The Liberals have been very

The Liberals have been very successful at increasing the pressure of the elite's thumb on our necks. For proof just look at where Gordo is today.

It's useless defending either party, it's all smoke and mirrors. Both parties have held power and inequality and injustice have persisted under both. As long as the banks control the money supply we can forget about any notions of democracy and prosperity, the parties are puppets, and we are slaves.

Is there any chance that in these articles and the comments that follow we could include the simple facts of the money scam?

stver

And don't forget they also received far more federal largesse than the NDP ever dreamed of getting. Paul Martin turned the taps on after eliminating the deficit, said he'd "fix healthcare for a generation" and out the money flowed from Ottawa to Victoria. And that's on top of the federal money for the Olympics and all that new gambling revenue.

Campbell pissed it all away. But BC Place has a new roof.

A Constructive Alternative

Nathan Cullen and Gregor Robertson are two people who are working to build a genuine, progressive centrist majority, not simply a strategy to beat a weak premier and a split vote.

Clark and Gunton knew the budget wouldn't be balanced. Clark and Dix horribly politicised a process that should have been undertaken in accordance with basic principles of project management. Madame Justice Bennett described Clark's behaviour as "an act of folly", but it reflected the attitude of "Process is for cheese" that pervaded everything he and Dix did while they were in the premier's office.

What really underscored the absurdity of Dix's behaviour is that he normally never wrote memos, because he always wanted to evade the FOI Act as much as possible. So the only time he ever wrote something was to deceive people! As with his approach to the leadership, he once again proved that he was just a little more ruthless than everyone else.

I do not look up to Dix, either morally or intellectually. He has no authority that I am willing to recognize. He is politically craftier and more ruthless, but that is it. It is amazing what people will accept once they have lost three elections in a row.

My fellow progressives: Vote independent in Delta South and Cariboo North, and Green everywhere else. And continue to work to build a true democratic majority with a real mandate.

I am willing to wait another four years or more in order to have a genuinely democratic government with a genuinely democratic leader. Trust me, an NDP loss in 2013 could be a blessing in disguise.

Frank Lee

You headed your comment "Constructive Alternative" and ended it by saying that you would put up with four more years of these crooks!

What are you, a masochist?

Frank Luke

Let's us go back to the start of this thread and listen to a wise man, Ed Deak "wealth can not be created ,only taken"

What creative history.

Frank Lee is obsessed with one NDP budget which it turned out was the result of realistic forecasting of revenues and expenditures. It was always the tradition to over estimate expenditures and underestimate revenues. This started with WAC Bennett but is hardly an accurate and truthful way to budget. Accuse the Glen Clark government of being truthful and risking a sudden decline in revenues but to call it anything else endorses the lack of truth in budgeting that BC has had for decades. Secondly compare that budget "which got all the play as a fudgit budget" by the liberals and the media shills to the numerous fudged accounting scandals of the liberals and the 90's look damn good.

Stop pretending to provide an unbiased analysis Frank Lee because your colours are showing. You are not a masochist/.

I Wonder if anyone read the Report.

I did. David Schreck refers to a report full of facts.

Quotes from the Report that Schreck uses.

"growth well below the national average in the 1990s".
That was during the NDP years.

"Health outcomes and environmental quality have improved significantly since 2000 which has allowed British Columbia to maintain its first-place ranks on these core targets.". This is during the Liberal years.

"British Columbia had strong employment growth between 2001 and 2007".
Also, during the Liberal years.

"Ranks for the crime, income assistance and LICO components of the social condition index have not changed for six to eleven years even though rates improved between 2000 and 2010."
Again, more improvement during the Liberal years.

Reading the report leads to only one conclusion, BC is doing very well and particularly in the last ten years. Better than the rest of the country, except for the oil producing provinces.

Don't facts matter anymore?

bcprogressboard.com/2011Report/BCPB2011intro.html

Employment growth in what

Employment growth in what ?

With the FTA , NAFTA etc. having destroyed Canada's productive manufacturing sectors, the only employment growth is in the sale of resources, which are the sale of capital and not an income, except in the fraudulent accounting system of neoclassical market economics that has no liability and debit columns.

Everything goes on, nothing comes off.

We now have hundreds of thousands of employed
lining up at the foodbanks, major child poverty, people can't afford to own homes and two breadwinners per family can't make it, where 40-50 years ago, one per family was plenty, living in their own homes.

