Time for a donor boycott of the BC NDP

http://www.vancouversun.com/choose+Sihota+party+president/2282860/story....

Sihota, now a businessman, was a controversial and colourful cabinet minister in successful NDP administrations. He ran for the presidency as head of a slate of "unity" candidates who want the party to become more centrist and reach out to business.

I also received numerous calls. I merely told them that I was a socialist and the party had decided those ideas where superfluous to getting elected and that Moe should look to his business budies for funds for his third way party.

Carole is hardly the only problem with the BC NDP when its convention elects Moe on that platform.  

[url=http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/34543/ndp_keeps_large_lead_in_briti... percent support for James' NDP[/url] At this rate, Carole James will be the next premier of British Columbia

kropotkin1951 wrote:

http://www.vancouversun.com/choose+Sihota+party+president/2282860/story....

 

Sihota, now a businessman, was a controversial and colourful cabinet minister in successful NDP administrations. He ran for the presidency as head of a slate of "unity" candidates who want the party to become more centrist and reach out to business.

 

I also received numerous calls. I merely told them that I was a socialist and the party had decided those ideas where superfluous to getting elected and that Moe should look to his business budies for funds for his third way party.

Carole is hardly the only problem with the BC NDP when its convention elects Moe on that platform.  

Mike Harcourt was correct in his book when he stated that a very vocal portion of the BC NDP doesn't ever want to win an election.  If we move away from the third way, we will NEVER form government EVER.

The NDP can't win a phony majority federally because we don't have Bay St funding our Party.

And the two old line parties can't win a phony majority today even with Bay Street support because the ideology runs out of gas every 25 to 30 years or so, and they're fresh out of new ideas for many years. BC Libs must have had some money behind them, because Campbell is a dud like McGuinty as far as I can tell.

I give up. It's pointless.

nbeltov, do you really think Blair was really 3rd way?

i see him as no more than a Bob Rae,  or any other infiltrating agent of destruction.

N.Beltov wrote:

Really? The third way or the highway? Do you think such a view is really defensible? Never mind havana's cheap shots. This is a more important question.

Neoliberal ideology is a top-down agenda requiring federal level compliance with the thing. And the way they've done it in Canada is to peel away tens of billions of dollars in transfer payments to the provinces, signed neoliberal trade deals with the US, and simply refused to collect federal level tax revs at even the OECD average, And never mind Canada being waaaay below the EU-15 average. Iow's, there are real capitalist countries spending more on social democracy than Canada, and not all of them are Nordic countries run by social democrats for many years either.

For our two old line parties in power and sharing power since 1867 non-stop, implementing neoliberal in Canada has been like shooting fish in a barrel for them. If any progressive party on the left is going to change things significantly in this country, they will need control of federal purse strings, otherwise this forced death march to the bottom of the barrel continues.

Third way is a mixture of left and right, as you probably know very well. If the Brtis spend $15B on housing - after the damaging Thatcherite feeding frenzy of yesteryear - what do they spend on the military?

I don't see how that Orwellian surveillance state - something we might very well have here once the "Games" are over - is an improvement. You'd do better to compare to Venezuela, or Cuba, or Bolivia.

by the way, did you know that last year over 100 homeless people died in Victoria, BC?

That was a interesting read as i see it more as this, also from the wiki link:

Quote:

"something different and distinct from liberal capitalism with its unswerving belief in the merits of the free market and democratic socialism with its demand management and obsession with the state. The Third Way is in favour of growth, entrepreneurship, enterprise and wealth creation but it is also in favour of greater social justice and it sees the state playing a major role in bringing this about. So in the words of... Anthony Giddens of the LSE the Third Way rejects top down socialism as it rejects traditional neo liberalism."

Only without too much "growth" and "wealth production" per se, or at least generational wealth production.

Moreover, there can be all  the same generational  power issues in  an absolute government control situation where those who work for the state would enjoy neopticism thinking and actions.

Egalitarian societies deman equality in belief and action...not in leveraging positions for personal power grabs.

