Always right there with the anal epithets, Cue dissociates himself from the real world of company pensions:
"George. I notice you spend considerable amount of time talking about shit you know nothing about. In this case the topic is me. I am getting CPP buddy and that is all. The last time I was in a union was the IWA, when I worked in forestry in the 80's.
As usual you have mixed up a lot of preconcieved notions about other peoples self interest (projection?) to fuel your anti-union hobby horse. I am not involved in "stock market" boondoggles, or "international investments". Nor are the unions actually, since they don't control how the pensions funds are used. They are controlled by a committee, in which the union voice is the smallest, as the teachers unions discovered when they tried to get Cadillac Fairview (a company you suggest they "own" and control) to negotiate a fair contract and rehire locked out CEP workers. In fact, the pensions funds are in control of a bunch of venture capitalists who are just as capable of losing all the pension money as they are of making it."
Then there was Cue, some weeks back, after explaining why he does follow the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan's fortunes rather closely: "I am married to an elementary school teacher you fucking moron."
The teachers suffer along with all dependent on the finance capital industry, as Cue explained:
"Having a successful pension fund speculating on the market that might blow up at any minute, is not "asking for more". Indeed, the value of OTTP has decreased by 30 Billion dollars over the last 3 years, doncha know it.
Quote:After eight straight years in the top quarter of Canadian pension plans, OTPP announced that the pension plan lost $21.1-billion of its asset base, which represents a negative 18% rate-of-return for the year ending Dec. 30, 2008. The fund's total assets have dropped from $108.5-billion to $87.4-billion."
But of course, Cue, it has always been a matter of whose ox is being gored. In this case, it's a matter of explaining how the majority of workers are to EVER enjoy the old age that you face, if there isn't an acknowledged role for at least a market designed to improve their lot, controlled by a state that reflects social democratic values.
. Can we discuss good green jobs and this coalition as part of the discussion about the relations aomongst political parties and social movementssay with an idea ot ciriqun this coaliton for not doing what it should?
I don't see Jack Layton recommending government investment in "new productive enterprises" here. I see him talking about investing in "infrastructure" to stimulate the economy through the existing construction industry, basically. Certainly, this has merit, but it does not address the issue of creating sustainable and profitable industries that serve Canadian interests.
In anycase, my point is not about the "ideas". It is about how to build effective organizations.
Exactly why I phrased it that way: they really, should be wary of being critical of "a social democratic party that cannot command, only condemn, finance capitalist institutions,"
Of course it's not just about ideas...it's about the POWER to DO something. And building effective organizations will depend on finding ways to tame finance capital, the wielder of all of our savings, while also causing those savings to increase in value.
Why should I be wary of it? It's the truth. I love social democrats who insist on a policy of Soviet styled "democractic centralism" and party discipline.
The power to do something means building effective organizations. Again, you have it ass backwards. The labour movement didn't build this country by waiting for a "national consensus" to arrive and then wondrously being graced with power through the electoral system. They did it by building effective organization, person by person, community by community, not by wishing on a star and telling people who critique the status quo parties to shut up.
But today, all people can do is complain about how the mass media is biased against them, and forgetting that when the labour movement became an effective tool for changing the way business is done, there was no "mass media", or very little to speak of, and what there was of it was entirely in the control of the business class.
I'm afraid that if you believe the same conditions exist for the building of labour as the immediate post-war conditions of the late 1940s, this discussion is just another meaningless ahistorical exercise.
Good thing I didn't say that then. But you will never miss an opportunity to miss the point in the pursuit of defending the moribund status of the NDP: the central point is about building effective organizations, without the support of any kind of mass media, not that we are living in 1900, the real benchmark date for the rise of the international labour movement.
One hopes of course that the labour unions can do their part in the transformative process, given that they are about the only cohesive organizations left, with any power and motivation to counter the neo-liberal agenda, as ideology, but sitting on the sidelines and hoping that the "national consensus" will miraculously change for the better and sunny skies will appear, is not going to get anyone anywhere.
Pretending that labour's votes for Tweedledum or Tweedledee while running from the very idea of Climate Change - the experience since the 1970s - is not the basis of a rallying cry that all could follow. The Georgettis will have to stop fawning over the brilliance of Jimmy Flaherty and increase their concerns beyond those of the membership. A wonderful start would be an insistence on increasing national pensions for everyone...not just those fortunate enough to have jobs and saving from relatively high wages in the CPP and with RRSPs.
