Political Free-for-all
Oh looky here, a can of worms! Lets open it!
Just in case you didn’t know, there’s a provincial election coming up next week. So for this weeks open-topic Friday lets do a politically charged free-for-all. This is the place to post your thoughts on who is best prepared to lead BC through this recession. Who has the best housing policy? How much control does the provincial government have over issues like affordability and homelessness? Would the Single Transferable Vote system change provincial politics for the better or worse?
-The Green Party of BC
-The BC NDP
-The BC Liberals
-The 29 other parties running
-BC Single Transferable Vote
-Patriotz on housing policy and politics
You are of course welcome to also post links to economic news as normal, but let’s hear what you think about BC politics as well. Good voting to you all, keep it civilized and have an excellent weekend!
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patriotz Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Gordo: I have the best clothes on earth!
Carole: You should wear union made clothes and buy some for poor people.
Jane: You should wear organic fibre clothes.
Boy: But Mommy, Emperor Gordo isn’t wearing any clothes!
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Don Lapre Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 7:38 am
I think all of the parties are equally qualified: they are all incompetent and pander to special interests.
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Dave Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 7:49 am
The BC Liberals are the most capable and prepared to lead. The NDP is devoid of ideas and is simply the party of ‘no’. The Green party has ideas, but it would be lunacy to enact them.
I think homelessness and affordability are two different issues. I think the Province should be involved in the former, but not the latter. I think municipalities could do a lot more to create affordable housing by being less bureaucratic and more creative. They should enable developers to build lower cost units (e.g. smaller square footage, less parking, etc..).
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mino3 Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 7:56 am
what are the downsides of STV system? That website is obviously not going to tell me.
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Hibernating bear Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 8:03 am
CBC reports that the city has finally secured financing for the olympic village. Glad they will be able to complete and flood the market further
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TUT Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 8:38 am
It doesn’t matter who you vote for regarding the economy. Government never created wealth in the past nor in the present and more likely will be the same in the future.
Some “increases” you may expect for sure are:
- Taxes
- Their own salaries
- Their cronies salaries
- Unfulfilled promises
- Verbosity
- Inefficiency
- Unaccountability
- etc.
If you want to improve the economy better figure out what is your part and try to do it.
Even better, get deep into debt and wait for the government to bail you out to keep the party going.
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realpaul Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Bwahahahahahahah, just in time for the election, an Increase in job creation is announced, but it’s a whopper of a lie.
As has been suggested on an earlier string EI cheques have stopped rolling in for the first wave of layoff victims from the fall 08. NOW, the government has decided to try to RENAME the EI recipients who have fallen off the pogey train as Self Employed. Bwhahahahahahahahaha what a laugh that is.
“Statistics Canada said self-employment accounted for 37,000 of the positions created in April, while the number of employees in the public and private sectors was little changed. ”
http://www.vancouversun.com/bu.....story.html
So by calling the terminally unemployed ‘ self employed’ because they no longer qualified for EI, VOILA jobs have been magically been created!!!! Wow, what bunk, who can be stupid enough to believe it?
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realpaul Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 10:20 am
As you see, the US numbers are still staggering with 539,000 official jobs lost. The CDN gov’t ‘good news’ is just bullshit to a small audience of captive fools.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
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sean Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 10:53 am
I strongly encourage everyone reading this blog to vote Yes for BC-STV. This is quite possibly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix our broken electoral system.
The current system (First Past the Post) comes from 12th century England and is hopelessly inadequate in a modern multi-party democracy. FPTP delivers perverse election outcomes like the 2001 provincial election where the Liberals took 97% of the votes with only 57% of the votes. If you’re a Liberal supporter and thought that was just great, then I give you the 1996 election. In 1996, victory was snatched from the Liberals by the NDP, even though the Liberals got more of the popular vote. At the riding level, MLAs are often elected with as little as ~30% of the vote! That means that ~70% of people voted against them, yet they still won! FPTP is a system that is particularly (perhaps uniquely) adept at delivering unfair, disproportionate election results.
In contrast, BC-STV was selected by the Citizen’s Assembly, a group of 160 randomly selected ordinary people, as the best system to deliver fair, proportional election results. Those guys spent almost a year studying all the available systems and chose BC-STV. That’s a ringing endorsement if there ever was one.
Moreover, one of the most compelling reasons to vote Yes for BC-STV is the fact that the No side is being run by a bunch of political hacks, lobbyists and backroom boys. These guys are very well served by the current system which delivers them power and money on a silver platter. If you believe government should serve the people, not the politicians, then you have to vote to reform the electoral system and shake up these fat cats.
