Maybe the dial did move. Might’ve been even more lop-sided without all the Yes campaigning.

I think there’s a missing category of No voters. This is the second most unaffordable place to live in the entire world. It seems like the wealthy urban planning elites can’t just understand that. Not everyone in Vancouver has a daily lattes and takes vacations in Copenhagen. A lot of families in this city have two working parents struggling to just put food on the table. They’ll vote no on any tax increase, especially a regressive one that will hit them the hardest.

So, again, I remind them, for they seem to be so out of touch. Not everyone here can afford craft beer, food trucks, and music festivals. Again, this is the second most unaffordable city on the ENTIRE planet. Think Hong Kong. Yes, there are a lot of rich people there with fancy Burberry clothes. But, also think people living in cages. Think millions living in squalor. We are just second to that. If all your friends are sipping lattes and shopping at Lululemon, then you obviously need to meet some of the growing numbers of families who are surviving off of the food bank.

Welcome back, Frances. We behaved this time!

Absolutely right! Tax the frraking developers, tax the empty multi million dollar empty homes, tax the foreigners, tax the realtors who are making millions off housing, tax the 1% as middle class is squeezed to the point of breaking!

All of their Elites are living in a bubble, they hang out with their millionaire buddies and hang out in fancy gastown new age restaurants planning the future of Vancouver on the backs of the middle class! Folks like Bob Rennie who is basically suggesting any young person should simply give up owning a home in Vancouver (another supporter of Yes vote).

As much as Transit is a big problem and issue here, BY FAR, the #1 issue is housing affordability that ALL of our politicians are completely ignoring.

My interpretation is that we’re clearly not at “rock bottom” yet, where the system is completely dysfunctional, and people are desperate for a solution, and are willing to pay for it. Only UBC students are at this point (totally understandable given the 99 B Line).

And so we just have to wait until congestion worsens and the problem feels more urgent.

The problem with this approach is that I feel like the Province would step in with highway expansion and their car oriented solutions, and it’d ruin the region.

This comment reflects the sentiment I heard from many friends and family. For many it was about a firm lack of trust in leaders. . My question is, how do you move forward from that? “I don’t trust them”. Ok, fine. So who do you trust? Under what circumstances would you have voted yes? Can we really expect our leaders to be perfect? And if this becomes the way we look at the world – this idea that nothing can move forward until we can be sure it will be perfect – how will things get done? I find it troubling that this kind of paranoid anti-government sentiment is spreading so much – the result of this plebiscite just makes me more worried.

I remain of the view that the impulse behind the the “NO” vote on the transit tax is the same self-destructive impulse behind the rejection of the HST. No matter how much sense it may make, people will not vote in favour of a new or expanded tax. Of course, it didn’t help that the “YES” side ran a hopelessly inept campaign, but still, the vote was doomed from the beginning.

Apart from all of the normal points stated here, I think the perfect was the enemy of the good here. Is Translink perfect? No. Are they really good on a global scale? Yes.

I think the degree of agreement that was necessary for all(most) of the mayors to agree on a plan and a funding source was under-appreciated.

Many are now calling on them to “raise property taxes instead”, which they can’t legally do to a degree to raise $250M/yr. But more importantly, they will never, ever, ever agree to do so, and to fund the broad range of specific projects that were included as a part of this plan.

I’m tired of caring what happens. I’d like to see the mayors dig in and do absolutely nothing. This all lands at the feet of Clark and her puppet Todd Stone.

The mayors have made noises that they are considering this strategy. But there are two outstanding risks: (1) voter anger about the referendum won’t stick long enough to matter in 2017, and (2) the Province will win a war of attrition by ignoring or financially punishing Metro Vancouver mayors in other ways. It really comes down to leadership of the message, and the mayors are in a more difficult position given the power the Province wields.

Probably because of divisive politics. The vote supporting the current provincial government is rooted in ridings that do not currently benefit from transit and don’t particularly want to finance it. Look at the 2013 election map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_general_election,_2013

Is it any surprise that the Massey Bridge is being built by provincial fiat, whereas Metro Vancouver transit has been subjected to such exhausting diversions? There’s no political rationale for the Province to offer more if its general revenues for transit, even if it makes for good governance of a growing region.

