Don't waste your vote...don't vote Liberal

Okay I haven't posted here in a while.

As everyone in this country knows, we have an election on October 14th.

It goes without saying that we need to get rid of Stephen Harper's Republican clones.

In the blogosphere, there's a pretty big "ABC" (Anything But Conservative) movement.

I've got a big problem with this movement. Anyone who thinks that the Liberal Party of Canada is somehow "progressive" is either suffering from amnesia or just plain stupid.

I've spent the last twenty odd years of my life trying to help out the unemployed in various ways, shapes and forms.

Unemployed folks need to feed their families, put a roof over their heads and maybe even retrain so that they can do new jobs.

What's the biggest obstacle that the unemployed face? The savage cuts to the "Employment Insurance" system imposed in the 1990's by guess who? The Chretien/Martin Liberal government.

A few years ago workers in the low paid hospitality sector were out of work due to the SARS crisis when Toronto's tourism industry went belly up. UNITE-HERE, the main union representing workers in that sector lobbied for special extended EI benefits for workers in that industry. Many of them were losing their homes or being evicted from their apartments.

What was the response of the Liberal government? "Nope". You have to bear in mind that at the time the Liberals held every single seat in Toronto.

What happened? A few Liberal hack politicians organized a charity Rolling Stones concert. Sure they raised a bit of money for a "rent bank". But given the devastation in the industry that money dried up very quickly.

Hundreds of thousands of manufacturing workers have lost their jobs in the last few years. But these same workers are still suffering the effects of the Liberal EI cuts. With the banking fiasco in the U.S., hundreds of thousands more will lose their jobs over the next few years. Guess what? All of these workers will be suffering the effects of Liberal EI cuts.

The Harper Republican wannabees have simply carried on with the Liberal war on the unemployed.

If you're unemployed, or about to become unemployed, the Liberals aren't your friends.

The Liberals would like folks to forget that they were in office for twelve long years. What's the legacy?

Does anyone remember the Liberal promise to introduce pharmacare? I didn't think so.

It's quite true that the Mulroney government took the feds out of the housing business. But in 1993 the Liberals promised to get the feds back into the biz. I lost track of how many times they announced money for housing. What did they deliver on? Nothing.

They promised money for childcare. It was only after the NDP put the screws to the Liberals during the short lived Martin minority government that the Liberals made any moves at all.

Liberal cuts in transfer payments to the provinces for healthcare created a legal climate where there have been court cases that threaten to undermine the entire medicare system.

Yeah the Liberals kept us out of George Bush II's war in Iraq. But they got us into Bush II's "other war" in Afghanistan. Over a hundred Canadian young people have paid for this disaster with their lives.

The Liberals signed the Kyoto protocol but did absolutely nothing to implement it's provisions.

Mulroney got us into the Canada/U.S. Free Trade Agreement. But who got us into NAFTA and signed-off on the notorious "Chapter 11"? The Liberals.

What about the Reformatory "Copyright Bill" which thankfully died on the order paper due to the election call. If you do anything of consequence on the internet, you've really only got one friend...namely the NDP...well maybe the Greens...but realistically they've only got a shot at maybe two seats. The Bloc Quebecois is actually worse than the Reformatories on this issue and at best the Liberals were being cagey...because they introduced a somewhat similar bill when they were in office.

The Harper Reformatories have brought in billions of dollars in corporate tax cuts. John Deere is axing 800 jobs in Welland, Ontario but is being rewarded with a tax cut. Guess who's supporting Harper on this one? Stephane Dionne and the Liberals.

The simple act of cancelling a scheduled corporate tax cut...not even "raising" corporate taxes is dismissed by Dionne as "socialism".

Not only that but Stephanne Dionne and the Liberals let Harper push through most of his right-wing agenda by not showing up in Parliament to vote against Harper.

Then of course there are all the useless drones who have occupied the Liberal backbenches for years if not decades. Dionne likes to talk about his "Liberal team". Alot of these folks should be sent back to the minor leagues.

There's an old expression "lead, follow or get out of the way". It's time for the Liberals to get out of the way.