via xkcd: Infrastructures.

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Recent revelations that B.C.’s health authorities are secretly storing and testing children’s DNA without parental consent, combined with provisions of Bill 11 that allow B.C.’s Minister of Health to gather information like these DNA records without notice or consent, have resulted in a call from the BCCLA for the government to retract the bill and the health authority to destroy the records. The new law and the records combined may create the largest DNA database in Canada.

via BC Civil Liberties Association.

OK, let’s go on this:

1. I’m an organ donor. I happily filled out the form and sent it in. I’m glad to donate my organs when I die. I respect people’s right to choose not to as well. I also appreciate that I get to pick what my organs can be used for. I like living in a free society.

2. I am a teacher and have had criminal record checks done, which have included finger printing. I am not a fan of the black ink on my fingers, but I had no problem following the rules of the check for a greater good. I was impressed that I was informed that my fingerprints would be destroyed after the check was complete and not held in a fingerprint data bank by the RCMP. I like living in a free society.

3. The mean BC government has recently cut funding for poor kids so instead of getting two dental checkups per year, now they only deserve one checkup. After a decade of abuse from this government, kicking kids in the teeth like this shows just how little we can trust them to have the best interest of citizens at heart.

So now we find out that the government is holding DNA samples from my babies and doesn’t feel they need to inform the parents and that they have asserted their sick, twisted and misguided prerogative to do whatever they want with my children’s DNA including possibly sending them to law enforcement agencies without my consent.

I simply do not trust this government to respect my children’s privacy. Period. Even if I support useful scientific testing or whatever, I am the parent. I have the privilege and responsibility to protect my children, including protecting their DNA from Kevin Falcon.

I intend to print out this form to request my children’s DNA to be returned to me.

I think you should too. I also think you should tell anyone you know who has had a child in BC or the Yukon in the last 11 years to do the same.

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What's with the smiling?

In doing some research into the emerging Olympic hangover, I found this piece about tourism in Vancouver. A good warning was about tourists with criminal records not necessarily being able to enter the country.

If that only applied to BC premiers, Gordon Campbell would have been stuck in Hawaii for the last 7 years and 7 weeks.

Be aware that if you don’t have a clean record, you may not be able to enter Canada. Certain criminal offenses, such as driving while intoxicated, are considered inadmissible in Canada, and customs agents can look at your records instantaneously and send you home.

via Vancouver beckons with Post-Olympics deals | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Travel: Best Fares.

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Samsung Olympic ad on TD building

There are many levels of debate about the value of Olympics: social, economic, cultural, political, etc. But one level seems to undergird them all: moral legitimacy, in which the Olympics is bankrupt.

For me it began crystallizing in late September, 1988. Ben Johnson won Olympic gold in the 100m, then lost it just days later because of the drug thing. After years of national angst over the cost overruns of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, and enduring boycotts in 1980 and 1984, it seemed impossible to have pure sport.

Fast forward to this young year when Mark McGwire quite easily announced he was lying when he said he was drug-free when chasing the home run record years ago. Whatever. Cynicism seems too natural.

While I value competition and, more so, seeking personal bests, I honour athletes who compete. Sadly the context of the Olympics and its corporate and political masters have spoiled the entire concept. Similarly, I have great respect for Canadian troops wherever they are in the world, but supporting the troops does not mean I have to support the politics behind any given mission they are sent on.

What has happened to erode the legitimacy of the Olympics? Simply, neoliberal commodification.

• corporate endorsements for players to fund their training as government reduce funding
• the participation of professional athletes to enrich marketing potential
• exclusive corporate sponsors who have quite effectively lobbied the welcoming IOC for extensive protections
• exclusive media sponsors impeding information flows outside of their media
• the IOC as an untouchable international organization that can suborn nations to abandon elements of their constitution as we can’t/won’t stop the IOC from discriminating against female ski jumpers
• litigious domestic Olympic committees protecting brands of what are already some of the most powerful corporations in the world
• The Canada Line transit route promoted to encourage an Olympic bid at the expense of the Evergreen line for the northeast suburbs already in the queue, with significant climate implications
• Lies: the marketing of a tunnel under Cambie Street for the Canada Line that turned into the cheaper cut-and-cover; only $176m pitched for security when previous Olympics security budgets were over $1b

The games are now about corporate marketing.

A core goal of VANOC was to literally monopolize all outdoor advertising during the games to resell to exclusive corporate sponsors. The global recession softened sales. Now the BC government is spending more of our tax dollars to buy up leftover ad space to advertise that BC is a great place. No longer “The Best Place in the World”[tm], mind you.

