'Us versus Them'
BC has entered a class war, and Libs started it.
BC has highest child poverty rate, still.
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BC's Rich and Poor: A Gap Pried Wider
Government fostered the divide. Now it reaps expensive social woes. Third of four on 'BC's Broken Economy.'
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NDP Needs Some Class!
Drifting party's lesson from byelections, BC polls: Fight for the less well-off.
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Left Needs Soul Searching
To make people care, craft a 'politics of meaning'.
"The leader of the Opposition spoke about us versus them. To me, what she said today makes us think the us versus them is the NDP versus business." -- Rick Jeffery, Coast Forest Products Association president on NDP leader Carole James
Let's be clear. Only one party has declared a class war, an "us versus them" in this province. And that's the B.C. Liberals.
Jeffery was reacting to James' call to cancel a planned corporate tax cut and instead put the $150 annual revenue towards public transit and environmental initiatives.
You'd think James was carrying a hammer and sickle red flag if you paid any attention to Jeffery's ridiculous reaction.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business's Brian Bonney was equally scathing: "I think it shows again she doesn't fully understand that it's not governments that are going to move us out of this recession, it's business in British Columbia that's going to do that," said Bonney, a former B.C. Liberal party organizer.
Do you really believe that, Brian, after even Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has bailed out business to the tune of a $59 billion deficit?
Us versus them, indeed
But let's get back to the class war, us-versus-them battle that Premier Gordon Campbell launched upon his election in 2001 and continues to this day.
B.C. has the worst child poverty in Canada for six straight years, despite our enormous wealth -- because spending on social programs was slashed early and never restored to pay for corporate tax cuts.
A 25 per cent income tax cut in 2001 was followed by a temporary sales tax increase, a permanent 50 per cent increase in Medical Service Plan premiums, higher tuition fees, carbon and fuel taxes and other user pay taxes -- meaning a dramatic increase in regressive taxes that hurt low and middle income earners while the wealthy come out ahead.
No increase in the minimum wage for eight years and labour laws changed to make it much harder to join a union -- while the legal contracts of Hospital Employees Union members and other workers were torn up.
The fire sale giveaway of B.C. Rail for $1 billion to CN Rail -- coincidentally one of the B.C. Liberal Party's biggest donors.
The continuing export of raw logs. Woodworkers lose jobs, forest companies --who've collectively donated millions to the B.C. Liberals -- get cash.
And don't forget former Finance Minister Carole Taylor ending the corporate capital tax on banks -- her going-away gift worth $100 million a year -- before joining the TD Bank board, as The Tyee reported.
Or the privatization of one-third of B.C. Hydro to Bermuda-based Accenture and the semi-privatization of B.C. Ferries.
Then there's Campbell's Harmonized Sales Tax -- the largest ever transfer of wealth from consumers to big business -- $1.9 billion a year out of your pocket and into the coffers of giant corporations who bankroll the B.C. Liberal Party.
The extra 7 per cent HST charged on everything from haircuts to home repairs, with not a penny going to needed government services.
And an 18 per cent Medical Service Premium increase over three years will also hurt ordinary taxpayers.
Don't say I'm anti-business. I've owned an incorporated, profitable company for 11 years. But that doesn't blind me to the B.C. Liberals obvious us versus them approach -- or its disastrous results that amount to a declaration of class war. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Grumpy
06-10-2009
Sadly, class wars end in.....................
..............revolution, either a 'quiet' revolution or a 'violent' revolution. Class wars are ugly affairs, in the same class as religious warfare for class war is based on a faith that the wealthy elites are superior to the poor peons.
Gordon Campbell is playing with fire by creating a 'class' caste system in BC, where he and other Vancouver 'West side types' with a few "Royal Oak' types have become the elite class, with all the privileges of being wealthy. The rest are divided into sub classes, the 'Gay' Class, the 'Middle" class, the 'Working' poor class, the 'Drug' class, the 'Union' Class the 'Street' or homeless class and finally the 'Elderly' class, with all having different rules and regulations to live by.
