Politics, Re-Spun

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!

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!

Obama Is Not Anyone’s Economic Jesus

It’s time to get over ourselves with thinking of Obama being any kind of economic Jesus. Eric Margolis reflects many people’s hopes, but it is time to leave our naivety back in 2008 because its best before date has expired:

“The axis of sleaze between Wall Street and Washington’s politicians has to be broken. Time for Obama to drive the money lenders from the temple.”

- Eric Margolis, columnist, Toronto Sun, April 5, 2009

Margolis’ quote shows up on page 2 of the current CCPA Monitor journal from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Ed Finn, the editor, juxtaposes it with his own assessment of what Obama will not be able to offer:

“Obama may be helping some of the hardest hit victims of the financial meltdown in the US with his huge stimulus budget, but his massive trillion-dollar bailouts of the fraudulent financial system that precipitated the crisis reflect no desire on his part to replace or even moderately change it. Instead, the obvious intent seems to be to restore and perpetuate it.”

- Ed Finn, editor, CCPA Monitor, May 2009, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Being optimistic for massive reform to global corporate neoliberal capitalism is one thing, but it truly pains me to acknowledge that expecting Obama to have messianic economic reform powers is just not realistic.

While I cheered his election and have significant respect for his demeanor, honesty, boldness in facing dire economic and social challenges domestically, we need to remember that the vetting process that takes place in the two major US political parties precludes any real reformers from having much of a chance at the White House.

Dennis Kucinich has been the most progressive Democrat to seek the nomination in recent elections. His policies reflect a profound desire to make America a beacon of social, economic and political justice and advocacy. 

He never stands a chance.

And I won’t even going into how credible Ralph Nader is on the corporate autocracy that runs America and the world. 

He’ll never make the White House either, barring some massive global economic depression and even more widespread corporate corruption leading to thorough delegitimization of free markets [though the fact that we tolerate this much says little about our civic critical capacities].

So those who have a solid chance of winning big party nominations are able to secure funding from broad sources. And while the stranglehold of corporate control of candidates is diminishing–but by no means disappearing–with more union and citizen financial support of the most progressive of the bunch, America is still America.

American capitalists and the majority of the middle class still believe in the American Dream[tm], or at least the perception that they can buy  in one day, despite Marxist arguments about false consciousness. Canadians exhibit much the same tendencies.

We are not so much interested in anyone challenging our beloved capitalism. When “excesses” occur, some tinkering is good enough because in the end, we can trust capitalists; after all, many of us have them as neighbours and they don’t seem to kill our pets for sport or empty our car tires on rainy Tuesday nights.

Part of the explanation for this lies in the lack of imagination and discourse about alternative economies. Free market capitalism is only about as old as America itself. That probably explains part of it right there. But before free market capitalism, we weren’t pre-social hunter-gatherers. We traded, we had markets, we even used markets to pursue social and economic justice.

And we can do that again, granted we have some leisure time to indulge in imagining economies that actually serve human beings.

But what about Obama, then?

He’ll tinker. He’ll sound resolute. He’ll speak like a disappointed patriarch scolding teenagers who took the car without permission and scratched it at the 7-11. Those capitalists [wag your finger with me, now]: always up to hijinx, so we have to ground them for a week or so to make them reflect on what they did!

He’s certainly better than Bush and McCain/Palin, even with McCain having spent most of the decade plugging his nose to suck up to the radical reactionary right of the Republican party to be a presidential contender, ignoring elements of his more moderate core.

But in the end, there is no way that Obama would have been a contender if the American and global corporate oligarchs weren’t comfortable that he was not going to close down the World Bank, IMF, WTO and OAS and invite Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales to the White House to build a new economic, social and political vision for the Americas.

And while I’ll continue to be pleased with Obama when it’s warranted, our relief at the end of the Bush dynasty should not keep us from recognizing when America is just being America some more. They are economic, political, social and cultural imperialists with a now-global manifest destiny that is rarely questioned, though the Chinese economic war with America may ultimately defeat them, leaving merely another global economic monster to contend with.

So feel free to leave your naivety in 2008 and when Obama does something not so progressive, develop a healthy critique of him. When he buckles to the healthcare lobby over the next few weeks, make sure he knows that Americans deserve to have a better healthcare system than to be stuck at the bottom of OECD rankings.

And if his foreign policy is more engaging and peace-building, celebrate that, but if his diplomacy is twinned with neoliberal assaults on other countries’ ability to develop their own economic, social and political structures, take a moment to demand more.

But in the end, if he leaves office without overturning any money lender tables in the temple of the global economy, don’t be dismayed. Reality will teach you all you need to know to assess his ultimate political value.

Regrets? Super-Human Gordon Campbell Won’t Tell

If we have learned anything about new higher expectations of politicians in the 21st century, it’s that they have to acknowledge they aren’t perfect. Obama gets it, Bush and Campbell clearly don’t.

It was astonishing to watch Campbell interviewed on the CBC tonight. When asked at the end if he could do anything over from his eight years as premier, he said there were things but refused to give an example, instead embracing his “tough choices” mantra. What about drunk driving in Maui? Come on.

Sure, one political stance is to say it’s a sign of weakness to admit you ever have made a mistake. It means you aren’t resolute and it gives ammunition to your enemies. But none of that matters. We know they aren’t super-human. Maui?

Bush admitted the Mission Accomplished banner on the air craft carrier was a regret, as was goading terrorists to attack by saying “bring ‘em on.” But Bush only admitted these things after Obama was elected and he was a lame duck president.

Obama, on the other hand, admitted on CNN just two weeks into his administration that it was a mistake suggesting Tom Daschle for Secretary of Health and Human Services because of his past tax problems.

Here’s how Obama expressed himself: 

“I’ve got to own up to my mistake. Ultimately, it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules — you know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.”

What kind of weakness lies in this statement? What kind of signal that the president is not resolute? How does this admission of an error bring any more ammunition to opponents than the fact that it was a mistake? Admitting it did not cause any further criticism of his nomination of Daschle. In fact, admitting he made a mistake probably defused the problem faster than otherwise.

Gordon Campbell is a dinosaur. Obama has led us all to have higher expectations from our public servants.