Don’t believe the myths being spread by the No side. E.g. the system is too complex; It will result in less accountability and more party power; etc. For a dose of reality take a look at: http://www.stv.ca
If you are interested in understanding the minutia of how votes are counted under BC-STV go to: http://www.trystv.ca But remember, to cast a ballot under BC-STV all you have to do is rank candidates in order of your preference (1, 2, 3 …) You can rank as many or as few as you want, even just one (in which case it’s equivalent to just marking an X).
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realpaul Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
COV mayor orders ‘extra police protection’ for cyclists. OMG what is this city coming to?
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VanLoverBoy Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Jobs up. 17,000 new jobs in BC. House prices here will continue semper sursum!!!
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kissmyshinymetalclass Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Rafe Mair, the ex-Socred cabinet minister come radio personality makes a case for voting NDP this time:
http://www.straight.com/articl.....l-vote-ndp
Now that’s gotta hurt!
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Jeff Barkley Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I’ll be voting NDP. I would hate to have saved for years,waited until prices moderated, only to be saddled with mega debt via the Liberal initiated selloff of our rivers. BC Hydro is being forced to pay these new IPP’s 12 cents per kwh, and they will be forced to sell it at no more than 5 cents per kwh. BC Hydro has more than enough power for British Columbia’s needs, this extra generating capacity is pure profit for Campbells friends in the corporations and for export only. The list of former BC Liberal this and thats that are now on the boards of all of these new power companies is prodigious.
This will dramatically force the cost of heating our (future) homes higher and higher, as we subsidize the profits of those best described as “the pig men”.
How will homeowners in Vancouver handle the tax load of the billion dollar PPP boondoggle village?
When the artificially stimulated building industry collapses, after years of a free ride on the cheap credit bubble and Olympic spending (all borrowed by the Liberals), what will power our economy? The forestry jobs so heartlessly destroyed by Campbell and the Liberals by removing the requirement for wood processing to be done in local communities? It was a gold rush for the forest companies, at first, as they clear cut and sent all the logs to china. Perhaps Starbucks and Walmart can fuel our economy with 8$ an hr jobs, because you sure won’t see a 10$hr minimum wage under the BC Liberals.
I am voting against STV. I have studied political science for years and the Canadian political system specifically. First past the post may not be perfect, but STV will not, in my opinion, improve any of the things that are being sold to people and WOULD require computers to do the counting. You know the ones, kind of like having the diebold machines in the US. You would always be certain of a perfect count as long as computers remained completely hack-proof
. Oh, right….nm…
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DaMann Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Since my job has no effect from the Vancouver economy I will vote for any party that trashes the economy the worst and slides the prices of houses into the ocean
Seriously though I’m sick and tired of Gordon Campbell and the Liberals. But what the hell is the alternative? NDP, I don’t liek NDP on a good day but even if i did want to vote for them who the hell can take Carol Jame seriously. Why do the NDP forever take bad leaders. Like my wife says “NDP will do everything they can to capture the minority vote, but don’t you think if they want to get elected they should go after teh majority?”
NDP are brutal, and the Liberals only pander to money. Greens are completely unrealistic. So what are we left with? We need a true BC liberal party, the current Libs are conervatives, how they are allowed to use the Liberal name is beyond me. We need a party in between the NDP and the conservatives.
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housingsuperbulltime Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
This blog is now dead. Stop reading it please.
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VanBanker Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I’ll vote for STV, which might be than our current system and probably won’t be worse.
Between the Liberals and NDP, I normally wouldn’t mind which way it goes, but I REALLY don’t like the idea of axing the carbon tax, because I don’t believe the NDP will actually replace it with cap and trade (which I agree would be better).
I personally believe if they won they will come in, cut the carbon tax, then pretend to try and push cap-and-trade but back off as soon as unions in carbon-intensive industries complain, and the environment will be worse off for it.
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K-Money Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Let’s be honest, neither the Liberals or NDP stand out a party to vote for. They spend most of their debate time pointing fingers at each other. I rather hear what they have planned to help improve the quality of life for people in BC.
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Aleks Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I really haven’t decided who I’ll vote for. On the one hand, I hate Gordon Campbell and fear what he will sell off to his cronies if given another term. On the other hand, I don’t think Carol James is much of a leader and think their discriminatory nomination process is complete bullshit. On the other other hand, the Green party platform is still a weird amalgum of radical environmentalism and crazy libertarian economic theory, so even as a protest vote it’s a little unsettling.
If it weren’t for the STV referendum, I might not vote at all.
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Anon Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
We need a new party and totally new politicians. I would would for Patriotz and a bunch of other guys from this forum!
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Anon Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
that is “would vote” in the previous post
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VanLoverBoy Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 6:04 am
Why did my post get removed? All I did was post the job numbers. Talk about myopic.