Seldom do we see the 'Elite' class in court, but the rest are abused by the Elite's class tools. the police and lawyers; the sub classes can not afford the law and are at the mercy of the courts and can't hire lawyers to plead their cases.
It goes on and on, until something snaps or a 'Messiah' (like that funny little guy with a mustache in Germany in the 1920's) unites the sub classes to over throw the elite class and make them pay for years of abuse.
It will happen, history dictates it will happen.
Make no mistake, Campbell has lit a fuse with his class warfare and only time will tell how long that fuse is.
Jeffrey J.
06-10-2009
Class system highly undemocratic
Democracy by its very nature repudiates the class system. The two are diametrically opposed. History is full of societies ruled by a tiny number of elites, who control the society's wealth and power to the exclusion of everyone else. Democracies however were few and far between. And highly opposed by elites. Yet they each created some of the best social structures ever seen. Athens, Rome, early Scandinavian society, the US Revolution and the French revolution.
All underscored the essence that a rich person is not and cannot be worth more than anyone else, and should not be granted more privileges or social power.
Democracies are always disdained by the rich and powerful, because it underscores their lack of moral legitimacy.
North America is now presided over by people who have lost all sense of historical purpose. Having no regard to the harm class systems create, our new 'elites' grab for money and power, unthoughtful, uneducated with little insight.
Surely the world's wealthiest society can do better than that. In the end, it will be up to us, the majority, just as it was for the democracies that preceded us. What is our choice?
jimorsheryl
06-10-2009
Us vs Them?
If all levels of government regardless of party don't realize that we have to quit spending our grand kids money, and do it now, we will be leaving a completely unmanageable mess for them.
There already is a nearly unmanageable class system and it is the private sector employee and the public sector employee.
The private sector can not continue forever to support the overpaid public sector and sooner or later we will face what giants like GM faced.
Only difference of course, there is no government to bail out government.
offended
06-10-2009
Large B.C. companies
outsource employment overseas, with raw goods or information services, with the result being that numbers of B.C. employees lose their job, and the government doesn't give a peep.
Their priority is not us, it is them.
Look at the large donations to their party. That tells the story better than I could.
Van Isle
06-10-2009
Ya just figured this out
Ya just figured this out Bill? Hells bells and buckets of blood, I saw this back in '01 and they really got blatant when they fired a whole bunch of hopital cleaners and contracted out their jobs. The ones they couldn't fire they ripped up their collective agreement and imposed a new one. The great unwashed are just a bunch of 'white ni--ers' to the Liberals and their friends.
alive
06-10-2009
Nothing new
We should be pleased that Gordo points out we have a classwar going on!
Maybe that way more people will wake up and realize that they are taken advantage of?
If all the disadvantages citizens were to rebel, we would have things fixed in no time.
Of course it does not help that James fail to lead the movement; either she does not see the problem for what it is, or she fears the idea of actually leading us to the future?
Hermans Hermit
06-10-2009
Crash And Burn
"NDP stink bomb:
"In a pointless and ill-considered gesture, NDP leader Carole James announced to the convention that if she had won the 2009 election she would now be canceling the tax cuts enacted to offset the carbon tax on fossil fuels for corporations. You know, like those wealthy forest companies."
"With this speech, James undermined her four years of painstaking work cultivating rural B.C."
"Globe and Mail reporter Justine Hunter, one of the wiser heads in the city media, quickly deduced what this was really about. James is trying to hold onto her job going into the NDP convention, Nov. 27-29 at the opulent Westin Bayshore. For urban lefties, it’s always “the corporations, dude,” and right now they’re lining up for Michael Moore’s latest pathetic movie, Capitalism: A Love Story."
http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/63578397.html
Carole and Gordo are going to crash and burn.
Viva La BC Visionistas!
MichaelT
06-10-2009
agreed
my transformation is complete.
I am with the NDP.
Things have gone beyond mere political shenanigans. I even devised a credible strategy to unseat my local fed NDP member but hope I can be accepted within the fold - I was an NDP member many years ago after all.
If we have no voice no choice and only serfdom ahead a rewvolt is necessary.