Last week, Gordon Campbell tossed a loonie to a striking paramedic, saying “don’t spend it all in one place.” How many of us remember a drunk Alberta Premier Ralph Klein wandering into a homeless shelter demanding explanations for why they don’t have jobs, then tossing some cash on the floor? He admitted to a drinking problem and 2/3 of Albertans forgave him. And while Campbell apologized for Maui, on the CBC tonight he couldn’t bring himself to mention even that as an example.

Then Campbell parroted an absurd line from liquor privateers that an NDP increase in the minimum wage from $8 to $10/hour would raise the price of a 6-pack of beer by the same percentage. The arithmetic inherent in that analysis is pathetic and wrong. Campbell, who criticizes Carole James for lacking business experience though he himself has spent most of his adult life in politics, should have been able to do some arithmetic to conclude that the data is shoddy. Liberal apologists all over BC have been claiming that he was given wrong information. Right, I see.

Then on Sunday during the leaders debate, he patronized Carole James by admonishing her with his brilliant insight that his job is big and hard to get a handle on, implying that she might be too stupid to do the job. Polls indicate women are far more likely to support the NDP. So was he pandering to the sexist male element of his base to get out their vote by insulting a woman? I think so, but that’s hard to tell, Perhaps we can make up our own minds when we think about why yesterday he cancelled an upcoming CBC radio debate with Carole James. That may be his backwards way of admitting that it’s wrong to call someone stupid like that.

Finally, today he refused to tell a reporter what he wishes he could do over again, though he acknowledged there were things. He should have been infinitely grateful that he wasn’t asked why he cancelled his CBC radio debate. Instead, he put on his bold, resolute hat and refused to discuss it and instead spun his tough choices. That’s his prerogative certainly. But it says something about the man. This also helps explain why John van Dongen waited a week before telling the premier that he had his drivers license revoked. Clearly, there is a dysfunctional lack of humility in the Liberal Party.

It is simply sheer arrogance to refuse to discuss mistakes.

And in the 21st century, voters will not stand for it. We have seen Obama admit mistakes and British Columbians want and deserve that same kind of political integrity.

Gordon Campbell and his party are thoroughly incapable of delivering it.

Memo to Harper: Bush Doesn’t Have Your Back Anymore

Someone should really tell the prime minister that George w.Caesar doesn’t have his back on angry imperialist rhetoric anymore.

It’s one thing for Ignatieff to sit quietly, saying nothing, waiting for the economy to implode Harper’s government, but for Harper to show that he still thinks the Bush Doctrine rules the world means his crash will be profound when the federal Liberals pull the plug on this version of their coalition with the Conservatives.

These tidy morsels from this great CP piece below are precious:

• “Harper took an alternate tack at the summit, waving the banner of free trade as often as possible.” Forget about how neoliberal free trade is largely responsible for our current crisis in capitalism.
• Harper’s goals: to “maximize the benefits of increased trade and investment”
• Harper’s new bff, the president of the Dominican Republic: ”Of course, with the financial and economic global crisis, that’s the…main problem, the main concern, but this doesn’t mean that free trade for some countries is not in their best interest.” Yes, black is black and white is white, but that doesn’t mean that black can’t also be white. 
• “Harper spoke of ‘antagonists,’ ‘cold war socialism’ and ‘rogue nations when referring to countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, declaring himself an ‘anti-Communist conservative’ in an interview with right-wing American TV channel Fox News at the summit.” Charming how Harper’s vision of Canada is filtered through Fox News.

Leaders declare Americas summit a success thanks to Obama

Published Sunday April 19th, 2009

Jennifer Ditchburn, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Still, they reached a consensus on adopting a shorter final statement, and more importantly nobody left slamming the door as happened at the last summit in 2005.

There were no confrontations between the Americans and some of their rivals. Instead, there were handshakes and Obama’s photo-friendly smile. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez said he’d like to send an ambassador back to Washington.

The chemistry was key, as host Prime Minister Patrick Manning noted.

“We all came here I think believing that we would have quite a battle among the radically different perspectives that exist on certain subjects…that did not materialize, in fact we saw the opposite,” Harper said a closing news conference. “We saw the replacement of confrontation by dialogue, a very good dialogue.”

Harper joined several others in saluting Obama for his landmark speech Friday evening, in which he brought a message of partnership with the hemisphere based on mutual respect and dignity. Obama also acknowledged certain failures in American foreign policy, including its enforcement based drug policy.

Obama repeated his call for a new American policy in the hemisphere at a news conference Sunday. He noted how many countries are supportive of Cuba precisely because of its humanitarian efforts – it sends thousands of doctors to developing countries.

“That’s why it’s so important that in our interactions, not just here in the hemisphere but around the world, that we recognize that our military power is just one arm of our power, and we have to use our diplomatic and development aid in more intelligent ways so people can see more concrete improvements in the lives of their peoples as a consequence of U.S. foreign policy,” Obama told reporters.

He said there had been promising signs in relations between his country and Cuba and Venezuela, but that the real test would come from the actions that followed after the summit.

The issue of Cuba’s inclusion in the inter-American family and future summits was pushed off to the general assembly later this spring of the Organization of American States (OAS). The prime minister did not comment on how Canada would vote at the meeting.

Harper took an alternate tack at the summit, waving the banner of free trade as often as possible.

One of his final acts of the summit was to sweeten the pot for countries Canada is negotiating with, earmarking an extra $18 million in aid over five years to help them “maximize the benefits of increased trade and investment.”

His call for open markets found some allies.

The president of Dominican Republic said he was keen to advance negotiations with Canada for a free trade deal.

“We see trade as part of development, it’s not just trade per se – it’s trade related to development,” Leonel Fernandez told a group of Canadian reporters.

“Of course, with the financial and economic global crisis, that’s the…main problem, the main concern, but this doesn’t mean that free trade for some countries is not in their best interest.”

Harper also adopted strikingly different language than Obama.

Where Obama urged countries in his stirring speech Friday against focusing on ideological labels such as capitalist or socialist, Harper spoke of “antagonists,” “cold war socialism” and “rogue nations” when referring to countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, declaring himself an “anti-Communist conservative” in an interview with right-wing American TV channel Fox News at the summit.

His spokesman continually referred to Latin America as Canada’s “backyard” in a briefing to kick off the meeting.

Some Canadian observers said Harper seemed to misread the tone of the summit, where many countries – and not just the “rogue nations” such as Venezuela and Bolivia – have been feeling a strong domestic backlash against trade liberalization.