Here are some other examples of decayed moral legitimacy.

During the last Olympic games, RBC ran ads bragging about how awesome they were in 1948 as they paid for the Canadian men’s hockey team to attend and win Olympic gold. How long before corporations start fielding their own teams instead of nations? A corporation is running for Congress in the USA and in BC, the premier announced last fall that the government is studying allowing non-human corporations to vote in municipal elections.

Last week, after criticism VANOC took down one of its website videos celebrating the torch run across the country. They chose to use Nazi footage from the 1936 games. They felt it might be controversial, so they blurred out the straight arm Nazi salute that is so visually repulsive. Both were horrible decisions. Both reflect a mindset that is so out of touch with standards of moral legitimacy. But I can’t be surprised by all this considering the overall mindset of the Olympics.

The Bay department store ripped off the Cowichan sweater design from the First Nations who “own” it, so it could contract out sweater production.

In Vancouver this week, venues and key sites are under military lock down with layers of concrete barricades and fencing. Military helicopters and jets buzz the skies. Military and private security forces live on cruise ships in East Vancouver. VANOC cars cruise the city, flagrantly violating civic anti-idling by-laws. And in a ecologically symbiotic nod to this illegitimate event, El Nino has produced spring-like temperatures making the Olympic mittens gimmick useless.

Polls in the last few months show around only 9% of Canadians are very excited about the games and recently only half of British Columbians think the Olympics will be good for BC, despite the common sense view that as we get closer people will be more excited.

Another common sense goes like this, the Olympics is a fish bowl of groupthink. Nazi footage in a promotional film? Stealing First Nations craft designs? Erecting ugly prison security around venues? A $10m Canada pavilion that looks like a strong wind could blow it over, when the log structure in Turin in 2006 cost only $6m [and has since become an albatross, itself a telling irony].

Then there is a story in the Globe and Mail the other day about how VANOC has banned athletes from being in advertisements during the games because it compromises the purity of competition. Oh, unless the ads are for the sanctioned corporate sponsors. Or, if in VANOC’s subjective judgement the ad campaign has been around long enough. Tim Horton’s has recently run some ads with Sidney Crosby, but in the article we read they are voluntarily pulling the ads during the Olympics in case VANOC decides to come after them. The chill factor extends to even Tim Hortons!

The best irony of that article, however, exemplifies this whole debacle. The writer characterizes Tim Hortons’ Sidney Crosby campaign as one about patriotism. Tim Hortons is now owned by an American company. Marketing is global now.

Later this morning we will see the beginning of actions leading to a massive convergence of dissent later this week to coincide with the opening of the games. This culture of critique is pervasive.

When the Canucks are in the playoffs, there is a palpable sense of energy around Vancouver. People buy flags to attach to their car windows. There is honking in the streets when Canucks score goals. Even people not too bothered with hockey get excited. This vibe is absent right now.

In the surreal world of neoliberalism, unaccountable international organizations like the IOC, corporate welfare programs and rational and moral contradictions, there is no irony left.

Oh, and a Chicago company got the contract to build the Canada pavilion in Vancouver.

So when we see the pablum, sanitized feel-good corporate media fluff pieces on Vancouver, think about how much packaging has already gone into the big show and how motivated the corporate media sponsors will be to paint this a smiles-only event.

Then we need to think about the athletes afraid to use Twitter, what lack of snow will do to some of them, and let’s think about the social costs of cleaning up the mess of this party.

As it is, no one has done the body count yet. As billions of dollars have been diverted from social programs, health, education, etc., how many people have suffered or died early because money that could have gone into hip replacement surgery or mental health treatment was diverted to a luge track. It’s a ghoulish research project, so it’s one that no one wants to talk about.

All I know is that the police state that is emerging this week will change Vancouver and Whistler and BC and Canada forever. The hands are pretty much dealt now. All that is left is in the playing.

And in a few weeks, we’ll know what kind of symbol the Olympic torch really is.

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Watching Polar Express tonight reminded me of my favourite part of the film near the end. Everyone’s waiting for Santa to come out and play. All the elves are standing around mumbling. Then there’s this converging anarchy of voices leading to an “ooooooOOOOOOhhhhhHHHHH yyyyyyYYYYYooooooOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…” that coalesces into “Oh, you better watch out,” etc. of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Many disparate voices joining together.

So I’m thinking about the abject failure of the Copenhagen summit for climate change a few weeks ago. Not surprising, really, when I think about it because the other day I was cutting some french toast in half [well 2/3 and 1/3] to see if my daughter would pick the bigger half. Game theory: the person who cuts is not the one who picks which half. I figured that was related to the realpolitik BS that killed Copenhagen.