BTW anyone notice the story about a PERMANENT installation of the olympic rings in Coal Harbour?
Are they kidding us? They have to shove that down our throats for all time? Obey your corporate/state masters slaves - don't criticize or be hauled away to jail - and here's a constant reminder of that.
A revolt seems sensible at this point, regretfully.
G West
06-10-2009
Class War
Best modern analysis of class war, here or anywhere, comes from Warren Buffett:
Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”
... I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Source: New York Times Nov 26 2006...(emphasis added).
dorothy
06-10-2009
The problem is in the psyche
of those people who keep lying to themselves and fancy that they belong to 'us' when they really are regarded by 'us' as belonging to 'them'. You should hear some of the terms in which that kind of hopeful posturing is referred to in circles of 'us', when 'we' forget that some of 'them' might be listening in, or when 'we' get arrogant enough to not care, for after all, what can'they' do about it? The shame of having the American dream fail on you is never put at the doorstep of its assasins, but always with the keeper of the dream, who grieves over its demise - and sometimes rightly so, for often the dream was relying on its failure for someone else. One man's misfortune is another's bread...
Brother-and -sisterhood in this scenario is so far below the horizon, that you can get away with completely denying its existence even as a concept. We are busy doing so...ranking the kind of trash we decide to be, in the small corner alloted to 'them' by 'us'. Bon appetit.
biscotti
06-10-2009
the geographic class divide
Whenever I visit the Lower Mainland and see the incredible wealth on display - construction cranes, more big fancy buildings, clean new cars (& v few cracked windshields!), new roads, transit & bridges, etc. - it emphasizes by contrast the sacking of the hinterland that continues to take place under the BC Liberal regime.
frank2
06-10-2009
Dorothy is right. Since the
Dorothy is right. Since the 1950's, I have been puzzled why large majorities vote against their class interest ALWAYS (even including times when NDP wins, since the Socred/Liberal "losers" still get most of their votes from wage slaves). Where is the leader with the charisma/hutspa or whatever to make people see another vision? And will his/her motivation be for democracy/equality? or something worse than Campbell's?
Umslopogaas
06-10-2009
Canwest
Just a thought: Will Canwest now be asking or a big infusion of tax payer's money from the public trough?
Nah they wouldn't do that would they?
wayfarer
06-10-2009
class consciousness
There's one thing I give Rick Jeffery credit for: he doesn't suffer from what Marx called false consciousness. He and his class-mates know exactly what their relationship is to the means of production.
Carole James, on the other hand, has no such clearly defined class consciousness, neither do most of her cohorts, which explains why they've drifted into ideological-vanilla-oblivion and lost their way amid a hopeless bid to be all things to all classes.
The amusement of Tony Blair's visit to Surrey today certainly wasn't missed by me, especially in light of this discussion. It was Blair's Third Way which inspired and misled most of the world's democratic socialists into abandoning their class affiliations. We saw which way this led Blair....
Dr Alexander
07-10-2009
Tony Blair's Third Way
I lived in Europe for a lot of Tony BLiar's 3rd Way crapola.
It got a lot of Iraqi's killed, amongst other atrocities. Amongst the elite class, he is tolerated because he is a first-class a$$-ki$$er and he does their bidding. Amongst the regular folks, he is... loathed.
The irony is not what can Surrey learn from Phony Tony, it is what Tony Blair can learn from Surrey. He should be paying the City of Surrey for one more of his insufferable speeches.
Roadie
07-10-2009
Fifi knows the truth
Sadly, 'Democracy' has been co-opted to serve the interests of big business and the political sociopaths who serve it. The article says 'B.C. has the worst child poverty in Canada for six straight years, despite our enormous wealth' and that is very true; we no longer own BC. Forests gone to the biggest companies, rivers sold off to the highest bidder, fisheries destroyed by the hunger of Liberal thieves for more political contributions, press largely controlled by corporate intersts. We are not being seduced, we are being raped.
