Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

It’s a common phrase on the front lines of class conflict: “Why don’t you just get yourself a job?” It comes up when people talk about employment, poverty, or wages. I am often surprised by the amount of glee taken when people complain not just about the homeless or the unemployed, but about people working for minimum wage. The question is often asked, “Why am I paying their tax bill?” “What do you mean I should pay for public transit? I have my own car”, “Why should they get anything more than they already have? I worked hard for what I have. I deserve it. They don’t. I’m a self made man”

I hear that and I think to myself, maybe they’re a manager who just had to fire somebody. Maybe they’ve just passed one too many strapping young panhandlers on the street. Maybe they’ve just had a look at their T4 slip. However, all the maybes in the world doesn’t make them any less wrong.

No one, not one single solitary person, “gets themselves a job”. Every job is dependent on someone else. In order to have a job, you need a company to work at. In order to have a company you need customers to sell to and suppliers to buy from. In order to keep using the labor and capital that your business depends upon, your customers will need to give you money. Money is little else but a giant confidence game we invented to distribute goods and services. Those Good and services are worth what people will pay for them, but the opposite is also true. A dollar is only worth what you’re willing to trade for it.

We’re in an economic crisis right now because a lot of financial institutions suddenly had to stop lying to themselves about how much they were worth. Pretty soon, more and more people will also have to stop lying to themselves. Companies are shutting down right now because they can’t pretend they’re making anything anybody will buy. All that is left will be thousands or even millions of people re-evaluating their place in society. I think that’s where the solution to the crisis lies. Premier Gordon Campell wrote on Twitter today that he was looking for unfiltered ideas on how to create jobs in this new economic landscape. I believe I have one. Find out what we have to offer the world, and also find out what we want from the rest of the world. If anything comes from the myriad of stimulus packages being passed in parliaments and senates all over the world, I hope that at least some of those funds go towards creating new markets. This will require us to answer this question: What are we all doing here? When North and South America were discovered, people made their fortunes creating new societies there and bringing resources back. When the industrial revolution started, we made machines that could make items like clothes and fine china at rates previously unheard of. In the 20th century, we connected the whole world with automobiles, satellites, and computers. In this new century, we must decide what the next chapter of the human endeavor is. If we can find a challenge that can speak to our souls, it is there that we will find our future.

Yes, yes, I know. I’m going along with the crowd and making a post about the Obama inauguration. There are times when you have to be an individual, and this is not one of those times. There is a Black US President. No one can ignore that. It’s also a change in power in one of the darkest economic times in recent memory. Any way you look at it, it was history. My wife had the inauguration on the TV in her classroom and one of her students asked, “Are my kids going to learn about today in Social Studies?”

I don’t believe there is anyone who heard that inauguration speech and didn’t feel like kicking ass. Obama painted a picture of the future, and for the duration of that speech it sounded like an exciting place to live. True, there would be hardship and problems, but he reassured that heroes would be made in overcoming them. He also treated America’s enemies differently in his speech. No longer were they the numberless hordes who “hated freedom”. They were actual people, misguided in their ventures, but people nonetheless. I think that approach inspires courage more than it does fear. If Obama does nothing else in his term of office, he will at least be a treat to hear at all of his speaking engagements.

I think the people who were incensed by the appearance of Rick Warren at the inauguration need to grow up. Obama let him lead a prayer, he didn’t make him Secretary of putting-the-government-in-people’s-bedrooms. He will be as much a part of the American Religious landscape after Gay Marriage is allowed as he was before. He will also have to deal with it just like everyone else. The real work of of obtaining the right to marry for all will be done by proving that such a thing is good for society, not just by attacking some figurehead priest. Make no mistake, those bans will be lifted. It’s a when, not an if, and the years of social progress beforehand stand as evidence. After all, as the inauguration today proved, anything is possible.

So after realizing that 143 seats does not a mandate make, Stephen Harper has convinced the Governor General to prorogue, or suspend parliament until early January. Personally, I wanted the coalition to oust the Prime Minister. Not because I think they’ll make a better government, but because I wanted someone to pay for the state of Canadian politics.

Dion was well on his way to being that person. The Liberal party lost all of those seats because they could not shake their image of an Ontario-centric Canada. They didn’t even seem to realize that they were talking down to the voters. They should have addressed that and made visible efforts to change.
With a new party leader, the Liberals could perhaps rethink their approach to governing and ultimately come up with a better party.

However, when Harper introduced the economic update, he made it clear that he should be the one to suffer. To cut his opponents’ election funding from the budget and to punish their voters (i.e. public workers) by taking away their right to strike means that Harper isn’t in Ottawa to make the country better, he’s just waging a personal war for seats in the House of Commons. He can yell all he likes about “what Canadians want”, but to pull a stunt like this after an election means that he has no idea what Canadians want. We want a minority conservative government. The reason Canadian politics has been so “boring” is that we as a people have no desire to go on these grand political adventures from the left or the right. A government where no party has a clear mandate has no power to carry out any kind of agenda, and that suits us just fine.

