Politics, Re-Spun

National Housing Strategy Rally in Vancouver: Bill C-304

Halfway through the Olympics on Saturday, February 20, hundreds gathered at the Vancouver Art Gallery to call for a national housing strategy. NDP MP Libby Davies’ private members bill C-304 lives on despite Stephen Harper’s cynical proroguement of parliament. Despite killing all his own pending legislation, the prime minister can’t kill private members bills by proroguing parliament. That gives us room for great action next week!

The rally was upbeat and inspiring, following days of the successful tent village.

Also, the enormous Canadian flag draping over the Hotel Georgia was the scene of some creative blowback: “FU2010″.

Some cutting in the top right corner

A closer look of FU2010

The tone of the day was concerned, passionate, upbeat and truly visionary as speakers and the crowd came together to explore a momentous step just days away when parliament re-opens to embark on a new era of social justice in Canada.

John Richardson, Executive Director of Pivot Legal Society spoke of overcoming fear and responsibly planning for the future:

MP Libby Davies spoke about housing being a human right, despite what I consider to be the gross excesses of the Olympics:

She also spoke about Harper’s lack of understanding of poverty and tendency to embrace budget crises as an excuse for inaction:

And she also spoke about what we need to do with her bill when parliament reopens next week:

In the end, when the 1,000 condos in the Olympic Village that cost $1 billion to build [or $1,000,000/unit on average] come on the market over the next few months, Metro Vancouver will experience a housing adjustment. Such a glut on the market will likely depress prices across the region. This can be good for people looking for affordable housing and for renters, despite the fact that few will be able to afford those 1,000 units. The ripple effect will be useful.

But there may be panic, dread, capital flight, or nothing but a different housing climate. In times of flux, there is great opportunity for change. It is within this context that Bill C-304 can make significant strides in addressing the crises of homelessness and affordable housing.

So pay attention to RedTents.org to see what you need to do to make our federal, provincial and municipal politicians do more than toss lip-service to housing issues.

Protesting the Corporate-Debauched Olympics

Whither/Wither Schools, Hospitals, Arts

I’ve spent the weekend reflecting on the success of various confrontations to the Olympic brand and the emerging global corporate feudalism.

I’ll start off with a recognition that I’m sitting here in my “I am a free speech zone” t-shirt, having celebrated Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year and observed Vancouver’s Missing Women Memorial March, which saw eagles circling above.

Let them eat cake.

Friday’s Olympics opening day march was a significant success. Elders led the procession. Dancing was prevalent. Agents provocateurs were noted, whispered about, marginalized and videotaped. And our messaging was clear:

1. “No Olympics on stolen native land”: the vast majority of British Columbia, unlike the rest of Canada, is on unceded native land and BC has been a part of Canada for almost 140 years now.
2. “2010 homes, not 2010 games”: the policy choice to host the Olympics has directly impoverished hundreds of thousands of British Columbians.
3. “This is what democracy looks like”: marching through the streets is the active expression of democracy; it is neither illegal nor anti-social.

What is lost in all this is the subtext of class war.

First, watch this clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Funny, eh, but let’s not think we’re past this. We have purged the nobility from our social system, even though the queen is plastered all over our money. Nobility by birth, except in monarchist mags, has been supplanted by corporate and celebrity nobility.

Poverty Isn't a Game

We still have a class system. It’s not upper, middle and lower class anymore; that’s all too impolite. But if we examine income groups in Canada, we have a increasingly wealthy hyper-rich, a rather rich group that is doing quite well, a struggling middle class that is being milked by user fees and needs two incomes to have the same purchasing power as one income did in the 1970s, a growing working poor or subsistence lower-middle class who are a few paycheques away from homelessness, and a growing homeless yet working and pure poverty class. Too many of these lower strata are using food banks.

Through this, our culture endures rampant empathy-free zones.