So then I started reading up on the The One Degree War and how Evo Morales is convening a climate summit for social movements on Earth Day next year. The first begins a dialogue on solving a global crisis in an open-source, non-proprietary way; it feels quite cooperative. The second recognizes that a way past the 17th century political culture that killed Copenhagen is to convene a movement of movements.

I was thinking of that when I started Canada22.org on Earth Day in 2006, but I didn’t have the mobilization juice to scale it up to a provincial or federal level. But it’s nice to see now that organizations like TckTckTck.org have been able to hack together 15 million people to mobilize in advance of Copenhagen and we now have 11 months to mobilize before COP16 in Mexico next winter.

If we are ever going to get from zero-sum politics to positive-sum gains, we have to change the rules and deligitimize the old politics. And the people have to take control. And we have to see through the corporate greenwashing of Hopenhagen and realize their vibe contributed to the pablum document in Copenhagen and destroyed real movements for climate justice.

Social movements are a dire threat to political parties that still operate in the 17th century and maybe even the 20th century paradigm. Paradigm mechanics like TckTckTck.org and Evo Morales and George Monbiot are most able to pivot us into a new era. We have to get on board or our leaders will sell us down the tar sands river, starting with the Canadian prime minister.

Now I just have to figure out if Bert and Ernie [the cop and cab driver..which is which? and does it matter?] in It’s A Wonderful Life are really the inspiration for the Sesame Street characters and if there’s a nascent social movement brewing there. Then I’ll really have something.

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For decades I’ve been hearing about and studying how humans are living beyond the planet’s capability of sustaining us…and that we’ve been doing so quite unequally.

And what have we done about that? Embraced neoliberal, deregulated free market capitalism: the economic expression of rape and pillage.

Reduce, reuse, recycle neglects the real first R: refuse.

Our notion of progress requires growth and improvement. We measure this in expansion of GDP and trade. But we are so divorced from the ramifications of our lifestyle that despite all the canaries dying in coal mines, we still might screw up Copenhagen beginning this weekend and leave the meeting with a world lacking unity on averting climate breakdown. And Canada may end up being the spoiler.

We are divorced from the reality of nature’s cycles. We think of growth as linear and upward and not cyclical and level. Nature goes in a circle of seasons. We don’t get more winter or spring each year, we just have equilibrium.

Even our calendars do not help us realize this, which is why this new way of envisioning a calendar is quite liberating: Chris Hardman’s Ecological Calendar.

And if people whack the equilibrium, the ecosystem responds. My children may be the victims of that response for decades more years than I will remain alive. If we cannot stomach that, we need to make sure Copenhagen works.

But how do we get off the economic growth addiction?

It requires a massive reframing. 20 years ago, there were no drink or paper recycling containers in schools and offices. Now they’re ubiquitous.

That took a reframed mindset.

Take also environmental footprints, a concept virtually unknown a decade ago. Now it is a useful and widely understood analytical tool for thinking about our individual contribution to a better or worse environment.

Getting off the economic growth fix can mean embracing steady state economics. This is an economic model that treats the economy as a means to human ends, not maximizing short-term shareholder wealth.

But what does anyone know about this model of zero-growth economics? Follow the link above and read the brief description of the values inherent in the model: sustainable scale, fair distribution, efficient allocation. Do they resonate with you? Do they seem more appealing for your moral goals for our relationship with the planet than getting a 9-18% return on your investments until you retire? Because that is the trade off.

More blatantly, the trade off is between something more like a 1-5% return on your investments or reframing our economy so the majority world living in poverty has a better chance at surviving and living in dignity.

If we cannot conceive of economic growth as being a cancer, it may not be because it’s wrong. It may be because we’ve been drinking this Kool-Aid fed to us in a steady marketing diet since birth. How could we be expected to see things differently. We need to use our imagination to contend with liberating ideas that are challenging to our unquestioned mindset.

Try steady state. 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed find it a healing tonic for ecological turmoil caused by neoliberal economics.

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Water is core.

Clearly, it is a human right, though like other core elements of life it is being commodified all around us.

Water justice, security, democracy and knowledge are the cornerstones of the declaration. In my most hopeful moments, I see Copenhagen as a time where Canada can be dragged into line for progressive policy to not eradicate my children’s chances at a sustainable environmental future.