And I don't see election workers "sitting on the sidelines." That's the position of critics up in the rarified air of the bleachers.
We havent given up at all. Ideally, NDP ridings and other kinds of club would be 20 times more active in between elections. They arent. The only thing activists can be sure people will be there for is the episodic events- the elections.
Thats not saying that is all that be will be done. But realistically, its all that we can count on being done well.
But social movement groups, each and as an aggregate, are equally episodic.
Nor do I see social movements doing much that results in shifting the national agenda. Same as with the NDP: no points for just trying.
I think people are forgetting the strategizing that does go on. And the NDP and social movements being related is not past tense entirely. For one, the membership of the NDP and many, many of those organizations overlaps.
Now I know of events where the NDP has been asked to show up without banners -- I also know of events where organized labour has been asked to show up without banners and places where those who did were criticized. These questions are not so simple-- at times people do not go to lead out of respect-- they go and stand in the rain and provide the bodies supporting the organizer not taking over.
You can debate if it was the right strategy but you should be careful about making assumptions about the reasons any particular organization might choose to show up but not be visible in an obvious way.
I don't know the organizers of the G20 protests-- anyone here know what invites, requests were made?
Cue, YW and tyvm, ;) and I agree pretty much with your detailed participation by the NDP, or lack thereof from your perspective, based upon my experiences out here.
However, I have never expected the NDP, as a party, to be what you seem to want it to be. I understand they represent(ed) people like my parents and sister/brother in law, who do not believe in radical activism too much on the inside of political party actions. as well as they do represent people like me, who believe there should be more. As such, I recognize that a balance has to be struck. And then maintained.
Even though my mom was heavily into clear cut logging protests, and marched against the first Gulf War, for her, the NDP was not the vehicle to be an radical activist within. She and others like her, who were founding members, or were there at the beginnings, whom I know/knew, believed that type of activism responsibility is for individual members to undertake on their own time, not 100% party time, as the people are diverse within the party and not all want to have a "radical activist party", as opposed to a consensus party.
In I hope the spirit of Remind's last post which makes good points-- I'd like to add that there should be no expectation that all who contribute must do it in the same way or through the same organizations. We don't need to constantly get into debates about the best way to make change slamming the other. I think both the political partisan people and the organizations outside the politics need each other and would both do better to support each other more.
Firewalls do not exist either as some people move in and out of each of them.
I don't think a movement or a party can only be judged by success and change alone-- standing for the right thing will get my vote otherwise we'd all be Conservatives today.
The NDP often has to make that balance as a party between taking a stand that can cost popularity or going for the position that gives votes now. In the end those who compromize may not do it out of belief but legitimate differences of strategy-- better to be stronger for the next fight or take this important stand now.
Often the party in my view gets it wrong. But we can't measure a party by our own standard alone because if I ask someone else here they might agree with me only to find that we entirely disagree as to which times the party got it wrong.
I don't think the issue is one of right or wrong or "strategic" positioning optics. I am quite sure that part of the reason the party doesn't pursue grass roots organizing is because it is afraid of embarrassment. That said, being "connected" and having a pretense in these kind of affairs is the only way to functionally take steps to prevent "embarrassment", and indeed, simply participating in something, and being directly involved in organizing, do not necessarily require total agreement with everything, and every person in an organization.
That is what coalitions are all about, and it is usually not such a big dieal striking a consensus on a generally accepted statement of purpose.
So, in my view, I would have no problem with the NDP becoming so actively involved that it bullied its way into events, demanding a visible presence. That is just politics. But I really don't see that kind of active interest from the NDP these days.
George. You shift playing fields like a golfer moving from one green to the next. However, you have to put the ball in before you move to the next hole. Those are the rules, sorry. Pensions, and so on, amount to more "stimulus" not "new productive enterprise" what you were calling for. Not that I object to this idea, because I know this was just your chance to take another shot at selfish unions that don't look out for anyone but the membership, but that neo-liberal talking point is just not going to wash with the great unwashed, such as myself.
Indeed it seems to me that the kind of new and productive and sustainable enterprise that you were talking about is something like this: Good Green Jobs. Now this kind of thing is not really good enough, and might be too little too late, but is far further along the line of toward building a sustainable economy than Layton's proposal for "shovel-ready infrastructure projects just waiting" to be staffed with ten dollar an hour temporary day labourers.
Be that as it may, what is really important here, is not the idea itself, but the fact that this is a project that directly links labour to the needs of our communities, and examples how community organizations and labour can work together to develop new ideas and create organizational links beyond the immediate needs of the membership.