Take my job for example: I used to make a decent living as a truck driver until our company was taken over by a big conglomerate; now I make nickels and dimes and don't complain or I will be out of work. Funny how no matter which way the worm turns, the rich get richer and the poor get schmoozed into ever lower standards of living. How we all have to convolute our beliefs and ethical standards to accomodate the shifting sands of corporate reality and political rhetoric. Sure, it's a rich country and we have a fairly high standard of living, but imagine how much richer we would all be if the stinking government actually worked for us, instead of for their corporate paymasters.
News flash! There will be no revolution! We will sink to lower and lower standards, all the while believing that we are supernatural, the best place in the world to live. We will all become; as I have, Joe Sixpacks; supplementing reality with a few shots at the end of a hard day and reluctantly tuning in to the CBC, Canwest and the rest of the media schmear which is laughably referred to as 'news.' One big company, ha ha! The more adventurous of us will subscribe to 'alternative' media outlets like the tyee where we can bitch to our hearts content without changing a goddamn thing.
This used to be a beautiful place to live. Until the turds floated to the surface and took over just about everything. Hello Mexico! Hello Indonesia! Shit, lots of Mexicans won't even work here anymore. 'Too much boolshit, man!'
'And every dog will attempt to devour his neighbor, and the races turned one against the other by religion, and the sexes separated by artificial boundaries propagated by a cunning media. Instead of turning their common sights to the common enemy - capalist fraudsters and bankers, largely inured to the suffering they cause by their profane greed for profit.' Thus spoke Fifi, my dog. And it shall come to pass.
'Fifi? Your DOG?' you say. Yeah, well she never watches the news and is thus fairly innoculated against corporate fairy tales.
Have a great day.
dlivingstone
07-10-2009
Charity?
Campbell should not be allowed to lead a the "Liberal" party, because his politics are not liberal. They are conservative. I think it's time the average Canadian became informed of the difference. Seriously.
Much of our society, from our schools, media and government, has been very much stymied by corporate control, which has successfully framed the debate into one of a choice between only left and right. It does so to suppress any discussions as to limits to its power. It has done so by categorizing any critique of corporate excess as "socialism" and "communism".
What is communism? It is the appropriation of Christian charity (and charity is of course not solely a Christian idea) to a political project. But it prescribed the practice of that charity as full state control. As this was necessarily an excess that failed to regard needed degrees of liberty, corporate controlled propaganda has now pointed to that error, but in order to denounce the entire concept.
Charity is not communism. It's time we isolated the idea of charity from the debate, because it is otherwise a universally accepted ideal. Accepted by most, that is, except of course the conservatives. For the conservative, charity is distributed by the the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith. That's a myth.
happy
07-10-2009
We somewhat agree Zalm (!)
Yes Zalm, Carole tried to reach out to the Business comunity like you said, tried to smooth over old assumptions about the NDP, that they weren't a Party of the BC Fed only anymore.
But you see, thats exactly what Harcourt said before the NDP won that election. And then immediately following that, the biggest income tax hike in Provincial history to pay for rich Contract settlements with the Public unions, courtesy Glen Clark, Finanace Minister.
So there was, and is still, a mistrust of the NDP's "hidden agenda" so to speak.
But you're bang on about the qaundry they find themselves in now. Half the Party thinks they should turn hard left, the other thinks head to the center, Gregor style.
And after seeing the amount donated by the BCGEU to the Party, its pretty obvious who's calling the shots and which way they will go. Follow the money, as so many posters say.
She can't win. May as well go out with grace.
Glen Murtz
08-10-2009
It's a good thing...
we've got all this social media to help us organize and protest and ... and ... and ... oh wait - nothing's actually changed at all.
Well, anyways, it's a good thing we've got a sizeable portion of "the left" blathering on about giving people jobs and spreading the wealth around, so there will be ever more people joining the middle class, with their attendant monster vehicles and plasma TV's, so they can watch ad's trumpeting how sustainable some new car is.
Screw Marx.
And Screw Adam Smith.
The key to life is making what you need when you need it and knowing you don't need much more than food, clothing and shelter.
We need a political party that can provide incentives for people to *DO* less work, not more.