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LookingToBuy Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Wow – Saturday morning – only 1 comment.
#1 – Vote Liberal, could you imagine what the NDP would do to one of the worlds seemingly most stable economies?
#2 – BCSTV will make the process slower, endless studies, people from all angles arguing, no consensus, never a majority. Have you heard of a horse built by a committee? A Camel? I know it isn’t perfect, but this isn’t the answer.
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Anonymous Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 8:55 am
1st
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Anonymous Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 10:53 am
The NDP will help bring down housing prices. Of course that will have nothing to do with their housing policy.
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tragicspin Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Are job losses slowing down or has the government just pulled a bag of bullshit over your head?
In the US we have freedom of information so unlike Canada it is easier to follow the game. We see that jobs numbers in the US were only mitigated by massive government hirings. What does that mean? Sort term McJobs and monster taxes to follow.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/67789.html
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factcracker Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Government employed artificially bouys the market. Jobs still being lost. It seems that the government has stopped counting the numbers they don’t like.
Elsewhere, manufacturing employment is down 106,300 jobs or 5.4 per cent, while construction has shed 86,500 jobs or 7.0 per cent, so the April pause is source of hope for the sectors.
Aerospace manufacturing in Quebec has been holding its own on the job front, said Serge Tremblay, executive director of the Centre for Aerospace Manpower Activities in Quebec.
There were ominous sings in February, when some big players began announcing layoffs to cope with the slowdown in orders.
But there have been no major additional layoff announcements since then. And Bell Textron said recently it has been calling back 400 of the 500 employees who were let go in February.
In Alberta, the sudden drop in oil sands construction had sparked large layoffs, many in Fort McMurray.
Union officials estimate 20,000 construction jobs disappeared in the oil sands alone, prompting electricians, for example, to defer raises.
Clark Builders president Paul Verhesen, for one, has laid off more than 100 workers from a staff of 600.
Still, the rest are “gainfully employed and busy” on a number of government projects, he said.
http://www.globeinvestor.com/s.....2/GIStory/
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goldie Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
From Comrade Patriotz’ manifesto: “The housing bubble is the greatest scam ever perpetrated on workers by the rich….”
Funny, I don’t remember any pinstriped bankers showing up at my door to force me to buy a house. Maybe I’m living on a different street than some of my comrades.
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CZ Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Did Canucks depress everyone?
Seems nobody wants to vote here, so do I.
We may be better stick to Vancouver RE.
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Declan Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
I’m fairly indifferent with respect to the party (not a big fan of any of them), but I figure the single transferrable vote (STV) would mean more power to the voters and less to the parties, which I count as a good thing (no surprise that the ‘No’ campaign is primarily staffed by party insiders like Tieleman and Schreck).
Plus the seat counts under STV by party might match the vote counts by party reasonably closely, and running Conservative candidates wouldn’t help elect the NDP, and running Green candidates wouldn’t help elect the Liberals so those would be nice improvements from the current dysfunctional system as well.
I’m cautious by nature so I see some reason to be careful in changing the voting system, but if you figure the proposed system (STV) has been used in Ireland and parts of Australia for about a century with no ill effects, I don’t really see much cause to worry.
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Anonymous Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Doesn’t matter what party is voted in. Real estate in greater Vancouver is going to crash!!!!
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Galileo Says:
May 11th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
DO NOT VOTE: The case.
As everyone is well aware the participation rate among voters over the years is dropping. Many people have their reasons, especially politicians, and academics. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that people do not get involved with something unless they feel they get something out of it. And that’s the problem, voting is becoming more and more an action in futility. Politicians do not answer to the people, in fact they do not even listen to them, unless it is one of those very rare occasions when the People’s ire is up. So why is this so?
The problem is very simple to understand. We have a political system where the people are disengaged from how they wish to be governed. This disengagement is facilitated by the political system we have (and that exists in most countries of the world). Central to enabling this disengagement is the political party. Political parties are representative of the people’s desire in name only. For they function strictly as an elitist organization with their own plutocratic goals, and really do not give a damn about the population as a whole. Parties foster their own special interests and look after their own agendas. It is this reason why, nothing ever really changes, because we vote for not a representative, we vote for an individual who is elected who will take orders from a political party that is not responsible to answering to, or interested in the will of the populace.
Political parties get this power from us, when we vote. When you vote, you are doing several things that these parties want you to believe and not to know:
- Firstly, it empowers their existence. By voting, you give away the control and responsibility that you thought you had for your life and your part in the decision making of how you would like the society that your apart of to be run. These parties then take it for granted that they can make decisions for you, even for those that you do not want them to. Voting only empowers the existence of political parties and the enslavement of yourself.