Opposition to a Free Trade Area of the Americas was the principal reason the last summit fell apart.

Carlo Dade, executive director of the Canadian Foundation for the Americas, gave Harper points for announcing a $4 billion financial guarantee for the Inter-American Bank (IDB), a move that he said took leadership in the hemisphere.

The financial crisis was by far the main preoccupation of countries represented at the summit.

But Dade said focusing on trade was an ill-advised strategy at a moment when many are resentful of trade – part of the reason figures such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales have emerged.

“There’s a lot of blame going on for the financial crisis on trade liberalization,” said Dade, who has been attending summit-related events. “Some countries have suffered in trade agreements with the United States and the European Union. They’re not like Canadian agreements…but (the government) hasn’t done the work to differentiate Canada from this.”

The damage that organized drug crime has inflicted on the region would have been a good topic to raise, Dade added.

Canada is seeing this reticence clearly in its dealings with Caribbean leaders. The 15 members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have been dragging their heels on a free-trade deal with Canada because they would like the deal to include funding that would adjust for any economic losses to their people as a consequence of a pact – this despite the fact Canada is the largest donor to the Caribbean region.

Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, said he and other rights organizations were disappointed that Harper did not couple his rhetoric on trade with a vision for social justice and better protection for human rights.

“It certainly does seem that’s he’s been a bit of a solitary voice around this vision of free trade being the answer to all of the woes in the Americas,” Neve said.

“It seems pretty clear that a lot of the other leaders have either moved on from there, or while still interested feel there are other more pressing priorities that really need attention here.”

Harper arrived in Jamaica Sunday evening for an official visit, where he is expected to address a joint session of Parliament.

Diplomatic Engagement 101

In case anyone wondered how actually one [like a president, some members of Congress or a Canadian prime minister] would go about practicing diplomacy on the international stage, here are two examples from today alone.

I think this is why there used to be a red phone on a desk in the oval office:

The Obama administration said Wednesday it will participate directly in group talks with Iran over its suspect nuclear program, another significant shift from President George W. Bush’s policy toward a nation he labeled part of an axis of evil.

via US to attend group nuclear talks with Iran.

And then…

A “very energetic, very clear-thinking … very engaging” Fidel Castro met the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) on its weekend visit to Cuba.

…

“And so all we’re saying is, do we need to move forward to have constructive dialogue based on national sovereignty and mutual respect? And members of our delegation believe that that’s the case.”

via TheHill.com – Obama to be pressed on Cuba before summit.

See? That wasn’t so hard!

But then unbalanced Canadian prime ministers like Harper need to have a bad guy to rhetorically throttle now and again to build up their ego. If it isn’t George Galloway or Abousfian Abdelrazik it needs to be some kind of axis of evil.

Aren’t we yet done with that kind of bravado, when the perfect storm of  peak oil, a climate crisis and an economic meltdown from the rapacious nature of capitalism are stunting the required process of building resilience?

I’m tired of it all. How about you?

Plumping the Municipal Election

There is no grand prevailing wisdom about how people should vote. It’s hard enough to get people to show up at the polls as it is–and for many good reasons. But once people show up, there are competing views about how we should cast our votes: in this case, to plump or not to plump.

This is particularly important with municipal, district and school board elections on Saturday, November 15.

Voter turnout for local elections in BC is traditionally well below 50%. Add to this the recent 20 month US presidential election soap opera, another minority government election in Ottawa last month and for many in Vancouver, two provincial by-elections also last month. More on lessons from these later, though.

When we look at how to vote in local governments, it’s critical to understand how the “at-large” electoral process is different from voting provincially, federally and in the United States. In fact, understanding the at-large nature of local elections motivates a greater number of people to actually vote.

The at-large system is in some ways opposite to the first-past-the-post system in the provincial and federal elections. At-large means there are no ridings or constituencies within the municipality or regional district. Aside from casting one ballot for mayor, voters will vote from a pool of candidates anywhere from one to however many sit on each local council or school board.

This is where plumping comes in. If there are six spots beyond mayor on your city council we can vote for up to six candidates standing for election. But why not vote for one? This is plumping or bullet voting, where we target one or a small number of candidates to focus our vote on without diluting the effect of our vote by voting for other people who could end up beating our preferred candidate(s).

Many object to the spirit of plumping for some good reasons. They argue that it undermines the value of at-large voting where we get to vote for more than one candidate, unlike in provincial and federal elections. It can also undermine one view of the spirit of voting: if we are allowed six votes, we shouldn’t waste any of them.

Fans of plumping argue that most people are not familiar with enough candidates running to be able to cast completely informed votes. So many people want to avoid casting ballots for people who aren’t necessarily deserving of that vote.

Plus, our electoral system is broken, so we should make the best of it when we get that pencil in our hands. This is a tired refrain for many of us, but it is something you should be braced to hear much more of in the future as there are broad movements to fix our electoral process.

I won’t even go into the complications of the US Electoral College, that great 18th century relic that skews the popular vote to elect a president, but the provincial and federal systems are equally irrelevant.

First-past-the-post worked quite well a century ago when there were typically two parties running for government. With only two candidates in a riding, the winner will get more than 50% of the vote and wasted votes were always less than 50% of those cast.

But today, with five viable federal parties (even with the Bloc only in Quebec) and more than two viable parties in most provinces, first-past-the-post ensures millions of votes are wasted across the country.

Dreadfully, in 1988 Brian Mulroney was reelected prime minister and rammed his Free Trade Agreement through government when 43% of Canadians voted for his party, which perversely allowed him to get a majority government. Considering that voter turnout was only 72%, less than one-third of eligible votes actually voted for free trade. Now we need to clean up that illegitimate mess.

The electoral reform referendum almost passed in BC in 2005 and likely will this spring, even though a similar referendum only got around 37% support in Ontario’s election last fall [see the comments below]. But then again, Ontario has often been pivotal in Liberal and Conservative governments for all of Canadian history, so they likely aren’t eager to move to a proportional representation system and lose their inordinate electoral power.

Also, our system typically produces majority governments for parties that earn less than 50% of the popular vote, where federally, voter turnout has declined in almost every election since that disastrous free trade election in 1988.

With five viable federal parties, a voting system designed for a two-party system is obsolete, as are majority governments. So people have responded with coordinated vote swapping systems on the internet, and some rather complicated strategic voting schemes.