If we can work to avert climate breakdown, reframe our economy to serve humans within the context of environmental equilibrium by eradicating the cancer of growth, then we will need to embrace proactive, constructive paradigms of existence. The Blue Summit Declaration is just that.

Every group that cares about any progressive cause in any sector should be endorsing this declaration.

And if we ever need a philosophical ally in eradicating bottled water from society, this is a great start.

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via City of Vancouver Homelessness Solutions Survey.

In a time where Vancouver city council may or  may not have the will to oppose a provincial government they seem to be cozying up with, they issue a survey to see what the citizens think of addressing homelessness and the Howe Shelter.

Even if they do the wrong thing with this, asking for our input is better than an NPA council will do.

Even if the province ignores it all, this is a survey to take part in, especially if you live downtown!

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The strike is an instance rare in the current climate of workers’ struggling for a political principle rather than immediate wage demands. As such, it has much to teach but also reveals complex challenges that both the labour movement and the Canadian left will have to meet in the near future.

The main issue at stake for both locals is the City’s demand that post-retirement medical benefits be eliminated for all future hires.

…

The future of the union movement as the first line of working class defence against ruling class attempts to make working people pay for the recurrent crises of capitalism depends upon its discovering new ways to mobilize its membership against this new mutation of an old divide and conquer strategy. It also depends on building solidarity, the next critical issue of general significance raised by the strike.

via Cyber-scabbing? Lessons for labour from the Windsor CUPE strike | rabble.ca.

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Matt Good’s profound review of contradictions in, around, during and after Woodlands will pummel your soul, but in a good way, unless you’re a heartless misanthropist. And this first bit is just emblematic of how this government views its social responsibilities:

In 2005, Stan Hagen, BC’s Children and Family Development Minister, claimed that the Provincial government did not subscribe to the view that systematic abuse took place at Woodlands despite the fact that in 2002 the Provincial government issued an official apology to some 1,500 survivors of Woodlands, Essondale, Valleyview, and Tranquille. Unfortunately, the $2 million dollars promised to provide counseling for them has never materialized.

Decades ago, as families picnicked across the highway in Queen’s Park, children were being tortured within view of it. The headstones of those unclaimed victims of Woodlands were, over the years, thrown in the nearby ravine, used to build a staff barbecue patio and stairs, and 1,800 of them were ripped out of the ground in late 70’s so that a park could be built. All that is left now is a small memorial that some believe to be enough to mark their passing, a small park in which local residents allow their dogs to defecate and urinate, were graffiti defames shattered headstones.

via matthewgood.org » Archive » A Cannon In My Chest.

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So Kootenay East Liberal Party candidate Bill Bennett did it again. First his campaign planned to host a beer night at a pub, advertising free beer. Bennett claims it was not his idea, but some over-zealous person on his campaign. Plausible deniability. Have a seat in your throne, Mr. Bennett!

Now he runs an ad talking about how voters want to elect someone who pays taxes BLAH BLAH BLAH. I’m trying to think of a provincial politician in a scandal about not paying taxes. Maybe that’s why he mentioned that idea.

Tom Daschle lost his chance at a cabinet post because of tax problems. Oh, wait. He was looking for a spot in Obama’s cabinet.

Ok, there appears to be no obvious context for him to make that comment, unless not living in Kootenay East means I’m missing out on some local controversy.

It is only when you look at the heredity and policies of his opponents do we see value in the statement.

NDP candidate Troy Sebastian belongs to the Ktunaxa First Nation and lives on an Indian Reserve so is exempt from federal and provincial taxes under the Indian Act. Wilf Hanni, leader of the BC Conservatives, and one of his party’s top contenders for winning a riding, is opposed to the governing Liberals’ Recognition and Reconciliation Act.

Bennett has recently broken with party policy to also oppose the new relationship, all to remove one of Wilf Hanni’s greatest wedge issues. He has also run ads recently that neglected to include the Liberal Party branding, since it carries such a stink to it these days.

So, if Bennett is more crafty than daft, his tax comment is all about continuing to remove Hanni’s wedge and play the race card against his NDP opponent. Plausible deniability exists again. Here is your scepter, Mr. Bennett!

And while daft and clueless [and arrogant and out of touch, the quite accurate NDP mantra against the Liberals] are possibilities, my money is on Bennett being crafty, sneaking free beer and racism against First Nations in because he is desperate to keep a seat he only barely won.

And in the end, he’s in trouble either way. If he’s too daft and clueless to see how free beer and a comment about paying taxes might be spun badly, why would anyone vote for him as their MLA?