That's the same old neo-liberal clap-trap. You'd be better off HIDING what a party you support stands for. Like most politicians do.

Mean Moe wrote:

You can't change anything with out winning an election and you can't win an election moving to socialism.  Capitalism is here to stay for quite awhile and the vast majority of the voting public like it.  We need to make realize this fact.  In order to implement a progressive agenda and limit the negative effects of capitalism, we must win an election.  In order to win an election, we must moderate our views on capitalism. That doesn't mean loving the corporations, it means accepting them as entities that create jobs and wealth. 

The outlook for each member will vary slightly, but here is my image an electable BC NDP:

1) Macroeconomics: The state should only be involved in economic interests were the sector is a natural monopoly, were the public good demands it and were the private sector will not develop.

2) Corporate Welfare: The state should only supply corporate welfare to a business entity were either it is viewed as an investment and provides dividends or a profit for the state, or in the case were an entire sector or company's failure would severely damage the entire economy.  In the event of the later, the dollars supplied should be in the form of an investment that provides for a benefit.

3) Taxes: Should only be as low or as high as is necessary to provide proper public services.  They should be equitably spread out so that one group does not pay more, or less, then their share. The simpler the better.

4)Public Services: The state should limit public services to natural monopolies, health, education and public goods.

5)Environment: Focus should be on aiding individuals to reduce to their use of carbon emitting products instead of grandiose mega plans. This could be in the form of grants for household energy reductions such as personal electrical generation via roof top solar and wind. As well  furnaces and boilers should be re-introduced.  These plans should be more effective and will have greater resonance with the voter.

 

Just some ideas.

 

And that differs from Campbell's policies HOW?

Basically, you're calling for the BCNDP to move MORE towards the Third Way even though every democratic country in the world is now repudiating Blairism-Clintonism.

Ken, it's just one Canadian province. There are nine more of them and two territories. By comparison, how would Michigan or Kentucky avoid competing with 49 other states for private sector jobs and investment that they won't be receiving from the feds? We have our "have not" regions of the country, too.

Neoliberalism is about Balkanizing large countries and isolating small ones with debt and unfair trade rules. We need a strong central government in both our countries if we're ever going to break the neoliberalorama. Although I suspect that there will be a new deal between western world countries within the next ten years or so. Sarkozy the conservative started things off last year with telling US politicians and Wall Street lobbyists that laissez-faire is finished.

What we need is a strong federal government that will challenge capital and the liberal financial regime with populist policies for fuller employment and investments in social democracy and green economy. I think Jack Layton has the smarts to do it, too. Provincial governments? They're in a race to the bottom with each other. And they collect a few taxes and pass them on the feds, and they can tweak provincial taxes a bit. But none of them are able to create socialism in one province. Not with the piddling amount of money they receive from Ottawa. 

Fidel wrote:

Mean Moe wrote:

You can't change anything with out winning an election and you can't win an election moving to socialism.  Capitalism is here to stay for quite awhile and the vast majority of the voting public like it. 

Last year a Ramussen poll in the US said that only [url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13226]53% of Americans favor capitalism[/url] over Socialism, while 20% now are in favor of Socialism. That's remarkable for several reasons which include the constant and pervasivee propaganda Americans have been exposed to by rightwing radio, newspapers and corporate sponsored television since the 1950s.

On the other side of the ocean, a solid majority of East Germans said they prefer life under Soviet communism to the capitalist system they have now. Socialists in Netherlands are on the verge of taking over the opposition role occupied by Labour. Europeans are confronting capitalism.

And here in the last far right bastions of capitalism in the world, our voter turnouts are abysmal. In Canada we have Harper with a phony minority government propped up with 22 percent of the registered Canadian vote. In our largest and what used to be most capitalist province, we have a Liberal leader clinging to dictatorial power with 22 percent of registered voter support in Ontario. And I doubt they would win that much support today.