Image provided by http://www.abbotsford-real-estate.info/

My vote has been counting for a lot this year. We had a federal election last month, a civic election yesterday and we’ll have a provincial election this May. It goes without saying that the local sign makers are ecstatic. During the grand to-do of the US presidential election, there have been many grumblings on forums that we Canadians don’t have to deal with politicians who think The Flintstones was a documentary and other such nonsense. In Abbotsford, the town I grew up in and where I have chosen to live, the situation is a little different.

I would like to direct your attention to an organization called Abbotsford Families United. If you click the preceding link, you’ll be taken to their voting guide for the civic election which they e-mailed to anyone who signed up for their newsletter. You may notice these candidates are not chosen for their ability to run the city, but for their “strong stance” on homosexuals, sex shows and casinos. Never mind about the homeless on the streets or that school classes are overcrowded, if we don’t elect these candidates, as they claim, “You can expect to see pro-homosexual indoctrination right down to the kindergarten level in the public schools starting next year.” Yeah, you know, because if we allow that into the curriculum, how are teachers supposed to fit that in between classes on burning witches and oh, I don’t know, learning how to READ and WRITE!?

Luckily, this group’s choice for mayor didn’t come within spitting distance of winning the election. That honor went to George Peary, an man I’ve known to display capability and integrity in every position he’s taken. However, 4 out of the 5 council members and all of the school trustees in that voting guide were elected to office.

I find myself thinking about how California and several other states just passed measures banning gay marriage. The passage of Proposition 8 in California strikes me as a monstrous decision as I imagine it is to many Californians. Gay Marriage has become a more emotional issue for me recently. Over the past 8 months there have been many times when I’ve been sitting at home, watching TV with my wife and thinking “Yup, life is pretty close to perfect right now”. When I got married, I was able to celebrate my relationship with her in front of all my family, my friends and my community. It was, and still is, the best day of my life. If someone made a law that said that I couldn’t have that, that is was somehow wrong for us to be together, then I would break that law with a clear conscience and extreme fervor.

The Mormon Church spent over $40 million dollars to get that amendment passed, but it all had to start somewhere. Civic and school board elections may seem small in comparison to the break-neck races at the national level, but they are all vitally important to preserving our freedom. I shouldn’t have to tell you that even now people are literally dying for the right to elect their leaders and control their destinies. We will always have a section of society that believes order is achieved through fear, cruelty and dominance. Sometimes all it takes is one seat, one election for them to gain a foothold in the halls of power. So next time your local paper is full of candidates you have never heard of, take the time to learn about them, and for heaven’s sake, vote! Abbotsford Families United cannot claim a monopoly on all values. We all have values of one kind or another, and the only way we can honor those values is if express them in the leaders we elect.

In case you didn’t know it was the 21st century, America has just elected Barack Obama, the first African-American President. Personally, I think this turn of events benefits everyone, even Non-Americans like me. It isn’t going to matter exactly what kind of President he is, the fact that Obama got elected the way he did is enough to rewrite the playbook on political campaigns. A vivid and compelling vision of your city, province or country is a requirement for any run for office. Now that we have the internet, that vision can be as vivid and compelling as you want. You can have as much information out there as you want, and the candidate with the most information wins. This increases voter confidence and energizes your core base. Early statistics place US voter turnout at 70-80 percent. Forget that there is a black US president, that number is an even greater achievement!

However, since Canada’s relationship with the US still resembles that of a humpback whale and a cluster of barnacles, a change in regime should always be a concern. The US Ambassador warned the Fraser institute that Canada will miss Bush if Obama wins the election. I’m sure we will miss Bush just as much as that lovely 30% duty he decided to put on our softwood lumber exports.

Obama’s site says that he will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to change NAFTA in such a way that benefits America’s workers. The campaign promise is vague in a way that’s unsettling. Is he appealing to his democrat base, or is this a vision of things to come? Of course, there are also elements within Canada that believe we got the raw deal on NAFTA. Perhaps if all parties meet on the basis of a shared distrust of the agreement, some common ground can be found and a better NAFTA will result.

No matter what Obama’s actions as president we’ll be, it’s a sure bet that he will think of his own people first. We should ask nothing less of our own parliament. However, we should take solace in the fact that he got to where he is right now by listening to the people around him, rather than just hiding behind his talking points. Where his opponents demanded obedience, he demanded inventiveness and passion. If he invites Canada to join in his plans for the future, he will do it by trying to inspire that same inventiveness and passion. Even if he turns out to be an adversary to Canada’s interests, the only way we’ll do right by Canada is if we respond with a strong vision of Canada and our place in the world. Either way, we come out with the Canada we wish for.