Gordon Campbell and all the Olympics boosters have chosen to host a global party. The price they have charged society has been in closed schools, reduced mental health services, declining hospital services and cuts to all levels of healthcare, an affordable housing crisis that enriches those who already happen own expensive property in the sexy parts of BC, and an uncounted death toll of people whose lives have been truncated by the service cuts that were the “tough choices” to ensure the tax base of BC funds a global party for the hyper rich: corporations, their serfs, their customers, and those who could afford to bid on Olympics tickets or pay scalpers.

Oh, and we have had the lowest minimum wage in the country and the highest rate of child poverty for more than half the decade.

"Olympics: It's Not a Party for the Poor"

Let them eat fucking cake, hey?

Let’s go back to Friday night’s protest. The few thousand of us who rallied, danced and marched. We did not disrupt the Olympics or the culturally-impaired opening ceremonies. We posited a variety of statements and had good media pickup. We exercised our personal free speech zones and the legal observers were happily mostly bored.

The bottom line was that there is a price paid by hosting the Olympics. The corporate media and other global corporations who only symbolically underwrite the party while the taxpayers of Vancouver, Whistler, BC and Canada actually pay for it, all go on thinking it’s a great time, despite the 12 degree temperatures and shipping snow from Manning Park to Cypress Bowl. So much for green games.

There are those who continue to wear their blood red Olympics mittens and cram themselves onto our transit to get to their events, some of whom vehemently resenting having to take transit at all, and still have no idea the kind of suffering the vulnerable of BC have endured and will continue to endure for decades while we pay off this corporate debauchery.

I don’t know what to say to them. I want to take their pictures, as they are maybe the deluded masses who don’t get the simple connection that voting for Gordon Campbell in 2001 because he said he would cut their taxes meant he’d cut services for the vulnerable and increase user fees for the rest of us. They are also the people who think a party that costs $6b plus the Canada Line and the Sea-to-Sky Highway will not have a collections agent waiting at our house on Sunday morning while we clean up the half empty wine glasses and stale cheese plates. The empty beer bottles won’t pay the debt. My grandchildren will finally burn the mortgage on the excesses we’ll enjoy over the next 14 days.

Olympics as Parasite: "The IOC is a Global Parasite"

And the BC government opened the legislature last week with a warning to fear the March 2 budget. For once the government is telling the truth. We are going to be further debauched in that budget because while VANOC is above the law and keeps its books secret, the government knows how much was spent and they’ll use it as an excuse to cut more, privatize more and gouge any other public, communal asset left in BC.

And if you think I’m crazy, wait 16 more days. I dare you.

Roque Quatchi asks "What Happens Once the Party's Over?"

The best we can hope for is for the Olympics to not bankrupt BC financially because our leaders have already sold our soul and bankrupted our morality, and we’re all going to feel the lashes for decades to come.

Shirley Bond’s Marie Antoinette Complex

shirleybond The heat wave continues-imagine being loaded on an Air Canada flight and then sitting on the tarmac in the heat for an hour – yup it was me!10:45 PM Jul 29th from web

Shirley Bond should keep using Twitter so we can see a better sense of her lack of empathy and perspective. Former Minister of Education and Deputy Premier, now Transportation Minister Bond, you’d think, would get some training in how not to offend the poorest 95% of British Columbians with her tweets…and how to update her Twitter profile to recognize her demotion in the cabinet shuffle.

Since her government refuses to choose to fund health care properly, BC’s health authorities are $360m in the hole. I personally know people who will suffer physical and mental trauma because of this. Many of us do.

Choosing to not fund education will mean hundreds of teacher layoffs and thousands of classes over the legal class size limit: a law the neoLiberals themselves enacted.

I’ve sat in hot planes on tarmacs. But I’m not responsible for massively increasing the misery of hundreds of thousands of British Columbians. So she gets no sympathy from me.

And while she doesn’t say “let us all eat cake,” the reverse is “weep for my suffering despite all of yours that I have caused.”

Give me a break.

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 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!

Igg’s Empty Deal with Harper

In 2005, New Democrats turned corporate tax breaks of $4.6 billion into $1.6 billion for affordable housing, $1.5 billion for post-secondary education, $900 million for transit, $500 million for foreign aid and $100 million for pension protection.

