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Naomi Klein was on the radio this morning, just killing it. Every answer to the dumb questions CBC felt obligated to ask she would use to hammer home a) climate change is happening and we need to respond yesterday & b) we can finance our response by taxing the poo poo out of those responsible aka the rich Why can't she be the leader of the dippers or greens, if not pm 
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Sep 17, 2019 21:29
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Blood Boils posted:Naomi Klein was on the radio this morning, just killing it. Every answer to the dumb questions CBC felt obligated to ask she would use to hammer home a) climate change is happening and we need to respond yesterday & b) we can finance our response by taxing the poo poo out of those responsible aka the rich Juul-Whip fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 21:42
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RBC posted:not taxing parental leave is not a handout to the rich. Maximum benefits occur at 51k. jesus christ you are loving out of touch It's a handout because they're taxed at marginal rates. Most people collecting these benefits are making not very much - their marginal rate is something like 20% if under 50k income, 28% in BC if they're making 80k... And people have other deductions like childcare expenses that can make that 20% rate apply a lot higher. Someone who earns 60% of the max benefit (because they earned 30k per year) is going to save 3506 in tax on 22,224 in EI income. Conservatives' proposal: they'd save 2630. I happen to be on parental leave again (4th kid, if anyone wonders why my posts are mostly low effort, I don't have time!) right now and gross a decent chunk over 200k on 6mo of work. Under the Liberals' proposal, I would save 14,533 of tax on EI income of 29,224. (The Conservatives' pledge would save me only 4383.) Ergo, the Liberals' promise gives way more of a handout to high income people than the Conservatives' and I am arguing this is dumb even as I wonder whether none, half, or all my leave is going to qualify (as the Liberals *will* win even as I vote Green in an NDP riding). Liberals: 900 more for 30k earner in BC. 10,200 more for 210k+ earner.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:50
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SpacePope posted:That's real loving dumb. Nah. The precautionary principle is widely used in Europe. Proof of safety should rightly fall on the corporations that will profit off of the sale of a product, and that proof should come before introduction into the market. It should not be up to individuals, communities, the government etc to prove that a product is not safe after the fact, in part because these groups often lack the funding for research and legal representation, and because at that point the damage has already been done. Human health and the environment are more important than the revenues and profits of corporations.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:55
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James Baud posted:Liberals: 900 more for 30k earner in BC. 10,200 more for 210k+ earner. Edit: looks like zero advantage at all on second glance, haven't run numbers though to be sure James Baud fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Sep 18, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 21:59
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Just??? Increase the benefit????? Instead of fiddling with the tax code
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Sep 17, 2019 22:09
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I broke the vote compass so hard by being pro-more-immigration-for-everything that it put me in one of the far right quebec parties.
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Sep 17, 2019 22:11
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God drat people are loving stupid in Canada. I've been hearing so many people in Victoria who are voting Liberal because: "I'm a huge loving idiots and don't understand how our electoral system works and think we vote directly for PM and think I need to vote for Justin because only he can stop the conservatives!" "The most recent polling showed the liberals having a slight edge on the NDP in Victoria so I gotta vote Liberal or my vote isn't strategic to stop the conservatives!" Canadian polling is trash that shouldn't be trusted, and it doesn't matter if we elect a Green, NDP, or Liberal if all you care about is not having the conservatives win. Their federal numbers don't matter, it's a local riding, the PM is not elected by popular vote!