Image provided by http://www.mackaycartoons.net/

After a month of salacious tv ads, accusations from all sides, and 300 million dollars we have achieved…absolutely nothing! Actually I think everyone got what they wanted in this election. The Conservatives have more seats, but still a minority which is what most of Canada wants anyway. I don’t think the Conservatives have themselves to congratulate for their 19 new seats. The Liberal party’s media presence, at least in the west, was next to nothing. I think many people voted for their Conservative MP candidate just so Harper would get out of that goofy sweater vest and stop attempting to smile. However, it’s more likely that the Liberals have done nothing to shake the image that they only care about Ontario and Quebec. Not only that, if you have a place like BC with bad memories of a provincial NDP government, we are left with no centrist alternative to vote for.

Now, I’m not saying that Canada is going through a new phase of Reaganomics, Thatcherism, or any other variation “Big government=Bad, No taxes=Good” philosophy. It’s just nice to know that we can pay for the kind of services we expect from the government without burdening future generations. We love the idea that we can get our medicine, military and employment insurance without running a deficit. The Conservatives bring this ideal to the table, but it doesn’t cover other issues that Canadians are concerned about, like the environment or poverty. The other parties were very passionate about these issues, but offered little information as to how their strategies would work without bankrupting the country.

The Liberals “Green Shift” plan that cost them so much seats could have been a blessing if they had simply published some data on how it would work. It could have created jobs and spurred innovation in many industry sectors, but we wouldn’t have known that because the other parties had control of the plan’s image. The average commercial webserver can send out the equivalent of the library of congress in a matter of hours. It shouldn’t be a stretch publish white papers, datasets, or bill drafts of any kind.. The Liberals chose to respond by repeating themselves rather than provide more detail, like they were guarding the plans for the atom bomb. The rumour mills provided by the NDP and Conservatives were able to build on that uncertainty until both parties had gained seats in the election.

I want to point out a recent article in the Boston Globe about the nature of rumours. Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology studied over 280 internet discussion groups to find out how rumours were born, spread, and killed. They found that rumours are based on a genuine attempt to find the truth. If you want to fight a rumour, first you cannot deny it if it’s true, and if it’s not true, make sure the truth is more vivid than the lie. The Democrats in the US are unwittingly putting these conclusions to the test in the forthcoming presidential election. Some Republican supporters have literally accused Barack Obama of being the Anti-christ. The website fightthesmears.com, along with the shear volume of information being published about the Democratic candidate are strategies dedicated to producing that more vivid truth. Forget the man’s stance on international trade. If he wins in two weeks, this will be a new chapter on how to use media to in politics. The internet has shrunk the costs of communication by exponential factors. No one will be interested in a repeated lie when the truth can be repeated just as easily. Candidates no longer be able to win elections based on hearsay and conjecture, but by communicating the most comprehensive vision of prosperity for all of their voters.

Voting in an election is probably one of the easiest decisions in politics. There is so much information on each candidate, so many polls, voting graphs and pie charts that there is no possible way anyone could vote in a modern election without the confidence of a zealot. If there’s a convincing case for the other guy, you can ignore it, like many voters do. Even the ballot has a limited number of boxes which are cleaner and more distinct than the messy business of lawmaking.

The true challenge of politics, in governing ourselves is the work that takes place in between those trips to the polls. We have to maintain the lines of communication with our elected officials at just about every level. Through research and information we keep those dialogues meaningful and effective. When all is said in done, wherever you are, whoever takes that oath of office, don’t let your politician rest in his or her Corinthian leather office chair. Fire off an e-mail, make a phone call, let the people in office know that you exist and have an opinion. Not because it’s your right, but because it’s your responsibility.

While the American public gets ready to head to the polls this November, the Conservative Government of Canada, not to be outdone by their neighbors to the south will follow suit in October. The election hasn’t even been called yet, and the Conservative party has already jumped the gun in creating these ads championing their glorious leader, Stephen Harper.

The ad is almost as cynical as it is stupid. You can’t even vote for Stephen Harper unless you live in his riding! It’s insulting to voters because it preys upon our supposed civic ignorance. The “testimonials” couldn’t have looked more staged if they all had Jar-Jar Binks pole-dancing in the background. To top it all off, Stephen Harper has a smile that curdles milk and gives nightmares to small children.

To add insult to injury, when this election goes forward this October, I will have to make a decision. It will either be the Liberals who won’t even look at you if you live outside of central Canada, the NDP and the Greens who have never formed a federal government, and the pack of losers responsible for that ad. For once I just want to see a campaign ad that talks about promises and plans for the future. As I said before, the governing parties of Canada seem to want nothing more than a majority in the house, and all designs for the country run secondary. I rather enjoyed having a minority government because no one party’s agenda could really get passed in the House of Commons. If either the Conservatives or the Liberals get a majority this time around, I have no idea what they have planned. I for one, am planning to vote this fall. I think it’s cowardly when people deign to complain about the government yet make no effort to do anything about it. Now if any potential politician wants to know what he or she can do to attract my vote, answer me this: What’s my country going to look like in 5 years?

