An accurate term to describe the causes of and prescriptions to the current economic crisis is “the looting of America.” That is also the title of a new book by Les Leopold, co-founder and director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute and among those who formed the labor-environmental Blue-Green Alliance.
Leopold attempts through the book the near impossible: to clearly and simply describe the root causes of the global economic crisis, the bizarre and complex financial instruments created which resulted in astonishing profits by transformed liabilities into assets, and a range of moderate to radical policy changes to reign in the fantasy-finance casino perpetrated by giant financial corporations and others.
The root of the current crisis goes back to the 1970’s when worker productivity and real worker wages began to diverge. Between 1945 and 1973, as productivity increased (more products and services were produced by workers per hour), firms sought more workers to increase their own profits. This drove up the price of labor.
It all changed beginning in 1973 when corporate owners no longer reinvested productivity profits back into firms (the real economy) or with workers to the same degree. Capital owners kept productivity profits for themselves. The percentage of wealth owned by the top 1% began to sour. Capital owners began looking for alternatives sources of profit of their extra wealth with high rates of return and little risk. The era of fancy financial instruments, led by derivatives, was born.
The derivative, credit default swap, collateralized debt obligation, and other fantasy finance “instruments” are defined and explained with excellent analogies in many cases. Derivatives, for examples, are compared to fantasy baseball where hundreds if not thousands of persons compete by betting on the statistics of real players yet none of whom actually own any of the real baseball teams or have any control over any of the real players. Similarly, derivatives derive their value from some real entity – a stock or bond. Hundreds, if not thousands, can own bets on the same single stock or bond. It’s a financial casino.
The flood of hundreds of billions of dollars into the casino economy fueled more and riskier bets and the housing boom. It enriched the financial corporations that were involved in this new business. As wages declined, debt increased and consumer spending eventually slowed. Meanwhile, real businesses were unable to secure credit for innovation as financial institutions looked to fantasy finance as more profitable.
The housing and debt bubbles burst because that what bubbles do.
Leopold devotes the last two chapters to solutions – divided between, as he says, “Proposals Wall Street Won’t Like” and ones they really won’t like.
In the former category are:
- Financial Disaster Insurance – premiums from every conceivable financial sector transaction to pay back taxpayers from the current raid on the treasury and for the recession caused by the financial casino and for the next one. He estimates this could amount to $500 billion per year.
- Financial Product Safety Commission – creation of an FDA-like product-approval process before any type of financial “instrument” is permitted on the market.
More radical proposals include:
- Wage caps – a $500,000 salary cap of any employee at any financial corporation – the salary of the US President.
- Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act – to give workers a chance to increase their collective power.
- Raising the minimum wage – to guard against deflation and to shift wealth away from the fantasy-finance casino.
- Public takeover the largest pieces of the private financial sector – to protect taxpayers, our economy and what’s left of our democracy.
Leopold has provided a valuable tool to demystify Wall Street’s destructive actions and a variety of tools for public actions to assert greater public control over money and finance.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Inequality Proven Unnatural and Harmful
THE SPIRIT LINK Reviewed by the Workers Solidarity Movement of Ireland
This book sets out to show that unequal societies are bad for everyone in them. It does this by collating decades of research in the areas of health, crime, trust, mental health, obesity, education, teenage pregnancy and social mobility, all of which demonstrate statistically the connection between social inequality and social problems. The authors explain that, in hierarchical societies that are unequal in wealth and status, our social class affects all aspects of our lives. From an Irish perspective, one of the most interesting points they make may be about the connection between inequality, levels of trust in society and corruption. ---- The authors, one of whom is an anthropologist, argue that research now proves that, for most of human history, we lived in fairly egalitarian societies that were based on values of cooperation and fairness. It is the unequal class-based societies in which we now live that are abnormal for us.
It’s not surprising then that the more unequal the society we live in, the more anxiety and depression we suffer from. We even comfort eat more, the more unequal the community we live in is! The book debunks the myths that social problems are caused by ‘bad people’, ‘culture’, or lack of morals. Those notions have been overtaken by research in the real world. The great contribution this book makes is in giving all of us access to research that can help us to understand the real roots of our problems, and therefore solve them.
The book also makes the connection between equality and freedom that was once commonly understood. It suggests that the miserable failure of the authoritarian communist states such as Russia led people to believe that equality wasn’t compatible with freedom.
