09.12.2021 09:16 PM

This week’s Sparky: enough.

 

32 Comments

  1. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Amen, brother.

  2. Steve T says:

    I’m assisting with advance-poll tracking for my local candidate, and from what I can see the turnout is significantly higher than prior elections.
    Let’s hope that translates into higher overall voter turnout – and, of course in my opinion – a high number of people who will punish JT for calling this ridiculous, expensive, risky, and unnecessary election.

  3. Phil in London says:

    Why wait till Election Day?

    I have used special ballot by visiting the returning office since the second time the name Chrétien was running for Prime Minster.

    Once I went to an advanced poll. This time I went online and ordered my ballot right after the writ was dropped so did my wife, son, daughter and son-in-law.

    There is simply no reason for people to whine about waiting in line next Monday. It just is not hard to get ahead of it.

  4. Phil in London says:

    Why wait till Election Day?

    I have used special ballot by visiting the returning office since the second time the name Chrétien was running for Prime Minster.

    Once I went to an advanced poll. This time I went online and ordered my ballot right after the writ was dropped so did my wife, son, daughter and son-in-law.

    There is simply no reason for people to whine about waiting in line next Monday. It just is not hard to get ahead of it.

    If I can do it, anyone can do it! After all I am a conservative for crying out loud. (I haven’t stated that in a long time)

  5. PJH says:

    I’ve worked as a scrutineer for a couple of days….I have to say turnout has been very heavy for advance polls.

    I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank ElectionsCanada for the excellent job they did in my community. The polls were well organized, the workers professional and polite, and it was rare to see anyone wait longer than five minutes to vote.

    Get out there folks and exercise your franchise. People die trying to vote(or to even have the right) in other countries, while many of us here in Canada take it for granted.

  6. Counsel Public Affairs: Liberals Tie

    Abacus: Liberals Tie

    Mainstreet: Liberals +5

    Nanos: Liberals +3

    • EKOS: Conservatives +2

      Angus Reid: Conservatives +2

      • Sean says:

        Nanos seems to be confirming Kouvalis’ tweets from the last few days. Spread is easily within the MOE.
        Last night’s “preferred PM” is almost a tie. Sharp uptick for Blue and sharp downtick for Red.

      • Léger: Liberals Tie

        Mainstreet: Liberals +4

        Nanos: Liberals +1

        Research: Liberals +4

        • Sean says:

          I’d be intrigued to know how many Conservatives – when they know they are getting a polling call – are just hanging up…. because they already voted. My gut tells me that their turnout will be pretty good and their tribe is way more motivated. I think Kouvalis was including folks who had already voted which inched up his numbers a bit.

          • Sean,

            We are the only party known for having members and supporters who leave their hospital beds to vote. A slight exaggeration but not by much. My gut tells me in the wake of advance poll turnout that Himself’s political repudiation will be, at the very least, epic and highly instructive for him. Back to the Speaker’s Bureau he’ll go, if he gets lucky that is.

  7. Peter Williams says:

    Went out and voted in Calgary to end this early this morning.

    A special shout out of thanks to the election workers at my polling station, they were all very polite and helpful.

  8. Robert White says:

    I just came back from voting in the advanced poll where it was busy. I voted NDP because they espouse the best Marxist rhetoric and I would truly like to see a wealth tax given that I am the son of a Canadian CA tax man.

    I hope the Liberal Party is happy about their loss of my vote for their bad governance & piss poor leadership from the Finance Minister & every other Liberal cabinet minister they have.

    PM Feminist-sock puppet Trudeau is finally going to get his comeuppance.

    P.S. I would have voted Conservative O’Toole if he didn’t say he would ‘balance the books in a decade’ which is impossible mathematically.

    Sorry, Ronald. I’m older than you by about two years so age rules here, eh.

    :-)’

    RW

    • Peter Williams says:

      You want a wealth tax? I’m curious, what would be a fair tax rate for the wealthy?
      a) income tax percentage
      b) tax on wealth

      • Robert White says:

        Right now this minute I would simply confiscate all of the wealth just as Fidel Castro did when he violently assumed power in Cuba.

        I would tax the predator wealth extracting Hedge Funds right out of existence via taxation on the entire Dark Pool Derivatives Universe of an estimated $2 quadrillion USD. I would outlaw the historical profit making of all the Canadian Charted Banks.

        Wholesale, I would rape & pillage the wealth extracting predator parasite class of investors that re wholly reliant upon rentier income extraction via government issuance of rent subsidy for increasingly poor due to inflation set by the BofC and Government of Canada bureaucrats like Finance Minister Freeland who is an Oxford elite wealth extractionist BIG ‘L’ Liberal bureaucrat.

        I’d tax these bastards so severely they’d run to the third world to set up shop and their new homes.

        RW

      • Pedant says:

        You need to dissociate income from wealth.

        One easy way to tax wealth is simply to raise property tax and concurrently decrease income tax. Toronto and especially Vancouver have some of the lowest property taxes in North America. The result is that wealthy people living in $10 million mansions pay a pittance, while a middle class person earning $100k gets crushed by income tax.

        Texas does it right – very high property taxes, but no state income tax. Therefore, productive work is rewarded rather than speculation and birth-lottery luck.

        • Robert White says:

          I do view wealth and income as mutually exclusive domain for taxation. Wealth Tax is most important to tax as Income Tax is already taxed, but wealth is not taxed yet.

          The only way forward for all is to tax wealth and rein in tax haven offshored wealth so that the wealth hoarders pay their fair share in taxation.