All this means that our electoral systems are up for debate.

When it comes to your municipal, district and school board votes on Saturday, ask yourself how many candidates you are capable of effectively evaluating. Search the web, check your municipality’s website. Get informed.

Then ask yourself how many of them you can truly support with integrity. And then vote responsibly. This will likely end up meaning that in Vancouver many COPE, Vision and Green supporters will likely only be voting for their own party’s candidates, despite the electoral agreement. The agreement does not outlaw plumping, after all.

And while you’re fighting off the strain of so many elections, look into BC-STV. That referendum will be on the ballot again on May 12, 2009 during our provincial election. It’s not a perfect proportional representation system, but it makes our current system look like the largely inadequate attempt at democracy we’ve been stuck with for our whole history.

So plump if you want to, but by all means make your vote matter–at least to yourself.

Welcome Back to Civilization, America!

Wendy Yuan’s Policy Emptiness is Bad for Vancouver-Kingsway

A vote for the NDP and Don Davies is a vote for progress, humanity and real political representation in Vancouver-Kingsway.

A vote for the Liberals and Wendy Yuan is a vote for the federal Liberal party “brand”, elitist and pro-corporate policies and the Paul Martin-David Emerson gang.

Worst of all, NOT voting is a vote for Wendy Yuan. Here’s why:

As far as I can tell, Wendy Yuan seems like a nice person: earnest, believing in the importance of a prosperous future for Canada [she owns a small business so you do the math] and somewhat down to earth.

But in the context of who we want representing us in parliament, she’s an empty vessel and fully uninspiring on the issues.

Don Davies has actually lived and volunteered in the riding for years, works for human rights and social and economic justice, and is interested in his fellow citizens in the riding and our concerns as opposed to pro-corporate issues or concerns of people who own big homes in Richmond like Wendy Yuan.

And without going into Wendy Yuan’s foibles which you can read about elsewhere:

• the tragic optics of the apartment she rented last fall in Collingwood to go along with her house in Richmond
• her probably good work with SUCCESS, the Richmond Economic Advisory Committee and SFU in Surrey [as opposed to any real work in Vancouver-Kingsway]
• whether she was involved in nomination meeting voter shenanigans, racially-divisive advertising, or supporting or failing to oppose China’s practice of murdering Falong Gong members for lucrative organs,

on what she actually brings to the table, she is a disastrous pick for MP.

You can review it for yourselves in a few places. Her YouTube site has a few vignettes of true policy emptiness that reflect her party’s abject refusal to address issues of real people. Its three features are so free of issues that we hear our anthem, see some pictures of her showing up at public events and trust-based service pledges. Empty otherwise.

She also seemed quite useless at the all-candidates meeting on October 7, 2008. While these videos may have neglected her best moments, what we do see is cringe-inducing.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• She lacks irony as she proudly claims to being the first democratically elected candidate, presumably in this round of elections, while for 2004 she stepped aside to help her colleague Paul Martin parachute the toxic David Emerson into this riding as the Liberal candidate. Whoops. But then we don’t really expect business people to demonstrate much facility with political, moral or social philosophy…and I should know, having been a business major when I first went to university.
• She totally dodged, but not even as “deftly” as Sarah Palin [whoops], a question on the SPP, claiming that among his criticisms, Don Davies’ facts may be wrong and that she would have to research them, so she wouldn’t comment on them. One of the facts was that Paul Martin was one of the original 3 Amigos who signed the deal: hard for her not to be aware of earlier this decade as she was “appointed as Leader’s Representative to the Liberal Party of Canada (BC) by then Prime Minister Paul Martin in 2004.”
• She continually talks about how she understands the issues of constituents, but living in Richmond, that is hard to believe, and given an opportunity to explain what the constituents care about, she shows little knowledge of anything beyond what immigrants and small business owners want [she is both]…oh yes, that and a desire to serve. But the problem is that she evidently wants to serve her party [remember the David Emerson connection] more than the largely poor and working class community of a riding she doesn’t live in.

In short, she is a master of cliche and substance-free “apparent” responses and comments in the all-candidates meeting and her own video vignettes. And she is quite a poor public speaker, with real difficulty framing ideas of any real substance beyond cliches and empty platitudes.

So how will this riding go tomorrow?

Reform/Conservative candidate [in name only] Salomon Rayek will not win. He didn’t even bother to show up at the all-candidates meeting. This was smart and the best option compared to actually being there and suffering the focus of how much everyone hates David Emerson. Showing up would actually end up costing the party votes and tax funding. And judging from the emptiness that Wendy Yuan showed in actual content breadth at the meeting, she should have thought about skipping the meeting too.

Rayek also will not win because his job is just to get out the Reform/Conservative vote. His flyer in the mail the other day also highlights his commitment to his party–instead of our constituents–and its boogeyman crime and punishment initiatives and tax cuts, he’s a blood donor[!], his children once attended schools in the riding and the best part: he’s the “president of a local Electoral District Association for the Conservative Party” which happens to be Delta-Richmond East. So he actually may live as far away from our riding as Wendy Yuan.

Since the Reform/Conservative party will not win Vancouver-Kingsway strategic voting to keep Harper out is irrelevant. A vote for Don Davies does just as much to reduce the Reform/Conservative representation as a vote for the policy-vacant Wendy Yuan.

Green party Doug Warkentin also won’t win. He’s a late entry candidate who admitted to not fully knowing his party’s platform at the all-candidates meeting and showed a distinct lack of breadth of knowledge of federal issues, but he sure sounded like an earnest, caring man. Just like Wendy Yuan. So she earned no more support than he did based on her performance.

No one from the small parties will get much of a vote either.

So that leaves NDP candidate Don Davies as the candidate that should win. During the all-candidates meeting he showed a fantastic breadth of knowledge of issues, with far more policy knowledge than Wendy Yuan. He was articulate, thoughtful and spoke of real people’s concerns, fears and hopes.

But winning means getting the vote out. Democracy in Canada is largely sub-contracted. People haven’t typically been directly engaged or even committed as members of parties. They vote sporadically and let professional political parties, lobbyists and activists do their business, however corrupt and deceitful it can be at times. This is why Wendy Yuan’s little YouTube ads don’t really say anything of substance. It’s all about the party brand, not about mobilized human beings.