During our Trip in Nelson I got a chance to see the Nikkei Memorial Internment Center in New Denver. Sara and I went there with her friend Wendy Tagami, whose parents had met near there during the war. Over 22,000 Japanese-Canadians were interned at New Denver. Wendy told us that many of the small houses on the outskirts of town were converted from the cabins that they had to live in. The center consisted of several of the wartime cabins surrounded by a wood fence and a Japanese-style stone garden.

The garden was so beautiful you could almost forget the circumstances by which people came here. At the time, Japan had already taken over Hong Kong and bombed Pearl Harbor. The government felt it couldn’t afford to offer Japan any other gains, so it went so far as to round up its own citizens with any racial connection with that country. Many of the Japanese-Canadians, in the very spirit of “stiff upper lip” calmly signed over all their possessions and reported to Hastings Park in Vancouver, where the PNE is now. From there they were sent off to the BC interior, far from any critical civil or military infrastructure.

Many of the first nights were spent in cast-off army tents. Soon, small cabins the size of most modern kitchens were built with walls so thin that the winter ice served as the only form of insulation. The internees did everything they could to keep life going on as normal as possible. At the memorial center you can see the photos of the dances, the baseball games and the Buddhist church that still stands today. When the war was over, the internees found that most of their possessions had been sold to pay for their internment. There would be no redress until 1988.

It’s easy to deride the decisions of the government at the time as racist and opportunistic. By our standards, they most certainly were. The repatriation and redress of the Japanese-Canadians was just and lawful. However, the policy of current governments apologizing for the mistakes of past governments unnerves me. It is a great way to garner cheap political capital without having to address the mistakes we have made recently and are still making now. We in the present love to inform the past, but how often does the past inform the present?

Have we truly done away with the mindset that caused us to unlawfully sell off millions of dollars of personal property to balance a budget?

Do we still favor solutions that are more convenient than effective?

Instead of trying to distance ourselves from history, we should be trying to find similarities with it. If you think about it, all people in history are just like us. They have a lot of bad past decisions weighing them down, ideals that are impractical, and an uncertain future that’s hurtling at them at the speed of time. At so many points in history you will see people who’ve learned from the mistakes of the past, lived up to the ideals and accepted a future that will outlive them. It shouldn’t be hard for us to be like those people. They often have a lot books written about them.

So the other day Sara and I were watching the encore presentation Olympic Opening ceremonies. As for the ceremonies themselves, they were fantastic. With over 15,000 performers, complex lighting effects and wire-fu to put the best action movies to shame, I doubt any country is going to top this kind of spectacle for long, long time.

The encore presentation on the CBC happened at about 3:00pm, but we were intrigued to find out how NBC handled their coverage. Rumor had it that ratings in the States depended on the victory of their athletes, and events that Americans did poorly in were simply ignored. We wondered how this way of thinking would carry over the coverage of the opening ceremonies and the parade of nations.

At first things were pretty similar to the Canadian coverage, although there was more explanation of the performance in the commentary. It took away some of the fun of interpreting the meaning of the performances, but it was interesting to hear some of the facts about what went into creating them. For example, the ceremonies involved creating images the coordinated movement of thousands of the performers. Amazingly, no markers were used to keep them in place as they created the fantastic designs on the stadium floor. However, as the parade of nations started, things started to get a little weird.

On the CBC, as the parade of nations went by, we heard the stories of the flag bearers, the athletes and how they got to be where they are. Stories such as how one of Japan’s equestrian athletes had been competing since the 1960s, or how the US flagbearer was a refugee from the Sudan.

Later on NBC, the first thing they mentioned about Canada was how we liked to pay people to compete for us and how we never won a medal during the Montreal or Calgary Olympics. Sara and I looked at each other and said: “Did Canada just get dissed?”

It turns out we weren’t alone in being talked about this way. For every nation that came around the track it was how many medals this country won, or how much they didn’t win, or how they’ve yet to win a medal. It wasn’t really offensive I guess, but it really shows off the priorities of the American coverage.

If the Olympics are a grand international society party, I guess the television coverage of these shows would be the impolite whispers spoken in hushed tones around the punch bowl. If only we could translate and consolidate all of the myriad interpretations of this event. We’d get some serious gossip and if we’re lucky spark a diplomatic incident.

On a related note, I hope Tokyo gets the bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. Just think of the events that can be inspired by Japanese game shows. Who would take the gold in an Olympic level competition of “Squishy-Squishy”?