In 2009, Michael Ignatieff could only manage a “blue ribbon panel” on Employment Insurance with limited scope that won’t report until September.

via What can you get to prop up a government? | NDP.

And since Paul Martin was the deadbeat prime minister who bailed on the Liberals’ agreement with the NDP causing the election in 2004, I can’t blame Igg personally for showing that the federal Liberals aren’t in it for suffering and needy Canadians.

But this arrangement satisfies a number of Liberal priorities:

1. demonstrating that Igg has the semblance of a problem-solver
2. promoting the appearance that the Liberals care about working people after a decade of neoliberal cuts to human supports
3. making their base feel like their leadership has a heart
4. delaying pulling the plug on parliament until after the summer when no one wants an election

So just as the Liberals ignored their promise to the NDP leading to the 2004 election, the Liberals can now come out after the summer to claim that Harper isn’t worthy of staying prime minister because either the working group isn’t working or whatever other recession-based argument he wants to make.

In the end, he is simply biding his time, enduring the personal attack ads from the ReformConservatives, allowing Harper to continue to not solve problems and waiting for the right time in the fall to crash parliament.

Once he gets his own minority government, we’ll see a continuation of the neoliberal anti-worker plan that began in 1995 and that the Canadian bankers and CCCE will insist upon since they kept the Liberals from entering into a coalition with the NDP.

And if the Bloc continues its hold on Quebec we’ll have no majority government. And if Igg earns a minority, he’ll either have the ReformConservatives or the NDP as supporters.

Igg is touting the merits of cooperation since he’s made parliament work. But when he’s a minority prime minister, expect his parliamentary supporter to get as much uncooperative behaviour as Martin offered 5 years ago.

Let’s just make sure that the NDP gets enough seats to qualify as partner so we can be the ones to try to force Igg to behave like an actual minority government prime minister.

Peak Oil Will Kill Neoliberal Globalization: More Support

A year ago today, I wrote about how a few years earlier at lunch with friends I was thinking that peak oil will kill neoliberal globalization. Last year, there was a piece in Report on Business about just that, making me feel mighty vindicated. It’s nice to see corporate media affirming your views.

A few minutes ago, I finished watching a Tuesday rerun of the now former chief economist at CIBC, Jeff Rubin, plugging his new book, Why Your World Is About To Get A Lot Smaller, on Stroumboulopoulos’ The Hour. Watch the clip. He’s all over this thing now, which is part of the reason why he left the CIBC two months ago. This helps his credibility.

So at first, I thought that he’s more vindication for my ideas from a few years ago, but not so much.

When I went back to look at last year’s piece, wouldn’t you know it, but Jeff Rubin is one of the fellows quoted in the article. And since his book is out now, it was in the can last year when he was mentioned in the article. So the fellow was already planning his exit strategy.

So despite all the greenwashing miniscule attempts at mitigating climate change without altering our consumerist and corporate worship, it’s nice to hear the CIBC’s former chief economist talking about bioregional survival, the necessary rise of domestic manufacturing, eating local food and skipping winter avocados unless we move to avocado-land, which I won’t do. I’ll be reading his book!

So what’s our job? Start planning to voluntarily simplify our lives. Read Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down to learn what real resilience-building means. Crippled markets with unaffordable gasoline, ecological crises and a deepening recession/depression will force us to simplify anyway, so we’d best get on it! And even if that 3-part perfect storm doesn’t happen, simplifying is better for you, your family, your friends, the planet and the abused workers who make all the shit that you won’t have to buy anymore since when global markets decline they’ll be out of work making the Wal-Mart junk and they’ll do what we’ll be doing: eating bioregionally.

Force your political party to start developing truly ecologically progressive policies that recognize 1) the crippling effects of climate change that the UN scientists say are accelerating faster than predicted, 2) the end of a local, national and global trade regime built on cheep energy, and 3) a global economic crisis that manifests the paradigm shift we will endure–either pro-actively or reactively, we get to take our pick.

