Prairie Tory

The Wallstreet Journal offers an interesting opinion piece on the opposition that George W. Bush faced in implementing, and then sticking with the Surge strategy in Iraq. Due to space constraints and probably other factors, I think the Wallstreet Journal had to be happy with a rather skeleton description of the bureaucratic and political wrangling that took place prior to the Surge, and even after the Surge was implemented.

I’ll have to check out Bob Woodward’s book – A War Within – and get a deeper look at what happened within the White House, Pentagon, State and Defense Department at the time of the Surge.

I think the piece could’ve provided a little more rationale for the President’s dismissal of Donald Rumsfeld. That was one part of the article that sounded a little misleading to me. I think there were other factors involved in Rumsfeld’s firing, besides the President’s resolve to find a winning strategy for Iraq.

This economic plan laid out by the C2C Journal of Ideas is whats missing from the current federal election campaign. C2C is an online journal that promotes conservative ideas and principles. Even if the Conservative Party only announced a portion of this agenda, I’d be happy.

Given the state of the economy, and the recent happenings on Bay Street and Wallstreet, I think this agenda could be easily sold to Canadians. In a turbulent global economy where we face annual GDP growth of only 1.1 percent for the rest of this year, according to Jim Flaherty. I think thats reason to drastically reduce spending, while cutting taxes at the same time.

How I’d like to be a fly on the wall of the Obama campaign bus right now. This is devastating. Then again, is it really surprising? George Will, among others have already talked at length about the reflexively left-wing voting record he has. He had the most liberal voting record of any US Senator. Isn’t this just more proof?

Just one more reason to support John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Yesterday EKOS has the Conservatives at 35%, and outside majority territory, now today they’re back up to 38%, which is where the Conservatives have essentially sat since the beginning. The trend seems to be that every time we see a poll that shows Conservative support shrink, or expand, it bounces back the next day, or within a couple days. I think the only opportunity for a significant shift is the debates because I think the English language debate could be an enormous debacle for Stephane Dion.

I will say that I think the Conservatives will win a majority. They’ve been at or near 40% support in Ontario, and 30% in Quebec (I’m going by CROP numbers for Quebec). The gains that could come if those numbers hold, should be enough to put them into majority territory, as long as they don’t lose seats in SK and BC due to rising NDP support.

Wow. I read Mark Milke’s book A Nation of Serfs and it was fantastic. The chapters on corporate welfare and free speech were especially interesting to me, along with the historical information about our roots in limited-government, and the garrison culture. The latter I hadn’t ever heard or learned of before, so that was cool. Anyway, here’s some more data on corporate welfare handouts in this Fraser Institute report.

These are some staggering numbers. These are numbers from the period 1995-2004.

In 2004 alone, Canada’s federal, provincial, and local governments spent $19 billion on corporate welfare, almost double the 1995 figure of $10.3 billion. The cost to each taxpayer who paid income tax in 2004 was $1,259, which was 35% higher than the 1995 figure of $934.

Between 1995 and 2004, the last year for which statistics are available, Canada’s federal, provincial, and local governments spent almost $144 billion on tax-financed subsidies to business.

Between 1995 and 2004, the total cost amounted to $11,030 per tax filer (all figures adjusted for inflation to 2007 dollars).

I guess this is one more item we can hope is on the CPC’s hidden agenda that comes attached to attaining majority government status. Its time to drain the swamp. Government does not need to compete with the private sector, nor does the private sector need the government’s help. Here’s the entire document.

Well, by the end of June its turned into a $1.2 billion dollar surplus for the ‘08-09 fiscal year. There was tremendous panic a short while ago about the current government going back into deficit. The report warns that three months are not enough to draw firm conclusions, but the Conference Board of Canada, along with Global Insight say we’re not headed toward a budget deficit.

I think I’m going to start visiting the Fiscal Monitor at the Finance Department website more often. They have pretty detailed information on where the increases in spending are coming from. It may be a surprise to some, to learn that its mostly from transfers to the provinces, which were part of the Conservatives pledge to fix the fiscal imbalance.

Program expenses in June 2008 were $16.6 billion, up $1.7 billion, or 11.1 per cent, from June 2007, reflecting increases in transfer payments.

In June 2008, transfer payments were up $1.6 billion, or 16.7 per cent, from June 2007.

• Major transfers to persons, consisting of elderly, EI and children’s benefits, increased by $0.3 billion, or 5.5 per cent. Elderly benefits increased by 3.4 per cent and EI benefits by 17.0 per cent. Children’s benefits, which consist of the Canada Child Tax Benefit and the Universal Child Care Benefit, remained stable.

• Major transfers to other levels of government, consisting of federal transfers in support of health and other social programs (Canada Health Transfer and Canada Social Transfer), fiscal transfers, transfers to provinces on behalf of Canada’s cities and communities, and Alternative Payments for Standing Programs, were up $0.7 billion, or 18.0 per cent, reflecting Budget 2007 measures and increased transfers for Canada’s cities and communities.

• Subsidies and other transfers increased by $0.7 billion, or 55.4 per cent, reflecting increases in payments related to the investment in infrastructure announced in Budget 2007, which came into effect later in 2007, higher transfers to Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia under the Offshore Accords, and payments to provinces and territories for labour market training announced in Budget 2007.

Interesting…while these are real increases in spending, its not exactly out of line with what the current government promised to do when they were elected.

I think the Fraser Institute proposed a much better solution to dealing with the so-called fiscal imbalance, but I guess simply increasing transfer payments was the path of less resistance.

more help for small businesses. I’m not sure why he announced this on a Saturday. I think announcing this on a Monday would’ve been more effective. I would never have realized this was announced had I not peeped conservative.ca out of sheer bordem. I immediately went to ctv.ca and didn’t see any mention of this announcement. Talk about coming in under the radar. Anyway, this is good news for business owners and entrepreneurs.

Another small step in the right direction by the Conservatives. I like it.

Mark Steyn is back from his summer sabbatical, and just as cutting and funny as ever. This post over at The Corner at National Review is hilarious.

The media’s tomfoolery regarding the Palin nomination, and Obamamania has been so ridiculous, that watching the media lose their own minds over the possibility that the GOP will retain the White House for a third straight term is too funny.

I’ve been noticing a trend in the polls since the election was called. The look remarkably steady. The Conservatives have been consistently hovering around 37-40%, the Liberals at 27-30%, the NDP at 13-16% and then the Bloc and the Green Party at 8-10%.

I’m trying not to focus too much on the polls, because I think that we’re going to see a new poll everyday for the rest of the campaign, and constantly talking about polling numbers will become mind-numbingly boring after a while.

Nanos released his latest tracking poll yesterday. Maybe later I’ll find the links to the other polls in order to further flesh out my point.

This is the kind of stuff I’ve been looking forward to. I hoped that when the Competition Review Panel released its report some of it would be acted upon by the Conservatives. This is heartening to see. The kind of economic nationalism that we were engaged in under Trudeau, which continued up until present day has outlived its usefulness.

We’re part of a global economy, whether we want to be or not. So, lets see if we can make it work for us, hmm?

At every turn, the Conservatives are drawing distinct lines between themselves and the left-wing parties that oppose them. You can argue that maybe the proposals don’t go far enough, but there’s no question that we’re better off sticking with Stephen Harper and the Conservatives over the other options.