The authors remind us that there was a reason why the French revolutionaries called for 3 things, ‘Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite’. The Spirit Level now provides the hard evidence that freedom for all of us to achieve our full potential is only possible in societies based on egalitarian values.
Where the book fails is in its proposed solutions. The logical conclusion of all of their evidence is that an egalitarian society is the one that we humans thrive best in. This is, naturally, what anarchists have consistently argued. The authors propose employee-owned and controlled enterprises as a solution.
This is another word for the workers’ control which anarchists demand.
However, the authors are not prepared to challenge the core issue of eliminating hierarchy itself. They presume that workers will still be prepared to have a CEO who earns many times what they do. They would like to merely reduce inequality. This is a laudable aim, but once we understand that something is so detrimental to us, why does it make sense to keep any of it?
They don’t argue that a little crime is a good thing, or that a little poverty is healthy, or that a bit of inequality is good for us, so why the timidity of the solutions? This book is a good first step and provides hard facts for those who instinctively know that something is not right in our society. But if we want lasting solutions then we’re going to need a little more imagination than the authors are prepared to provide.
The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (Allen Lane) £20.00 / €23.65
Related Link: http://www.wsm.ie/public_newswire/review
This book sets out to show that unequal societies are bad for everyone in them. It does this by collating decades of research in the areas of health, crime, trust, mental health, obesity, education, teenage pregnancy and social mobility, all of which demonstrate statistically the connection between social inequality and social problems. The authors explain that, in hierarchical societies that are unequal in wealth and status, our social class affects all aspects of our lives. From an Irish perspective, one of the most interesting points they make may be about the connection between inequality, levels of trust in society and corruption. ---- The authors, one of whom is an anthropologist, argue that research now proves that, for most of human history, we lived in fairly egalitarian societies that were based on values of cooperation and fairness. It is the unequal class-based societies in which we now live that are abnormal for us.
It’s not surprising then that the more unequal the society we live in, the more anxiety and depression we suffer from. We even comfort eat more, the more unequal the community we live in is! The book debunks the myths that social problems are caused by ‘bad people’, ‘culture’, or lack of morals. Those notions have been overtaken by research in the real world. The great contribution this book makes is in giving all of us access to research that can help us to understand the real roots of our problems, and therefore solve them.
The book also makes the connection between equality and freedom that was once commonly understood. It suggests that the miserable failure of the authoritarian communist states such as Russia led people to believe that equality wasn’t compatible with freedom.
The authors remind us that there was a reason why the French revolutionaries called for 3 things, ‘Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite’. The Spirit Level now provides the hard evidence that freedom for all of us to achieve our full potential is only possible in societies based on egalitarian values.
Where the book fails is in its proposed solutions. The logical conclusion of all of their evidence is that an egalitarian society is the one that we humans thrive best in. This is, naturally, what anarchists have consistently argued. The authors propose employee-owned and controlled enterprises as a solution.
This is another word for the workers’ control which anarchists demand.
However, the authors are not prepared to challenge the core issue of eliminating hierarchy itself. They presume that workers will still be prepared to have a CEO who earns many times what they do. They would like to merely reduce inequality. This is a laudable aim, but once we understand that something is so detrimental to us, why does it make sense to keep any of it?
They don’t argue that a little crime is a good thing, or that a little poverty is healthy, or that a bit of inequality is good for us, so why the timidity of the solutions? This book is a good first step and provides hard facts for those who instinctively know that something is not right in our society. But if we want lasting solutions then we’re going to need a little more imagination than the authors are prepared to provide.
The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (Allen Lane) £20.00 / €23.65
Related Link: http://www.wsm.ie/public_newswire/review
Monday, May 18, 2009
The BC Green Party in Myth and Reality
The idea that the Green Party is right-wing or has been taken over by right-wingers has been circulating for a number of years now in the Canadian politocosphere. Now, it is certainly true that some of the international Green Parties are quite nasty, the Mexican Partito Verde is hostile to the left, and of course, the German Greens supported the attack on Yugoslavia. The Canadian national Green Party I cannot vouch for, nor any of the other provincial parties, but I have examined the BC party.
What a party is all about is contained in its platform, and if it has any access to power, how it enacts that program. The platform of the BC Green Party is contained in it's Green Book.