So we have to become assertive paradigm mechanics to start re-tooling for a future that will start soon after the Olympics debacle cripples BC’s resilience next year with some kind of $74b debt. Lucky us. We also have to re-imagine community interdependence, bioregional agriculture and markets, and an end to greed-based individualistic consumerism. And the sooner we begin, the better.

Neighbours Organic Weekly Buyers Club [NOWBC] has figured this out, going one step past organic food delivery companies with local sourcing. Last week they held a community potluck at Heritage Hall on Main Street in Vancouver, which was delightful, child-friendly, entertaining, educational and full of healthy, yummy food. They talked about doing that event annually. They need to do it monthly, judging from the eager crowd!

Oh, by the way, while we’re on it all, let’s let the auto companies go under, or better yet, nationalize them to build transit and post-carbon autos. GM and Chrysler are on the brink and for a change, how about we insist that governments–who are elected by actual human beings–bail out the pension commitments to workers instead of tossing more of my future grandchildren’s income taxes into more corporate money pits!

So, what are you waiting for? If you have read this far, contact me and let’s get talking! And if you belong to the BC NDP, you absolutely HAVE to contact me because you need to get in on the ground floor of making that party the leader in wise planning for a tumultuous future!

Now. Let’s get busy!

Gordon Campbell Fires Himself During the Leaders Debate

I was thoroughly astonished at how effectively Gordon Campbell maimed his political career during the leaders debate. But really, I shouldn’t be because of his utter inability to have any meaningful breadth of vision as a leader.

I can understand why the Liberals are hiding out and not attending all candidates meetings. Their record is so bad, that being perceived as arrogant and dismissive by not showing up is less damaging than having to answer to–or actually not answer to–their record.

But while Campbell is clearly afraid of having his empathy-free personality exposed in a debate with his NDP opponent Mel Lehan, he couldn’t hide from the leaders debate.

And since his no-contest plea to drunk driving in Maui in 2003, after spending years hiding in an undisclosed location with his ego-inflating RCMP security detail, he has clearly lost whatever populist appeal he had in the 1990s as an opposition MLA. I’ve recently looked at the leaders debates going back into the 1990s and he’s certainly lost even that edge. Unfortunately he hasn’t lost that nervous hand thing where he holds his hands in front of his belly, palms facing forward, holding a non-existent soccer ball. In the 1990s, a friend suggested his hands looked like they wanted to strangle someone, but I have always believed Campbell thinks it makes him look pensive.

And tonight he showed us all some of the worst elements of his character while Jane Sterk took adequate shots at the front-running parties and Carole James calmly and empathetically addressed issues, asked fact-based questions of Campbell and showed real maturity in the face of Campbell’s addiction to all things economic, and his chauvinism and condescension.

“It’s the Economy, Stupid!”

One of Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign epiphanies was all about getting elected on this: “it’s the economy, stupid.” Gordon Campbell, being obsessed with neoliberal economics, privatization, and reducing regulation, taxes, the government and all things public, spent much of the debate talking about how an issue or question affects the economy, no matter how far he had to drag the idea over.

Sure the Liberals have polled well on the economy, but he has drunk the neoliberal Kool-Aid so deeply that he still sees the global recession as a means to actually continue advancing his neoliberal agenda! It’s like Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine is his play book.

He knows that the recession is caused by neoliberalism and he loves it. It means more of the same.

What he isn’t hearing is that actual human beings enslaved by this global neoliberal economy are suffering under it since the economy doesn’t currently exist for them. And it scares them. So every time Campbell talks about how everything has to do with the economy, he just names their fear even more. Fear-mongerers like Campbell hopes this translates into votes. But hope and optimism and positive suggestions for a better province and world negate that negativity.

There were plenty of examples of Campbell’s obsession with economics. During the debate moderated by Russ Froese, he criticized Carole James for not having business experience. The assumption is that government is a business. That’s actually an ideology skulking around inside neoliberalism called New Public Management. But there are other more philosophically sound ideas of what a government is than that, the Social Contract, for one.

