Tag Archives: populism

Why You Don’t Know About the Uncut Movement

We all need to read up on the Uncut Movement. Canadians, Americans, British, Australians, whoever. But the first rhetorical question is why hasn’t the corporate media been promoting it as a significant populist movement?

Or maybe you like public spending cuts? You don’t think high quality public education and healthcare, and treated drinking water and sewage aren’t actually human rights for all, rich or poor?

You maybe think tax cuts and domestic tax havens and no BC tax on the first $500,000 of corporate revenue starting January 1, 2012 is good because you are winning the class war?

If so, we outnumber you. Significantly. And we’re mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore.

Deadbeat dads are increasingly vilified in our society. Why not deadbeat corporations? Technically, they aren’t deadbeat corporations because the cronies they fund who get elected set up the rules so that tax cuts are God’s Divine Plan[tm] and perfectly legal. And when you think about it, weak or unenforced laws create deadbeat dads too.

Then from tax cuts, we get crippled governments forced to cut public services.

The Uncut movement is my kind of tax revolt. It recognizes that society functions well when we have fair taxation that can provide basic human rights for everyone, rich or poor. It recognizes that things are cheaper and better when we buy them together as a society.

Why do you think people want a national pharmacare plan? It’s cheaper to buy things in bulk and if the nation bought our drugs collectively, we’d get a better deal. Why don’t we have it? Big Pharma and the politicians they fund to get elected don’t want to lose out on profits if we starting buying for 34,000,000 at a time.

That is also why the BC Liberal party cancelled UBC’s Therapeutic Initiatives program that independently examines drugs to see what works and what is a waste of money, in part because federal regulators have had their regulatory teeth pulled. The program costs $1,000,000 annually and saved $53,000,000 last year. Hello Big Pharma.

Deadbeat corporations. Deadbeat, greedy, tax-avoiding people. They’re becoming social pariahs. It’s about time.

So read up on the Uncut movement. It’s on fire in Twitter. You can see it in national movements for Canadians, Americans, British, and Australians.

And you can probably now understand why the mainstream corporate media is not showering you with the movement. This is a do-it-yourself movement, like democracy ought to be: by the people, for the people.

We see Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Libya and a host of repressive, anti-democratic middle eastern states awash in people’s democracy movements. We see regressive, anti-worker legislation in Republican dominated Wisconsin and Ohio. And we remember how Gordon Campbell was ahead of the curb in cancelling public sector worker collective bargaining rights 9 years ago despite it violating our Charter rights.

Now you’ll see that this is a class war: the rich and the corporation directors, who are looking to cut taxes and privatize public services to pad their profits, versus real working people who are having services, wages and benefits cut to pay for the bailouts for the irresponsible corporations.

And while we’ve been afraid of a North American Union that would be a corporate haven, we should actually be mobilizing for a North American Union whose principles are to unite for a better world for real human beings, especially the poor, and not those fake human beings called corporations.

It’s time to get Uncut!

Be an evangelist. The poorest 95% of our society needs us working together on this. But it demands solidarity!

Let’s make 2011 a massive re-democratizing year all around the world.

Tracking the BC Liberal Party’s Internal Democratic Deficit

It’s astonishing what kind of democratic deficit exists within the BC Liberal party. Their constitution calls for a one-member-one-vote leadership election, but the party has far from a robust, geographically membership base on the ground. How will they ever decide how to pick a new leader?

Energy Minister Bill Bennett said the voting system must be changed so that the vote isn’t entirely controlled by party members from the densely populated Lower Mainland.

Mr. Abbott, like Mr. Bennett, comes from a largely rural riding where the one-member, one-vote system would be a drawback.

via Behind-the-scenes battle raging in Liberal Party – The Globe and Mail.

Sure, no ever accused the BC Liberals of being overly populist. They are a corporate comprador party that happens to have human members. Candidates are parachuted into ridings and even “members” of the party are not eligible to actually vote for the leader without paying an additional fee that the party executive sets: two-tiered democracy! No surprise here.

The additional fee is offensive on principle, but in practice, it may end up being a fundraising vehicle or a manufactured barrier to participation. Imagine the provincial executive meeting this weekend sets a $1,000 fee for transforming oneself from a “common” member to a “preferred” member capable of voting for a leader.

This government has always been a fan of market-based Darwinian inequality over universality, so it would be no surprise to see a significant barrier to participating in a vote for the leader.

The party is locked into a “one person, one vote” mechanism – now the party’s constitutional lawyer is reviewing just how much flexibility can be wrung from that wording.

A core alternative is to allow delegated voting, so that each of the 85 ridings would be able to cast equal ballots.

What all this reflects is that the party does not care about, or is incapable of, expanding meaningful membership depth in all areas of the province. With a 4-year party membership costing only $10, and with a preponderance of members in the lower mainland, perhaps the party should reap what it neglects: one-member-one-vote means those who bother to join get to vote, the rest of the province be damned.

If the party neglects most regions of the province, so be it.

But if the party wants to move to a delegated voting system, and its constitutional lawyer can tease that out of the constitution, then the party will essentially be admitting an error in not caring about developing a broad membership base around the province.

It sure looks bad for them either way.

What is certain is that the tone of political expectations is changing in the 21st century. Organizations with overt expressions that oppose rich, populist, inclusive democratic participation risk losing their significance. The declining voter turnout reflects that shift in expectations.

The rest of November is sure to be tumultuous for politics in BC. When the BC Liberal executive pins down some details of the leadership convention this weekend, contenders will react and jockey. When the BC NDP provincial council meets the following weekend in Victoria, the nature of their deliberations will be affected by what happens with the Liberal executive this weekend. Since the NDP provincial council is largely comprised of delegates from the 85 riding associations, there is a great opportunity for participatory democracy to occur.

Things are moving fast. Don’t go more than a few days without keeping up.