The HST Is Actually a Tax Cut?

What do neoliberals like to do? Sell everything owned by the public. Reduce government operations through privatization. Defund the government so it can’t do much anymore. Marketize all things that rest within the realm of community.

So when we heard of the hideous, regressive HST coming to BC, people flipped out because it punishes the poor by sucking income from them disproportionately compared to the rich. And in the end, the middle class get soaked.

But now we’re hearing that the federal government’s bribe money will be spent within a few years by annual reductions in provincial government tax revenue of $370 million. Vaughn Palmer sums it up nicely below.

So what is the HST, really? If this arithmetic works out, it’s just another way to defund government and justify more cuts and privatization.

And if we follow the money trail through to the exemptions, rebates and relief, we’ll likely see some sweet subsidies for friends of the BC Liberal Party.

They’ve handed out so many exemptions, rebates and other forms of relief, that the provincial treasury will actually be collecting less revenue (about $370 million less in a full year) under the HST than it would have done if the Liberals had decided to stick with the PST.

via Mark your calendars: Six days to the official beginning of the post-Games letdown – View from the Ledge.

Healthcare Before Olympics: Michael Moore-Style

Corey Rollins - http://adhack.com/ads/health-care-before-olympics

We’re days away from the end of the $8 billion obscene Olympic party. Last year, BC’s health authorities were defunded by $360 million. Cut, cut, cut.

Soon the 16-day bash will be over, the guests will leave and we’ll return the empties. Then we’ll walk around the house and tally up the damage. Holes kicked in walls, broken vases, cracked bathroom mirrors, something weird in the carpet that will never come out.

Less than a week after the Olympics end there will be a federal and provincial budget. Expect “tough choices”, which is what neoliberals say when they plan to further separate the rich from the poor.

So in thinking about Danny Williams flying to Florida for minor heart surgery, I went out retrieving this fantastic Olympic maimed-mascot poster.

I also came across something from Michael Moore, from long before Sicko: “The Healthcare Olympics.”

The best part is that Bob Costas, in town now to narrate the Olympics with NBC, is a narrator of this almost 20-year-old piece. Enjoy!

Danny Williams, Class War, and the Illusion of Choice

I was going to write something about the Newfoundland and Labrador premier skipping to Florida for minor heart surgery. He said, “This is my heart, it’s my health, it’s my choice.”

I was going to write about how obvious the two-tier [class war] society is emerging in Canada.

I was going to write about how the private system drains medical talent from the public system.

I was going to write about how the rich and the poor deserve the best health care system Canada can provide.

I was going to write about the millions of Canadians who are too poor to choose to go to Florida and stay in a comfortable condo.

But then Brian Topp wrote something spectacular!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 7:30 AM

Danny Williams and the separatism of the rich

Brian Topp

The Blue Summit Declaration: A Companion to Copenhagen

I was thrilled to read the Blue Summit Declaration that emerged from last weekend’s Blue Summit in Ottawa celebrating the 10th anniversary of Water Watch. As we head into Copenhagen in a few days, it is critical to assert companion declarations about the sanctity of core elements of life and the symbiotic relationship we must recognize with them.

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.

Healthcare as a Human Right for Americans?

Americans have had it rough, what with their rabidly individualistic, anti-communitarian history and social policy.

From that, they have a hard time embracing things of the common good, like healthcare being a human right.

The current debate, with the wingnut lunacy of greedy hyper-individualists wanting to keep poor people without healthcare that others would have to pay for, is quite hard to follow. It’s rife with red herrings.

And the Canadian system is awesome, of course, except for how our own right wing, greedy, hyper-individualists are trying to destroy it through defunding it. Our healthcare crisis is a result of right wing governments privatizing, turning off the taps and trying to bankrupt and impair the public system so people will demand market solutions with health insurance companies poised to make billions off this new desire to pay for what we’ve gotten for free for four decades.

So, in looking for sound analysis of what is happening in the USA, I’ve read Greg Palast slamming Obama for giving backrubs to the healthcare oligarchs, but it looks like that’s the brokerage politics working because in reading Joshua Holland’s analysis, 10 Awesome Things That Would Happen If Health Reform Passes, seeking an achievable solution likely means not destroying the insurance companies and Big Pharma. Yet, anwyay.

Holland:

So let’s get past the fearmongering and look at some of the highlights of what’s really in the more progressive legislation working it’s way through Congress. The proposals aren’t perfect. As I’ve written before, in their current form, the bills fail the test of having a truly “robust” public insurance option, and as such has limited potential for cost savings.