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Sep 17, 2019 22:18
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So in the Victoria reddit people are posting why they're voting how they're voting. This one conservative posted a huge long FACT CHECKED and SOURCED reason to vote conservative and it's an amazing window into their minds and the insane things they think are huge pressing issues (guns and gang violence), the things they want to actively work against (climate change, poverty), and the huge list of things that are totally ignored (women's rights, trans rights, first nations issues). I just found this list so illuminating for how conservatives think and what is important to them. Dude clearly put in a bunch of work and thinks this list is very convincing: Aside from being the only party who will not try to ban my guns to pretend like it would do anything to curb urban centre shootings in Canada, below is a list of some issues of why I will be voting CPC, like I have since I was old enough to vote. I figure I am a minority here, but alas, the points are below. Effectively remove federal portion of income tax from EI maternity and EI parental benefits by providing a non-refundable tax credit of 15 per cent for any income earned under these two programs (source) Remove the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from home heating and energy bills (source) Establish a single tax return for Quebec, administered by the province (source) Bring back the public transit tax credit of up to 15 per cent on monthly and weekly transit passes or electronic fare cards (source) Cut the tax rate on income under $47,630 from 15 per cent to 13.75 per cent (source) Relaunch two Harper-era tax credits: A children’s fitness tax credit so parents can claim up to $1,000 for expenses related to fitness and sports activities; and a children’s arts tax credit to claim up to $500 for expenses related to arts and educational activities. (source) Increase the government’s contribution to an RESP from 20 per cent to 30 per cent for every dollar invested up to $2,500 a year (low-income parents would receive 50 per cent on the first $500 they invest every year) Repeal Bill C-69 (source) Increase the Canada Health Transfer and the Canada Social Transfer by at least three per cent every year (source) End the shipping ban in northern British Columbia (source) Clarify roles of proponents and governments in consultations (source) End foreign-funded interference in regulatory hearings (source) Provide certainty on approval timelines and schedules (source) Set emissions standards for major emitters that produce more than 40 kilotonnes per year of greenhouse gases, requiring them to invest in private-sector research and development of green technology. (source) Establish a green patent credit that will reduce the tax rate to five per cent on income that is generated from green technology developed and patented in Canada. (source) Incorporate traditional knowledge of First Nations into efforts to address the impacts of climate change. (source) Expand Export Development Canada programs to issue more green bonds that provide financing for the development of emissions-reducing technologies. (source) Create a two-year green homes tax credit for homeowners to help pay for energy-saving renovations. (source) Review and update the invasive alien species strategy for Canada, as well as the invasive species action plans. (source) Review and modernize air quality standards and regulations, with a focus on urban airsheds. (source) Re-establish an advisory panel that gave hunting, angling and conservation groups input on policies and programs on conservation. (source) Negotiate regulatory changes that would increase the energy efficiency of cross-border trucking while encouraging research and development in eco-friendly modes of transportation. (source) Renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States (source) Ensure that the system prioritizes people facing genuine persecution (source) Put an end to illegal border crossings at unofficial points of entry like Roxham Road by changing the Safe Third Country agreement with the U.S. (source) Improve credential recognition and providing low-skilled workers with a path to residency and improving language training (source) Cost-share new anti-gang law enforcement initiatives with provinces and territories (source) Create a Police Infrastructure Grant program (source) Make sure that information on guns found at crime scenes is given to the right authorities (source) Ensure that the Canadian Firearms Program has what it needs to conduct rigorous and effective background checks (source) Increase the funds available for the Youth Gang Prevention Fund by 25% to ensure continued support for counselling, skills development, and other important programs (source) Conduct an audit of all correctional services programs to make sure inmates are ready to rejoin society upon their release (source) Ensure that anyone who is knowingly in possession of a smuggled gun is sent to federal prison (source) Ensure that anyone found to divert legally purchased guns into criminals’ hands will face serious consequences, including prison time and a lifetime ban from owning firearms (source) Create a Canada Border Services Agency Firearms Smuggling Task Force, which will oversee an increase of frontline officers, deployment of new technology, and further use of criminal intelligence. They will also be authorized to work with law enforcement counterparts on both sides of the border to identify smuggling routes, and ensure that smugglers and those employing them are put behind bars where they belong (source) Ensure that any firearms owner detained under provincial mental health legislation will immediately have their firearms seized. They will be able to apply, after a period of time, to have their property returned if they can demonstrate that their condition has stabilized. (source) Make lifetime firearms bans mandatory for all serious personal injury offences and gang crimes (source) Ensure that individuals who knowingly provide a firearm to an individual who is subject to a gun ban face serious prison time, and that they themselves will be prohibited from owning a firearm for life (source) Encourage firearms manufacturers to improve traceability, require the submission of ballistic data on crime guns, and ensure that the RCMP crime lab is appropriately resourced (source) Make sure that arrested repeat gang offenders will be held without bail (source) Create and maintain a list of proven criminal organizations which will help law enforcement prosecute gang members faster (source) Require those on parole to cut ties with gangs (source) Bring in mandatory sentences in federal prison for directing gang crime (source) Create new offences for committing and ordering violent gang crime and attach mandatory sentences in federal prison for each (source) That's pretty much it. I could not vote for any party who thinks money grows on trees or that blocking resource extraction in a country as rich in natural resources as ours is a good idea.