The pathetic thing about Campbell’s criticism is that elsewhere in the debate he reinforces what is commonly known about him, but seldom analyzed with his claim of being a businessman: he has spent the last 25 years in political life in municipal and provincial politics, so he himself has very little business experience. Whoops. George W. Bush may actually have more than him!

But to get a true sense of how economistic Gordon Campbell is, we only need to listen to the easiest softball question any politician could hope for, in the leadership category: what are three reasons why we should vote for you–and please answer without attacking or referring to your opponents. Sounds awesome. First, Carole James waxed eloquently about her resume and skill sets. To wrap up the trio, Jane Sterk did an good job of explaining sometimes vague experience, but right in the middle, Gordon Campbell failed his job interview:

“Well, Katy, that’s one of the more difficult questions I’m sure all three of us have had to try and answer. First let me say this, I think this is a very critical time in our economy. I think it’s important for us to have people with some business experience who can help deal with that. I think it’s important to have real leadership as we move forward and take advantage of the Pacific Century. That excites me. I also think that it’s important for us to have a government that’s willing to deal up front with the hard decisions we have to make with regard to climate change.”

Beyond the fluff of this nebulous Pacific Century, he went on talking about how the NDP did nothing to stop the pine beetle in the 1990s and why a new relationship with First Nations is important. 

But the beginning of his answer showed just how rarely he thinks about what public service really means–and he’s the premier! And he clearly wasn’t listening to Carole James inadvertently yet utterly destroy his lack of imagination, insight and breadth of personality just before him as he claimed that all three leaders couldn’t answer that question easily.

Still, if we are to take his current dubious First Nations policy seriously as a reflection of his leadership self-concept, we need to also remember that he stormed into office in 2001 and promptly embarked on a province-wide treaty referendum that was panned as purely racist and horribly worded to ensure the government could do whatever it wanted. Now that’s a sign of a special kind of horrible leadership!

Later, in responding to his neglect of the poor by not increasing the minimum wage for 8 years, Campbell again dragged out how the average wage in BC is $22/hour. My eyeballs swell with pressure every time he says this because he assumes we will all think we’re ok with that so we don’t need to care about the poor. But I wrote about that annoyance more here and I can’t go into it again or else I’d have to vomit.

And during his closing comment of the entire debate, the very first thing he said was that this election is about the economy and leadership. It’s clear that he doesn’t even have a vision of his own leadership and the issue around the economy is not whether the neoliberal government should continue to maim us during the recession, but whether we’re fed up with an economy that abuses people so that we can build an economy that actually serves people.

And to close, from the economy he invokes his fear-mongering hobby by threatening thousands of jobs that are at stake if the NDP forms government. Sure, BC is leading Canada by thousands in jobs lost in the last several months, but he’s hoping we’re not paying attention to that right now.

The trouble is, we are paying attention to that right now.

Chauvinism and Condescension

Aside from his reframing of everything into an economic lens, Gordon Campbell’s dark and dirty side came out during the debate as well.

Gordon Campbell’s first slip into condescension–or rather, insight into his character–came when Carole James asked him to justify his tough on crime stance with the cuts to prosecution and corrections officers in his February budget.

Campbell: ”I think, Ms. James, you should understand...I know this is a big job and it’s hard to get it–a handle on it, but the fact of the matter is we’ve added additional prosecutors to fight crime and fight the gansters, BLAH BLAH BLAH,” and at that point nothing else he said mattered.

He just called her stupid!

And it wasn’t like she said anything stupid. She was just asking about line items in his own budget. Of course he had no answer, so he just verbally slapped her on the top of the head. Eight years of bullying policies seem to fit nicely with his personality.

The second condescending gouge came when the three leaders were talking about addressing crime. Campbell was all about the variety of retributive justice and policing interventions. Carole James was talking about policing as well as the prevention programs while Jane Sterk spoke against a policing-only strategy, supporting prevention programs and decriminalizing illegal drugs. 