Here are what I consider its main points:
Stop privatization of water, forests and public lands. Water management in public hands only. Sale of any public lands must be approved by local govts and First Nations.
Restore publicly managed billing, food services, cleaning and security in both hospitals and schools.
Ban the private export of electricity, Ban water exports and raw log exports.
Repeal "Projects Streamlining Act" which has allowed the Provincial Govt to force development decisions on municipalities. Prevent further withdrawals of land from the Agricultural Land Reserves.
Direct election of municipal police boards to oversee police
Put pressure on the Federal Govt. to legalize marijuana
Make Provincial Govt. engage in Ethical Purchasing – fair trade and local products.
Create community owned and run health clinics. End fee for service for doctors, pay them a salary.
A Guaranteed Livable Income based upon the Low Income Cut-Off measure to replace welfare and other forms of assistance. Abolish the 2 years out of five requirement for welfare eligibility.
Pay equity for women, full right to strike for workers. End $6.00 per hour "training wage." and set minimum wage to Low Income Cut off standards.
Community-owned land trusts and coop housing to create affordable housing.
Direct election of representatives to Regional Transit Board.
First Nations to have access to, and control of, resources to enable self-sufficiency. Rejection of assimilation policies.
And, of course a plethora of environmental concerns. I have read the entire platform and can find nothing that could be construed as right-wing.What we have here is the COMPLETE REJECTION of the neo-liberalism that even many erstwhile social democrats have endorsed. Thus tarring the GPBC as 'right wing", is as I have suspected all along, nothing more than an example of sectarianism.
What a party is all about is contained in its platform, and if it has any access to power, how it enacts that program. The platform of the BC Green Party is contained in it's Green Book.
Here are what I consider its main points:
Stop privatization of water, forests and public lands. Water management in public hands only. Sale of any public lands must be approved by local govts and First Nations.
Restore publicly managed billing, food services, cleaning and security in both hospitals and schools.
Ban the private export of electricity, Ban water exports and raw log exports.
Repeal "Projects Streamlining Act" which has allowed the Provincial Govt to force development decisions on municipalities. Prevent further withdrawals of land from the Agricultural Land Reserves.
Direct election of municipal police boards to oversee police
Put pressure on the Federal Govt. to legalize marijuana
Make Provincial Govt. engage in Ethical Purchasing – fair trade and local products.
Create community owned and run health clinics. End fee for service for doctors, pay them a salary.
A Guaranteed Livable Income based upon the Low Income Cut-Off measure to replace welfare and other forms of assistance. Abolish the 2 years out of five requirement for welfare eligibility.
Pay equity for women, full right to strike for workers. End $6.00 per hour "training wage." and set minimum wage to Low Income Cut off standards.
Community-owned land trusts and coop housing to create affordable housing.
Direct election of representatives to Regional Transit Board.
First Nations to have access to, and control of, resources to enable self-sufficiency. Rejection of assimilation policies.
And, of course a plethora of environmental concerns. I have read the entire platform and can find nothing that could be construed as right-wing.What we have here is the COMPLETE REJECTION of the neo-liberalism that even many erstwhile social democrats have endorsed. Thus tarring the GPBC as 'right wing", is as I have suspected all along, nothing more than an example of sectarianism.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Anarchists, Social Democrats and Greens
"People before ideology." is the adage I have lived by for the last 30 years. This does not mean "anything goes." What it does mean is that people's true needs – for a better life, for greater freedom etc., are more important than any ideological construct, party line or theory. Not to take this approach, is in my opinion, the first step in the direction of the killing fields.
In practice, if a party or government proposes or enacts legislation, say, that increases the minimum wage, makes it easier to join a trade union, or increases public transit, I would admit that these were positive steps and demand their implementation. I would do this without going rah-rah for the party and plainly separate this positive element from the other aspects which I think worthy of criticism.
I would like to see a lot of these genuine reforms. Trouble is, social democrats today don't seem to have much imagination in that regard, many of them having bought into neo-liberalism. In BC the forces of reform are divided between the NDP and the Greens making any hope for even minimal positive changes through government impossible. Thus, even though an outsider, I encourage social democrats and Greens to get their act together. Simple really – reformists work together = more reforms = better life for working people = better life for me.