Some great progress, not to mention the cancer and other epidemics that didn't exist before, especially in little kids.

Where is the accounting system adding up the figures of the damage caused to humanity by the globalized destruction system of the "wealth creation" racket, stealing people and the world blind?

By the way, we hear a lot about the fight over the coming destruction by the Prosperity mine, but not a word about the proposed destruction of Spanish lake , for the very same mining racket, above the community of Likely, planned to be destryed and with the effluents most ending up in Quesnel lake, already endangered by the Polley Mountain mine.

Some "employment growth" and "wealth creation".

Ed Deak

.

Cool Hand - The Devine govt

Cool Hand - The Devine govt in SasK. sold the potash company, not the NDP.

Ricky Barnes

You are correct, to an extent... BUT:

"Romanow completed the privatization of public assets begun by Devine. From 1991 to 1994 he completed the privatization of the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (PCS). In 1989, when the PCS was privatized, the province received 35 million shares, immediately selling off 13 million. Thus, when Romanow came to power, he arguably had enough of a stake to reverse the privatization."

http://books.google.ca/books?id=78xT8ujumpMC&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=Romanow+potash+corp&source=bl&ots=NSsF0RiPBO&sig=0PyGJ3i2vokPl9B9PnO1PNcwDgY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8S0FT-jlH-aSiQKCi9itDg&sqi=2&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Romanow%20potash%20corp&f=false

Romanow sold off the remaining 63% of PCS to the private sector. As an aside, in 1997 Romanow also sold off SK's 50% interest in Saskfor.

Luke you lazy bugger

You went with the first link you got from google.

Having lived in Saskatchewan until 1989 when I moved to BC because Saskatchewan was pretty much the worse place to be in Canada I remember the Devine government pretty well.

To understand how bad the Conservatives were in that province you should read "Privatizing a Province" by two U of S profs. I have the book but am too lazy to find it to get their names.

The upshot is, is Sask better off having sold Potash Corp and allowing the head office to be moved to Chicago? I don't think so. It should have been retained.

The lesson is, when Dippers act like neo-cons they lose. Enter the minority with the Libs and then Sask Party.

But no doubt there's plenty of right-wingers who think having a US corporation extracting potash in Saskatchewan is better than a home-grown publicly owned one.

David Schreck is getting desperate

David Schreck knows perfectly well that the impossible happened as a result of the NDP's reign of economic terror in the nineties. That is that BC actually became a have-not province as a result of incredibly stupid policies. It was a miserable time to be working in the private sector of BC.

Perform any internet search you want and you will find that any well respected, non biased economist blamed most of BC's malaise on the NDP.

How ever David Schreck spins the facts, he cannot relieve the NDP of the responsibility for a terrible decade and the fact that A Dix was front and center through the hole mess.

BC had about 30% of the

BC had about 30% of the present debtload, racked up by the BCLibs, much of it is covered up under sick PPP schemes, where the public has to pay through the nose the higher interest rates, plus the profits of the racketeers, but it doesn't show as debt in the books.

If BC elects another NDP govt. once again the multinational corporate mafia will do their best to ruin the economy as they have done it in the 90s, using it for anti government propaganda to brainwash people to vote for pimps in their service.

Ed Deak.

John Corman

Nice try, but the economy was better in the 1990s than its been under the Libs. Higher economic growth, higher population growth, less poverty, less gambling, less federal revenue and better services.

Campbell failed to do as well as the NDP.