You forgot how the “Yes” side spent $6M of our tax dollars, paid to Vision political party and lobbyist, to run robocalls. This was probably to enrich Vision that went into debt after last election!

Surrey has figure out a way! Maybe if Gregror wasn’t just bitching and moaning and pointing fingers at all levels of government, could have had more help to fund his projects?

As I said, it’s simply LACK of trust… I live in Vancouver, and I have ZERO trust in Moonbeam as all they do is to enrich the developer buddies.

Again, Gregor can’t blame Feds and province for everything (he’s famous for finger pointing) and then expect them to turn around to give him Billions of dollars! Surrey with P3, and Federal help is being VERY SMART about it. Good for them!

The City is being a good employer and leading by example. It costs more to live here, so the City is upping their pay. poke poke poke

No one associated with transit comes off looking stellar but the Mayors are responsible for creating the mess they find themselves in today.

If the Transit Plan was vital to the well being of Metro Vancouver, then it was incumbent on the Mayors to find the funding for Metro Vancouver’s share of the cost of the Transit Plan even if that meant increasing property taxes. In fact, if they had presented the plebiscite in that context (vote for a sales tax or face property tax increases) the plebiscite would have easily passed. Further, it would remove all the other considerations – Translink performance, governance, etc – and clearly limit the vote to a choice of funding sources. Either the Mayors don’t have the intelligence to figure this out (possible), they are cowards who feared any heat from the voters (more likely) or they are playing another game and at least some Mayors wanted the plebiscite to fail.

For years, their govt didnt understand that if you just don’t have enough money, you cant have everything. You just can’t.

For years, commenters on the internet feel the need to comment on Greece without knowing the facts or the history. Greece was overspending [LINK], but not in large way and one that could be easily adjusted if it hadn’t been part of the EU and had it’s own currency and control over monetary policy.

As for history, post-war Greece is a country that has endured civil war and military dictatorship. Overspending on the military and generous public sector benefits may have been textbook economics, but they weren’t trying to balance the books rather than maintain the political peace.

Also/and, perspective:

I couldn’t agree more. I am gradually reaching the conclusion that Gregor really is a moonbeam — judging by his performance our Mayor is just not that smart. He cannot deal with complex issues — though I don’t believe the transit referendum was all that complicated but Moonbeam and the leadership of the YES side just didn’t get it. And unbelievably they didn’t get it when the key negative issues surfaced in the first few weeks. Absolutely no politically astute leadership. A true politician knows how to read his constituancy and how to build support. Gregor does not know how to do either. And the net result is that he is a puppet of elites.

Two reasons. First, it makes it more difficult for a private company to offer a lower cost alternative if everyone is starting at a $20.00 floor for wages. Second, a private company operating in multiple jurisdictions may find it is impossible to maintain separate pay scales for the same work done in different cities and choose not to bid.

I don’t know where you got this data but it is grossly inaccurate. Most analyses only look at the amount of monies advanced to the Banks (often through the purchase of preferred shares which were redeemed when the banks recapitalized) but rarely do they consider the funds that have been returned to governments.

See here for an accounting of the Tarp money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

As for Greece, they chose to join the EU and adopt the Euro (even if they had to cook the books to qualify) and then went crazy with the cheap money made available because of the credibility that the Euro gave them. (and they continued to cook the books until the financial crisis in 2008). It is quite a stretch to suggest they needed to offer retirement at 50 and 14 “monthly” cheques to the public sector workers to “maintain the political peace” and avoid a military coup.

A Taxpayer: You’re grossly inaccurate! I won’t directly say the numbers are wrong or anything or mention the “Greek bailout” is actually the “Greek creditors bailout” (ie. German and French banks) or explain why Citigroup & Morgan Stanley were worthy of our generosity without any moral…or more importantly…legal judgement…

…but I digress.

It is quite a stretch to suggest they needed to offer retirement at 50

I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but it’s grossly inaccurate. The story of Greek pensions is not a simple one and is oft misunderstood. [LINK]

But then, as is often the case with people like you, when the big people make mistakes you make the little people pay. In blood and tears.

Sartikus writes: A Taxpayer: You’re grossly inaccurate! I won’t directly say the numbers are wrong

so why taxpayer is grossly inaccurate and not Spartikus?