And the Liberal Party is no more populist than it was with the sponsorship scandal kneecapped them.

So when we look for how the Obama bump affects Canada we see that individual voter disenchantment with big party politics that has become a social movement after initially crystalizing around Obama in the USA, has moved into Canada raising bazillions of dollars for the NDP, increasing their poll standing and reflecting the reality that the NDP has been the official opposition for two and a half years while over 40 times the federal Liberals abstained on votes in the last parliament, giving the Harper Reform/Conservatives a de facto majority. Why did they abstain? They weren’t confident of being able to win at least a minority government if they opposed the government on a confidence motion.

And why are we voting tomorrow? Because Harper himself crashed his own parliament since the Liberals wouldn’t. If I were Wendy Yuan, I’d be afraid of that too.

And while Harper called this election for many reasons, two of them underscore why Don Davies should win tomorrow:

1. Harper, being a US-Republican American Idol, cannot be re-elected to anything if Obama wins the presidential election. A shift to the populist “left” in the USA will remove his cover of having a more radical soft fascist in the White House. Even though the Democrats are Republicans-Lite, an Obama election is a rejection of the fear-mongering conservatism that has ruled North America this decade. Bad for Wendy Yuan is that Paul Martin’s co-creation of the SPP and the North American Union puts that stink on her, and would have even if she weren’t close to him personally. So Harper has shot for re-election before the US election and the Liberals are no more ready to govern than they have been for the last 30 months.
2. The global economic meltdown hurts everyone with conservative fiscal policies. Even the director of the anti-human International Monetary Fund has characterized this “event” as dire. So who pays for this? Harper’s Reform/Conservative party and the Liberals, whose fiscal platform is so identical to the Harper gang that after David Emerson crossed the floor he justified himself grandly by telling the truth that the parties were essentially the same to him. And Paul Martin spent years making Canada the envy of the world [as Wendy Yuan was eager to keep repeating at the all-candidates meeting] because of the balanced budgets and surpluses created by gutting Canada’s social programs. So Saloman Rayek was wise to skip the all-candidates meeting, but Wendy Yuan didn’t figure that out: the Liberals’ de-regulated fiscal free trade policies are just as much responsible for the economic disaster we’re in now as the Harper government.

So it’s time to vote tomorrow and it’s time to tell everyone you know in Vancouver-Kingsway to get out and vote for Don Davies, unless they are committed to solid, corporate-friendly, 20th century politics that ignores real people and real issues. And if that’s the case, they’re part of the problem.

Capitalism as Extortion: 700,000,000,000 Ways

Over the last 7 days, I’ve been watching the repulsive song and dance in the USA to bail out some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. Congress finally passed bailout legislation today.

But instead of reforming the system that allowed the kind of greed and manipulation we’ve seen, we see capitalist extortion at work. The price is $700,000,000,000 from US taxpayers, their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren…most of whom aren’t yet born so they have no political rights in this situation.

In this bailout, we see an arbitrarily derived number, $700,000,000,000, borrowed from non-US banks and added to the US debt. The money is essentially a gift to maintain the solvency of the financial firms at risk of tanking. Despite all the free market competition rhetoric from the neoliberal, neo-conservative Democratic and Republican White Houses for the last 3 decades, the government has chosen to intervene in the market to avoid the socio-economic ramifications of the collapse of so many firms. Surely, their collapse would be devastating to the US economy and the rest of the world, but the nature of this bailout says a great deal about options not embraced.

The Cause

This is perhaps debatable, but the sub-prime mortgage collapse last year is the likely trigger of this mass insolvency.

The US economy has been in trouble for a long time. Right after 9/11 Bush’s initial advice to Americans was to go shopping. Their economy is so dependent on consumer purchasing that if it were to stall, their trade imbalances and currency stability would crash, leading to a domestic and likely global depression. Canada is not much better. Such is the desperation of those running the US economy that they have supported a massive culture of consumer debt to underwrite increasing spending. This cannot go on forever.

Part of this consumer debt cycle is the sub-prime mortgage. Financial institutions lured desperate people who are reasonably unable to buy homes or expensive homes, to purchase them beyond their means with interest rates temporarily below the prime rate. Just like pyramid schemes, the system was profitable…for a while. Then it becomes untenable. Last summer, the sub-prime mortgage market crashed.

A humourous and accurate portrayal of this crisis is this short cartoon, well worth watching and spreading around: http://www.businesspundit.com/sub-prime/

The sub-prime crisis was a warning that went unheeded. It indicated that consumers were overextended and financial institutions were overextended in their lending. That left both citizens and institutions vulnerable to slight problems that could push them over the edge.

Options

There are several options available to the US government in recent weeks. They include the following:

1. Let the corporations collapse
2. Pay off their debts
3. Nationalize them

1. Let the corporations collapse

Capitalism is all about risk and reward. Even though Canada and the USA do not allow people to drop their student loan debt when declaring bankruptcy, corporations can drop all their debt if they orchestrate their collapse effectively enough. Bankruptcy is designed to stimulate entrepreneurship. The problem comes when corporations get so large and powerful that their collapse has devastating ripples throughout society: job loss, pension fund collapse, currency devaluation, increased trade imbalances, recession, depression, increased working class and middle class bankruptcy and homelessness.

Governments that espouse free market principles, deregulate and undermine their own ability to intervene in markets are faced with a painful choice: live up to their free market ideals and let insolvent corporations collapse and allow their society to suffer, or pretend it’s OK to intervene sometimes and dodge criticisms of pulling a socialist tactic to save the economy.

Clearly, letting corporations collapse is painful medicine. CEOs have gambled that the government will not let them crash. Thus they have a get out of jail free card allowing them to behave irresponsibly knowing that the taxpayers will bail them out. Sounds like extortion to me. Ah, if only the taxpayers had bailed out Enron and Worldcom there wouldn’t be such hardship! Maybe.

2. Pay off their debts

Any kind of bailout package that shores up the insolvency of these financial institutions will allow them to survive another day, minimize some or most of the negative ripples they’ve instigated and keep the economy from tipping too far over the cliff overlooking depression. The US government today has guaranteed that these firms will survive another day, at least until the next crisis. But the US citizen has no true accountability from the financial sector or the government. While a future White House is required to prepare and monitor a payback plan, there is nothing actually requiring the $700,000,000,000 to be repaid to the consumers/taxpayers who have been lured into over-consumption in the first place.