Things are hardly looking care0free for the capitalist system throughout the western world. If advanced democracy was the rule in North America, things might look a lot different for crony capitalists and their hirelings in government pre-paid for by Wall Street and Bay Street. Without money in politics propping them up, we can be sure that capitalists would have even fewer friends every four years. What the left needs to do is unite against the right. We on the left are divided not so much by income differences as we are by social differences. We proles outnumber the wealthy and their rightwing politicos by a lot. But we remain divided.

This is the field of play. You can get on the field and play, or you can try to change the field and not play.

Your choice.

Ken Burch wrote:

Mean Moe wrote:

You can't change anything with out winning an election and you can't win an election moving to socialism.  Capitalism is here to stay for quite awhile and the vast majority of the voting public like it.  We need to make realize this fact.  In order to implement a progressive agenda and limit the negative effects of capitalism, we must win an election.  In order to win an election, we must moderate our views on capitalism. That doesn't mean loving the corporations, it means accepting them as entities that create jobs and wealth. 

The outlook for each member will vary slightly, but here is my image an electable BC NDP:

1) Macroeconomics: The state should only be involved in economic interests were the sector is a natural monopoly, were the public good demands it and were the private sector will not develop.

2) Corporate Welfare: The state should only supply corporate welfare to a business entity were either it is viewed as an investment and provides dividends or a profit for the state, or in the case were an entire sector or company's failure would severely damage the entire economy.  In the event of the later, the dollars supplied should be in the form of an investment that provides for a benefit.

3) Taxes: Should only be as low or as high as is necessary to provide proper public services.  They should be equitably spread out so that one group does not pay more, or less, then their share. The simpler the better.

4)Public Services: The state should limit public services to natural monopolies, health, education and public goods.

5)Environment: Focus should be on aiding individuals to reduce to their use of carbon emitting products instead of grandiose mega plans. This could be in the form of grants for household energy reductions such as personal electrical generation via roof top solar and wind. As well  furnaces and boilers should be re-introduced.  These plans should be more effective and will have greater resonance with the voter.

 

Just some ideas.

 

And that differs from Campbell's policies HOW?

Basically, you're calling for the BCNDP to move MORE towards the Third Way even though every democratic country in the world is now repudiating Blairism-Clintonism.

In many ways.

No hand outs to corporations with out expectations of a return.

Ensuring taxes paid by all are apportioned properly, not having post-sec. fees account for more revenue then CIT. Not expanding consumption taxes.

Not selling and possibly reacquiring natural monopolies such as Tersan, not attempting to privatize Hydro. Which is a another natural monopoly.

Having an incentive based environmental plan not a penalty based one.  You catch more flies with homey.

For all the perceived failings of third way politics, it allowed provinces like Manitoba to weather the downturn the best and a job is better then any social program.  It is also the main political leaning of those younger then the boomers.  In my opinion, its worst failing is that it is incremental and that is acceptable to me.

What they don't want is "just barely different".  Other than people who will NEVER vote BCNDP, why would ANYONE want that?

And wouldn't running on a "just barely different" plaftorm as you advocate actually end up making a BCNDP victory meaningless?

Besides, nobody other than corporations favor ANY more handouts to corporations.

Nothing in the policies you mentioned would have any effect on the lives of the poor, or on union workers.  Neither of those groups benefit from increased corporate profits.

Ken Burch wrote:

But it won't make it easier to elect a federal NDP government if the provincial NDP governments settle for being just as fiscally right-wing as the governments they replaced. 

I personally don't associate balanced budgets with either of the two old line parties. Steve Harper is running the debt up as Mulroney did before him, and McGuinty's Liberals are way out of balance with $25 billion in the hole annually. And Conservative-Republicans in the US are probably the most notorious big spenders with putting the US in a hole for Keynesian-militarism and now socialism for Wall Street and continuing under Liberal Democrats. 

The CCF-NDP have been the most fiscally responsible of all three main parties on average here in Canada as a rule. But we've only ever held provincial level power. As I was saying before about Marx' socialism in one province, neoliberalism in Canada is designed to Balkanize provinces with a race to the bottom agenda for corporate and other taxation. Some here have said provincial governments could create socialism in one province, but they aren't dealing with reality. They never explain how it can be done in any great detail. and when pressed for the details, they skulk off somewhere for a week or two. And then I forget I even asked the question.

