Will Moe Sihota become the next Premier of BC

Nice to hear of Moe Sihota again, and would welcome his return to BC politics, but are you equating party president with party leader?

lol. No Moe. Sorry. He would do worse than Ms. James.

I think the NDP should be small and medium business friendly said that over and over again here, and it is not any type of departure from where they used to be no matter how some try to spin it otherwise.

no1important wrote:

No. Never.

You left out Nay.

Another riddle.  Whose work do you think Moe will be doing? 

Forgive my ignorance here but I always thought a party president was mostly a dignitary position, like Governor General.  But after reading the interviews, I had the impression Moe was going to help Carole steer the ship from the backroom.

Pogo wrote:

The only time I have seen a party president (of any party) in the press is when they are trying to explain away a major screw-up.  If you want to increase your profile there are lots of better ways.  I would think rather that Moe is doing someone else's work.

I agree, Moe will be doing somebody else's work, if elected. The 2009 BCNDP Convention is all about forming the next Executive, who will be doing the work of forming the next campaign and choosing a new Leader. There are a lot of invisible hands out there.

I listen to Moe on the CBC and he is progressive on some issues but on others he has very regressive views.  Besides he is so last millennium.

Moe will prepare the feast and Gregor will dine out on it.  The left in BC will once again be on the sidelines watching business friendly NDP operatives deciding how to gain power from the business friendly Liberals so that we can have prosperity using Howe street's vision. But a greener and more socially conscious Howe street vision with the NDP in power.  A brave new future that is sure to yield significant progress on poverty and equity issues.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I listen to Moe on the CBC and he is progressive on some issues but on others he has very regressive views.  Besides he is so last millennium.

Moe will prepare the feast and Gregor will dine out on it.  The left in BC will once again be on the sidelines watching business friendly NDP operatives deciding how to gain power from the business friendly Liberals so that we can have prosperity using Howe street's vision. But a greener and more socially conscious Howe street vision with the NDP in power.  A brave new future that is sure to yield significant progress on poverty and equity issues.

I translate that to mean the NDP will move to the centre to provide a 'kinder, gentler' alternative to the Liberals.

ReeferMadness wrote:

I translate that to mean the NDP will move to the centre to provide a 'kinder, gentler' alternative to the Liberals.

Just like in the 90's they will defer any positive social change until the books are in order.  Once they spend a term or two trying to balance the books after the P3's debacles come home to roast they will be thrown out of office for being incompetent financial planners. The sad part is that no matter how fawning they become on Howe Street the business media and the business leaders will not be NDP friendly.

Reshuffling the chairs on the deck so that poor people get a better view of the sinking is marginally better than locking them below decks.

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Soothsayers had a better record of prediction than economists

Many of us thought that way when Clark got in only to watch him screw many of the people that worked hard for him and the NDP at that time.

I think the biggest problem economically will be, and has been in the past, business reducing investment in jurisdictions that are NDP run.  It is well known that big business will pull large amounts of investments from provinces with NDP governments, just to screw them over.  Then when a business friendly party returns to power, they ramp up investment and it appears like the governmnet was responsible.  Saskatchewan's recent "boom" is evidence of this fact.

How do you deal with this type of irrational behaviour?

Mean Moe wrote:

I think the biggest problem economically will be, and has been in the past, business reducing investment in jurisdictions that are NDP run.  It is well known that big business will pull large amounts of investments from provinces with NDP governments, just to screw them over.  Then when a business friendly party returns to power, they ramp up investment and it appears like the governmnet was responsible.  Saskatchewan's recent "boom" is evidence of this fact.

How do you deal with this type of irrational behaviour?

This is not irrational behaviour it is actually long term strategic planning.  Something the the corporations have been doing for over 30 years in response to the social safety net put in place after WWII.  The mushy centrist NDP'ers  sit around trying to figure out how to make Howe Street like left wing ideas that by definition will decrease windfall profits. I think that is as absurd as it sounds.

The other thing of course is our unions do not support the type of attack groups that the business community does and the media does not cover left wing lobbies the same as they cover business friendly lobbyists.  We still hear about the fast ferries and fudget budgets despite the fact that neither of those events are either the worst examples or the most recent examples of government ineptitude.  Where is the union supported Kevin Falcon to be employed for 4 years at destroying the Liberal brand name.  