3. Nationalize them

As the UK has done, instead of taking citizens’ and future citizens’ wealth to give to the irresponsible extortionists in their troubled financial firms, the government has nationalized some of the firms. This means the government, on behalf of current and future citizens, has taken actual ownership of the firms. Sure, they intend to sell them off again, but at least Joe and Margaret Citizen get an asset for their forced investment of wealth.

Fear-Mongering and Inducing Panic

So how is the USA coping with this crisis? The other night on Anderson Cooper’s show on CNN, queen of hysteria Suze Orman shared her thoughts. Her personal opinion is that the current crisis will not recover until the middle of the next decade. She continued by advising people who expect to retire in the next 10 years to get their money out of the market.

This is a fascinating and dangerous piece of advice. The first of the baby boomers are in their early 60s right now. In 10 years, most of the boomers will be in retirement age. Orman, has thus advised the largest portion of the biggest demographic blip of the last century to extract their wealth from the market.

Granted, the market is over-inflated. The bubble needs a correction. This explains some or most of the trillions of dollars of air leaking out of global markets in recent weeks. But when Orman says you can recover what you’re losing now after 10 years, boomers who can’t wait a decade to retire will be pulling out their cash, risking a run on the market.

Hysteria and fear-based withdrawal of wealth from a market tends to accelerate into a run as the desire to sell outpaces the desire to buy, causing stock prices to fall, potentially even below book value of companies themselves. At the same time, there is predatory buying, as we’re seeing now as behemoth corporations are buying up simply gigantic companies leading to less competition and more oligopolistic collusion.

The 1994 Mexican Peso Crisis

This kind of bailout is not completely new. In 1994, the Mexican peso crisis led to the USA orchestrating a $50 billion loan guarantee. Canada coughed up a hefty $1 billion, significant for a population of less than 30 million people then. The crisis came from the convergence of a number of incidents including the new Mexican government devaluing their currency, an act that was aggravated by a run by investors to dump the peso, thus compounding the tailspin.

US motivations for bailing out the weakening peso orbited around protecting US banks from bad loans. Does that sound familiar? So using taxpayer dollars to extend loans to support a foreign currency to keep domestic banks from suffering is a transfer of wealth from the mostly unborn future generations of Americans [and Canadians] indirectly to US banks that were greedy and stupid enough to extend such loans in the first place. But then, is it greed and stupidity when you behave like an extortionist and the system lets and encourages you?

The 1979 Chrysler Bailout

Another example of this capitalist extortion-based bailout involved Chrysler 30 years ago. In 1979 the US government spent $1.5 billion on loan guarantees for the virtually bankrupt Chrysler corporation. As one of the big 3 car makers in the USA, a bankrupt Chrysler would have meant a significant blow to the USA’s industrial capacity. The free market dictates that entrepreneurialism has rewards and risks. The fact that capitalist societies shelter capitalist activity with benefits like limited shareholder liability and bankruptcy protection seems to not be enough. When Chrysler was in dire need of assistance, the government intervened with taxpayer dollars to interfere with the hallowed free market of capitalists to protect the national economy from a body blow.

With these bailouts, what incentive do CEOs and entrepreneurs have to avoid running their corporations into the ground. If you owe the bank $300,000 for your mortgage, you work for the bank. If you owe the bank $300,000,000, the bank works for you because if you default on your loan, it goes out of business. This is the extortionist principle that has worked the last several weeks. Not so surprisingly, the threat of a massive foreign debt default by developing countries has never materialized despite its potential to reform the global trade and currency regime. So not everyone can pull of that kind of threat.

What the Bailout Doesn’t Do for Suffering People

By the time the House eventually voted for the amended bailout package today, some “members of the Congressional Black Caucus…said they changed course after securing commitments from presidential candidate Barack Obama that he would back legislation to help struggling consumers and homeowners facing foreclosures if he wins the White House.”

This is a nice sentiment, but when the bailout package is initially designed to help obscenely rich corporations instead of actual human beings suffering in this crisis, we see the clear priorities of the bailout’s supporters. We heard it too on CNN last weekend as announcers kept referring to the importance of helping “the financial firms that are suffering.”

Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine

The themes of Naomi Klein’s latest book on disaster capitalism fit well with the last few weeks. Extortionist capitalists have overextended their institutions past solvency. Since their existence is parasitically symbiotic with the bone marrow of the US society, letting them die would threaten the existence of the host. When the public purse comes to the rescue, we see a massive transfer of wealth from humans to the corporations (and their rich investors) that have contributed to their insolvency. The neoliberal agenda is advanced and the tens of millions of dollars the finance executives have been making in recent years looks like a good investment to shareholders since they can run the corporate profits up with unsustainable business practices and then get the people of the land to reimburse them for their irresponsibility.

Any time we see a fiscally conservative government cut taxes to the rich while increasing them to lower income groups, it is a wealth transfer from the poor and middle income groups to the rich. This is pure theft. What we’ve seen in recent weeks is the same pattern, all through the lens of a dire financial crisis.

Solutions

So what would really work to improve the situation we are in?

Firstly, the rapacious, over-consumptive social norm is unsustainable in any economic, social or ecological sense. Watch The Story of Stuff now if you haven’t yet!

Secondly, deregulated neoliberal capitalism allows a psychotic parasite to imprison us all. Society has the right to regulate its market activities. We need to enhance our regulatory capacity in many ways, including invoking our right to revoke the state-bestowed charters of corporations that are destructive in their behaviour.

Thirdly, we need to seriously re-think the notion of limited liability for shareholders. Allowing most of us in society to indirectly and ignorantly own stakes in dozens of corporations without having to worry about their destructive activities creates a culture of irresponsibility. Enacting investor liability will force us all to pay some attention to what our investments reap. It may throw a wet blanket on rampant, “innovative” entrepreneurialism, but I think we’ve seen enough of the horrible consequences of such innovation in recent generations that a little responsibility is necessary now. And in the end, the profit-maximizing corporate model is inherently unsustainable in a world of finite resources. Removing limited liability for investors will encourage most of us to explore more sustainable market models like co-operatives.

Fourth, we need to pull out the sledgehammers and destroy the crumbling vestiges of the economically imperialistic global trade and finance regime: the WTO, IMF and World Bank. That triumvirate of exploitation is being undermined monthly by countries and movements that reject the free trade cult in favour of trade and development plans that put people, social and physical infrastructure and the environment first.