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Sep 17, 2019 22:21
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mediaphage posted:Ah. Funny story I was reading through my work benefits package and discovered it covered Christian Science Practitioners. Like the literal 19th century "Modern medicine doesn't work pray away the disease" crazies.
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Sep 17, 2019 22:33
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infernal machines posted:I think it might be worth it when you have some time. It's an election after all, and between this and the strategic voting sites that inevitably get linked here every single time, it's probably worth explaining this bullshit at least once so we can quote it whenever some good natured soul bumbles in and asks. Okay here goes. The first thing to know about Vox Pop Labs, the people who run Vote Compass, is that they were founded and as far as I know are still run by a bunch of political science academics from the University of Toronto. They were doctoral candidates when they founded the company (I think most of them have graduated now) and the primary purpose of the company was mass data collection on the political opinions of hundreds of thousands of Canadians, which they could then use to do statistical research on Canadian politics (part of their research output at least used to be focused on how to do representative sampling using a giant but not-randomly-selected pool of survey respondents, i.e. the hundreds of thousands of people who opt in to do Vote Compass each election cycle, instead of classic polling techniques of trying to do a random but statistically representative small sample of the population). So the fundamental goal of Vote Compass is not to give you the most accurate representation of where you fit in the political landscape of Canadian politics, it's to collect data from your answers that academics can then use to conduct research. This is also most likely one reason for why some of their questions seem strange or esoteric, because they may have been designed to fit a research agenda rather than to most accurately reflect the political divisions of the current election cycle. This also likely explains why they ask (or at least used to ask) the questions like "how much do you trust each party leader", which don't reflect on the compass they display at the end but do give them valuable research information. That doesn't necessarily affect the methodology of Vote Compass itself, but I think it's a really important thing to understand about Vox Pop Labs itself. It also helps explain why some (though not all) of their other work has been so strange, like their "what style of urbanist are you" survey they did for the Toronto Star, or their "what style of democratic citizen are you" survey they did for the Liberals on electoral reform. Although I have it on good authority that the electoral reform one was extremely unpopular within Vox Pop Labs for various reasons that I'd rather not get into, and turned them off direct work with political parties in the future. Damage done, though, and to be frank they should have known better. But if you come back to this point at the end of the post, you'll see how that actually fits very well into the pattern established by their work on Vote Compass. Then there are the issues already raised by Pinterest Mom in this post: Pinterest Mom posted:Yeah, on top of a binary left/right framework being inadequate to a lot of this (is "How much financial assistance should the federal government provide to first-time home buyers?" a left or right-wing position? How about "the government should offer a guaranteed minimum income?"), these people are just bad at phrasing questions. These are excellent critiques of their methodology so I won't bother repeating them in my own words. Trying to fit everything into a left/right frame based on how the Vox Pop Labs analysts decided the issue doesn't work for everything, some of the questions are ambiguously-worded and confusing, and they often phrase the questions as a false binary with unclear definitions for their terms. I haven't done Vote Compass in a while so I can't use a specific example that they've used, but one example would be something like "The government should pursue direct investments in sustainable infrastructure instead of trying to incentivize individual behavioural changes with a carbon tax" (a question I made up, not a real one!). These kinds of false binaries crop up all the time in Vote Compass questions like the one on childcare raised by Pinterest Mom above. If you think the government should do both those things, or neither of those things, how are you supposed to answer the question? And how are you supposed to map that question onto a left/right axis? Okay, on to my other critiques. Another problem is that all their questions are set up to place you on a 2D chart at the end, where they've also placed each of the parties. But that's based on averaging out a whole bunch of claimed policies, and a whole bunch of your claimed preferences, into a really simplistic 2D graph--that might as well not even be 2D, because nearly every time they do it it's just a straight