consistency

Devine, Harris (With his finance minister Flaherty in tow), Mulroney, GW Bush, Filmon in Manitoba & the BC Libs in different jurisdictions of course with different levels of power all followed the same economic playbook, all left (or in the case of the BC libs, will leave) their jurisdiction in terrible economic, and resultant social, mess. Some jurisdictions were fortunate to have time and centrist governments such as Romanow, Chretien, Doer to fix the mess, some such as the US under Obama and Ontario under The McGuinty (both of which are quite conservative) have not have time to fix the mess that was wrought. I have not even commented on the economic darlings of Europe 3 years ago, yes Ireland and Spain, which are now in situations that are difficult (Spain) and Insurmountable (Ireland) due to reliance on what is, in their context, right wing economic policies. Should I move on to Asia where the privatization and monopolistic policies have been most strongly followed in the Philippines resulting in the country moving from one of the strongest economies in the region to one of the poorest in a consistent 5 decade long march, while neighbouring countries (formerly known as the Asian Tigers) followed a much more mixed market economic approach to development and grew. Wow, consistent policies, consistent results!
You may wonder why I have not included Alberta? It is an economic basket case if oil prices drop below about $80/bbl and is now supported only by rapid increases in tar sands investment. Very prudent policies set in place by a centrist gov't (Lougheed) were abandoned 20 years ago by a successive slew of incompetents starting with Getty (& finance minister Stockwell Day). A reasonable comparitor for measurement of performance of Alberta is Norway. against this comparitor, Alberta is again an example of utterly failed policy.
I wish I could be optimistic but we still have the BCLibs here(and David's article is correct) and on a national scale we have the "Harper Gov't" following the same tried and failed policies. Truly we should weep!!!

I've lived under every known

I've lived under every known ideology and studied their history for over 60 years.

For all practical purposes, all ideologies and economic theories have been pseudo religions and they all failed, killing and destroying the lives of billions. Yet, humanity still hasn't learned the lessons and goes on following nuts and crooks.

The only solution is the acceptance of unbreakable physical laws for economics and a monetary system that reflects the same values, under strict public control.

As I wrote in my 1991 "Principle for the application of physical efficiency to economics":

12. Our economic systems are based on the misuse of words, concepts, mathematics and accounting. No sane person wishes to go back to primitivism and musclepower, but there must be new, democratically controlled determination of when, how far and for whose benefit convenience may, or must overrule the concepts of true efficiency within the recovery capacity of the environment and humanity.

The situation worsened in the past 21 years since I wrote this and all our politicians can do is beg for more trouble based on the words of frudulent "prophets".

Ed Deak.

No ad will remove the bad taste

there are far to many people who have been hurt by gordo or chrispy for the voters to be fooled into voting Lieberal
Welfare for big buisness is not acceptable to voters

Mary....We voters can jump up

Mary....We voters can jump up and down, the real governments are the multinational corporate mafia and they can ruin all of us, any government, or people, who dare to stand up against their insatiable profit demands, controlled by the stockmarkets.

Ed Deak.

Gonorrhea Lectim

I saw this a while ago and I will understand if you don't post this, but ... I thought it was kind'a funny, in a sick sort of way. Information about Gonorrhea Lectim (Liberalis strain.) The BC Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of this old disease. The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim. It's pronounced "Gonna re-elect 'em," and it is a terrible affliction. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior involving putting your cranium up your rectum. Many victims contracted it in 2008...but now most people, after having been infected for the past 1-2 years, are starting to realize how destructive this sickness is. It's sad because Gonorrhea Lectim is easily cured with a new drug that just came on the market called Votemout. The first dose was taken in 2010 (HST variant) and the second dose in 2013 and simply don't engage in such behavior again; otherwise, it could become permanent and eventually wipe out all life as we know it. Most ridings are already on top of this, like many in the interior , and apparently now on the Island, with many more seeing the writing on the wall.

Frank

You are being delusional if you believe that the NDP were good stewards of the economy in the nineties.

We had the worse performing economy on the continent with the exception of one or two southern US States. Not coincidentally, we also had the highest income taxes on the continent.

Some day you far lefties will catch on to the undisputed fact that increasing income tax rates by 10% does not increase tax revenues by an equal amount. The converse, of course is true

Scandinavian countries have accepted reality. Hopefully you NDPers will figure it out some day soon so we never again have income tax rates at an unbelievable 55%.

BC Progress Board

Yawn...so CC canned these guys.

http://www.bcprogressboard.com/index.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-politics/compared-with-other-provinces-bc-worse-off-in-2010-than-2000/article2280105/

OK John.....What are our

OK John.....What are our capitalists who are deindustrializing and destroying the country to suck up to their great friends in China:
Lefties, or Righties?

Ed Deak.

John Corman

John : "You are being delusional if you believe that the NDP were good stewards of the economy in the nineties."

No, just able to read stats.

John : "We had the worse performing economy on the continent with the exception of one or two southern US States."

Nope, the economy performed well. The average GDP growth was higher than its been under the Libs. So if you think the NDP should have done better you must really hate what the Libs have done since.