Notably, we see an attempt being made to build bridges by the entrenched labour movement in aid of new immigrant communities as represented by the Canadian Tamil Congress and the Jamaican Canadian Association. I don't think that we will be seeing any "good green jobs" anytime soon, but this is the kind of initiative that builds strong organizational links at the grass roots in the long term, which is what we need if we are going to weather the coming storm, and maintain even a slight smidgen of the values that we share.
See the NDP there? I don't.
So, keep putting, maybe you'll make it to the next hole, someday.
Cue: "Those are the rules, sorry. Pensions, and so on, amount to more "stimulus" not "new productive enterprise" what you were calling for. Not that I object to this idea, because I know this was just your chance to take another shot at selfish unions that don't look out for anyone but the membership, but that neo-liberal talking point is just not going to wash with the great unwashed, such as myself."
Cue, you can look forward to enjoying a pension that will be far and above the pensions of the majority of workers. They would like to have a guaranteed income at the end of their working days (which may be 70 within the next couple of decades). Corporations will no longer set up pension funds with a guaranteed income, they will only guarantee to make payments into a fund, and the rest is up to the MARKET. That is the one institution in the panoply of capitalist institutions that you never mention, as though , unmentioned, it will go away.
In reality, Cue, you are involved in the stock market and international investments, right up to your ying yang.
The 'productive enterprises" should be state-owned, as were so many in the mixed economy at war's end. The accumulated pension funds including our sovereign funds should be employed in the development of Canadian industries...only one living in another world would not consider them our primary hope for the generations to follow.
And please, don't suggest that New Democrats do not support a multicultural workforce. That lie could easily be refuted by any active New Democrat on this board.
George. I notice you spend considerable amount of time talking about shit you know nothing about. In this case the topic is me. I am getting CPP buddy and that is all. The last time I was in a union was the IWA, when I worked in forestry in the 80's.
As usual you have mixed up a lot of preconcieved notions about other peoples self interest (projection?) to fuel your anti-union hobby horse. I am not involved in "stock market" boondoggles, or "international investments". Nor are the unions actually, since they don't control how the pensions funds are used. They are controlled by a committee, in which the union voice is the smallest, as the teachers unions discovered when they tried to get Cadillac Fairview (a company you suggest they "own" and control) to negotiate a fair contract and rehire locked out CEP workers. In fact, the pensions funds are in control of a bunch of venture capitalists who are just as capable of losing all the pension money as they are of making it.
You posited an idea. Something about "new productive enterprises". Were it not for you crass desire to shit on the few working people who make more than minimum wage because they happen to be in a collective bargaining unit, you have chosen to completely ignore the fact the "Good Green Jobs for All Coalition" is an initiative that seeks to direct government investment into government owned businessess to build Canadian manufacturing, Ontario Hydro and Toronto Hydro. That is what you say you want, is it not?
No. Rather that recognize that George has to rant on about "self-interested" unions who only look out for their own membership, and praise the high minded ideals of those who promote "stimulus" funding to hire temporary workers in construction. According to you no one should critique the NDP for its high minded stance on "stimulus", but you feel totally free to shit all over those "selfish unions" who are actively promoting the ideas about government capital investment in government controlled enterprises that you say you support.
But, this is not about "ideas". Ideas are a dime a dozen. This is about effective organizing.
I never said that the NDP does not support theoretically the idea of a "multicultural workforce". It's not about anything like some vaguely aesthetic sounding notion of having a "multicultural workforce", a phrase that belies the fact that you simply do not "get it". It is about giving marginalized people opportunities through directed investment intended to build the Ontario economy. It is not about "supporting" high brow notions of "cultural diversity" or any other such rot. It is about building strong organizational linkages across communities that can leverage community power to make your "multicultural workforce" a reality. That comes from doing something more than showing up at the local community weenie roast for a photo op.
At the end of the day I do not see the NDP directly involving itself in these struggles, as part of its day to day organizing efforts. Indeed, I see no effort to mobilize anything at all. On the other hand, here we see the unions directly confronting neo-liberalism as an ideology at the "grass roots", not just in theory, but by contributing their resources to empowering the voice of marginalized people, and forwarding a progressive agenda of investment in a sustainable economy.
Their activist, and their members go to these meetings as representatives of their unions, and they help co-ordinate and organize with people from marginalized communities, and they give cash to help them promote their cause.
That is how you build organizations, and that is how you build a "national consensus" person by person, and community by community.