Fifth, read what progressives are saying about the bailout, what problems will still exist, and alternative ways of addressing these toxic problems. Alternet.org is a good start. So is spending a minute and a half watching Dennis Kucinich explain a better focus than the bailout.

Some Common Sense

In the end, this crisis was inevitable. The overinflated market needed a correction. Housing bubbles in Vancouver and many other cities need to be corrected. Markets respond to positive and negative hysteria to create and deflate bubbles. And along the way regular people lose their life savings, homes and economic freedom. The collateral damage is simply intolerable. That is why the US House of Representatives initially voted down the bailout: they have to get re-elected every 2 years. The bailout saves Wall Street, not the citizens.

Without a fundamental rejection of market-based greed and over-consumption, this crisis will be far from the last one. As long as we neglect systemic changes, we will continue to suffer. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, our continental and global economic system is insane and so are we if we think it will fix itself while we ignore its systemic flaws. Shame on us if we let that happen.

The Venezuelan-Russia-USA Dance

We should all be noting a few things about escalating dance between the USA and Venezuela.

A few months ago, after 58 years of being a part of the larger US Second Fleet, the USA reconstituted its Fourth Fleet to enhance its presence in its traditional sphere of influence: Latin America, perhaps the most successful political opposition to the USA’s imperial positions of late, with an electoral machine opposing US hegemony virtually consistently.

And as much as Venezuela is increasing its trade relations with China, the next economic superpower after the USA economically implodes, Chavez has been talking with Russia about getting technology to become the third South American country to develop nuclear energy capacity, while working on joint naval operations with Russia.

Hawks in the USA spins this as reminiscent of one to three generations ago of the Russian Bear infiltrating the USA’s sphere of influence, the sphere itself being an inherently arrogant and imperialist assertion. The Soviet Union’s involvement in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America freaked out the USA during the Cold War. Russian-Venezuelan cooperation on the military and nuclear energy has the potential to either provoke an increasingly desperate and declining empire to rash actions, or more hopefully, to let the increasingly more introspective and protectionist USA know that just because they are part of the Americas doesn’t mean they’re in charge.

And unlike the first 9/11 in Chile in 1973 where the Americans coordinated a coup of the democratically elected government and installed Pinochet, the hemisphere won’t go quietly.

How Many More Wars Do You Want, Anyway?

Pick a number, then vote McCain:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJUCU1UH2w]

Some context:

Sarah Palin said two things which can be pegs for an attack ad of this kind:

1. War with Russia could happen over the Georgia conflict

2. Soldiers going to Iraq are fighting the people who killed thousands of Americans on Sept. 11.

The Imploding US Economy, or the Economic Stimulus Package as Canary in the Coal Mine

Roughly 20 years ago I was writing about how the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement was like handcuffing ourselves to a drowning man.

I’ve watch the American Empire defeat the Soviet Evil Empire. I’ve watch it champion Fukuyama’s end of history, neoliberal globalization and outsourcing, and the rise of soft fascism in the w.Caesar era.

I remember as a kid watching Chinese acrobats on TV. One of the coolest things was the plate spinning where a person would put a dinner plate on top of a stick and spin it, then do another until there were many plates all spinning. The trick was to keep them spinning so none would crash to the ground. Then, I suppose, the trick was to stop them all without any breaking either.

This is the American economy. Well, it’s the global economy really.

After 9/11, w.Caesar told everyone to go out and shop. An insane national directive in a time of existential crisis, but when you think about what it takes to maintain the American economy, that was exactly the right advice.

But let’s look at a few things:

• early in his presidency w.Caesar tried to get the Chinese to increase the value of what Americans believed to be their artificially deflated currency
• when the Chinese refused, oddly, the US currency started tanking; it’s now essentially on par with the Canadian dollar
• America has an unmanageable and increasing trade deficit with China and others
• American consumers are addicted to cheap Chinese goods, which creates the trade imbalance because the Chinese are not addicted to whatever it is that America produces these days [if you haven't yet seen the movie Other People's Money you need to watch it so you can enjoy the poignancy of Gregory Peck's speech at the end about how America doesn't actually make anything anymore]
• the Chinese government invests its surplus US cash back into 90-day US treasury bills, essentially enabling the US currency to remain as solvent as it is; 35 years ago, the Saudis invested their petrodollars in US real estate and corporations
• one day coming up, the Chinese will stop rolling over its newly cashed-out T-bills into the next series of T-bills because the 300 million Chinese who make up the middle class of their market economy [unlike the half a billion impoverished rural folk who enable that middle class to exist] will be able to do more business with Brazil, Venezuela, Russia and India [with its growing middle class], so who needs to keep American consumers able to buy cheap Chinese products anymore; this will thrust America into a depression that the Chinese will likely be able to just side-step
• there are only 300 million Americans [in total]
• the American middle class [the consumers of cheap Chinese products] is declining fast
• the sub-prime mortgage implosion is indicative of the malaise of over-extended credit

So what does the US Congress do in all this? They run around faster trying to keep the plates spinning a little bit more. Echoes of “go shopping” abound as in classic neoliberal fashion, the US government defunds itself a little more by sending out a $150 billion economic stimulus package approved in February.

This package gives most Americans around $300 or more each to go shopping. This money comes from tax revenue, thereby making government smaller. It is essentially a tax cut which people will hopefully spend on WiiFit or something equally criminally stupid instead of paying off some 19-29% credit card debt. How do you spell usury anyway?

This is desperation, ladies and gentleman. This is the macro-economic equivalent to the sweat whipping of your brow as you run around the stage ever faster trying to keep the plates from crashing to the ground.

But the stimulus package isn’t really the canary in the coal mine. We’re well past that. The canary was the US real estate bubble, or maybe even NAFTA.

This package, though, is a desperate move 8 months before an election to keep the recession from turning into a Recession or d/Depression.

It’s also a cynical method of pursuing neoliberal government downsizing at the expense of hundreds of millions of Americans who are going to be up to even more debt, needing more storage lockers for their consumer purchases they can’t fit in their homes, and more vulnerable to insolvency–like their nation’s economy–when the plates slow down and hit the ground.

