Good choice.
And this is bad how? Better eager noobs than experienced crooks in my opinion.
Agreed. They’re going to face a steep learning curve, though, and their inevitable errors will only hurt the party. Hope they can make a go of it and soon figure out how to govern effectively.
Ya know, at some point it’s just not enough to ‘represent’ the people. You have to actually, you know, know things. Because at some point, people expect real results and intelligent, educated choices.
These are people that are going to be making multi-billion dollar decisions on issues which are highly technical, which require an understanding of management practices, budgeting, risk analysis, etc. Not necessarily to the level of professional managers, but at least enough to be able to understand what they are telling you and to be able to weigh the various options presented.
People who spend too much time in the partisan trenches forget that governing requires actual skills and it’s not enough to just ‘care’.
The likely result of this is that these people are simply going to be overwhelmed and defer decision-making to the unelected bureaucracy, unable to do their jobs as representatives of the people because they have no idea how to actually understand the complex issues they will be expected to manage. Power will devolve to unelected bureaucrats with their own agendas.
My wife is pretty high up in the government (two levels from the minister), and I see the kinds of issues she deals with and has to get advice and consent on from the minister. It’s not simple stuff. It requires an understanding of the underlying literature and the ability to read and understand technical reports and their implications.
What is it about the left that makes them want the government to play an increasingly large role in managing our affairs, but seem okay with electing people who will screw up the actual management of the government, thereby destroying its credibility and setting back their own agenda?
Jon Stewart has made this point before: The people who should be most invested in ensuring that government is efficient and competent are the ones who are trying to convince the rest of us that government should do more. And yet, they seem to be the ones least interested in the actual details of running the government. When your preferred party gets into power, your very first goal should be to show the rest of us how it’s done, and how the government can be a force for good, by making sure that the government works better.
Then you get an NDP in Alberta, or an Obama in the White House, and you look the other way or make apologies for the appointment of cronies and partisans to positions that require real managerial skills, and their inevitable screwups demonstrate to the rest of us exactly why government can’t be trusted to do things right.
Republicans screw up too, but they aren’t invested in the notion that the government is efficient and competent to replace functions normally undertaken by the market and business.
Even better: Experienced non-crooks. Methinks you have excluded a fairly large middle.
I’m not asking a lot here. A finance minister should at least know basic accounting. A transportation minister should at least have enough education to understand engineering reports and know when he’s being bamboozled with unrealistic estimates. An energy minister in a province dominated by energy industries should at least have a modicum of education or experience in that field.
The fact that this is apparently too high a bar to ask for re-affirms my belief that government should be kept as small as possible. When clowns are driving the car, I’d rather it be a Volkswagen than a Mack truck.
Uh huh. Because a bus driver, who doesn’t even need a high school diploma, is obviously qualified to understand multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects. Because driving a bus gives you total insight into the transportation system. About as much, I guess, as my neighbour who owns an RV.
Who knew that a class 1 license was a sufficient qualification to run the transportation infrastructure of a province?
By that logic we should elect street people to government, because they have a unique perspective on the needs of street people.
It’s not enough to have a ‘voice’ if that voice is incoherent and ignorant. There is nothing about being a university student living at home or with grandparents that gives you any special insight into the problems of rent, other than that you can’t afford your own place while maintaining a lifestyle consisting of buying weed and partying a lot, which appears to be what the person in question does.
This isn’t even smart from your own perspective. You should be the one cringing when an incompetent gets elected on the left, because the damage that person does is going to accrue to your side. Obama’s failure to run the government competently cost you the house and Senate. Choosing an unelectable buffoon like Joe Biden as Vice President made it much harder for your side to hold the Presidency.
These types of mistakes burn your side - not mine.
Indeed we should, some at least.
That is not an easy position to support, but never mind.
After winning with him the previous time?
And yet your side lost. To a bunch of people for whom you have no respect. They lost. How do you account for that?
*Had *the Tories developed an air of corruption about them? It wouldn’t be the first time a party in power for a long period had run into that.
What I mean is that normally after two turns, the President throws his campaign towards getting the VP elected president, as George HW Bush was, and Al Gore almost was. This time, everyone knows Biden would never be elected, so that leaves an open presidency battle. The same thing happened to George W Bush with Cheney, but in that case Cheney disqualified himself while in office - on paper he wasn’t a bad pick at all. But Obama chose poorly.
First, it wasn’t ‘my side’. I didn’t vote for the PC’s. I was hoping they would lose. What I thought was the most likely outcome was that we would wind up with a PC or NDP or Wildrose minority government. That would have been a far superior outcome as it would have kept both sides in check and would have allowed for far more choices for cabinet positions.