To this, Campbell mumbles in response to the alternative perspectives, “it is a multi-faceted approach that is required of us.” 

This is one of those phrases people use to let their audience know that they are, again, too stupid to understand the complexities of it all. Yet Cambpell has only a single-faceted policing/prosecution strategy, while both of the other leaders have a multi-faceted approach. So on top of his habit of insulting people to get them to shut up, he wasn’t listening to what multiple approaches actually sound like.

It also means that Campbell is either unaware of the social determinants of crime, or he doesn’t care about them. It’s all about the hammer for him.

The next example of Campbell’s chauvinism and condescension came when Carole James asked him whether he’d fund his pet hammer projects by transferring money from other areas like auto safety or community safety. After the question, the moderator, Russ Froese, said open debate time was up and Campbell would have to answer the question during his rebuttal time.

Campbell laughed.

Sure it could have been the nervous laughter of a child unable to adapt to a tense situation. Or more likely it’s the typical behaviour of someone who enjoys demeaning others in the legislature. Unfortunately, he let that slip during a debate that more than a few people would be watching. It simply made him sound like someone who doesn’t have the time for this nonsense.

It is also at this point that Campbell starts answering questions and issues by speaking to “Russ” by name. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but with two female leaders attacking him, it sure looked like he was seeking a connection with the other male on the stage. It might be out of insecurity. It might be because he is playing to a male voter demographic that happens to dominate his party’s base. It might be to marginalize the women on the stage by establishing the dialogue as a male-to-male context, thereby making the women interrupters. 

Then, in a flagrant violation of the respectful tone of the debate so far, when talking about healthcare, Gordon Campbell got truly ugly.

His government pledged to build 5,000 new long-term care beds for seniors. It turns out they built almost 5,000 assisted living beds, which are useful but are far from the same level of intensive service of long-term care. Then George Abbott, in one of his first public bids to distance himself from the Campbell regime for a leadership run coming soon, ultimately agreed that they didn’t actoually build 5,000 beds, instead it was about 800.

So Carole James asks, “I’d like to ask Mr. Campbell, is his health minister telling the truth or are you?”

It was a classic catch-22. Campbell was screwed. So he did the best thing he could think of, attacking Carole James by saying, “no, you’re not.” And if you saw it, you’d know it was as transparent an attempt at dodging a tough question as Campbell could provide. And it had the added bonus of petulance and absurdity as her question was based on Campbell’s own health minister’s admission of facts.

Then on the environment, Campbell tried to spin his woefully inadequate climate change program with airy nonsense and unicorn tears by saying our grandchildren will thank us for making the hard choices and “building a bridge to the future,” whatever that means, when the climate intervention program will fail miserably based on what scientists say is required. 

Then Carole James replied to his nonsense by saying he is inconsistent on the environment with a pathetic carbon tax along with pushing for offshore oil and gas drilling, irresponsible fish farms, firing park wardens and reducing environmental protection. And during this description of Campbell’s duplicity, a man with a microphone turned on just laughed. 

I doubt it was Russ Froese. If it was Campbell, such a laugh is useful for dismissing the legitimacy of someone’s criticism. But in stating those blatant hypocrisies in Campbell’s approach to all of the environment, there’s nothing illegitimate about the criticism. The laugh just sounds like a desperate attempt to avoid the reality.

So, in an era where electoral reform will likely sweep BC’s electoral system out of the 19th century, it is stunning that the leader of the governing party would allow himself to exhibit such despicable behaviour in public. But then again, for someone who has been in hiding since Maui, he seems to have forgotten that the soon-to-be passe rude and dishonourable behaviour in the legislature is part of the reason why people will vote for change this month.

And it’s not useful to let that nasty behaviour show up in public!

It made him look even more misanthropic than he already is, especially when Jane Sterk was attacking the polarized blame game of BC politics and Carole James was presenting an enlightened, human-centred vision for what the BC government should make the economy do for people.