And instead of the government pulling a Keynesian move by investing in infrastructure projects with the massive multiplier effects of robust economic spinoff in communities, it bleeds its collective wealth a little bit more.

And Canada, being handcuffed to this drowning man, will suffer as well since over 80% of our exports go to America. And while NAFTA requires Canada to never reduce the percentage of oil and gas, this imploding economic context may be what it takes to cancel NAFTA. It takes a letter of a couple sentences in length announcing our intention to bail on it, or parts of it 6 months from the date of the letter.

Keep your eyes peeled. Listen for the sound of plates smashing. Get resilient.

Justifying Invading Iran, Or Is It Iraq Again?

In a strange deja vu, the build-up to the Iraq invasion is taking place again with Iran: this time with Canada on board with the UN Security Council rhetoric.

Where Chretien fell down, Prime Minister Steve is stepping up!

March 3, 2008 (8:00 p.m. EST)
No. 47

CANADA SUPPORTS ADOPTION OF NEW SANCTIONS RESOLUTION AGAINST IRAN

The Honourable Maxime Bernier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the following statement regarding the adoption of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1803 imposing additional sanctions against Iran:

“Canada fully supports the adoption of this resolution by the Security Council, which results from Iran’s failure to comply with its international obligations under resolutions 1696, 1737 and 1747—namely, that Iran must suspend all sensitive nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing activities. Iran must also take steps to fully rebuild confidence that its nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes by, among other things, implementing the Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement, pursuant to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“We are deeply concerned that Iran has failed to clarify a number of outstanding issues around its nuclear program, as noted in the February 22, 2008, report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Agency has asked Iran to clarify remaining questions on reports that it is pursuing studies relevant to weaponization of nuclear materials. Iran must fully cooperate with the IAEA to resolve these outstanding issues in order to clearly demonstrate that its program is solely intended for peaceful purposes.

“New sanctions under Resolution 1803 include a travel ban for targeted Iranian officials, a freeze of assets of newly designated Iranian companies and officials, additional restrictions on the sale of identified dual-use items to Iran, and a call for governments to withdraw financial support for trade with Iran, to dissuade domestic financial institutions from entering into transactions that could support Iran’s nuclear activities, and to inspect cargo going in and out of Iran via identified carriers. As with UNSC resolutions 1737 and 1747, Canada will ensure its full compliance with the decisions of the Security Council through Canadian domestic law.

“Canada notes that China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States have renewed their proposed package of incentives, which offers a suspension of further discussion of Iran’s nuclear program by the UN Security Council in exchange for Iran’s suspension of sensitive nuclear activities and implementation of the Additional Protocol. This proposal promotes a resumption of dialogue on broader political, security and economic issues. Canada strongly encourages Iran to pursue this proposal.”

- 30 -

For further information, media representatives may contact:

Foreign Affairs Media Relations Office
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
613-995-1874

Why I’d Rather Cast a Ballot in Venezuela than Canada or the USA

With Canada’s 19th-century first past the post electoral system and the USA’s rampant electoral fraud and conflicts of interest, voting in Venezuela seems like a tonic.

And in Venezuela’s recent referendum on political change that failed by roughly the same infinitesimal vote as Quebec’s referendum failed a decade or so ago, the North American media cabal is decrying it a triumphant victory for freedom fighters.

Despite that hyperbole, Venezuela’s democracy receives most of my envy. Why?

Here’s why:

Venezuela is Not Florida

By Mark Weisbrot

December 5, 2007, McClatchy Tribune Information Services

Last Monday, with less than 90 percent of the vote counted and the opposition leading by just 50.7 percent to 49.3 percent, President Chavez congratulated his opponents on their victory. They had defeated his proposed constitutional reforms, including the abolition of term limits for the presidency.

No one should have been surprised by Chavez’s immediate concession: Venezuela is a constitutional democracy, and its government has stuck to the democratic rules of the game since he was first elected in 1998. Despite the non-renewal of the broadcast license for a major TV station in May – one that wouldn’t have gotten a license in any democratic country – Venezuela still has the most oppositional media in the hemisphere. But the U.S. media has managed to convey the impression to most Americans that Venezuela is some sort of dictatorship or near-dictatorship.

Some of this disinformation takes place through mere repetition and association (e.g. “communist Cuba” appearing in thousands of news reports) — just as 70 percent of Americans were convinced, prior to the Iraq war, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the massacres of September 11. In that case, the major media didn’t even believe the message, but somehow it got across and provided justification for the war.

In the case of Venezuela, the media is more pro-active, with lots of grossly exaggerated editorials and op-eds, news articles that sometimes read like editorials, and a general lack of balance in sources and subject matter.

But Venezuela is not Pakistan. In fact, it’s not Florida or Ohio either. One reason that Chavez could be confident of the vote count is that Venezuela has a very secure voting system. This is very different from the United States, where millions of citizens cast electronic votes with no paper record. Venezuelan voters mark their choice on a touch-screen machine, which then records the vote and prints out a paper receipt for the voter. The voter then deposits the vote in a ballot box. An extremely large random sample – about 54 percent – of the paper ballots are counted and compared with the electronic tally.

If the two counts match, then that is a pretty solid guarantee against electronic fraud. Any such fraud would have to rig the machines and stuff the ballot boxes to match them – a trick that strains the imagination.

In 2007, Venezuelans once again came in second for all of Latin America in the percentage of citizens who are satisfied or very satisfied with their democracy, according to the prestigious Chilean polling firm Latinobarometro – 59 percent, far above the Latin American average of 37 percent.

It is not only the secure elections that are responsible for this result – it is also that the government has delivered on its promises to share the nation’s oil wealth with the poor and the majority. For most people – unlike the pundits here – voting for something and actually getting what you voted for are also an important part of democracy.

The Bush Administration has consistently sought regime change in Venezuela, even before Chavez began regularly denouncing “the Empire.” According to the U.S. State Department, Washington funded leaders and organizations involved in the coup which briefly overthrew Chavez’s democratically elected government in April 2002. The Washington Post reported this week that the Bush Administration has been funding unnamed student groups, presumably opposition, up to and including this year.

Venezuela must be seen as undemocratic, and Chavez as the aggressor against the United States, in order to justify the Bush Administration’s objective of regime change. As in the run-up to the Iraq war, most of the major media are advancing the Administration’s goals, regardless of the intentions of individual journalists.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.