And if he’s crafty, then he’s a lying, scheming, opportunist who will flip on party policy and attack an opponent by pandering to racists, and that is not a person worthy of representing any British Columbians, except of course for Liberal voters who happen to be bigots.

But then again, the BC Liberal Party has a convicted drunk driving for a premier, a former mayor under criminal investigation, a now-resigned cabinet member with a suspended driver’s license, a few others with drunk driving or a plethora of moving violations and a homophobe. And don’t get me started on the sick and disgusting things I heard come out of Harry Bloy’s mouth during question period while I was sitting in the gallery several years ago when there were two female NDP MLAs in the house. That vitriol steams me to this day.

And while the NDP has its share of candidates with some speeding tickets, the trophy with the headless bowler goes to the Liberals for either criminal or madly anti-social behaviour–and don’t get me started either on how anti-social their policies have been for 8 years.

So in the end, Bennett seems more crafty than daft to me, in part because he would fit right in with his party.

So when you go vote tomorrow, Saturday and Tuesday, if you live in Kootenay East, ask yourself if Bill Bennett is just stupid or a lying racist. Whichever answer you get, make sure you don’t vote for him.

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Gordon Campbell criticizes Carole James because she’s not had broad business experience. He’s been in politics for a quarter century, but let’s forget that for a minute. 

Campbell’s criticism is an attempt to frame leadership in economic terms. But what about human leadership and social leadership and political leadership? His has been totally absent.

Switching to the minimum wage debate, right and left fight over studies supporting or defending the neoliberals’ low minimum wage. Throughout the debate, the morality of a poverty wage is ignored. 

This reflects very badly on our society, since we are so eager to ignore the human reality of an economic policy. 

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we actually spent a week during the campaign talking about issues and completely ignoring the economic implications?

We could talk about elements of our society that are right, wrong, good and bad. Then we could finish the week and ask the economists to build a model to reflect how we want our society to be.

If this notion strikes you as crazy and naive, then maybe you are too economistic as well and can’t see the human forest for the economic trees. And as a political economist, I have this vision problem too sometimes, so it’s important to have occasional reality checks.

Whatever is on your mind now, read Stephen Hume’s moral analysis of a low minimum wage below. It’s hard to disagree with it without ending up with you merely trying to justify greed and bashing the already poor. If I’m wrong, send me your justifiable defense. I dare you.

Why the minimum wage should be raised.

Statistical wrangling among economists aside, it seems to me there’s a clear moral dimension to the debate.

In the eight years that B.C.’s minimum wage was frozen, inflation drove up the cost of living index. And as businesses raised prices to cover their costs, the average hourly wage in B.C. was also increased over the same period. It rose by 24 per cent. Provincial politicians voted themselves a 29-per-cent increase over the same period. Some senior public servants were granted increases even greater than that by the legislature.

This effectively means that while the mainstream shielded itself from inflation with wage and price increases, those working poor compelled to accept the frozen statutory minimum saw the purchasing power of their wages erode by 17.4 per cent.

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STV is polling quite high and I expect it to pass. This means that you no longer have to plug your nose voting for someone to keep someone else from running the place. And it also means you don’t have to waste your vote in a protest by voting for a candidate who won’t win, all to avoid abstaining.

STV means the proportion of votes going to parties will come very close to being translated into seats in the legislature by making sure that someone you rank will use your vote to win a seat.

So if you can’t handle Gordon Campbell anymore, and would prefer not to vote for the NDP for whatever reason, but you feel you need to do it now, here’s how you can put a smile on your face.

When you cast your ballot, vote for STV as well to make sure that the next election will mean that your ranking of candidates won’t be wasted as one of them will almost certainly use your vote to become elected.

The most frustrating thing for me leading up to any election is listening to smart, passionate, concerned friends voting for parties they hate to keep from wasting their vote. Or else they don’t vote and I can understand why. If the system is this broken, it needs to be fixed.

I think for a place with only two political parties our current system is awesome since the winner will have to get more than 50% of the votes. 19th century Canada was such a place, but even then the parties didn’t need to represent women or other politically undesirables.

But in a place like Vancouver, BC and Canada, there are no two parties that effectively reflect everyone’s identities and passions. This is why we get vote splitting, unearned majority governments, wasted votes, apathy, anger and cynicism.

It’s astonishing that we can fix all these things just by changing the system.  STV here we come!