But they are also substantial reforms that would go quite a way toward beefing up the health and economic security of a lot of American families if enacted.

via 10 Awesome Things That Would Happen If Health Reform Passes | Politics | AlterNet.

And in the mess is the new boycott of the otherwise progressive Whole Foods. Why? Their CEO is a rabidly individualistic hater of common social policy:

“We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health,” Mackey wrote yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. “We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.”

Capitalism first [along with his profits], the health of the vulnerable and poor comes second.

So let’s cross our fingers and hope community, cooperation and the progressive ideals that the majority of Americans possess–despite how the corporate media tries to convince them otherwise–will allow them to see through the rhetoric and nonsense and embrace a real improvement in their human rights.

It’s time to get with the 20th century, America! And while we fight off our own greedy, for-profit healthcare ghouls, we’ll help you get into the 21st century soon!

Handcuffing a Community’s Resilience: Bata in the 21st Century

I first knew Bata shoes as a kid taken shopping to try on new shoes. As a teen I learned about the nexus of globalization and apartheid with Bata as a model, since they were operating in South Africa. Thomas Bata said, “We expanded into Africa in order to sell shoes, not to spread sweetness and light.”

Not only was it neoliberal globalization’s low-wages that lured Bata to they shift production overseas decades ago to take advantage of cheap labour, foreign competitors also helped force the closure of Bata’s domestic shoe production in Batawa in 1999.

But now Sonja Bata is trying to redevelop Batawa, Ontario into a post-industrial community, it is clear that she hasn’t read Jeff Rubin’s book, Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, on how peak oil will end globalization and force us to spend far more time developing bioregional social, economic and political communities.

She has partnered with design students from Carlton University, encouraging them to get all radical in creating a new vision of a community with artists, urban farms, research incubators and even a microbrewery. While these ideas reflect a healthy respect for a mixed community, since her model is post-industrial she may be in for a surprise when oil goes back up to beyond where it went last year and the global human supply chain constricts.

What will likely be needed in Batawa is for her to open her factory to make shoes again, not convert it into condos.

So, it is more than a little ironic that she is planning to miss out on developing some appropriate infrastructure for the community upon globalization’s decline.

While Bata is now in the gentrification business, the Globe’s Gordon Pitts correctly writes, “the region needs jobs, not fanciful ideas,” as a local Quaker Oats plant recently closed.

Ultimately, Bata’s vision and paradigm are hopelessly obsolete. In discussing the process of Batawa’s gentrification, she says redeveloping the factory is a symbol: “we have to get that done.” Destroying the factory’s capacity to manufacture products local certainly is a symbol, but it’s a symbol of a business model which will become more irrelevant every month the price of oil creeps back up.

But that’s not the only problem with paradigms involving Bata. Carlton characterizes its partnership with Bata as a university-community collaboration. Bata is a corporation with a real estate gentrification agenda. They are not a community. They don’t speak for a community. They are, in fact, hampering the Batawa community’s resilience to transform its local economy to a more sustainable one.

The relationship is really a public-private partnership with public university design students subsidizing the creative function of a corporation. It would be far more appropriate for the design students to be remaking Batawa in a way that will allow it to function in the transition we’ll be encountering when oil prices rise.

Instead, they are creating a community that will have no place in our near future.

They should be recognizing that bioregional social, economic and political units will be the sustainable size of communities since getting products from outside local zones will require expensive transportation. Bioregional communities will have to be as self-sufficient as possible to ensure that what they do trade will provide real value to justify the costs.

At 82, Sonja Bata may not be able to properly envision what our communities will require in a future with peak oil, climate change/breakdown, discredited deregulated and privatized neoliberal capitalism and declining globalization.

The key to managing such a profound paradigm shift is for all the rest of us to have more foresight than her. What the world needs now is the sweetness and light of sound community planning.

Olympic Ad Pollution with Building Condoms and Commercials: Vision Vancouver’s Vision

Honestly, it’s bad enough that every billboard will be literally monopolized by VANOC for its corporate johns during the Olympics, but now we are going to get dozens of buildings wrapped in ad condoms and “celebratory images …including video imaging and projections on walls” to Blade Runner proportions for about 5 months. That’s almost as long as Expo ‘86 lasted!

So much for the Olympics being a mere 16-day inconvenience and distraction. But the stink of this horrible decision will land squarely on Vision Vancouver.