line of dots running from top-left to bottom-right so they might as well just have a left-right line. What does it mean if the NDP are two squares left of the Liberals? They don't tell you which policies put them there, or which policies are given how much weight, so it's a completely meaningless distinction. And they don't tell you if they weight different questions differently. Does a question about assistance to first-time home buyers (a relatively small spending promise, and one that affects a relatively small number of people) have the same weight as a question about support for national pharmacare or a Green New Deal, which are huge transformative promises to restructure our economy and social contract? How do the different scopes of these issues factor into that dot at the end? It's impossible to really tell, which is a big reason why these 2D modelings of political position are pretty useless. But the biggest problem with Vote Compass is its credulity. The entire survey is based on a methodology of asking the parties what their stances are on issues, then reporting those the exact way the parties answered. If the party doesn't answer then they'll go to the effort of looking through their party platform to try and decide for themselves, but otherwise they pretty much go with the self-reporting, and that's it. Incidentally, this is also one reason why the Greens are usually pretty well-represented in Vote Compass stuff--it's because they tend to be the most responsive party to the survey. They usually respond the quickest and give the most detailed answers, so the people running Vote Compass give them more time and energy than they probably deserve. Now, what's wrong with this approach? The biggest problem is that their methodology forces them to just believe whatever the parties say in their platforms, because accusing a party of lying on their survey or in their platform, and therefore placing them somewhere else on the 2D graph than the position their answers to the survey questions would place them, would be a huge insult to that party, could theoretically land them in legal trouble, and (maybe the most important thing for their business) would sour relations with that party moving forward, meaning less or no cooperation on future Vote Compass efforts. And yet that therefore means that they misrepresent where the parties stand. The worst example of this is the Liberal Party. In this thread we all know the Liberals "campaign from the left and govern from the right", and have a long, long history of doing that. They promise progressive things in their platform (electoral reform, for example, or national childcare, which as Pinterest Mom pointed out in another post, was part of their platform for five elections in a row between 1993 and 2006. They won four of those elections, three majorities and a minority, and yet somehow never got around to enacting national childcare) and then don't deliver when in power. If you were objectively analyzing this to place the Liberals on a 2D political chart, you could look at things like their voting history, their record when in power, their voting history when out of power (do they support more Conservative or NDP bills, for example), who their major donors are, who they hire to fill their staff positions, what their candidates' backgrounds are, what they say in their speeches, the actual effects of their policies, whether they more often enact their policy proposals that are considered "right-wing" versus those considered "left-wing", and so on. And if you did that, you would almost certainly end up placing them much further to the right than they inevitably end up on in Vote Compass's chart. But if all you're doing is taking their survey answers and looking at their platform, you tell everyone who gets to that chart at the end that the Liberals are a left-wing party just next to the NDP. And then people believe that, because that's how they campaign even though it's not how they govern. And that's the really fundamental flaw in the Vote Compass methodology that, as far as I know, has never been fixed and will never be fixed for reasons of decorum and business expediency (and, as my own bone to pick with the discipline of Political Science, for reasons of being biased towards "objective" quantitative measurements over subjective qualitative ones like 'do they actually govern like the left-wing party we say they are in our chart). There's a built-in credulity in Vote Compass's methodology that cannot account for the fact that politicians lie and misrepresent themselves all the time. And there are ways around that, but their methodology and their business interests mean they don't account for that. As a final coda to this post, I'll return to my earlier point about the electoral reform survey. I heard from an insider that they were very disappointed at how the Liberals used their eventual survey to make the case against electoral reform. And my comment earlier in this post was that they should have known better, because a smart observer would know that the Liberals, based on their entire electoral and political history, would not want to pursue electoral reform. A cynic would tell them they were going to be used by the Liberals to pursue political objectives, and that's exactly what happened. But the inherent credulity in their work meant they didn't make that leap. And sure, it's probably a stretch to tie that back in to the methodological flaws with their flagship product, but I think it speaks to the larger underlying flaw in their work, which is that they pay far too much attention to what our politicians say, and far too little attention to what our politicians do, and that then gives a skewed perspective on our political landscape to everyone who completes their survey. vyelkin fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Sep 18, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 22:37