• June 29, 2010 -- Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably (0)
• June 4, 2010 -- Interested in Contributing to Politics, Re-Spun? (0)
• May 18, 2010 -- Pettiness: the Defining Quality of Politicians? (3)
• June 21, 2009 -- Ignore My Copyrights (0)

They now have a scandal cloud over 6 of their candidates, and they’re continuing their policy of unaccountability by not showing up at all-candidates meetings. Add to that a new expectation of a high voter turnout means a week of the NDP trying to manage competing environmental NGO messaging will end with the Liberals in acute damage control all weekend for a fresh face on Monday, but don’t hold your breath on anything fresh from this tired, condescending party.

Let’s review.

The NDP’s Ray Lam resigned his candidacy on Monday because of Facebook pictures with risque content. The hypocritical, no-contest, drunk driving premier disapproves. Eyeballs all over BC roll backwards and fall out of people’s heads. Still, that’s one public perception spin pseudo-”victory” for the Liberals.

Today, we have a total of 6 Liberal candidates with public perception spin crises.

1. Gordon’s Campbell no-contest plea to drunk driving in Maui in 2003. He never stepped down and has set a standard that appears to be that as long as a Liberal isn’t convicted of doing more than that, they can stay.
2. John Les, the most recent solicitor general under criminal investigation for wonky dealings while mayor of Chilliwack. He won’t resign his candidacy while he’s not in jail…and then, who knows.
3. John van Dongen, the current solicitor general gets his driver’s license revoked for excessive speeding tickets and asks the no-contest, drunk driver premier to remove ICBC and Superintendent of Motor Vehicles from his portfolio. He hasn’t resigned his candidacy yet.
4. Marc Dalton running for the Liberals in Mission turns out to be a homophobe. He hasn’t resigned his candidacy yet.
5. Laura McDiarmid has 33 driving citations over the last 10 years as a limousine driver, but she won’t resign her candidacy. She excused them by saying her job requires meeting schedules, so little things like laws and safety don’t seem to matter much.
6. Jesse McClinton won’t resign his candidacy though he pleaded out in a drunk driving incident at what he considers to have been a youthful indiscretion. When he was 26, right. 17 I can understand, but not 26. He’s also the one with the ostensibly non-partisan Facebook event page promoting higher voter turnout on May 12th; “non-partisan” despite the fact that he’s running for the neoLiberals and he’s been having a hard time even pretending to be neutral lately.

So we’re now looking to the Liberals to figure out if their vetting process sucks, or if a certain amount of illegal activity, convictions, homophobia, pleas to lesser charges and criminal investigations are tolerable to the party. Film at 11.

But don’t wait until 11, try this one on from the premier: “I don’t know about everyone’s driver’s record. I can tell you if we said to people, ‘If you have any driving infractions, you are not eligible to run for office,’ we’ll have a pretty small legislature. It is important for people to be accountable for their actions, myself included, I might add .… As far as I know, the tickets have been paid off.”

And we all know what Campbell thinks constitutes accountability.

And it may not be appropriate to ask for resignations from all 6 of these Liberals, or Ray Lam, or two other NDP candidates, Doug Brown and Harry Lali, who have 13 traffic infractions between them. The issue is who deserves to be an honourable member of the legislature. How many speeding tickets is too many? Is drunk driving a deal breaker?

What will play out next week will be some reckoning for the finger-waggers. The Liberals helped Ray Lam resign. Will they accept that standard for themselves? If not, that will hurt their chances in the election. But the scary thing is that it may not hurt their chances. How many criminal convictions will BC Liberal party voters tolerate? I’m afraid the number may be high since they already re-elected their premier.

So this scandal firestorm will take up a certain amount of space next week, but we need to remember two other issues haunting the Liberals: they still won’t show up to all-candidates meetings and an increase in voter turnout will likely hurt them.

The Liberals have a history of not showing up to all-candidates meetings organized by groups hostile to them, so they say. And since there are thousands of those groups, they’ve had a pretty low profile. It’s a clever strategy. Don’t go somewhere if people will attack you when the hit from not showing up is less damaging. 

So what happens when a government funded group holds an all-candidates meeting? The BC Campus Climate Network tried to hold a meeting but couldn’t get confirmation from Liberal or Green candidates, so they had to cancel their meeting. Whoops. Now it looks like the Liberals aren’t at all interested in public participation in democracy during an actual election campaign.

And if this shocks you, try this one on.

BC’s chief electoral officer is predicting an increase in voter turnout on May 12. This is absolutely disastrous for the Liberals since mobilized voters are more likely to vote for change. Apathetic voters expect or are content with the status quo and don’t vote, especially since the Canucks will still likely be in the playoffs.