Huge Olympic-themed building wraps will pop up in Vancouver three months earlier than expected under a new deal involving the City of Vancouver, Vanoc and 3M Canada.

The city originally planned to restrict the installation of 2010 building murals and graphic designs until Jan. 1, 2010, but has relaxed the rules to allow them any time after Oct. 1 this year.

3M was concerned the Jan. 1 restriction didn’t give it enough time to properly transform buildings into Games-themed displays, especially if bad weather delayed the application of clings, wraps and films to building exteriors.

via Olympic signs of the times – three months earlier than planned .

The rising and now falling tide of excitement tracking Vision Vancouver is astonishing. A party with no firm policy or governing experience signed up thousands of new members a year ago. Bandwagon city.

Now that they are in charge, we get to watch how their visionary talk doesn’t match their governing walk.

We’ve already seen how Vision Vancouver believes in the sanctity of billboards, but we now see that a weak and flimsy excuse of possible bad weather 5 weeks before the Olympics debacle starts is good enough to extend for 3 months the length of time the corporate sponsors of the Olympics can pollute our eyes with ubiquitous ads and projected commercials on our skyline.

Add these new ad condoms and building commercials to the CCTV arriving “for the event only” and we’ll have an Olympic legacy that will set new standards of intrusion and erosion of all things public.

Thanks, Vision Vancouver, for polluting our vision with advertising ubiquity! All we need now is to hear loudspeakers throughout Olympic zones blaring, “A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!”

We’ll remember all that when we cast our ballots on November 19, 2011.

Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 5.11.09, an Election Eve Vista Video Podcast

Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 5.4.09, a Vista Video Podcast

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.

Alcohol Privateer Fear-Mongerers, With Flaky Arithmetic

In what the industry is calling the NDP’s “six-pack attack,” private store owners are warning an NDP win on May 12 could increase the price of a half-sack of suds by three dollars

The NDP’s promise to increase the minimum wage from $8 an hour to $10 would have a disproportionate impact on the food-service industry, she said. “You could see the price of a bacon-cheddar burger at Earl’s jump from $13.55 now to $16 under the NDP. A burger at the Cactus Club could go from $14 to $16.60.”

via NDP’s pledge to up beer prices brews woes.

Before I address twisted arithmetic, let me just say that I don’t buy my BC brew at private liquor stores. Their selection is overpriced and awful, their stores are generally untidy, they are understaffed with usually not-so-thrilled workers who are paid awful wages–no surprise there.

Without injecting any numbers, a private liquor store is making a killing if it sells beer at prices higher than government stores, yet pays people minimum wage, thus less than the BCGEU employees at government stores. That’s got to make some sense, right?

And why do the privateers get a 16% discount on products compared to government liquor stores? Because Gordon Campbell will subsidize privatization wherever he can. Corporate welfare 101.

So, I have absolutely no sympathy for the privateers. Their criticisms make me just shake my head at their baldfaced greed.

The best part, though, is that if you buy your beer at public liquor stores, none of this neoLiberal Party fear-mongering will affect you at all! And the threatened restaurant burger price increases are made up as well, so have no fear.

That said, let’s look at the math. You can take a look at the BC NDP’s analysis of public and private liquor costs here.

But here’s my first question. If a 6-pack of beer costs $12 at a private liquor store [already $2 more than at a government store] and the privateer owners are claiming that a $2 minimum wage increase from $8 to $10 will cause the $12 6-pack to cost $15, what kind of labour costs must they have? I know this sounds like a word problem from grade 9 Math or something, but just think it through.

If there are [an unrealistically high] 3 employees making $8/hour on duty over 12 hours each day in a privateer’s store, the daily labour cost is $288. At $10/hour, the labour costs go up by $72. In this scenario, and looking at labour costs alone, the only way $3 can be passed on to consumers is if they sell merely 24 6-packs each day–and nothing else. That’s clearly just nonsense.

When we add in the loss of the privateers’ discount of 16% to 10%, that 6% will affect final costs too, but not significantly. Even if the $12 6-pack were being sold at cost, the loss of the extra 6% discount would increase the 6-pack by 96 cents. Since the privateers’ mark-up is a whopper, the real final cost increase of the 6% discount reduction is far less.

