The view from Pete

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GenX. My politics are clearly left and I’m tired of compromise with the neo-liberal right. They’ve driven a wedge with their money based centrist politics. We used to be able to do great things and we can again; we just need the leadership to do so; and folks to say as much.

  • Class warfare politics again

    If you’re just tuning in now, you may have been tempted to think the rising star of the conservatives will run to the rescue of beleaguered modest and middle income earners and save Canada from the elitist egg heads of the Liberal Party.

    There’s a problem with that.

    Both Liberal and Conservative politicians serve the same super-establishment and 1% to the cost of everyone else.

    Both defend a neoliberal economic model. In fact, they all champion an economic model that since the 1980’s has wrecked the middle class and driven the wedge between rich and poor to its worst extreme in recent history.

    Through no fault of their own, the rising generation of millenials may need to save for 29 years in order to afford a home in Canada’s cities.

    Now, I’m a ½ generation ahead of a millenial; the so-called “GenX” now at age 45. Getting into the home ownership game wasn’t that severe for us. And we were the first unfortunate beneficiary of this neoliberal economic model. Now it’s worse.

    The current duopoly of red/blue governments do nothing to change this. Their promises are mere window dressing next to the mess it’s made.

    Tiny tax cuts here, boutique tax credits there hide the ugly truth behind the big lie. Both Liberals and Conservatives offer no change. More of the same.

    So who does?

    This guy.

    For the business rags to condemn the NDPs tax agenda (which even I think is relatively timid) means that the NDP is headed in the correct direction.

    Finally.

    And let’s undo a narrative right now. The conservatives seem ready to cast the Liberals as a bunch of Eastern, out of touch, university egg heads completely detached from the reality on Main Street.

    While there may be an element of truth to that, there is nothing wrong with being educated. In fact, that’s what we parents look forward to in our kids. Finish school, get some education/vocation and make something of yourself. Those who would demonize the educated are attacking our own youth. Stop it.

    And what’s worse is that the conservatives have their own brand of super elite “egg heads” that are just as out of touch with every day folks. But they come in the flavour of energy lobbyists, social conservatives, xenophobic policy writers and advocates of the super rich.

    So we’re back into a class warfare politics again. But don’t think for a moment that team blue is any better than team red. They’re both terrible.

    My2bits

  • Ride hailing is coming quickly to BC and the NDP can take credit for it

    There are those to be sure who don’t like the idea of the ride hailing service, but it’s here and unavoidable now.

    What’s interesting now is the desperate flailing of certain BC Liberal partisans trying to gain a wedge issue in the thing they had 8 years to deliver but only made a deathbed conversion when looking at Parliamentary defeat.

    Tough shit.

    What I have been vocal on is that ride hailing drivers fall under the same rules as taxi drivers. Same license requirements, etc.

    And I wasn’t alone either. The government passed its ride hailing legislation that requires a class 4 license (as Alberta does) plus a handful of other transition measures to establish the new business.

    But not to the partisans. They’re out to convince you that the NDP are laggards on ride hailing, bowing to the powerful taxi lobby. If so, they failed at that.

    Ride hailing has existed since 2009 with the founding of Uber. At no time until the last gasp of the 2017 provincial campaign did the BC Liberals find this as a priority. Indeed, they were in power all the previous time and didn’t seem at all motivated to bring in ride hailing at all. I wonder who’s lobby had their ears.

    It wasn’t until the NDP/Green agreement did a formal plan take shape to bring in Ride hailing. So it was bundled into legislation and passed.

    September is when it opens for business.

    That took two years.

    As for the onerous regime the NDP is putting ride hailers through, spare me your verbal diarrhea.

    Other than time, ride hailing corporations have had a fairly smooth sailing to being legitimate here in BC. Just look at what they’ve experienced elsewhere.

    Ride hailing isn’t going to solve any climate issue. It won’t take many cars off the road. It’s a convenience based business model. That’s all it is.

    Oh and get used to a new term: “surge pricing”.

    My2bits

    Update: here’s a link to a sad story coming from Toronto where a grieving family had to bury a son lost to an inexperienced ride hailing driver. Punchline? That the mom hopes BC holds the line in requiring the higher license requirement and that other jurisdictions follow suit.

  • Everyone calm the fuck down

    The NDP is not going through some existential crisis, the political ground that’s moving is on the right and far right; and this is not a playground the NDP should dabble in. Ever.

    Its worth reminding folks that Saint Jack Layton was a relative centrist in his overall philosophy; this is why he appealed to so many independents and made it possible to draft folks like Thomas Mulcair. It was Jack Layton who made a pitch to the “progressives” of the (then) freshly disemboweled PC party to come aboard. If you’re keeping up, that means appealing to folks like Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell, or “red tories”.

    The left of the NDP didn’t protest much as they saw the electoral success of opening that tent further and it shocked the federal Liberals to see Jack Layton eat their lunch.