- Secondly, parties do not formulate social policies by the people’s will, they construct social policies behind closed doors by those who have vested interests in the way things are run. When you vote, you are not voting for someone to represent you. That so called representative has absolutely no power to make decisions or speak for you, for if they tried, they will get thrown out of the party. All you have voted for is for someone to take orders from a leader(s) that you have no direct control over. In short, you have only voted for a patsy, or puppet, that’s all MLA’s are.
- Thirdly, and most importantly, you lose your entitlement to life. As everyone is well aware when you are part of a family, the everyday trials and tribulations that come to dealing with everyday issues, from the house budget, to just the ordinary joys of living, it enlivens you. Alas, this process is dying in modern democracies, people do not feel involved or attached to their communities as they once did. People often talk about community souls lacking, well you get that, when people do not feel they have any part in the running of their communities. This happens when you hand over the reins of your community, province or country to elitists. Like management of a home, a country’s, province’s or community’s soul has to be enliven by the people, and that means the people must be allowed to be involved with the way things are run. This can never happen with party politics, even if you become a member of a political party, cause members are just puppets. The elitists are in control.
So change the system you say? Change the way parties vote for each other like for instance with the Single Transferable Vote, STV. I have news for you, nothing will change. Why? Cause you will still have the same parties, with the same elitists, and the same backroom decision making. It is not the political voting structure that is the problem, it is the political infrastructure itself that is the problem! As someone who has lived under a form of STV in another country, I can tell you, politicians find ingenious ways to undermine the system, the crafty bastards they are.
So what to do? Some thoughts.
- Get rid of parties. Ban them. Do not allow the representative you voted for to form associations with other representatives. A representative must represent the people who elected him, absolutely.
- Governance by federation. Representatives must come up with policy that is based upon the people’s will. This can be done by voting by representing what their ridings want.
- Get rid of multilevel governments. We do not need to have three level of governments, one representative for a riding is enough. Provincial issues will be handled by representatives in the respective provinces. City issues by the representatives in that city.
- Open government. Government must be open to the people. People must be able to see how their representatives speak and act for them.
Non of these things can happen with a political party oriented system. Don’t make the mistake that you can change things from within. You can not. The vested interests in a political party will only keep things the way they are, they have no desire to changes things, especially if it means lessening their power.
So what to do?
To make changes first you have to get rid of the system you have. To do that, you have to take the political elites power away, and this is done through the vote. DO NOT VOTE. Yes this sounds counter intuitive but that is what must be done. No political party will have the nerve to run a country or province, if they win power with only a few percent of the electorate, if they did, it would eventually incite bloody revolution. Once they have no power, then things can be changed. Yes there will be turmoil for a short period of time. But eventually, the people will win.
This was in kind how the first democracy was, in Greece two and half millennia ago. So it does work, in fact, in works very well, the only people who lose out, are the elites, and so they should, this is not their country, or province or city, IT IS OURS.
So I say: DO NOT VOTE!
Don’t empower the political elites, they do not deserve to lead you.
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Galileo Says:
May 11th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Moderation is a form of censorship. I will not post here anymore. Strange how people fear words…it seems that words, people feel, now have as much power as a gun to enforce harm.
Or is it just that people’s paranoia is now a force for good. I shudder at the thought.
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Niko Says:
May 11th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Isn’t there a political forum somewhere where you can talk politics? This was a real estate forum last time I checked. Let’s keep it this way.
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Clam Chowderhead Says:
May 11th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Spring is here the bears should be waking up. The Bulls have been busy nailing cows for the last couple of weeks.
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Strataman Says:
May 12th, 2009 at 7:29 am
Okay this is off topic but kinda fun!
“Its full impact on the UK is not likely to be known until the annual flu season in the autumn and winter, when a “really major epidemic” can be expected in the northern hemisphere, says Professor Ferguson.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8045364.stm
So here is the scenario.HEADLINE Vancouver airport YVR has closed because of the world wide flue epidemic. Although well protected against the unlikely event of a terrorist attack YVR had absolutely NO infrared scanners for detecting fever and did not have even one well trained medical evaluation “swat team”. Due to this the winter Olympics has been canceled. However due to the large number of security personnel the facilities will be used as various police and army navy air force personal with nothing to do have a competition.
My comment? This is way more likely to happen then any terrorist attack!
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lemontory Says:
May 12th, 2009 at 9:14 am
don’t forget to vote today!!
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VanBanker Says:
May 12th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
“Jeff Barkley Says:Reply to this comment
May 8th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
It was a gold rush for the forest companies, at first, as they clear cut and sent all the logs to china.”
BC sells very little wood to China. The number one market is the US, with Japan a distant second.