Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably
As it turns out, corporations have been able to vote in BC municipal elections for most of our constituted history. That this appalled me is a testament to a new regime of rights and entitlements of humans over corporations that makes me smile. That I was disgusted that the BC neoLiberal government was fishing around [...]
Vision Vancouver Are Not Radical Socialists
Vision Vancouver are not radical socialists, but it plays well for the right-wing NPA to portray them as such. Much of what NPA enthusiast Mike Klassen writes in this article on relations between Vancouver and the BC Liberals is bang on. Except for this: Despite their radical socialist leanings and connections to labour, Vision so [...]
Fixing Vancouver’s Homelessness: A Survey With Teeth
Welcome to our Community Consultation Survey on Homeless Solutions and the Howe Shelter 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 [...]
Why the BC NDP Lost the Election
The BC NDP hasn’t joined the 21st century. Because of that, we missed a chance to pivot British Columbia into a healthy social, economic and political future. The BC NDP entered an existential crisis 6 days ago. This election loss, a voter turnout shamefully below 50%, the loss of meaningful electoral reform: all these things [...]
A Sad “Vision” of Billboards
Vision Vancouver is going to suffer from billboards for quite some time to come. “The Olympics are prime time advertising and the city might be offering it to Vanoc at the regular market rate,” the Richmond mayor said. “But all of this has been discussed at closed meetings, so I really can’t go into the [...]
Why Vancouver’s NPA Lost Badly Today
Because I like to make electoral predictions, I guessed that the NPA would elect 5 people to various councils in Vancouver. It turns out I was generous. They got 4 in, unless more official results in the coming days alter that. This doesn’t really prove that the NPA is dead. Corporate donations will keep the [...]
Challenging the Myth of Non-Partisanship and the NPA’s Stability
Two nights ago during dinner, one of the candidates for the Vancouver Park Board phoned me. He is running with the Non-Partisan Association, the NPA…a group that I have written before [see "The Lie of Non-Partisanship" from July 8, 2005 at http://PoliticsReSpun.org]. In fact, the NPA is anything but non-partisan, being all conservative and neoliberal. [...]
Pitying the Conservatives in Vancouver and Nationally, But Not Really
So now I’m thinking NDP-Bloc coalition federally. More on that below, but first… The Vancouver NPA, multi-generational vanguard of pretend non-partisanship has finished nominating its candidates. One significant note here: Kanman Wong is the final NPA council candidate. Remember Kanman? He ran a modestly respectable campaign for the January 2006 federal election as the Conservative [...]
Mayor Sam: Once Again Merging His Civic and Personal Campaign Activities
Below is an email I received tonight from Mayor Sam Sullivan’s civic email address: mayor@vancouver.ca. It’s the email address that the person who is elected to be mayor uses for formal civic business. In this email, he directs us to his personal campaign website, http://mayorsamsullivan.ca. He is clearly still more irony-free than the last time [...]
Rich Coleman Has a Home; How Many Thousands Don’t?
There seems to be a debate about how many homeless people there are in BC right now. 5,000 up to 15,000? At any rate, quite a few. Rich Coleman, minister responsible for homelessness, however is happy to have a home. I don’t begrudge him being able to afford a home. I just wish he’d do [...]
COPE’s Ideas Conference and Re-Inspiring a Robust Democracy
In our society citizens are rapidly being re-framed as consumers. We need to seriously question just what democracy means to us. Politics is not an event that a bunch of us take part in every few years at an election. It is something that happens every day. If we choose to ignore politics except during [...]
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