    So when I hear folks complain that the NDP isn’t left enough, remember that this is how we ended up with our little putsch that dumped Mulcair after his inaugural election that saw the NDP with its second best showing ever. We weren’t left enough. So we picked Jagmeet Singh.

    There is some racism that’s alive and well in Canada who won’t vote for the brown man, but then those folks aren’t the type I want my party appealing to anyway. Go vote PPC since that’s more appropriate to your hateful thinking.

    But in changing from the relative centrist Mulcair in favour of Jagmeet Singh, we got a left wing party whose platform is the most progressive I’ve seen in a generation. It has a green new deal and a tax on the 1%.

    Oh yes, some will say it’s not enough, and some will say it goes to far. Thing is, it’s the Greens that are saying the NDP plan doesn’t go far enough and the Liberals saying it goes to far.

    Wonderful! If radical Greens say your plan isn’t radical enough and do-nothing Liberals say it goes too far, then we’re probably exactly where we need to be.

    As long as the NDP doesn’t fumble around in the bigoted anti immigrant tropes that the PPC/CPC are mired into, there’s plenty of room to expand the reach of the NDP.

    Liberals have revealed themselves again as the party that will say anything to get elected, while doing as few possible progressive things except as necessary to stay in office.

    We’re done with this.

    The neoliberal economic philosophy is how we got here. The major gaps in rich and poor, the crushing of unions, the disregard towards the environment and climate change; it’s all related. None of the other party’s are prepared to tackle the system. The NDP will.

    So stop your navel gazing. Let the reactionary radicals in the Greens and PPC light their hair on fire, let the Liberals and Conservatives engage in platitudes and dithering, the NDP just needs to plow forward. We’re on the right path.

    My2bits

  • BC media adopting BC Liberal talking points. Again.

    Here it is. The narrative is changing to accuse the NDP of sinking personal wealth through the various housing countermeasures they’ve initiated.

    Let’s clarify why this is.

    The BC Liberals deregulated the housing market over a decade ago while simultaneously turning lethargic over money laundering in BC.

    This left the door open for criminal money to find it’s way into the housing market as a means to flip it to cleaned cash. The results of this were naturally that the housing market overheated and pushed tens of thousands of otherwise middle class families out of the housing market entirely.

    But to hear some business leaders tell it (by extension, BC Liberal friends), the NDP combating this rotten scenario are the real problem; not the deregulated cesspool the BC Liberals prefer.

    Horse shit.

    If your personal wealth is artificially inflated by forces driven as a result of criminal money infecting the economy, then it’s not real. And correcting this problem will do more benefit to those who can now buy a home vs those who were trying to cash in on the fraudulent “boom” we had as a result of money laundering.

    Crocodile tears I tell you.

    Working folks are told the tale of an honest days pay for an honest days work. If the BC Liberals are looking to revert to the old days of cronyism and looking the other way, then shame on them. Never let them govern again.

    My2bits

  • Repeat after me: “tax cuts do not pay for themselves”

    Trickle down economics has never worked. Ever. Yet it was tried again here in BC when the BC Liberals took office in 2001 with results that literally anyone could have predicted.

    Now a former Gordon Campbell cabinet minister reflects back on the times that were and thinks it wasn’t good times. We could have told you that Mr Abbott, but you went along with it anyways.

    It’s worth noting that former BC Premier Gordon Campbell is advising the Ford gov’t in Ontario, ostensibly with a mandate to uncover areas worth cutting funds to.

    New Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has also diverted some of that stinky BC Liberal bathwater to help his new govt settle into power.

    This isn’t going to work out well for Alberta or Ontario.

    “Tax cuts pay for themselves” is a rebranded “trickle down economics” and it’s never worked, not a single time. Yet we’re drifting towards parties that believe in this mythology.

    Don’t fall for it again.

    My2bits

  • I’m not in a panic over teacher negotiations and neither should you

    I’m not unfamiliar to contract talks between unions and their bosses, and I’m old enough to remember that most of the noise is the rhetorical hot air that both sides breathe in order to rally public opinion to each respective side. So with that being said, I’m pretty much ignoring the noise being made publicly about what’s going on in the negotiating room between the BCTF and the employer, the BCPSEA.

    It however wasn’t long ago that the BC Liberals, directly interfering with negotiations last time, trotted out heavy hitting cabinet ministers and Premier Clark with their “affordability zone” mantra.

    Since then, the teachers union won their appeal at the Supreme Court that restored class size and composition language that was illegally stripped away by legislation introduced by none other than (then) Deputy Premier and Education Minister Christy Clark when Gordon Campbell was Premier.

    I do have to inject a reality check here. Both sides are free to ask for whatever they think they’ll get in contract talks. Aim high and see where negotiations take you. The employer is free to ask all they want for movement on CSC language, but it doesn’t mean teachers have to agree to any changes there – that was a win in court. The union is also free to ask for whatever they feel they’ll get; see how this works?

