NDP waste....its all waste to me. I don't care what flavour of government it is....I really don't.

Boris said...

WWU, you've utterly failed to address any of the criticisms levelled at your reasoning. I'm really curious, though. What do you think the role of government should be? How do you define waste?

Anonymous said...

Would it matter if I addressed the criticisms? Would a politician really care? Would a bureaucrat really care? Would a political pundit/blogger really care? I doubt it. As long as my tax dollars keep flowing to them, why should government care?

People will see what they wish to see. Some might see spending on the CBC as waste and some may see the F35 mess as wasteful. Heck, we had two new overpasses constructed in my city over the past couple years and judging by their failure to solve traffic woes I'm sure many people here see them as wasteful. I worked in the public sector for a decade before leaving the North and saw plenty of examples where bureaucrats did quite well and yet the people that were supposed to be helped got shafted. It sickened me and I decided I wanted no part of it so I left.

As for your questions though, depending on how one wanted to define the term "waste", there could be many examples I would imagine. If you wanted to define it as "unwanted or useless" I would think one wouldn't have to look too far beyond the past few governments to find examples of that.