The wikipedia source seems more credible than a graph popping up of nowhere, isn’it?

According to this french link, the greek debt is mainly owned by the European taxpayer, and already close to half of the greek debt has been cancelled.

the EU also invests lot of money in Greece, i.e. the athens subway has mainly been built on European development fund…

Greece has the biggest military budget (in term of GDP) of all Europe…while it still exempt of tax the second landowner of the country (that is the church). Btw, Not only the church is not taxed, but its clergy is still paid by the government

Whether the little people of Greece pay in blood and tears to preserve the Army and the Church of austerity is a Greek choice. May be they could start to address that first…

Seriously?

Seriously [LINK]

What does that even mean?

You should really read more than the front page of an
article that might appear to support your position if you want to avoid further embarrassment.

First, your graph added up to $8 trillion and purported to show the bailout for just 4 banks while your new reference deals with the total exposure of the US Government. So yes, your first graph was grossly inaccurate and your new information does nothing
to counter that.

Second, you really need to understand the difference between the financial risk the governments took on during the financial crisis and the ultimate cost to the taxpayer. Let’stake a look at the detail behind your grand $9 trillion dollar bailout.

– The Government agreed to backstop Money Market
funds which did create a risk of $3 trillion. This was necessary to provide liquidity should any fund experience excessive redemptions. Outcome: “The guarantee program ended on September 18, 2009, with no losses and generated $1.2 billion in revenue from the participation fees.”

– The Government agreed to backstop the Commercial Paper market which had a value of $1.6 trillion in 2008, again to provide liquidity. Outcome: “The
program, which lent $150 billion in its first 10 days of operation, was wound down with no credit losses to the Federal Reserve.”

– The Government agreed to purchase debt from
Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac which the NY Times listed as a $1.6 Trillion exposure. Considering that many of the problems of these two organizations stemmed from Government mandates to increase home ownership of low income earners there was some obligation to
provide this support. Outcome: I cannot find any reference to costs to the Government for any purchases made under this program.

– The Government agreed to provide loans under
the Term Asset Backed Loan Fund (TALF) which the NY Times article assigned a risk of $900 billion. Outcome: “There was never more than $49 billion outstanding and to May 2011 the Treasury earned
$1.2 billion in interest”

– The Government announced the Public Private
Investment Fund that would buy up to $900 billion in assets from banks. Outcome: Funding was not needed.

– The Government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with an estimated exposure of $400 billion. Outcome: $189 billion was advanced from Treasury and
to September 30, 2014, $185 billion had been returned to Treasury.

– The Government created the Troubled Asset
Recovery Program (TARP) with an exposure of $700 billion. Outcome: see earlier reference.

– The Government provided funding to AIG totalling
$182 billion. Outcome: By 2012, $205 billion had been returned to Treasury.

Clearly, while the Government had significant exposure
during the financial crisis, it was mostly contingent and caused by lack of liquidity in the market. Comparing the
real financial exposure to Greek debt to the contingent liabilities of the financial crisis is grossly misleading.

[Eyesroll] I understand the points you are trying to make and they’re just (not very subtle) attempts to change the subject. Greek debt is, as the chart showed, not large when compared to the losses of private companies in 2008. Did the various governments recover money? Yes (and it’s very precious for you to say this from the perspective of 2015 when at the time the bailouts were made it was far from clear the money would ever be recovered). And it’s besides the point. The money was made available. The conditions were not onerous. No one went to jail.

Except for those who view economics as a morality play, helping Greece wouldn’t be a loss either. Of course the hardliners in the EU don’t want to admit the Euro and the European Union are fundamentally flawed as currently designed and that’s why we’re here.

The original poster said Greece was the “bad actor”. I merely pointed out the scale, the history, who was actually being bailed out and who was being made to pay for it.

Good grief, the chart does not show “a loss”. It shows how much Citibank borrowed from the US Government [LINK]. And yes, it’s been paid back.

If you say so. Nevertheless, despite your protestations and bobbing and weaving and ignoring the main point Citibank was bailed out borrowed $2.5 trillion dollars to cover…something. Certainly not anything they did.

The chart was accurate.