Is not such an approach at variance with anarchism's revolutionary nature? Not in the least. A beaten down people rarely revolt. It is when the situation begins to improve that such sentiments arise. Workers in BC have been subjected to an unending series of defeats beginning with the failed general strike of 1983. While the activist core certainly exists, the population as a whole seems demoralized. We need some victories. Had the so-called Liberals been defeated and the NDP backed by the Greens, reversed the give-away of our rivers, scrapped TILMA, took back BC Ferries and BC Hydro from the piratizers, the cycle of defeat would have been broken and would have created demands for further progressive action.
While some parts of the world are in a revolutionary situation, Canada is plainly not. In a such non-revolutionary situation, progressive change develops in a pattern. (1) Each progressive ideology, whether reformist or revolutionary, parliamentary or anti-parliamentary, has its function within that process. Change starts from below, engenders forms of public protest and direct action. A mass movement emerges which then influences reformist parties. These parties then enact legislation which generalizes the reform. The function of anarchists and other visionaries is to initiate change and build the mass movement. The function of the reformists is to come on stage in the last act. The problem today is that the reformists do such a poor job of being reformists, and thus needed reforms are blocked.
Admittedly, the system may well be broken beyond repair and reform a product whose selling date has expired. Working people may will continue to be battered from pillar to post until they cannot take any more, finally in desperation rising against their tormentors. But until we have proof the system is incapable of reform, NDP, Greens, get your shit together! In the meantime, we anarchists will continue to implant ourselves within the communities and work places, encouraging the the idea of popular power and self-management.
1. See my article on the function of ideologies at
http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/function-of-political-ideologies.html
Saturday, May 16, 2009
BC Election - the Decline in Voting
One of the most important outcomes of the election was the fact that only a minority – 48% - of the population voted. This represents an all-time low and is a good representation of a general malaise effecting both the province and the country as a whole. Two questions immediately come to mind; what caused this malaise? and what will come of it?
Anyone with any familiarity with BC politics and recent history ought to be able to list some of the political causes. Beginning in 1983 with the betrayal of the almost general strike, working people have endured a series of defeats. Living standards have declined and government services privatized. NDP governments, once a fount of hope have stabbed their supporters in the back, as we saw with the arrests at Clayoquot Sound and the violent attacks on First Nations people at Gustaferson Lake. Remember also, it was the NDP government that first suggested the Olympics boondoggle.
All three major political parties have – at least in their public pronouncements - come to resemble each other. The right-wing Liberals have re-created themselves as environmentalists. The Green Party has become so moderate that many people see them as to the right of the NDP.
The other aspect of the decline in voting is more sinister. This is the general atomization, inward-turning, "personal privatization" that has been going on. Due to suburbanization and the domination of consumer culture, people have lost connection with each other and a sense of the overall picture. Community has been rapidly dying and with it participation in the public sphere.
Political alienation - "None of the parties represent me" - can be positive and lead to a new radical politics. (This is what we anarchists dream of in our often naive belief that abstention is a positive sign.) Social alienation is another kettle of fish. Social alienation directs people away from any kind of action, especially the communal and mutualist kind favored by anarchists, and toward self-destructive behaviour.
The only hope is that conditions will force the population to act. While conditions have declined for working people, in truth, "We ain't seen nothin' yet." The triple crisis – Economic, environmental and energy, has barely made its mark. When it does, people will have to act collectively just to survive. Once in motion, much of the social alienation will shake off and a new politics will arise.
Tomorrow - "Anarchists, Social Democrats And Greens"
Anyone with any familiarity with BC politics and recent history ought to be able to list some of the political causes. Beginning in 1983 with the betrayal of the almost general strike, working people have endured a series of defeats. Living standards have declined and government services privatized. NDP governments, once a fount of hope have stabbed their supporters in the back, as we saw with the arrests at Clayoquot Sound and the violent attacks on First Nations people at Gustaferson Lake. Remember also, it was the NDP government that first suggested the Olympics boondoggle.
All three major political parties have – at least in their public pronouncements - come to resemble each other. The right-wing Liberals have re-created themselves as environmentalists. The Green Party has become so moderate that many people see them as to the right of the NDP.
The other aspect of the decline in voting is more sinister. This is the general atomization, inward-turning, "personal privatization" that has been going on. Due to suburbanization and the domination of consumer culture, people have lost connection with each other and a sense of the overall picture. Community has been rapidly dying and with it participation in the public sphere.