Canadians who are conservative politically are sometimes attracted to the NDP because of their solid record for fiscal responsibility. A friend of the family's is a well off business professional, and his brother is a unionized blue collar worker who votes conservative and Liberal and switches back and forth every election like politics is a game of musical chairs. But his wealthy brother tells him that with his income, he has no reason to vote either Tory or Liberal and that those two parties favour rich people and big business in this country. And his blue collar brother still associates himself with the upper middle and upper classes in Canadian society based on his deluded expectation that some of their wealth will someday rub off on or trickle down his way I guess and not that they would ever spit on him if he was on fire or anything like that. Canadians are silly, Ken. It's like Woodie Guthrie said once about there being too many temporarily embarrassed millionaires in Canada, or something.

Ken many of us vote NDP provincially because we really do understand how the neoliberal agenda is actually carried out in this country.

We get a lot of this argument that says, if the NDP can't create socialism in one province, then what good are they?  And they don't realize how it sounds. But they are clever enough to stop short of saying, Jeez! We might as well vote Liberal or Green or Tory. At which point we have to hit our heads against the desk a few times. Rabble/babble discussions have become a lesson in how the left divides themselves based on social relations as opposed to wealth and income. We'd bite off our noses to spite our faces kind of thing sooner than unite and defeat the right.

I do think that now is the time to face down the plutocracy. But we need federal power to be taken seriously by capital. We need to challenge capital and to let it be an example for other countries operating within the liberal financial regime. And the mechanisms are there and exist for every country in this new setup since the 70's and 80's and which will allow a federal NDP government to do just that. But the way it is now is that every provincial Liberal and Conservative government tend to act like they are another Bosnia and Croatia and Montenegro and Serbia wanting to get rich quick and do it before the next election at all costs. We have to make Canadians excited to participate in our democracy, and that's not easy with an obsolete electoral system that punishes the majority who do bother to vote. If the left doesn't united now, then there may never be a good next time. If the NDP wasn't promising electoral reform, I'd still vote for them. But as far as I can tell, electoral reform will be necessary to defeat the right in Canada(and USA) and should be something every leftist in Canada works toward making happen.

Ken there are political conservatives who actually want this neoliberal setup to fail, like social democrats want it to fail but for totally different reasons. And I think it's scary the alternatives the right have in mind to replace this system gone awry after 28 years and tested under near-perfect lab conditions.

Well, I don't really agree with the whole initial approach taken in this thread, of attacking C. James, but thanks are in order for havana for uncovering the ugly views under the BC NDP rock. The fact is, the genuine views of so-called "mainstream" parties are often hidden from sight and covered with a lot of bullshit. It's refreshing to see the unadultered appetite for power expressed as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. That's very educational , I think, for lefties without a lot of experience.

And I like helping lefties.

There is nothing wrong with being proud of your past accomplishments.  I personally come from a long line of CCF/NDP members starting with the Regina Manifesto. That stated, those were different times, a different set of rules and a different game.  Politics has changed ten fold since then. We either can wallow in in our past glories or build new ones.

New glories will not come from staunch ideologies, or political dogmas.  They will come from a process of reconciling our past with modern world.  Otherwise, we are no better then neoliberal ideologues.

The third way is the synthesis of the failures of socialism and capitalism.  Taking the best from both to create a better world.

Or, you could continue to hit your head against the brick wall of socialist, or capitalist, politics.

Svend and Siksay as radicals, lol.

If Tony Blair and Bill Clinton represent Third Way politics, it is definitely to the right of what we need.  Socialism doesn't exclude small business, or pragmatism for that matter.  You can have socialist principles without being dogmatic.  It just seems like the NDP is losing its way, losing touch with its roots, and not connecting with the general public who are looking for a viable political solution.  I think being left, green and supporting small business and communities is pretty rational and pragmatic. Why use a tag like third way when it's been so badly tainted by Blair, Clinton and their ilk?