Their losing had nothing to do with the NDP, though. They lost because A) the voters were tired of the PC’s, and B) the PC’s had shifted to the left under Redford, and then stayed there and added a heap of incompetence and scheming with Prentice and C) the natural opposition, the Wild Rose, imploded when its leadership jumped to the PC’s. That left only the NDP standing. They weren’t elected on their positive vision for Alberta - they were elected almost by default. As I said before, some of their candidates didn’t even bother campaigning because they thought they had no shot. They weren’t vetted because no one believed they could possibly win.
Exactly. Corruption, big deficits, and an answer to deficits that included a huge number of tax increases and fee increases. The worst of all possible worlds. There’s no question the PC’s deserved to go. The NDP were the only ones around who could possibly win in the cities, so they won almost by default.
But note that the Wild Rose doubled its own seat count in this election - that’s not the sign of a province turning to the left, although I will admit it sure has here in Edmonton.
*That’s *what “Obama’s failure to run the government competently” means? :dubious:
Then why are you so bitter about it?
Then you shouldn’t be so upset that the new people in charge are “inexperienced”.
No, that’s what choosing a buffoon like Joe Biden means. I think you confused yourself.
Because an NDP majority is a dangerous thing for this province, and because their caucus is spectacularly unqualified for office. Most of them are unqualified for anything other than a junior position in a company somewhere. Some of the new ministers wouldn’t even qualify for a job in government at all if they applied for one, and many of them aren’t qualified for anything more than an entry level job somewhere.
Let me ask you - do you not believe competence matters at all in elected officials? I seem to recall a lot of outrage when ‘heckuva job’ Brownie was head of FEMA, because he had never run any kind of large organization. I’m certain you have been very critical of Republicans in the past when they appointed cronies or incompetents to head federal agencies.
Has your opinion on that changed?
I have no problem with inexperience in government. I have a problem with our leaders being inexperienced in LIFE. I would prefer my elected officials to actually be serious people with real accomplishments behind them, and I would prefer that cabinet ministers be chosen that actually know something about the field they are responsible for. 20 year old students, 20-something college dropouts living at home and people whose only credentials are being ‘activists’ do not make the grade.
You know, at some point these people have to do real work. They have to be able to read and understand budgets. They have to have a good understanding of the tradeoffs involved in various policies. They are going to be presented with choices between options and be expected to make rational decisions. And the choices aren’t all going to be dramatic ‘social justice’ type choices. It’s going to be choosing between vendors for projects, hiring decisions for assistants and managers, knowing whether a budget presented to you for a project is reasonable or not, that sort of thing. That requires a certain degree of competence.
Sam Stone. [del]You[/del] Those around you will not survive the next four years (here’s to another 44 year old dynasty 
).
:dubious:
For what it’s worth Sam, I’ve been following the bouncing ball here and am in complete agreement with you.
When waitresses and students were elected federally in Quebec, some of whom weren’t even fluent in French, I scratched my head in disbelief. Why wouldn’t you Google your potential MP and find out what his or her credentials actually are?
I would never in the life of me vote for a total noob with zero life experience. I suppose they think that voting for the party is actually voting for the leader, regardless of what it means in their own riding.
I’m guessing these people have never, ever contacted their MLA (MPP or MP) for any reason, and have no idea what their day job actually consists of.
Low information voters.
After 43 years of one-party rule, it’s hard to see how you could elect an experienced opposition party. I agree that most of these cabinet ministers are grossly underqualified, but it was that or another round of the PC’s. Alberta brought this entire situation on itself by blindly voting PC for four decades.
Interestingly, I do believe back in the days of the federal Liberal’s fourth term Sam was telling us that no matter how incompetent or regressive some of us feared the Conservative Reform Alliance Party (I do so love to call them that) was likely to be, we should vote for them because the perfidy of the Liberals in Adscam was simply too much to tolerate. And indeed, Harper’s first cabinet was pretty damn incompetent - though to be fair he did have a few reasonably experienced folks in Flaherty and a couple others.
Don’t forget that the civil service, the ones who work behind the scenes and do the heavy lifting, are intact and remain in place regardless of which party actually forms the government. The relative experience or lack thereof of the minister or the MLA is something that will sort itself out, as long as the civil service is competent. The sky is not falling just yet.
The wheels have fallen off the Manitoba NDP, and staff have left for Alberta.
These former Manitoba NDP staff members be the only ones with jobs when the Tories take over next year.
So, the Alberta NDP will get some of that experienced talent everybody’s complaining that they lack.