    What is harmful though, is that the rhetoric can get toxic outside the negotiating rooms. Teachers are a powerful ally to the NDP and some loud mouths online are using this delicate negotiating period as a means to drive a wedge here. As if by electing the BC Liberals back to power will mean any better gains for teachers (hint: it won’t).

    Do yourselves a favour and let the negotiating teams do their work; ignore the rhetorical hot air like its a bad smell..because it will blow away.

    My2bits

  • Fair question, but poor timing, Ben.

    By now, most Canadians have heard the story of the Victoria city councillor who put forward a motion to city hall to ask the Department of National Defence to help defray the policing costs of Remembrance Day and related events.

    This request originated from the city’s police board as costs predictably increased.

    So far so good, right? How about asking this of city hall on D-Day itself..

    Ooops. Very poor timing Ben Isit.

    He was met with howls of outrage from folks across the nation; seeing this as a deliberate poke at veterans.

    Hold on a moment.

    I have no personal connection with Ben Isit, but I’m pretty certain that he does not have a hate on for our military veterans.

    We, on the left, have deep admiration for those who gave so much in the defense of our freedoms. We will always honour their sacrifice.

    But if it makes it any easier, pretend it was another topic for which this is based.

    Ben has inadvertently opened up a discussion on superior government offloading to local government the associated, unfunded costs of a virtually mandated event.

    Nobody seems to have caught on to this. Strange that none of the taxpayer guardian organizations spoke up.

    Ben didn’t suggest that the city cancel it’s Remembrance Day events or drastically reduce its scope (funding); he asked a question.

    I’m not suggesting that Ben was right or even smart to lay this egg on D-Day, but his right to pose the question at all is exactly the thing that our veterans fought to defend.

    If it’s true that the unfunded part of the issue is well over $100k, then someone had to speak up for taxpayers. Otherwise, city hall would have had to find funds from elsewhere to cover this gap; and given the fact that local government cannot legally run a deficit, this means either funding cuts somewhere or tax increases everywhere.

    I’m sure I’m in the minority opinion here, as some would brush aside questions over “who’s gonna pay for this” because it’s the *right* thing to do.

    Asking who’s going to pay for things is also the right thing to do.

    My2bits.

    Edit: I’ve been told that the date when the above mentioned ‘motion’ wasn’t picked by Ben Isit, but as assigned by city staff. So there’s that.

  • Happy pride month!

    Look, as a straight white guy, I shouldn’t have anything to say about Pride Month, the rainbow flag or the many pride parades and related events happening in June.

    Except for this: human rights.

    Once you accept the fact that the state has no business interfering with the private affairs of consenting adults, it’s an easy journey to see why it’s our duty to speak out in support of our allies in the various corners within the rainbow community.

    Nowhere on earth is it illegal for straight people to exist. Nowhere would a straight person be put to death for being straight. But in this time, on this planet, gays, transgendered folks, women, people of colour, are all feeling the hysterical backlash by powerful conservative social engineering.

    It’s open season in some areas.

    What happened to “do no harm”, or live and let live?

    Objecting to someone else’s sexual identity or preference is like protesting what someone else orders from a restaurant menu.

    It has zero effect on you so mind your own business. Or as the Bible says, “love thy neighbor”.

    My2bits

  • Up is down and those protesting against the pending rise of a new fascism are the real enemy.

    Everyone should be opposed to fascism.

    I saw on my TV the white supremacist “protests” at Charlottesville from a year ago and the news of the woman their movement murdered in protesting these neo-nazis, but today I learned that this woman and the uppity protesters she was part of are the real enemy.

    No seriously, that’s what opinion piece the National Post published today.

    Look. In the normal discourse in politics, the normal left right and centre have this perpetual debate on issues of importance.

    But it must never be ok or normalized that a group be protesting under the Nazi banner using phrases like “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil” (taken directly from 1930’s Germany).

    Nobody should be ok with this. All rational left, right and centre thinking folks have to be united here. In fact, it was a failure of the rational majority to unite that saw Hitler rise to power.

    Sure, opinions are constitutionally protected, especially ones published in news papers and related outlets. But it doesn’t make the article any less stupid.

    Or wrong.

    My2bits.

  • Andrew Wilkinson and his BC Liberals would be wise not to do a victory lap on the appeals court decision.

    Whoops. Too late, they did.

    How did we end up here? The NDP government tried to assert their right as a provincial government to protect rivers, streams and our coastline.

    As it turns out, the environment wasn’t considered in this judgement, only a jurisdiction issue.

    Which strikes me as odd, as the means the federal government used to initially approve #kmx was through a provincially signed “equivalency agreement”. Theoretically, if an agreement such as this can be approved, it can be repealed too.

    Interesting words used in Andrew Wilkinson’s comments today that the BC govt was “smacked down”. Mr Hubris should remind Andy that it took the Supreme Court 20 minutes to “smack down” the BC Liberal government anti-teacher laws (after the BC appeals court upheld the BC Liberal government position).

    This isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

    My2bits