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Baronjutter posted:I could not vote for any party who thinks money grows on trees or that blocking resource extraction in a country as rich in natural resources as ours is a good idea.  Look pal, either money grows on trees or it doesn't, make up your mind. Thank you for this effort post!
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Sep 17, 2019 22:50
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Every election I take that vote compass thing and ever election it shows me being closer to the greens, and the greens being to the left of the NDP. These are very incorrect assessments on both counts.
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Sep 17, 2019 23:20
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i've met like one (1) polisci major who was actually left wing, and that person has since become an "intelligence associate" at Deloitte
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Sep 17, 2019 23:28
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I'm a little disappointed that the only volunteer that has come to my door so far was for the People's Party and proceeded to tell my wife, who is obviously not white and whose parents are refugees, how immigrants and refugees are ruining Canada. She even tried to give them an out by asking their policy on crime and gun control, but apparently all crime in Canada is caused by immigrants and refugees and only stopping immigration will lower the crime rate.
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Sep 17, 2019 23:59
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Juul-Whip posted:i've met like one (1) polisci major who was actually left wing, and that person has since become an "intelligence associate" at Deloitte For my sins, I was a polisci major 
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Sep 18, 2019 00:06
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Man what kind of weirdo do you have to be for this to end up near the top of your reasons to vote for anyone when you live in Victoria. quote:Establish a single tax return for Quebec, administered by the province (source)
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Sep 18, 2019 00:36
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Conservatives love to fake caring about other places if it means they get to bang on the "smaller government" drum.
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Sep 18, 2019 00:41
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homework assignment for you all. any time you are talking about the PPC irl, make sure to call it "the so-called people's party" or "the Maxime Bernier party". never ever call it "the people's party" or "the PPC" - self-appointed leader - leader was a federal cabinet minister - no internal democracy of any kind. policies are dictated by the leader and his inner circle - pro-business, big oil platform - anti-women's rights they're not a party of the people. don't dignify it by referring to it as such Juul-Whip fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Sep 18, 2019 |
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Sep 18, 2019 00:47
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vyelkin posted:For my sins, I was a polisci major I was a polisci major before I became a computer toucher. I constantly have to argue with people about why our union is good.
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Sep 18, 2019 01:18
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Juul-Whip posted:homework assignment for you all. any time you are talking about the PPC irl, make sure to call it "the so-called people's party" or "the Maxime Bernier party". never ever call it "the people's party" or "the PPC" They are a party of the people. The really loving dumb, racist people.
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Sep 18, 2019 04:48
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PT6A posted:They are a party of the people. The really loving dumb, racist people. Good point, it never said which people they were a party for. Just, you know. Some.
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Sep 18, 2019 05:19
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Barrie is such a lost loving cause. All these people moving up here from the GTA suburbs are somehow so much more racist and conservative than the ones that already lived here, I dont see either riding going anything other than CPC for the next 50 years. Its all so loving depressing.