So how does the privateer industry get a $12 to $15 price jump in their wonky arithmetic? They add 25% to the final product cost. Why 25%?  Because if the minimum wage goes from $8 to $10, that’s a 25% jump. I do enjoy my beer, but honestly, I’m not that stupid. And anyone who thinks it through for just a short time isn’t that stupid either.

I think the industry, the Alliance of Beverage Licensees of B.C., is simply lying with these numbers by suggesting that’s how labour costs factor into retail prices. I also think the neoLiberal Party is promoting the lie to scare beer fans away from the NDP and their plan of cutting back on the corporate welfare program for privateer, profit-gouging liquor vendors. Enough already!

I also think the industry and the neoLiberal Party are expecting people are stumped by grade 9 Math word problems to the point that they’d believe the crazy arithmetic without working through the problem with a pencil and paper.

They must think we’re stupid. Oh right. This is consistent with the neoLiberals’ disdain for the population it governs.

Doing similar math with the burger costs, we find more PR and rhetoric masquerading as arithmetic.

With a 25% increase in minimum wage from $8 to $10, Earl’s and the Cactus Club claim they will pass 18% and 19% of that increase on to their burger consumers. This isn’t as pathetic as the alcohol privateers’ lame arithmetic, but it is also impossible to find plausible. The last time I was at Earl’s they were going to charge me $4 for there to be vegetables on the plate of my entree.

So, we have the BC neoLiberal Party candidates ducking all-candidates meetings, telling people to just “get over” the BC Rail corruption scandal, lying about social service improvements, watching their lead in the polls evaporate to within the margin of error, seeing female voters favour the NDP by a back-breaking margin and the Canucks in the playoffs distracting loyal Liberal voters from all things political.

And now we have the arithmetically-challenged fear-mongering trying to scare beer drinkers into thinking the NDP is going to rip them off.

But in the end, if you buy your BC brew from a government liquor store, the minimum wage increase and the reduced discount for privateer liquor vendors will simply not affect you at all!

So, even though I’m not a BCGEU member, I’ve been a proud member of 3 unions in my life. I feel wonderful buying my beer at government stores because I know the workers are at the very least being paid a living wage and the product costs less than at the privateers’ stores where they have been getting their 16% discount in Campbell’s New Era of corporate welfare for privatized services.

So, do your grade 9 Math word problem above, get your result, keep shopping at public liquor stores, wag your finger at the neoLiberal Party’s desperate fear-mongering, vote NDP and STV with a smile and enjoy a new era for human beings starting on May 13th.

Arrogant and Condescending Liberals: Bob Simpson’s Experience

Bob Simpson is a testament to reasoned, reflective, empathetic, intelligent political leaders with integrity. Two items on his Facebook page today [see below] show how desperate and afraid the BC neoLiberal Party is going into the last 11 days of the election campaign.

They either don’t show up to all-candidates meetings or when they do show, they sometimes spew critical lies/errors that make them look moronic at worst, or very poorly uninformed at best.

When they show up and lie ]or incorrectly state] that the government has done something good like building thousands of new seniors’ residential care beds when the party has already admitted to wildly fudging the numbers, or they put on their elitist hats to tell us to get over the BC Rail scandal, they are showing what disrespect they have for the 4+ million British Columbians who will hire them or fire them on May 12th.

What kind of person says we should just get over a scandal involved in privatizing BC Rail through a $1 billion 999-year lease to CN? Arrogance has been a key word in NDP rhetoric for a long time now. The neoLiberals simply keep stepping in it. To quote the wildly successful BCTF campaign: “When will they learn?” The answer is they won’t learn. We need to get rid of them.

And when the neoLiberals don’t show up to public meetings during the campaign, it’s because they’ve calculated that being there and suffering the brutal hits would do more damage to their dwindling re-election chances than the arrogance of not showing up at all.

It’s ironic since this is the year the STV will win as people decide that it’s worth changing the electoral system to get responsive politicians who won’t merely ram through pet legislation because they have a tyrannical majority government, regardless of whether it’s reflected in the popular vote.

This kind of anti-democratic behaviour, disrespecting citizens, helped keep the federal Conservatives from a majority government and it will kill the Liberals in BC in 11 days. Good riddance!

Bob Simpson had another interesting all candidates meeting in Miocene last night (Miocene is between 150 Mile House and Horsefly). Some excellent questions from the floor and some very strange answers from the Liberal candidate. He stated log exports have declined, said we simply need to “get over” the sale of BC Rail, and still claims the Libs built the 5000 long term care beds, despite Abbott’s admission they haven’t!