No matter how business friendly the NDP becomes, if elected BC will have another capital strike just like we had in the late 1990's but again like then the MSM will use the term rarely.   Only workers strikes are greedy.  Corporate capital strikes are just good business to maximize profits and that helps everyone.  Haven't you been trickled on yet?

Agreeing with Bill Tieleman is not a first for me but certainly not an everyday occurrence.

He will never be leader or Premier, but he is involved in rigging the next BC NDP leadership race in favour of Adrian Dix or possibly Maurine Karigianis.  They are all old Clark/Sihota cronies.   Dianne Watts would absolutely destroy Moe S in a provincial election, he has so much baggage and so little substance to offer.  Moe is smart enough to understand this, he wants to be the power behind the throne and he does command significant allegiances in the party, in organized labour and the broader Indo-Canadian community in the Lower Mainland.

The "BC NDP needs to reach out to business" line is so ancient, it goes back to when Harcourt became leader in 1987.  The BC NDP has been explictly pro-business for the last 20 years - Tieleman and Clark did some "on your side" rhetoric to win the 1996 election, but the policies from start to finish have been extremely centrist.  Dosanjh brought in balanced budget legislation as an NDP Premier in 2000, but you still have these "expert pundits" asking the BC NDP  to "accept balanced budgets."  We spent 10 years in government kow-towing to these people and they still hate our guts to this day, so I agree with Tieleman's analysis to that extent.  But both Tieleman and the Sihota faction want the NDP to rely on superficial slogans and images - they just differ on which ones. 

You mean Moe I-have-5,000-votes-in-my-pocket Sihota?

He's just fine with becoming the totally unrivaled puppeteer.

Being President will put more formal accountability on him than is usual. But the emphasis is on that word 'formal', so its a small cost for all the rigging tools that go with the position.

How does one get rid of corporations?

remind wrote:

How does one get rid of corporations?

The question for me is how does a government limit their control and power. In my ideal world one of our constitutional changes would be to clearly state that corporations are not a protected entity under the Charter.  My world would also have a government backed capital pool for coops and syndicates and other worker controlled economic units.  By limiting their power and giving worker owned small and medium sized businesses the tools to flourish we may not need to be subservient to them in the future. 

Stockholm wrote:

The fact is that the vast majority of people in Canada are employed by private companies and if you try to use this "bread riots in St. Petersburg"-style anti-business rhetoric, all you do is send out of a message to the public that you see the people they work for as enemies that you want to see them fail. Very few people will vote for that.

 - but that doesn't mean that Carole James needs to become the "Rosa Luxemburg of BC" and start clenching her fist and declaring war on business either. The fact is, unless we had some sort of a totalitarian Marxist government that legislated an end to all private property and all private entterprise of any kind - there will always be businesses and they are a vital part of our economy.

That to me is a fine political ideology and there is nothing inherently wrong with it.  I just was bemoaning the demise of an alternative left wing voice.  The NDP the party built by CCF'ers, who in BC participated in things like the On To Ottawa Trek is offering no vision except we will be kinder and gentler liberals. The leadership has implicitly said we have no alternative grand visions but we will be nicer people. Attacking businesses is not the answer but sleeping with them will never produce meaningful change.  The poor and marginalized in this province are not involved and do not vote.  Once again the NDP will spend 3 years trying to win the votes of middle and upper income people instead of highlighting the issues of the people that it was founded to represent and that it should be standing shoulder to shoulder with in this economic storm.

In my riding the largest single worker groups is retail.  I am sure all those young voters who didn't vote and go to work at the mall every day want to hear that the NDP is on board  with their corporate bosses. Imagine the consequences electorally of talking about actually hiring more government Employment Standards Officers and giving them the regulations to stop the abuse of our working poor.  But wait that would require money and the NDP will not raise taxes especially on the geese that lay Howe street its golden eggs.

So next election I will be faced with having to vote for a kinder gentler centre right party or a revamped right wing party with a centrist name and a new centrist leader. IMO the logical result of the next election will be a further decline of voter participation because our young marginalized workers will ignore the whole process. 

The current type of voter participation decline is not good for anybody but the elites, because workers are merely abstaining and not spoiling.

Moe is the new President of the BC NDP.

He will not become the next Leader of the BC NDP. Even if James' leadership is not backed at the 2011 convention, I doubt Moe would be resigning the presidency to seek the Leadership.