So in just over 59 minutes, Gordon Campbell’s failure to relate to human beings, his obsession with the economy, and his rudeness, condescension and chauvinism will be a strong likely explanation for significantly increased voter turnout, a new electoral system, and an end to his days as premier.

Our Low Minimum Wage is Overt Poor Bashing

It’s interesting how economistic we are, all obsessed with how politics affects the economy. What’s galling is how the economy is some nebulous thing that is measured by the GDP and not by how it serves human beings.

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.

Poor Bashing in the BC Liberals’ Online Store

I was so annoyed listening to Gordon Campbell pull a Sarah Palin [I hear your question, but I think I'll just talk about this instead] on the leaders debate on CKNW this morning when asked about poverty reduction strategies. He talked about how he loves to help create high paying jobs and that the average wage in BC is $22/hour. 

Mouspad for the "average" BC worker

Let’s do some simple arithmetic. The global GDP is estimated at around US$69 trillion. The world population today is around 6.7 billion. That means the average annual income of everyone in the world is around US$10,000! Goodbye poverty, hurray for us! Oh wait, averages can be the devil’s pool cue crashed over the back of the homeless fellow outside the pool hall and a rainy winter night.

This is what I think of every time Gordon Campbell quotes the average BC wage. Anyone who finds solace in it needs to re-think how insidious averages can be and ask themselves if they wish to be inadvertently complicit in poor bashing. 

So when I cruised by the BC Liberal party’s online fundraising merchandising store, I examined the prices of the trinkets that, with Campbell’s love of globalized trade and the race to the bottom of production, I assume are made in Chinese sweatshops.

$22/hour is the average wage in BC? Hmm, that would buy you a mousepad promoting the Liberals’ strong BC. But it would take you longer because I’m sure Campbell is talking about $22 as a gross wage, so that after deductions it would take far more than one hour of work to buy that mousepad.

The Liberal Homelessness Toque

And what about a toque to keep your homeless head warm while promoting the BC Liberal brand? Let’s not assume that none of the homeless have jobs, because many do and are still homeless. $17.50 is the price. that would take an $8/hour minimum wage worker around 2 hours and 12 minutes to earn it.

An apron for those summer barbeques? $20 or 2.5 hours of pretax minimum wage work or even more, 3.3 hours, for the victimized trainee/new workers making $6/hour.

But if you really want to save up for the eco-friendly women’s plasma jacket, perhaps by foregoing protein for all 3 meals each day next week or maybe skipping lunches altogether, $8/hour workers would have to toil for 24.4 hours. 

A week of sufficient protein, or a jacket? You decide.

So as we’re watching economic stimulus packages devolve into corporate welfare programs, we should applaud the NDP and their commitment to raising the minimum wage to $10/hour. Minimum wage workers spend their wages in their communities to create a multiplier effect that recycles wealth and improves the economy from the ground up. The neoLiberal party never talks about this kind of stimulus because their constituency is not the poorest 95% of the British Columbians, let alone the economically destitute and those barely hanging on, living one pay cheque away from the streets.

But then, why would the BC neoLiberal party care about raising the minimum wage, since the poor wouldn’t buy their $22 mousepads anyway.

Gordon Campbell Actively Ignores the Poor

This morning’s leadership debate on CKNW allowed Gordon Campbell to continue to demonstrate how he totally ignores poor people.

When asked about poverty reduction strategies, he continued his mantra that he believes in creating high paying jobs and then he pulls out meaningless statistics like how the average wage in BC is $22/hour. Of course it’s $22/hour…on average with thousands of high wage earners including senior provincial civil servants who received a 43% raise from Gordon Campbell last summer. But focussing on average wages across the province totally ignores the poor and destitute and allows Campbell and his supporters to ignore their plight.

His focus on high paying jobs helps BC Liberal donors, not those living on the edge of existence.

Scared neoLiberals Lie About BC’s High Unemployment

Well it would seem that the Liberals are still in denial. These numbers represent the largest job losses in the history of British Columbia, and yet the Liberals are still claiming on their website that they have “record low” unemployment numbers in all regions

via The Butcher Shoppe: BC Liberals Out of Touch on Job Losses.