It has already been clear in recent weeks the increased buzz around this election. Volunteers showing up from all over the place, young and stereotypically apathetic folks are engaged, the STV referendum is polling very high and with public funding is engaging many more with a legitimate alternative to not voting, and there’s the Obama bump. 

You remember Obama. He’s the fellow, a community organizer [like Mel Lehan, taking on Gordon Campbell in Point Grey] who mobilized millions with a vision of hope and reversal of carnage from a neoliberal, unaccountable, right wing government. Does that sound familiar?

His success at mobilizing forced Stephen Harper to call an election before the US presidential election out of fear that a president-elect Obama would negate his chances at a majority government. That happened anyway.

The Obama bump arrived as a rising tide spilling over the 49th parallel, buoying the federal NDP to drastically higher levels of engagement as Canada’s populist party raised more money from more people than the federal Liberals.

Are you seeing the parallels?

So, to sum up. We have a provincial neoLiberal party that wagged its finger at Ray Lam 4 days ago. Now they have 6 candidates under their own morality clouds, their penchant for skipping democracy-enhancing events like all-candidates meetings, and a fear of the expectation of higher voter turnout by the province’s chief electoral officer.

Six scandals to attempt to defuse, fear of all-candidates meetings and a rising voter turnout are the makings of a perfect storm for the Liberals. Next week will be awful for them. Make your popcorn and hunker down for some karmic carnage visiting them. But skip the CanWest/Global media [Global TV, The Vancouver Sun, The Province, The National Post and the Victoria Times-Colonist] since they’re the communication wing of the neoLiberal party. Instead watch CTV, the CBC and read The Tyee, Public Eye Online, Politics Re-Spun, The Globe and Mail, and The Lead Up at the BC CCPA.

Oh wait, the BC Rail corruption trial will start up again about a week before the election. That’s the one that was delayed past the 2005 election! As it is, it will be nowhere near completion before this next election. But you can be sure that every hour that ticks through that trial, there will be evidence or hints at the extend of corruption in the Liberal party around the $1 billion, 999-year lease/privatization of BC Rail.

So while the NDP has endured the brunt of the schism in BC’s environmental movement for the last 2 weeks, it is now the neoLiberals’ turn to turn up their spin and damage control machines. They’ll need a lot of luck, none of which they deserve.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/content/poll/pollResultHub?id=131895&pollid=131895&answerid=&poll=GAMFront&save=&show_vote_always=no&hub=Front&subhub=VoteResult&vote=145079&button.x=16&button.y=9&button=Vote

Here’s why.

The advantages to having demographic information out in the open far outweigh the disadvantages, said Prof. Fullan, who is also professor emeritus of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

“We said we should use the information to make all schools better, but I understand the fear,” he said in an interview yesterday.

Prof. Fullan believes in setting targets for test scores, and in the idea of statistical neighbours, whereby schools with similar demographics can be compared with each other.

via globeandmail.com: Data on schools website divides parents, educators.

Let’s start with this poll. The last time I saw such a close race was the Quebec separation referendum over 10 years ago. This is the vote tally as of 11:30pm tonight. Apparently it was also evenly split earlier this afternoon.

The poll shows that over 4,000 people agree with Michael Fullan that the demographic make-up of a school in the form of parents’ immigration background is a significant enough variable in determining which school’s product they purchase.

The Ontario government removed income and education levels from the presentation of information. That is a rather damning self-indictment. They initially included it because it fit the profile of what they wanted educational consumers to consider when making their purchases, then they removed it. Perhaps people couldn’t stomach the blatant reality that some would choose a school based on the wealth of parents, but clearly, that does go on.

Essentially, what we’re dealing with here is the Ontario government’s tacit support for a class based public service. Pick some variables that determine the class you want your children to associate with, then publicize the data for informed choice. Society should not be condoning or supporting such class-based decision-making. Period.

In BC, we’re well aware of the criminally narrow range of high-stakes testing that our students suffer to generate Foundational Skills Assessment scores for the hyper-libertarian, unregulated market-worshiping Fraser Institute to use in ranking schools. The whole process is obscene and celebrates active ignorance of the breadth of what it takes to evaluate our multi-faceted human beings in the K-12 education system and the system as a whole.

And now in Ontario, the government is essentially controlling for race in the statistical analysis that parents unjustifiably wish to make. When we talk about immigration background, we’re talking about the polite way of describing parents’ race. I have a hard time thinking that if Michael Fullan tried to float this concept as an academic project past OISE’s research ethics board, he would have been roundly rebuked–at least I’d hope so.