9:28am ·

Bob Simpson is very proud of our Quesnel youth. The questions the students asked at the QSS forum were a reflection of the key issues in this campaign, not just the issues involving youth. I felt the students were listening with interest and that both the Green candidate and I gave them lots to think about. The Liberal candidate did not have the decency to show up, that’s just plain disrespectful of our youth and their concerns

1:44pm

via Facebook | Bob Simpson.

Canada Line P3: More Lies

It was surreal hearing about the block party on Cambie Street on the weekend when “thousands of pedestrians took to the street to celebrate the completion of the Canada Line.” Was it designed by TransLink to keep the Cambie merchants from starting any more lawsuits?

Celebrating the completion of the Canada Line? Right.

As many have remarked all over the net, I agree that it is still like driving on the moon. This morning the workers were professional and smiling as always, butI waited 15 minutes to get through Cambie and 12th because–surprise–there was a massive crevasse in the middle of the intersection with lanes shifted all over the place. I guess they aren’t really done, hey?

But it sure sounds good during an election campaign to have a big sidewalk sale after “declaring” the construction complete. I remember when George W. Bush got a ride in a fighter plane onto an aircraft carrier to declare Mission Accomplished in Iraq after about 9 minutes of the whole thing. When politicians say something is finished, check to see if an election is on or imminent. Then check for your wallet.

But to add to the miserable lies you only need to drive to Cambie and 49th to see the huge “Complete” sign up on the sign describing the construction of the station there. The huge yellow fence, 9 workers and busy activity make me think “complete” is yet another lie.

Remember the tunnel they were supposed to bore under Cambie Street  instead of doing cut and cover? Remember that the new TransLink board is not accountable to anyone, they were appointed by a pro-business search committee created by Gordon Campbell, and they are spending billions of dollars of our municipal taxes, but our municipal politicians have no authority over them because taxation without representation is Gordon Campbell’s way!

Critical thinking should translate to the ballot boxes on May 12.

Oh, and if you are busy that day or don’t like lines, simply vote in advance like I’m going to do. Every riding has a place open from 8am-8pm from Wednesday, May 6 to Saturday, May 9 for advance voting. And the best part is that you don’t have to have a “reason” why you can’t vote on May 12th to vote early.

So enjoy and let’s ge t rid of Gordon Campbell for good.

Keith Baldry’s Sloppiness in Hiding His Bias

CanWest/Global’s Keith Baldry conveniently misses some details when sliding out some concluding statements lately.

First case:

An Opposition party usually wins when enough of the electorate desires a change in government. So far, there is little evidence to suggest that is the case in this province.

via Are the days of mass political rallies over?.

Little evidence? How about this from an Angus Reid poll last month:

“Amongst people ‘absolutely certain to vote’, the governing party is only two points ahead of the NDP (41% to 39%).”

“The BC election may well be determined by the turnout levels of supporters for each party.”

…

“Overall, 51 per cent of respondents across the province say it is ‘time for a change of government in British Columbia’ while only 34 per cent feel that the current government should be returned to office. When Gordon Campbell’s name was added to the question, only 30 per cent of respondents thought ‘Gordon Campbell should be re-elected’ while a majority (54%) said it was time for a different premier.”

Second case, when he is talking about the NDP’s opposition to the awful carbon tax that discriminates against people without adequate transit, people living in cold places, the climate since it’s part of Campbell’s plan to reduce way too few GHGs way too late, and all of us since by the time the tax is fully present, it will be no longer revenue neutral, but a regressive tax:

Here’s a tidy piece to ponder the issue more than Keith Baldry seems to have: End of Public Power in BC?

De-Spinning the Enviro NGO Mess in BC This Month

One of the best things to come this month from the controversies about how environmental NGOs view the NDP’s opposition to Campbell’s awful carbon tax is that people are realizing that climate change is not a 6-second sound bite.

Here is an absolutely amazing piece that reviews some truly sound points!

Tapping Our Wild Rivers Can’t Fix Climate Change

via Tapping Our Wild Rivers Can’t Fix Climate Change :: Views :: thetyee.ca.

Tapping Our Wild Rivers

Can’t Fix Climate Change

M’Gonigle of UVic: ‘Power down!’

Veteran enviro says no to Tzeporah Berman’s ‘PowerUp’ logic.