John : Scandinavian countries have accepted reality. Hopefully you NDPers will figure it out some day soon so we never again have income tax rates at an unbelievable 55%."

You mean back in those bad days when we had high consumer confidence, good jobs and lower inequality?

Frank

Again you are being a little disingenuous when you state that:
"Nope, the economy performed well. The average GDP growth was higher than its been under the Libs"

That's a strange thing to say.
Your next little piece of wisdom will be to commend the nineties NDP for having a better economy than those in charge during the thirties.

You should try to keep your eye on the ball Frank. It would make for more enlightened debate.

Look Folks

It ain't misleading Liberal ads that keep reminding me of Glen Clark and the 1990s--it is Adrian Dix that does.

If he really is the best the NDP has to offer, then that is a reflection of the weak talent pool that he is swimming in. That weakness will just give him an excuse to follow his predilections--for centralized control, thight discipline, and subordination of substance to spin.

As for the economy, external factors have always been the most important ones. But the NDP--as the party that generally comes with a higher price tag, in terms of overall taxation--has the burden of proving that it can still deliver higher value for that higher price.

A Dix-led bunch of nobodies is not worth that price.

Frank Lee

You are attempting to sound like your analysis is more than skimming. I could use the same terms to describe Christy Clark and her bunch of nobodies in the shallow talent pool. You can't even prove that the NDP comes with a higher price tag. Double the provincial debt in just ten years of BC Liberals is higher than anything the NDP did. Campbell and Christy have told more lies and half-truths than any government in B.C.'s history and you still are fixated on Adrian Dix as the incarntion of evil. It isn't working friend.

Sky....The provincial debt

Sky....The provincial debt has been tripled under Campbell, much of it hidden under fraudulent PPP schemes the public has to pay for at much higher costs and rates, but they don't appear, as debts, on the books.

Conservatives are always great fiscal managers, especially when it comes to cooking the books to fool the public.

I have the suspicion that the BCLib party will go the way of the Socreds within a year and disappear into the folds of the Conservatives, where they really belong and who were set up for the purpose.

The excuse will be "not to split the votes" and it will still give them enough time to wage a massive campaign with unlimited funds from their owners.

Ed Deak.

Not Higher Price tag?

While Dix is doing his best to "dial down" expectations, he either has to give teachers, healthcare workers, political operatives and trade unionists what they want or alienate his base. He can pry away environmentalist and First nations support by opposing the Gateway Pipeline, but that will be a typical example of foregone economic activity and revenue.

I don't approve of Liberal debt and deficits, but they have had the virtue of stemming from tax cuts and trimming down on public spending--yes, I agree with David Schreck that a lot of the tax cutting was really tax shifting, but not all of it. A lot of it has been manifested as leaner government. Try as he might, Dix cannot satsify his constituency (that of the government-dependent) without spending more, and without burdening the private sector more. And by "private sector" I don't just mean corporations and wealthy individuals--I just mean the Sharon Prescotts and David Schrecks and Adrian Dixs of the private sector who will be paying the freight.

I am not an apologist for the Liberals, but they have generally had a more talented caucus than the NDP--something that was not true in the first half of the 1990s. Think of the recruitment of Carole Taylor and Wally Oppal after a couple of vacancies arose) As a former public servant with five years experience (who has met Dix about a dozen times), but who no longer needs a public sector job in BC, I take a longer range perspective: it might be worth the wait to get a more democratic leader and a more talented caucus.

One of the things I remember about Dix is that he saw cabinet ministers and bureaucrats who questioned the fast ferries as problems to be overcome. He tried to cover that up during his leadership campaign, hiding behind the conventions of cabinet solidarity and collective responsibility. But it was Clark and Dix who were the real problem. And I have seen enough of Dix since 2005 to see that he has not fundamentally changed--he's just become more careful.

P.S.

From my perspective, I have never seen a worse choice in a BC election than the prospect that faces us in 2013. Even Bob Skelly and Bill Vander Zalm had the virtues of being a genuinely nice guy and a genuinely entertaining fellow, respectively.

Since I am not someone whose pension will vest if the NDP gets back, or a teacher who thinks he will get a better contract next year if the NDP gets back in, or someone who has already made up his mind that the Gateway pipeline and sees the NDP as the best chance to block it, or even an aging political operative who might see 2013 as his "last chance", I can afford to take the longer view.