Political alienation - "None of the parties represent me" - can be positive and lead to a new radical politics. (This is what we anarchists dream of in our often naive belief that abstention is a positive sign.) Social alienation is another kettle of fish. Social alienation directs people away from any kind of action, especially the communal and mutualist kind favored by anarchists, and toward self-destructive behaviour.
The only hope is that conditions will force the population to act. While conditions have declined for working people, in truth, "We ain't seen nothin' yet." The triple crisis – Economic, environmental and energy, has barely made its mark. When it does, people will have to act collectively just to survive. Once in motion, much of the social alienation will shake off and a new politics will arise.
Tomorrow - "Anarchists, Social Democrats And Greens"
Friday, May 15, 2009
A Community Bill of Rights
Citizens in Spokane, WA are taking democracy into their own hands...and challenging corporate so-called “rights” in the process. A coalition of organizations in that community are circulating a petition to generate signatures to force a vote that would change the city charter (the city constitution) that would, if passed by voters, affirm citizens’ right to decide on everything “from healthcare to housing to unionization to protecting the Spokane River to a greater extent from the pollution that it’s been subjected to over the past couple of decades.” The citizen initiative seeks to legally root the rights of people of Spokane over those of corporations.
Democracy Now program: Envision Spokane: Coalition Works to Get “Community Bill of Rights” into City Charter
http://i2.democracynow.org/2009/4/21/envision_spokane_coalition_works_to_get
This is a model worth studying and possibly replicating. It’s local work...which creates real democracy with people taking charge where they are of their own community.
Democracy Now program: Envision Spokane: Coalition Works to Get “Community Bill of Rights” into City Charter
http://i2.democracynow.org/2009/4/21/envision_spokane_coalition_works_to_get
This is a model worth studying and possibly replicating. It’s local work...which creates real democracy with people taking charge where they are of their own community.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The NDP and Greens Self-Destruct in BC Election
This is Kevin Annett's take on the BC election.
When Will They Ever Learn: The NDP and Greens Self-Destruct and Hand an Unearned Victory to the Campbell Crew in
"Beautiful British Columbia"
by Kevin D. Annett
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
The bare and brutal facts tell it all: Gordon Campbell's Liberals won last night's provincial election by thirteen seats. But in twelve ridings taken by Campbell, the combined NDP-Green vote was actually greater than the Liberal. (1)
Clearly, a Green-NDP coalition would have won yesterday's election, which witnessed the Greens and NDP garnering over 50% of the popular vote, compared to the Liberal's 45%.
Even in Campbell's own riding of Vancouver-Point Grey, the combined Green-NDP vote came within 700 votes of unseating him.
This sobering conclusion is indicated by more than simple arithmetic. If the NDP and Greens had have done the sensible thing and joined hands, enough centrist voters would have been wooed from the Liberals to give such a left coalition easy victory.
So why didn't it happen?
Twenty five years ago, I was expelled as chair of the Point Grey Green Party after having publicly called for the Greens to unite with the NDP in the next provincial election. As a founding member of the B.C. Greens, I saw no real difference in policy between both parties when it came to the environment and other basic issues, and to run separately was, and remains, tantamount to political suicide. Yesterday's election results continue to bear this out.
Family feuds are always the most vicious, and the origin of many Green party leaders as activists in or around the NDP compels one to assume that the ongoing and disastrous animosity between the NDP and Greens is simple a battle of egos. Certainly nothing on the part of either party's leadership indicates much political sense when it comes to the need for a strong coalition-building strategy. Indeed, in the face of B.C.'s historically polarized, "first past the post" electoral system, which dooms the Greens from the outset from winning any seats and casts it, as best, as a spoiler force, the continued rejection of such a coalition by both party leaderships make absolutely no sense.
The pro-capitalist parties in B.C., unfortunately, have never suffered from such political stupidity. Ever since the formation of the NDP's predecessor, the CCF, in 1933, a continual anti-socialist coalition of liberals and conservatives has kept the left out of power: the only exception being when the anti-left coalition fell apart in 1972, and the national backlash to Brian Mulroney decimated the right-wing during the early 1990's.