By Michael M’Gonigle
Published: April 20, 2009

TheTyee.ca

A week into the provincial election the person grabbing headlines is not a politician but an environmentalist. Tzeporah Berman helped lead the Clayoquot protests of ‘93 and then protect the Great Bear Rainforest but lately she’s been slamming the NDP for opposing the carbon tax while throwing her weight behind a huge new energy strategy embraced by the Liberals: run-of-river (RoR) power production.

And she’s pulling a lot of others with her — while getting many others fired up in disbelief and anger.

Berman and her influential allies want us to believe that only by harnessing renewable “green” energy can we reduce global warming. And that the time for debate is past; now we must just do it.

I’m one long-time environmentalist who couldn’t disagree more.

As one of the founders of Greenpeace International, EcoJustice, Smart Growth BC, the Dogwood Initiative, and other B.C. groups, I embrace real solutions to our environmental challenges, including climate change, and the movement to make them happen.

But in pressing for run-of-river, Berman and allies are only accelerating us down a doomed path that will destroy precious natural ecologies in British Columbia without making any significant dent in global warming, and undermine the work of many environmentalists in the process.

There is a far better course of action, however, that would not divide environmentalists but excite them and motivate the larger citizenry. Let me explain.

At first glance, run-of-river power seems pretty benign. Without recourse to large dams, RoR diverts stream water into turbines, and then returns it to the river downstream. In many rural areas, such projects have been in operation as small-scale sources of power for generations.

But as proposed in B.C., RoR is on a far larger scale. And its numerous side effects are now well known: Destructive construction in wild rivers and intact habitats, new roads and penstocks carved through wilderness areas, long transmission lines.

The list of concerns for RoR in B.C. goes on: the potential privatization of up to 500 streams and rivers, the realization that the systems will work well only during spring run-off, the gold rush mentality that has identified some thousands of potential sites across the province, the industrial scale of most of the projects, and the government/industry push that eschews careful planning by removing local decision-making authority.

Recently Berman’s new organization, PowerUp, held a well-attended meeting in Vancouver to promote RoR on a massive scale in B.C. Berman gets lots of support from power companies, political leaders and climate scientists, including UVic’s Andrew Weaver who, in a Vancouver Sun article, attacked “so-called environmentalists” (like me, I guess) who don’t agree with “what science shows to be necessary.” He dismisses as “outlandish” and “insidious” our concerns for protecting wilderness rivers and aesthetic viewscapes. We haven’t done “the math”; proposed policies “are very well understood.”

I would call this state of mind climate myopia — where climate change is essentially treated as the only environmental issue we face that, if we could somehow solve it, would allow us to get back to business as usual. Old growth forests, overfishing, fish farms, wild rivers? Back burner issues. We have to focus on climate change or else it’s all over.

All right then, let’s focus on really solving climate change — and why Berman and her allies are dead wrong.

Don’t raise supply, lower demand

As a “solution,” an important distinction must be made here, for RoR is a so-called supply-side solution, one to produce more energy. And even here, B.C.’s green energy won’t displace existing local sources of carbon-emitting energy because the power is destined for export to California. Despite this, a group of high profile environmentalists wrote in The Sun of the need for this new power because “our electric cars are going to have to get juice from somewhere.” These advocates do acknowledge the need to promote solutions on thedemand side by conserving energy. They note approvingly that the province plans to meet “more than half of BC’s new electricity demand with efficiency.”

Supporters of “alternative energy” also argue that it will create new “green jobs.” But what jobs? Construction workers in remote camps blasting rights-of-way through grizzly habitat to build RoR facilities on undeveloped rivers to provide seasonal power for export to Los Angelites who can now crawl in their electric cars guilt free along the freeway?

Environmentalists have long been fond of saying that the economy is a subset of the ecology. But not Berman’s brigade whose RoR strategies take the economic growth trajectory (and its accompanying energy trajectory) as a given. At best, Berman calls for “more sustainable development.”

But wait. Is “more sustainable development” about new electric cars, newpower supplies, new energy exports, efficiency to meet new demand? Is there not a problem here? In a country with some of the highest per capita energy usage levels on the planet, where is the discussion of seriously reducingenergy demand overall and doing it for the long term?

Increasing efficiency and generating new “alternative” sources of supply will never get us past the climate crunch because they confront a central contradiction: continuous economic growth that will just swallow up whatever gains are made, all the while upping the environmental impacts.

Can someone please explain how we can get past this contradiction except byreducing total energy demand, and developing economic strategies that will allow us to do so permanently?