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Sep 18, 2019 05:42
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vyelkin posted:The first thing to know about Vox Pop Labs, the people who run Vote Compass, is that they were founded and as far as I know are still run by a bunch of political science academics from the University of Toronto.... Reddit posted:Hope is a lie.
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Sep 18, 2019 06:58
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Furnaceface posted:Barrie is such a lost loving cause. All these people moving up here from the GTA suburbs are somehow so much more racist and conservative than the ones that already lived here, I dont see either riding going anything other than CPC for the next 50 years. If it's any consolation it will all be on fire in the next five years at the rate we're going.
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Sep 18, 2019 07:11
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Furnaceface posted:Barrie is such a lost loving cause. All these people moving up here from the GTA suburbs are somehow so much more racist and conservative than the ones that already lived here, I dont see either riding going anything other than CPC for the next 50 years.
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Sep 18, 2019 11:39
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Mr. Apollo posted:A guy at my gym said he was moving to Barrie because “Toronto is full of beta cucks and purple haired SJWs”. How do you not just scream
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Sep 18, 2019 13:27
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Mr. Apollo posted:A guy at my gym said he was moving to Barrie because “Toronto is full of beta cucks and purple haired SJWs”. I feel for Barrie, but Toronto ain't gonna miss him. e: The previous generation of this was white flight from Brampton when it started getting too diverse for these CHUDs. infernal machines fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Sep 18, 2019 |
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Sep 18, 2019 14:41
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In better news, this year London managed to graduate to “first pride without active protests”, so, progress.
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Sep 18, 2019 14:46
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NDP: This one weird trick will help us vastly expand Canadian health coverage. Means testing 
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Sep 18, 2019 15:04
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https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1174082904286056450?s=19
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Sep 18, 2019 15:33
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I can't tell if Coyne is being facetious.
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Sep 18, 2019 15:39
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Coyne exists in a superposition of irony, both entirely serious and completely absurd at all times. To collapse his state, call him out, and he will suddenly hold the position he thinks makes him look less bad.
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Sep 18, 2019 15:44
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half cocaine posted:I can't tell if Coyne is being facetious. He is. The CBC ran an pedantic “fact check” where they say Scheer’s “universal tax cut” is “stretching the truth” because it only cuts taxes for people who pay income taxes, not for people who don’t.
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Sep 18, 2019 16:03
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Yeah sorry awful app doesn't display context properly for reply tweets https://twitter.com/CBCNews/status/1174058025809862656
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Sep 18, 2019 16:07
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Pinterest Mom posted:He is. It is almost as if the entire media establishment in both countries are reading the CSPAM > Failing NYT thread, and taking some very odd opinions away from it.
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Sep 18, 2019 16:08
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(Apologies CanPol but you're due for another self indulgent nobody-asked-for-this-Helsing long post about the NDP, this time in the form of my pointlessly nitpicking an article from a nobody written two years ago.) This article is almost two years old and apropos of nothing in particular but I found it to be a very neat summary of why I increasingly struggle to justify the idea that the NDP makes any positive contribution to politics. I used to cling very hard to the argument that the NDP membership were as a group well to the left of the other parties and thus acted as an anchor on how far right the party would go. While I still think that's somewhat true the older I get the more I start to recognize that the party actually changes the views of its members more than the members change the view of the party. Rather than the NDP changing its position to reflect what its "base" wants the NDP actually encourages its base to identify with the party and to accept the numerous rhetorical and policy compromises this entails, with the ultimate effect of actually reducing the available space for a real left alternative to emerge. In effect the current NDP is taking up space and energy that someone else might use more effectively. The article in question comes from a decent enough persepctive but is all