The government is inciting a firestorm of bigotry by enabling people to be able to move their students from schools with too many of the wrong kind of classmates, with people defining wrong in whatever mildly to severely racist tone they wish.

This is the height of social and political irresponsibility. In an era of economic crisis when local communities will increase in importance for enhancing individual and regional socio-economic resilience, inserting this wedge that will split communities is simply reprehensible.

And since I’ve only taught high school and have never been a professor emeritus at OISE, I’m totally open to hearing all these great arguments in libertarian social engineering that Michael Fullan feels far outweigh the provincial government condoning race-based divisive education policy.

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March 27, 2009

The B.C. Liberal government’s controversial election “gag” law has been ruled unconstitutional by the B.C. Supreme Court.

Justice Frank Cole found that Bill 42′s restriction on third-party election advertising before the official 28-day election period is unconstitutional. He’s expected to issue written reasons for his judgement early next week.

via Hospital Employees’ Union – Home.

• June 29, 2010 -- Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably (0)
• June 4, 2010 -- Interested in Contributing to Politics, Re-Spun? (0)
• May 18, 2010 -- Pettiness: the Defining Quality of Politicians? (3)
• June 21, 2009 -- Ignore My Copyrights (0)

via Lord Stern on global warming: It’s even worse than I thought – Climate Change, Environment – The Independent.

As governments continue to craft optics-friendly greenwashing plans while ramping up highways construction, etc., I keep reading reports that estimates from as little as 2-3 years ago were too conservative as new data shows accelerating climate change effects.

Nero fiddled and we’re worried about how to afford a new car during this economic crash!

Stupid.

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How do we know this? Beyond the empty rhetoric and Rich Coleman’s desire to be the saviour/czar of the homeless [after being the aggravator of those eager for affordable housing], we turn to BC’s auditor general. Whew!

When the neoLiberals first got elected they did two things to signal that they were not as interested in transparent, open government as their rhetoric indicated. They de-funded the auditor general’s office and Elections BC. But in a nice twist of irony, it is the auditor general who came out with some objective truth: the emperor has no clothes because the homelessness plan has no “clear goals and objectives,” “accountability for results is missing,” and they government has “not identified success.”

This is no surprise. I’ve written about the useless Rich Coleman periodically while the government has sworn off recognizing the need to count the homeless in BC to figure out the extent and breadth of the problem. This is especially embarrassing as NDP MLA David Chudnovsky toured the province as housing critic to do just that. Whoops, Minister Coleman, do your job, hey?

In his report, the auditor general’s comes up with one of the best arguments around, if it weren’t for the neoLiberals’ actively ignorant and blind social darwinist ideology keeping them from buying it: “The cost of public services to a homeless person is significantly higher than to that same person being provided with appropriate housing and support services.”

So the neoLiberals are willing to waste taxpayer money–normally repulsive to them–because they can’t bring themselves to admit that the free market forces people to the streets. This is why “pathetic” fits so well.

And it’s also why Rich Coleman won’t be able to rub two sticks together to solve anything before the election. It’s all optics designed to appeal to that element of their base that are actually repulsed by the party’s disdain for the poor or bothered by the presence of such poverty in the streets. Now that they hear the neoLiberals are serious about solving homelessness, that’s good enough. They can show up to vote and believe they aren’t voting for poor-bashers.

It’s just too bad that they’re wrong.

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And I don’t even want to think about what our current economic meltdown is going to do to that dynamic, but try this one on for size.

Recently we received a gift of a Sears gift card. So we go to Sears and buy some things and in the process get a Sears credit card for a 10% discount or something. Since we pay off credit cards monthly, it’s no big deal. In the back of our minds we hear stories of retail outlets whose profit margin is greater on financing than their core business. But whatever.

So at one point we return something and end up with a $30 credit balance on the card. Fast forward several months.

Today we get a bill in the mail that shows a credit balance maintenance fee of $25 sucking out most of the $30 credit balance.

I’m no lawyer or police officer, but that’s our $30 that they just took. Sounds like theft.

So we phone Sears with a wtf. After the typical 7 minutes on hold we complain and get a reversal of this charge if we go into the store and spend the $30.

While stores may set policies to steal credit balances in 1, 15, 30, 180 or 365 days with impunity, it’s still theft.

But the shocking thing is that upon simply complaining to the first person we encounter on the phone, they are authorized to just reverse the charge.

And if that’s the case, it sure doesn’t sound like it’s a policy that Sears cherishes, perhaps much like insurance companies whose policy is to reject all claims.

So, in case you needed another reason to boycott Sears and any other company that makes a practice of stealing your credit balance, here you go.

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