Naming the problem

Taking the problem of economic growth seriously will not make you popular with the mainstream. But doing so actually offers tangible lessons. Here are three obvious ones:

1) We should not embark on destructive new supplies until demand reductions have been exhausted — to death.

2) We should not look at just simple efficiency gains in existing processes but at whole new ways of designing our economy that inherently reduce energy flows.

3) We should consider new sources of supply only later and only where each renewable watt is directly tied to retiring an old carbon-based one.

So the climate emergency may not be about building more river utilities after all. Maybe we would do better to work together to stop new infrastructure investments like the new 10-lane Port Mann Bridge, a bridge for more cars, and without light rail. And to do this as part of a full-on campaign to refashion the whole face of urban transportation not just in the Lower Mainland but worldwide.

But this doesn’t fit with the one truth that all political leaders agree on: we must keep the growth machine on stimulants.

A new model of development

These leaders have successfully exported this ideology to places like China, the most populous place on earth. With China’s commitment to a coal-fired future of ever increasing production and consumption, exports and trade, a car for every household, one must ask: What have we unleashed here? Is there any vision of development that is both as universal and as inappropriate to the survival of the planet as this?

Talking about how we might get past this ideology and its contradictions is a taboo. But no one was talking about Wall Street’s duplicity a year ago either. It took a collapse for that.

For B.C., this contradiction has a very specific import: given China’s growth trajectory, what sense could it make to compromise one of the great river regions on the planet for minimal practical effect? It IS one atmosphere after all.

Climate scientists do not like to think about this. But when you do, you see the second, and more difficult, “inconvenient truth” of climate change — the limits of a model of development that depends on always more growth, and more energy to fuel it. That is to say, the PowerUp strategy.

Just as global warming was until recently marked by widespread denial, so too denial of the problematic of growth economics is omnipresent today.

Confronting the tough truth of economic limits by actually trying to think and work past the growth paradigm opens up great possibilities. Call it the strategy of “growing into no-growth.”

Instead of blasting in new supply projects to fuel electric cars, why not talk about how to build “car-free” cities? Here we might start to save the earth, and save money too. After all, if a car costs about $10,000 per year to own and run, a “demand reduction” strategy could reduce not only energy needs, but financial burdens on people. A strategy with a “double dividend,” long term.

Instead of seeking more profits from power exports to California, why not work like crazy to reduce our food imports from that distant state with a massive commitment to enhance local food production right here? The same energy reduction benefits would result, and creating a true green economy (literally).

Who’s being ‘realistic’?

The retort, of course, is that such ideas aren’t politically realistic.

Not so, says one of the gurus of energy planning, Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba. On the contrary, he argues that the history of creating new energy supply systems has shown that the challenges are so enormous that “none of the promises for greatly accelerated energy transitions will be realized.” Message: it’s the renewable energy folks who aren’t realistic.

Meanwhile, the distinguished American geographer David Harvey points out in an April 2 interview in DemocracyNow! that the global economy was worth $4 trillion in 1950 and is now at $56 trillion. With all hands on deck to stimulate it way past even that, and to do so for as far into the future as anyone can contemplate, we are hitting the “limits environmentally, socially, politically…. In other words, we have to think about a zero-growth economy.” Message: it’s the whole economistic agenda that’s unrealistic.

In the competition of unrealities, I will throw my lot in with those who would create new political possibilities. At least we would be working with the feedback we are getting from nature, not continuing to work against it.

Environmental politics for this century

To ensure the success of avowedly green energy projects, governments in British Columbia and Ontario now promise to pay big subsidies for more power, and they have rewritten provincial legislation to prevent local communities from deciding whether they want these development proposals. In contrast, in the United States, the federal government is looking at new forms of neighbourhood governance that might refashion all forms of resource and energy use at the community level.

Actually empowering citizens to try out new things where they live entails a form of what Harvard law professor Roberto Unger calls “democratic experimentalism.” DemocracyNow! calls it “deep democracy.” Not here.

For citizens in this province, a choice presents itself. Does climate change demand an impossible technological response to “power up” new sources of energy to fuel an impossibly expanding political economy?

Or does it demand an active democratic response that can inspire a new movement to “power down” into a calmer economy, and a livable future?

When you push past our collective denial, most people know the answer here. But they don’t know how to do it. As the climate clock ticks, this is the real work to be done.

PowerUp? No thanks.

PowerDown? Sign me up!