the more daming for it. The author is well educated, worldly and progressive - everything the contemporary NDP values - and her attitude encapsulates just how intellectually bankrupt and vacuous the party has become. Notice how in what follows she uses some powerful and hard to argue starting points such as condemnations of racism and calls for greater inclusivity, and then see exactly what this appears to mean in practice. I will bring this up again below but notice how for the author material reality barely exists - there is only discourse and moral sentiment. People aren't materially divided into haves and have nots, owners and workers, etc. What keeps us apart are nebulous but obviously bad (and thus safe to attack) things like "intolerance" or "hate". Notice how under specified this is. quote:It’s time for the NDP to end its ideological loyalty test So first of all lets acknowledge that this article makes several important points, in particular about the racial double standard that Singh faced and continues to face over his ethnicity. As I've noted before you could challenge a lot of other MPs over their opinions on heated foreign conflicts - Chrystia Freeland's opinions on Ukrainian "patriotism" come to mind here - but let's not dispute the fundamentally accurate point she is making here. While she is mixing several very different arguments together - concerns over Singh's expensive sartorial tastes are not the same thing as criticisms of his religion, for instance - it would be ridiculous to pretend that there isn't an obvious racial aspect to how Singh is viewed. What really jumps out at me though, is how she views social movements. For one thing she makes it clear from her phrasing that she doesn't personally share the view that the NDP should aspire to be a movement oriented party. In fact she is very quickly to draw a link between movement based parties and the age of Trump, heavily implying that the anti-elitism that questions Singh's expensive suits is one and the same as the racist backlash against Singh, and that in effect populism itself is fatally tainted with the danger of racism. Then we get her positive assessment of movements and it is extremely telling how she writes the following paragraph: quote:Social movements conjure up images of protesters carrying placards, of sit-ins, of leaders holding megaphones encouraging their supporters to action. And such protest is essential for human progress. We depend on these movements to remind us of our social responsibilities, to educate and raise awareness of the experiences of others, when and where we are failing as a society, and to mobilize popular support for change. We join in protests and support these movements when we believe that their fight is our fight, and when we are moved to feel empathy and responsibility for the fate of others. This is very much the perspective of a privileged and successful person who thinks social movement activism is mostly about the affluent and successful professional classes being reminded to feel compassionate about the less fortunate. You can really see here how this is being written by a liberal academic because there is no hint here that social movements are about oppressed groups demonstrating their power or that the point of a social movement is to assert the power of its membership regardless of how generous the wealthy and professional classes are feeling that day. Fight For 15 isn't supposed to be about gently convincing affluent suburban home owners that actually they should feel more understanding toward minimum wage workers - the point is to get the workers themselves organized into a fighting force that can demand a better deal for themselves. A better deal that will necessarily come at the expense of their customers who will pay more to supplement these higher wages. Then there's this passage which really gives the game away. The real essence of toleration is making more room for small business owners and people who don't want to do anything about the environment: quote:It also means the NDP needs to break down walls, rather than build them. Evidence suggests that more open and inclusive groups are better problem-solvers. But being inclusive means the NDP needs to welcome, listen to, and empower others. The example of Charlie Angus, who gave the floor to members of the Indigenous community instead of speaking for them, is noteworthy. But equally important is the NDP listening to critics, ranging from those skeptical of the Leap Manifesto to entrepreneurs wanting to ensure that their contributions to the economy are welcome and valued. (That's quite the range! All the way from Leap Manifesto critics to small business boosters, what an amazing panorama of diverse perspectives!) Notice how this paragraph leads in with a reference to indigenous inclusivety but actually ends up saying that what we really need the NDP to do (and this is after both Layton and Mulcair had had their way with the party platform and ideology) was to become even more inclusive toward "entrepreneurs" and their "contributions". Notice how there's no acknowledgement of the underlying paradox here: that any substantial attempt to increase the material well being of natives would be challenged by the very same class of entrepreneurs that she says the NDP needs to strive to include. Any substantive relief offered to native communities will be more, not less, divisive for the Canadian body politic. Her worldview is simply not ready to handle this though because she isn't viewing this as politics but rather from the perspective of