You are entitled to your opinion that the real reason the NDP does not participate is mostly because of the embarrasment part. But you could at least acknowledge that you have heard people saying that they dont think the NDP belongs there in the way you think it should. Why you think your reason it isnt there trumps, and what is the connection to the reason others gave, Remind most recently.
A pretty complex attribution of motive. Not so much complex, as dependent on a lot of disputable variables.
To a degree we all agree on this. Though there is an important divergence in that you see it as a departure from what should be and was once much more. Which 'organically' leads to the different colouring of what is.
And just to be clear, I dont think its really a matter that the NDP does not 'belong' a lot more in grassroots movements.
Ideally, and more than just ideally, we'd all be involved in everything. But there isnt just the obvious time limits entailed in that.
Some kinds of work just dont fit together as well as do the activists doing them. And harkening back to our difference about the NDP at its origins: that reality goes back to the inception of the CCF, let alone the NDP that is later in time as well as in the evolution of the role of party within a movement of socialists and their allies.
As someone said above, we do different things better. Yes, that can be a copout obscuring how it was 'inprogressively' propelled to be that way. [Emphasis on can be.]
But it can as much be a lazy copout to in practice assume that the seperation is to make sure things stay tame.
Always right there with the anal epithets, Cue dissociates himself from the real world of company pensions:
"George. I notice you spend considerable amount of time talking about shit you know nothing about. In this case the topic is me. I am getting CPP buddy and that is all. The last time I was in a union was the IWA, when I worked in forestry in the 80's.
As usual you have mixed up a lot of preconcieved notions about other peoples self interest (projection?) to fuel your anti-union hobby horse. I am not involved in "stock market" boondoggles, or "international investments". Nor are the unions actually, since they don't control how the pensions funds are used. They are controlled by a committee, in which the union voice is the smallest, as the teachers unions discovered when they tried to get Cadillac Fairview (a company you suggest they "own" and control) to negotiate a fair contract and rehire locked out CEP workers. In fact, the pensions funds are in control of a bunch of venture capitalists who are just as capable of losing all the pension money as they are of making it."
Then there was Cue, some weeks back, after explaining why he does follow the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan's fortunes rather closely: "I am married to an elementary school teacher you fucking moron."
The teachers suffer along with all dependent on the finance capital industry, as Cue explained:
"Having a successful pension fund speculating on the market that might blow up at any minute, is not "asking for more". Indeed, the value of OTTP has decreased by 30 Billion dollars over the last 3 years, doncha know it.
Quote:After eight straight years in the top quarter of Canadian pension plans, OTPP announced that the pension plan lost $21.1-billion of its asset base, which represents a negative 18% rate-of-return for the year ending Dec. 30, 2008. The fund's total assets have dropped from $108.5-billion to $87.4-billion."
But of course, Cue, it has always been a matter of whose ox is being gored. In this case, it's a matter of explaining how the majority of workers are to EVER enjoy the old age that you face, if there isn't an acknowledged role for at least a market designed to improve their lot, controlled by a state that reflects social democratic values.
Still not feeling well today, but I want to quickly say, if the NDP were the left's version of the Reform, I personally would have gone/go running from them.
Reform = Tea Partiers = no brains or maturity
I love live cases
. Can we discuss good green jobs and this coalition as part of the discussion about the relations aomongst political parties and social movementssay with an idea ot ciriqun this coaliton for not doing what it should?
[quote
s. =Cueball]
Indeed it seems to me that the kind of new and productive and sustainable enterprise that you were talking about is something like this: Good Green Jobs. Now this kind of thing is not really good enough, and might be too little too late, but is far further along the line of toward building a sustainable economy than Layton's proposal for "shovel-ready infrastructure projects just waiting" to be staffed with ten dollar an hour temporary day labourers.
Be that as it may, what is really important here, is not the idea itself, but the fact that this is a project that directly links labour to the needs of our communities, and examples how community organizations and labour can work together to develop new ideas and create organizational links beyond the immediate needs of the membership.
Notably, we see an attempt being made to build bridges by the entrenched labour movement in aid of new immigrant communities as represented by the Canadian Tamil Congress and the Jamaican Canadian Association. I don't think that we will be seeing any "good green jobs" anytime soon, but this is the kind of initiative that builds strong organizational links at the grass roots in the long term, which is what we need if we are going to weather the coming storm, and maintain even a slight smidgen of the values that we share.
See the NDP there? I don't.
So, keep putting, maybe you'll make it to the next hole, someday.