Denial is one thing, lying is quite another.

Without getting all Marxist with a long rant on false consciousness, I know that there are quite a few people who may even be nice folks with generous souls who still wish to support Campbell’s neoLiberals.

But when facts conflict, people seek an easy reconciliation.

When papa Gordon “says” we still have record low unemployment, these nice folks can sleep at night because they trust him and will reject StatsCan data that conflicts with what they wish to believe.

So I can’t imagine that some of the extraordinarily PhD-heavy bureaucrats in Victoria are merely rejecting StatsCan data and sending alternate information up the chain to the political lever-pullers.

I think it’s as simple as the neoLiberals lying to keep as many people onside as possible. Just like the Republicans were desperate to make sure their base showed up to vote for McCain/Palin, the neoLiberals–far from a populist party–are eager for their supporters to actually vote.

This all fits with my continually reinforced theory that the neoLiberals are desperately afraid of losing their jobs.

And since Gordon Campbell’s neoliberal ideology is responsible for the global crisis in capitalism, his job is to make sure the cult of Milton Friedman doesn’t take the fall for this.

So lying is easy. Let’s set their pants on fire on May 12th.

Olympics Bring CCTV, Not Solutions for the Homeless

David Eby, from BC Civil Liberties, told the COPE AGM on Sunday of his concerns about the Olympics not so much being a lever for solving homelessness, but an excuse for a reduction in civil rights.

It seems he got it right.

When the provincial government floats examples like the Bard on the Beach as being a place for CCTV, to the surprise of the Bard organizers’ reflection that theirs has never been an event worthy of surveillance, we know this is just spin.

Despite written assurance, several councillors including COPE Coun. Ellen Woodsworth–the lone dissenting vote on council–raised concerns about the “temporary” nature of the CCTV plan and the potential erosion of civil liberties.

…

But last Friday’s provincial government press release told a starkly different tale.

Vancouver, it read, will receive $400,000 for a “re-deployable CCTV unit for special events and emergencies.”

via City admits surveillance cameras here to stay.

Gullible Gord: A Compendium of Campbell’s Fear and Desperation

“Incompetence is combined with thoughtlessness, arrogance and hubris — a fatal mix.”

via Spare Us from Gullible Gord :: Views :: thetyee.ca.

Rarely is there an article that so succinctly lists evidence of Campbell’s extraordinary dislocation from reality, worship of neoliberalism and disregard for citizens and communities. Rape and pillage for the lowest financial return is bad policy. These people have to go!

Read this piece and forward it widely! With the Bil 42 gag law, it is viral distribution of the destructiveness of BC’s neoLiberals that will bring them down.

“Lord Stern on global warming: It’s even worse than I thought”

“Sea levels are likely to rise twice as fast as predicted in the last UN climate change report in 2007.”

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.

The Unanticipated Pricetag of Being an Olympic Corporate Sponsor

The Canadian Press: Threats against Olympic sponsors worry security officials.

They should be worried! I don’t know if they need to be $1b worried, but if you do the math, there is earned concern:

((The Olympics corporate welfare program) + (obscene reductions in government spending for human beings) + (radical and radicalized groups who object to the billions wasted on this spectacle, and what in our culture it has steamrollered) + (sponsors and government groups that flaunt their glee in the faces of those suffering) + (an opportunity to capture attention on a global scale)) x (an unpredictable economic depression [ooops, Great Recession]) = a perfect storm of wariness.

And while the CBC recently reported that the carnage that has become the lower mainland in the last 2 months is likely the playing out of choked distribution points in the Mexican drug war, the climate of fatal violence in and around Vancouver increases the likelihood of radicalized responses to the Olympics.

And if Gordon Campbell gets re-elected [by the way...did you know that Gordon Campbell hates you?] then we should all expect things to ramp up considerably once he implements his crowning agenda buoyed by being elected a third time!

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