If you’ve ever wondered how a really really bad provincial MLA explains how to define contempt for the population, you must watch this. At least twice! February 2, 2015 The So-Called Transit Referendum: Don’t Be Duped! (0) February 18, 2011 Endorsing Alnoor Gova for the Burnaby-Douglas Federal NDP (3) November
Continue readingTag: Neoliberal Economics
Politics, Re-Spun: The So-Called Transit Referendum: Don’t Be Duped!
By Emily Griffiths The Transit referendum “Yes” campaign has been asserting itself all over Facebook, Twitter, neighbourhood news boxes, and I can’t help but ask myself, Since when is increasing a flat tax a leftist thing to do? Oh! The word “transit” has been attached to the newest proposed consumer
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: You Deserve Better Wages and Benefits
Right wingers want to pay no tax. It’s hard to bleat about that in public without sounding like the greedy, selfish people they are. Instead, they say that public sector workers are paid too much, and that we should privatize everything. THAT way, governments get to starve themselves to the
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Who Cares About Fixing Poverty in BC?
Well, it’s the Poverty Reduction Coalition! One of their many activities is to send recommendations to the government when the government deigns to ask people for their ideas. The Finance Committee is an all-party committee of the legislature, so the government usually ignores their recommendations. As citizens, we need to
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Which BC Corporations Would YOU Like to Euthanize?
Oh, what a list it would be! Enbridge? Kinder Morgan [the zombie child of Enron]? Imperial Metals [fanciful producers of the Mount Polley Mine disaster]? Other companies that treat workers badly like IKEA or Rocky Mountain Railtours? Capitalism is all about worshiping Frankencorporations that are immortal, legally a human being,
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Shhh, The Bold Revolution Has Started
We live in tumultuous times: Ferguson and other non-indictments of white police who murdered people of colour ISIL and other extremism Stephen Harper’s continued assault on democracy and embrace of soft fascism [has he had CRA audit YOUR favourite progressive group yet?] Accusations against Jian Ghomeshi Accusations against Bill Cosby
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Russell Brand Re-Spins Stephen Harper, Expertly
Politics, Re-Spun hereby bestows honourary Canadian and Politics, Re-Spun citizenship upon Russell Brand for his precise and effective re-spinning of Steve Harper and his soft fascist, neo-conservative manipulation of most of last week. And we all need to think more carefully about “convenient murders.” His new passport is in the
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Stop Persecuting The Rich, You Stinkers!
Rich folks, corporations and capitalists are feeling persecuted AGAIN! George Monbiot explains that we [citizens in pseudo-democracies] are attacking them and their right to a free market as well as their right to be free from disloyal politicians pursuing policy goals that serve voting human people instead of businesses. Here
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Against Collective Forgetting
Workers must do our part to Stop Harper! Happy Labour Day! 🙂 In Stephen Harper’s Canada, we keep enumerating the things we’re losing: meaningful legislative debate, evidence-based policy, public science, a free and open society, among other things. But what happens if we go too long with a slow erosion
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Welcome to the 1,000th Politics, Re-Spun Editorial!
Steve Harper, the greatest threat to Canadian security in the modern era. Happy August! Happy Day! I have a few comments about this, the 1,000th editorial at Politics, Re-Spun. But you can read them below, about my sabbatical plan, new visions for this almost 12-year-old website, and other things. But
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: How Translink Impedes Transit Use
Translink is “being evasive on exactly how much money is being spent on this.” via Compass Card program delayed again by TransLink – British Columbia – CBC News. How’s that for not surprising. Translink is notorious for its taxation without representation: taking municipalities’ money without providing democratic representation to municipalities.
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The Occupy Movement Has Changed the Narrative, But We’re Not Done
Recently, with the WEF spending the last few years acknowledging global income inequality is a problem, I’ve declared a kind of victory for the Occupy Movement: getting the lexicon on the 1% and inequality on the tongues of the sly gazillionaires who rule the world, and into mass consumption. Now
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The 1% Has More Solidarity Than We Do
In Davos, the 1% rule the world. Literally. They also have the guns. The 1% are claiming we have it out for them; that if we don’t tone down the rhetoric and stop calling them names like “the contemptuous rich,” we might end up starting a class war. But they
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: How the Tsilhqot’in Land Title Ruling Can Help Kill Enbridge
Watch Pam Palmater’s response to the SCC ruling. Click above. Stephen Harper had about a week to enjoy the glory of his remarkably understated whispery notification that the Enbridge climate killing pipeline will proceed. Yesterday the Supreme Court shut down the prime minister, which they have a tendency to do
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: What Does Soft Fascism Look Like These Days?
We don’t see brown shirts and jackboots, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t seeing the de-democratization of our society. In Vancouver this month, armed police with guns drawn, raided a house because they suspected people inside not of being terrorists, but of spray painting “No Pipelines” all over the place.
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: When Blog Comment Spam Goes Bad
You know you want it! Someone really crossed the line from whoops, to nuclear codes. One of the15,000 weekly blog spam comments that never make it to the human eyes stage on this website, accidentally made it through. Sadly, it is a compendium of all the kinds of faux-sincere blog
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Let’s Play Cowboys and Indians
Why not? It seems to be working in Washington, DC. And you know what? They’ve got our backs. When ranchers are farmers and tribal communities realize that the tarsands and their toxic pipelines threaten us all, it’s pretty easy to figure out how working together gets things done. They’re even
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Does BC’s Neglect of Poverty Constitute a Eugenics Plan?
There has been a great deal of talk in recent decades about the cycle of poverty, how it’s a vicious circle that children have difficulty getting out of. Human chromosomes with telomeres stained fluorescent red. Copyright Nakamura et al. It makes sense. If parents are short on economic resources, have
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The World Economic Forum Is Now Occupy’s Mouthpiece
By the way, if you were keeping track, the World Economic Forum rules the world. They’re the richest corporations in the world getting together with governments to plan the world. And why not, they’re the elite. And it turns out, since you’re keeping track, that Occupy has been quite successful.
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: BC’s New Landscape and Ecology Eradication Projects!
Once upon a time, before we knew much about ecology and systems theory, corporations just went around raping and pillaging the countryside, polluting whatever they wanted. Shhh, there’s a secret new law: it’s open season for corporations to rape and pillage our environment. This came back to me grotesquely in
Continue reading