          If a billionaire like Jeff Bezos draws a salary income of $250k per year to live on he only pays Income Tax on the $250k income, but none on the billions invested.

          Warren Buffett does the same as Bezos so they don’t have to pay tax on income. They don’t get taxed on their shares in the stock market either.

          Warren Buffett’s secretary still pays more Income Tax than Warren Buffett does, but Buffett an creatively write off his tax on income through investment that is not taxed.

          It pays to be rich or an aristocrat like Trudeau.

          RW

          • Peter Williams says:

            How much would your wealth tax be?

          • Robert White says:

            My Wealth Tax would be slightly above official inflation.
            In brief, my Wealth Tax would be roughly 5% of total.

            At 5% taxation I would drive out the most egregious wealth hoarders. And if they wanted to leave Canada I, for one, would tax them on their departure.

            I’d make Fidel Castro look like a piker.

            RW

      • Peter,

        First off, the tax system will never be fair where the wealthy are concerned: too many still available tax havens, too many still available manipulations of the tax code, too many high-net-worth only tax avoidance strategies.

        All of the above has to be cleaned up before ever considering a wealth tax. Otherwise, wealthy is suddenly 200K with most of the middle-class somehow ending up paying by far the vast majority of the wealth tax.

        Of course, the rich and their allies will never clean up tax havens. They are too bush using them.

    • Pedant says:

      As someone who tends to lean right, I want a wealth tax. Canada crushes educated professional working actual jobs through excessive income taxation, but does nothing to clawback any unearned wealth by those who bought homes for $30k in 1977 that are now worth $1.5 million. Tax capital more, and labour less.

    • Robert,

      The important part is voting and you have. In a democracy, I can complain all I want about an end result but the voters are always right — because they took the trouble to vote and got us a government.

      P.S. No one in their right mind, including me, believes in a CPC balanced budget after ten years. That’s pie in the sky to say the very least.

      • Robert White says:

        I think the Federal Reserve ‘tapering’ is not going to happen either. This will ensure Wiemar Republic level hyperinflation sometime in Q2 2o22 when Larry Summers expects the Fed to taper.

        Voting for anyone other than Trudeau was my objective.
        There is no way in heck that anyone reading The WAR Room is going to be voting Liberal IMHO. Like Warren said ‘he has to be punished’ for the vanity election bid for a majority that he can’t obtain.

        This election costs upwards of $700 million minimum.
        Trudeau could have given poor Canadians that $700 million instead. Homeless people living under bridges in Toronto could use that $700 million IMHO.

        Trudeau is in a class by himself when it comes to wasting money.

        • Phil in London says:

          I think it was hapless Kim Campbell who said an election was a terrible time to discuss issues but it is in the case of this topic in this election.

          Tax reforms is sorely needed but it ain’t going to happen while everyone is handing out candy.

          True tax reform means replacing a progressive income tax system and a consumption tax system with an all encompassing progressive system that provides for the recognition of wealth (which can be extremely distinct from income) as part of the roadmap.

          Persons who are rich for example should not bear the burden of 300% of their own societal costs, but they could be made to bare the cost of up to 100% of said service costs leaving more money for poorer people to receive every imaginable social benefit from OAS to pharmacare.

          None of this reform needs to make wealth a sin

          • Robert White says:

            Greed is a sin IMHO, but I’m an Anglican whereby the official head of my church is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II who has a Personal Net Worth of approximately $800 million USD.

            Queen Elizabeth never took a vow of poverty.

            RW

        • Robert,

          I agree that tapering will not happen but I come around to it from the opposite view: my contention is that inflation is rising so steadily, in out of hand proportions, that it will quickly become impossible to taper. Future hyperinflation of 50% per month, which is on the way, will put a gun to The Fed’s head and force immediate rate increases. And then BOOM: down goes the Bond Market with the Stock Market in tow.

          (For those of you who do not know the true rates of inflation and unemployment in the United States, consult ShadowStats, not the phoney, made up and manipulated garbage that comes out of the American government.)

  9. Phil in London says:

    If the Leger polling data is accurate, this election is already half voted.

    It stated in the data that some 24% had already voted by visiting returning office or mail in vote, a further 29% intend to vote in advance.

    The only way left to advance vote now is in the elections canada offices because advanced polling ended yesterday and vote by mail option must be requested by today.

    If you are not yet in possession of your mail in ballot I am going to suggest it ain’t going to happen.

    37% say they will show up at the poll on Election Day. 10% won’t vote or refuse to say.

    Voter turnout last election was 67% so if the numbers who did vote are accurate, the number who will vote in advance is “half accurate” we could have 40% of votes already cast and only 27% more to come if the turnout remains the same.

    I don’t know what the hell I am trying to conclude other than there may not be a lot to count on Monday night, meaning a very long night of counting advance polls and mail in ballots.

    Maybe the election is already decided in some ways and the polls don’t mean a lot unless we pick up some voter desire to show up

    • Phil in London says:

      I forgot if the Marxist vote as referenced by RW truly splits from liberal to NDP my heavens we could be looking at a game changer surge, I estimate they could lose as many as four votes (and what between zero and 100 seat swings?) if that happens.

  10. Lawrence Barry says:

    Jesus WK – 1st look at that I thought Sparky was going to give an enema to someone – then again might not be the worst thing!

    • Lawrence,

      In the case of “some” politicians, were you to provide an enema in traditional fashion or perform it at the other end, the final result would inevitably be the same in both instances…

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