Notwithstanding the virulent sectarianism of many Green activists when it comes to uniting with the NDP, the biggest barrier to a left-green coalition in B.C. is the odd confusion of the NDP itself when it comes to its own political self-identity, as it continues to deny its own principles and legacy in its elusive search for "middle of the road" respectability.
It was not for nothing that former Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent once referred to the NDP as "liberals in a hurry". The trouble is, they're not in much of a hurry anymore: a fact which routinely sours its supporters and prompts desperate spin offs like the B.C. Greens.
The problem is, we are running out of time, and cannot afford the luxury of further political myopia. The grotesque prostitution called the 2010 Olympics and the impoverishment and militarization of the province that has accompanied it is but a symbol of the disaster that is unfolding in B.C., as the land and its wealth is being sucked dry and shipped abroad.
The B.C. Liberals, and their corporate bosses, have a clear and stated plan, and no qualms about following it. It's time the NDP had a similar boldness - and political sense. And the place to begin is by knitting together a new peoples' coalition by approaching the Greens and working next time for a coalition government in B.C.
One can only hope that there is a next time.
When Will They Ever Learn: The NDP and Greens Self-Destruct and Hand an Unearned Victory to the Campbell Crew in
"Beautiful British Columbia"
by Kevin D. Annett
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
The bare and brutal facts tell it all: Gordon Campbell's Liberals won last night's provincial election by thirteen seats. But in twelve ridings taken by Campbell, the combined NDP-Green vote was actually greater than the Liberal. (1)
Clearly, a Green-NDP coalition would have won yesterday's election, which witnessed the Greens and NDP garnering over 50% of the popular vote, compared to the Liberal's 45%.
Even in Campbell's own riding of Vancouver-Point Grey, the combined Green-NDP vote came within 700 votes of unseating him.
This sobering conclusion is indicated by more than simple arithmetic. If the NDP and Greens had have done the sensible thing and joined hands, enough centrist voters would have been wooed from the Liberals to give such a left coalition easy victory.
So why didn't it happen?
Twenty five years ago, I was expelled as chair of the Point Grey Green Party after having publicly called for the Greens to unite with the NDP in the next provincial election. As a founding member of the B.C. Greens, I saw no real difference in policy between both parties when it came to the environment and other basic issues, and to run separately was, and remains, tantamount to political suicide. Yesterday's election results continue to bear this out.
Family feuds are always the most vicious, and the origin of many Green party leaders as activists in or around the NDP compels one to assume that the ongoing and disastrous animosity between the NDP and Greens is simple a battle of egos. Certainly nothing on the part of either party's leadership indicates much political sense when it comes to the need for a strong coalition-building strategy. Indeed, in the face of B.C.'s historically polarized, "first past the post" electoral system, which dooms the Greens from the outset from winning any seats and casts it, as best, as a spoiler force, the continued rejection of such a coalition by both party leaderships make absolutely no sense.
The pro-capitalist parties in B.C., unfortunately, have never suffered from such political stupidity. Ever since the formation of the NDP's predecessor, the CCF, in 1933, a continual anti-socialist coalition of liberals and conservatives has kept the left out of power: the only exception being when the anti-left coalition fell apart in 1972, and the national backlash to Brian Mulroney decimated the right-wing during the early 1990's.
Notwithstanding the virulent sectarianism of many Green activists when it comes to uniting with the NDP, the biggest barrier to a left-green coalition in B.C. is the odd confusion of the NDP itself when it comes to its own political self-identity, as it continues to deny its own principles and legacy in its elusive search for "middle of the road" respectability.
It was not for nothing that former Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent once referred to the NDP as "liberals in a hurry". The trouble is, they're not in much of a hurry anymore: a fact which routinely sours its supporters and prompts desperate spin offs like the B.C. Greens.
The problem is, we are running out of time, and cannot afford the luxury of further political myopia. The grotesque prostitution called the 2010 Olympics and the impoverishment and militarization of the province that has accompanied it is but a symbol of the disaster that is unfolding in B.C., as the land and its wealth is being sucked dry and shipped abroad.
The B.C. Liberals, and their corporate bosses, have a clear and stated plan, and no qualms about following it. It's time the NDP had a similar boldness - and political sense. And the place to begin is by knitting together a new peoples' coalition by approaching the Greens and working next time for a coalition government in B.C.
One can only hope that there is a next time.
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