I am just saying: if the NDP gets thumped, in the long run it could be a blessing in disguise.

P.S.S.

One thing Christy Clark badly needs is a couple of "star" candidates. It is a government that is nearing the end of its "natural" life, and is badly in need of a transfusion. A fresh new face at the top is not sufficient.

John Corman

JC : "It would make for more enlightened debate."

Kind of disingenuous coming from a guy that doesn't debate at all, eh wot?

And yes, BC had a better economy with a higher median wage under the NDP.

Them's the facts.

A former civil servant???

I don't think so. Frank Lee, you haven't the political acumen to see the writing on the wall.

"While Dix is doing his best to "dial down" expectations, he either has to give teachers, healthcare workers, political operatives and trade unionists what they want or alienate his base."

Even the HEU sees the writing on the wall and will settle for wage-neutral contracts as long as they don't have to give up any more of their holidays or lose any more employees, like 175 positions in Nanaimo or more LPNs. You obviously have never, ever, EVER seen negotiations in operation, nor have you ever had a gun held to your head by the NDP to settle your expectations not only below your own levels, but also those of party across the floor of the Ledge. The NDP cut more government jobs and booted more welfare recipients in ten years than anyone before them. Gordo tried hard to equal that record...

"A lot of it has been manifested as leaner government. "

Oh? That's why spending has gone up an average of 7% year-over-year since the Fiberals came to town, and why total debt to BC taxpayers is now in excess of $52 billion this year when the NDP left it at about $21 billion including its scamming from Hydro? You clearly can't read the simplest of balance sheets.

"Try as he might, Dix cannot satsify his constituency (that of the government-dependent) without spending more, and without burdening the private sector more."

Nobody can - Christy Clark wants to spend a fortune more - even to the point of giving away "the patch" to people who can afford it themselves - even John Cummings wants to spend more! Yes, yes, I know he says he wants to spend less, but 10 out of 11 of his policies involve increased spending. Look for yourself:

http://bcconservative.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Contract_BCCA.pdf

"I am not an apologist for the Liberals, but they have generally had a more talented caucus than the NDP"

Yeah, that's why Ralph Sultan sat on the backbench his whole life - a guy who loses more brain cells drinking a glass of wine than the Fiberals could put in a caucus room on Monday morning. Gordo should be ashamed, and Christy hasn't the wits to be ashamed.

No the Fiberals have been insufferable for a long time. I don't know if Dix will be any better, but I know he couldn't be worse.

...which is why I'm so certain the closest you ever came to a civil servant is renewing your driver's licence. You've absolutely no perspective whatsoever. Pah.

John Corman

I'm waiting for you to turn the economy around yourself, single-handed, just like you claim the Fiberals did.

So far all I see is all hat, no cattle.

1. I saw the freeze in

1. I saw the freeze in spending outside of health and education 1996-97 and the hiring freeze that accompanied it. Just as mindless and non-surgical as the New Era cuts 5 years later. There is a truth that the NDP has trade unionists over a barrel as long as they have no place else to go. Thank you for pointing that out--but it is my point as much as it is yours.

2. "Leaner government" is consistent with growth in spending if costs and demands are even higher. Especially when you are following a 20% cut in non -health and education ministries 2001-2003 and that is the baseline from which 7% growth figures are measured. Alternative Service Delivery, e-government, project management and P3 initiatives have all fallen short of expectations, but overall I think that government is leaner.

3. We are actually not disagreeing on the point that all three parties cannot satisfy their bases. All three are counting on illusions to sell their platforms.

P.S.

I should have thought about Ralph Sultan and didn't, so I concede that point.

I used to look at Jack Davis and Pat McGeer being frozen out of major cabinet portfolios in the Bennett government and rationalized that the NDP at least had a more rational distribution of whatever talent that it had. That may still be true, but it is not as obvious as it was back in the 1980s

P.S.S. Using Statistics

Cool Hand's argument that disposable income is higher under the Liberals is partly due to government policy, as he implies. But so is the pro-NDP argument that debt levels are even worse under the Liberals. These two points are clearly related: tax cuts never "paid for themselves", as Campbell blandly asserted they would. They made it harder for government to balance the books.