administration. Another paragraph worth unpacking: quote:But in their drive to promote social change and mobilize their supporters, social movements can risk undermining this shared sense of responsibility. Their rhetoric often divides the world neatly into those who are with us and those who are against us. Analysis of complex political and socio-economic conditions is replaced by ideological sound bites—argument over facts, rhetoric over action. Walls are built, narrow perspectives perpetuated, and beliefs hardened. Keep in mind that while she wants you to think of Donald Trump (don't think that her line about "Walls are built" was accidental) what she is actually describing here are NDPers who want a genuinely left-wing leader. This is of course not "complex" enough and obviously complexity is good for its own sake (her entire job is based around navigating complex and obscure rules so big surprise that she views complexity as the most important value of all). Even worse, in a divided world her economic privilege might come under scrutiny and that would simply be unfair. Of course throughout this entire article almost no specificity whatsoever is offered. We're also not presented with any real analysis of why society has become more bitter and angry. It comes off as though the author thinks people have just gotten more irrational and that the political parties may have even caused this rather than merely responding to it. She doesn't view a highly unequal and dysfunctional economy as creating divisions - no, that's just a natural byproduct of the economy and not something you could even fix without dangerously risking "dividing" people. So instead the important thing is that politicians repeatedly tell us not to feel divided, because political rhetoric is all that is real and material conditions like inequality or poor services or unaffordable housing are fundamentally non-political issues that you shouldn't look to a politician to help you with. She encapsulates that whole view when she writes of the worrying "fragility of our social consensus—that is, our shared understanding of our responsibilities to each other" as though the status quo in Canada is a country where a strong social consensus under girds our shared sense of responsibility. Does anyone here think that describes the Canada we live in? Does anyone here even think that kind of milquetoast rhetoric is going to be useful to a party that actually wanted to change the status quo rather than administer it? This is a woman who views politics as an extension of middle class charity not as a power struggle between opposing groups. It is literally worse than not having any coherent ideology at all. At least a total ideological opportunist might accidentally land on the correct analysis from time to time. Obviously this is an uncharitable reading and of course I'm really fixating on the writings of a random NDP member with no particular authority and no role as a party spokesperson. But in some ways I find that makes this article all the more interesting. It's not an overly massaged and elaborately prepared statement, it's just the genuinely presented worldview of an NDPer who I think is sadly representative of many of the senior members of the party these days. You can read her professional bio here if you're so inclined and its the typical successful progressive Canadian story: lots of international work, association with various governance agencies, lots of credentials and professional success. It's literally the old Thomas Douglas addage about Mouseland made manifest. Nobody with this level of power and comfort and self satisfaction is ever going to contemplate a serious challenge to the status quo and no party composed mostly of people who think this way is going to be anything except a drag on leftist organizing and activism. The fact that there is so much education and expertise and progressive sentiments behind these arguments is part of what makes them so dangerous. It is an extremely seductive worldview for a certain kind of well meaning and privileged Canadian in which you can simultaneously be helping the needy and yet also casting yourself as above the messy cut and thrust of daily politics and all the grubbiness that accompanies actual politicking. You can tell that for people like this merely participating in the process of power and being treated as an important voice is vastly more important than actually winning power and then changing things using that power. After all, any attempt to actually change something would be divisive and therefore untenable.
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Sep 18, 2019 16:20
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infernal machines posted:I feel for Barrie, but Toronto ain't gonna miss him. What happens when Barrie becomes too cosmopolitan for them? Can we expect them to arrive in Red Deer next?
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Sep 18, 2019 16:59
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PT6A posted:What happens when Barrie becomes too cosmopolitan for them? Can we expect them to arrive in Red Deer next? Jesus, what did Red Deer do to deserve that?
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Sep 18, 2019 20:49
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Hey Helsing does it make you feel better or worse that the NDP could financially fizzle out after this election? The Jack Layton Condo Building is such a fitting end.
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Sep 18, 2019 21:39
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