The Conservatives love to change the rules surrounding financing of leadership contests while their opponents are ensconced in them. They did it in 2006 to trip up the Liberal leadership candidates then, putting a squeeze on their future fundraising ab…
Continue readingTag: Democratic Deficit
CuriosityCat: Democratic Greeks fight the German and French Bullies
Gavin Hewitt, the Europe Editor of the BBC News, has written an incisive article today about what is at stake with the Greek Prime Minister’s call for a referendum on the EU austerity proposal.He draws a sharp distinction between the PM’s call that dem…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: A Prime Minister challenges a Chancellor: Could this be the end of the EU?
An epic struggle for the future of the EU was started this morning when a Greek politician threw down the gauntlet, challenging both those within his country who opposed his leadership as prime minister, and the latest ‘solution’ of the EU financial cr…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Arithmetic says that NDP MP Nathan Cullen’s electoral cooperation plan can succeed
It’s been a little over a week since Nathan Cullen launched his bid for leadership of the NDP with a bold plan to encourage cooperation between members of the three opposition parties in those ridings where sitting Tory MPs were vulnerable.Despite the …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Why Wall Street is being Occupied – in two sentences
Banks and politicians should take the time to ponder this extract (my redlining) from an article by Adreas Whittam Smith in The Independent:How did some banks become “too big to fail”? Why did their reckless behaviour go unchecked for so long and is it…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: OWS – the next step: occupy the boardrooms of large corporations & the internet
OccupyWallStreet is spawning offspring at a healthy click, and I’m not talking about occupy some other city kind of spawning!A fascinating website named epolitics has a posting on two recent developements of the OWS, one of which is rather humorous, th…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Chantal Hebert misstates Nathan Cullens electoral cooperation idea
In today’s Toronto Star Chantal Hebert writes about Nathan Cullen’s idea for electoral cooperation between the LPCC, NDP and Green Party. She is of the opinion that the idea is doomed because it ignores human nature, really amounts to a quasi-merger pr…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Any one of the NDP’s Two and a Half Men would make a good leader & PM
The NDP now have three good candidates for their top job: The Fighter, The Dealer and The Visionary.Both Brian Topp and Thomas Mulcair have decades of experience in practical politics, with Mulcair on the hustings and Topp in the proverbial smoke-fille…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Reasons behind the Cullen Plan to Turf-a-Tory in 2015
Why would a young MP decide to join the race for leadership of the NDP, when he faces competition from veterans in the field, such as a backroom dealer, Brian Topp, backed by the party brass, and a seasoned politician , Thomas Mulcair, who fought and w…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Signs of Hope: Some MPs in the Liberal caucus support the Cullen Plan
In a wide ranging interview by Tim Naumetz in The Hill Times, Nathan Cullen, the innovative young NDP MP who has joined the race to replace Jack Layton as leader of the NDP, said that he has been getting some feedback from several sources in the other …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Do Brian Topp & Thomas Mulcair have the right "leadership material" to head the NDP? MP Pat Martin says No!
Outspoken NDP MP Pat Martin is calling their leadership skills into question because of their ‘knee jerk’ rejection of the Turf-a-Tory Cullen Plan floated by NDP MP Nathan Cullen earlier this week when he joined the fray for leadership of that party:Na…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Let the people speak: Some comments on the Walkom article on the Cullen Plan
I skimmed through some of 70 plus comments on the Thomas Walkom article on Nathan Cullen’s idea to Turf-a-Tory through electoral cooperation between the Liberal, NDP and Green parties before the 2015 election.This idea is starting to get legs (Walkom’s…
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Why Occupy Wall Street does NOT need the Democratic party
Some people are now calling for Obama and the Democratic Party to get behind (or is that take over or co-opt) the Occupy Wall Street movement; this at best a strategically unwise misdirection of energies, I would argue, and at worst, a dangerously naiv…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Man behind the Cullen Plan to Turf-a-Tory in 2015 by electoral cooperation
Nathan Cullen had some blunt words for a Toronto crowd he addressed last night, when asked about the risks to a party which decided to adopt the Cullen Plan and then found its own nominated candidate outvoted:Nathan Cullen sketches the Cullen PlanIt is…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: John Ivison says the Cullen Plan could take away Stephen Harper’s majority government
Ivison sees trouble ahead for the Harper Tories with the plan launched by NDP MP Nathan Cullen when he announced that he was running for leader of the NDP. Ivison believes the plan could take Harper’s minority away, because there are 21 Tory MPs …
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Dysfunctional Dunderdale Administration #nlpoli
Kathy Dunderdale thinks the provincial legislature is dysfunctional. Well, if the House sat more often than it has since Dunderdale’s been a member, they might be doing better. Dunderdale as premier is carrying on the tradition of her predecessor o…
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Occupy Wall Street: The emerging global pro-democracy movement, where it stands, what it means, and where we go from here
The Occupy Wall Street movement, which has already become a global grassroots populist pro-democracy movement, if we have eyes to see, has clearly already won a broad and growing base of support. What is needed now, I believe, is to further clarify and…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Doug Saunders nails it: Tax the Crooks!
Doug Saunders Still wondering what the Occupation Movement is protesting about in New York, thousands of other American cities, and now hundreds of cities throughout the world?Then read the article headed We need a global army of tax collectors in toda…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Liberals, let’s make Steve Janke eat his words
National Post’s Steve Janke thinks we are doomed. He thinks we will shrivel up and die:I have to wonder, therefore, if there is a cure for what ails the Liberal Party. The same dynamic that pushed the NDP up and up is driving the Liberals down and down…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Ontario voters wishes thwarted; McGuinty government’s legitimacy questionable
So less than 50% of Ontario voters cast a vote, while half of them voted with their feet by staying home. Wonder why this happened?The system once again failed to deliver democracy to Canadian voters. McGuinty is whistling past the graveyard, trying to…
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