The Critical NDP-Watch Thread 2

The Liberals sense of privilege continues...

Another story attempting to put the NDP leader in a bad light. You would think he was the one found in contempt of parliament.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Layton+least+civil+during+Parliament+R...

duncan cameron wrote:

Another story attempting to put the NDP leader in a bad light. You would think he was the one found in contempt of parliament.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Layton+least+civil+during+Parliament+R...

Any so-called index that doesn't put John Baird at the bottom of the barrel is hugely suspect.

This is the new reality for discourse in Canada.  No one must be upset about anything. This demand to be calm and cool is a denial of the hard wired empathy in all humans except sociopaths and others with personality disorders.  I hope our NDP MP's always score high on the righteous anger index. 

My partner was just telling me about going to a meeting with a freshly minted HR person straight out of university. When she would not answer any questions about the firing of a long term employee my sweetie began taking her to task.  The response was, "Your getting emotional. There's no reason for being emotional."  

Our new neo con elite, fresh from business schools like the one doing this civility bullshit,  not only believe that unions should be ignored they now are back to trying to demand that the Reps doff their caps and speak respectfully.  Needless to say this little elitist twerp did not stand a chance against an intelligent and hardened BA fired up because of the injustice being wrought on a worker and her family.

Fuck being nice to oppressors and their sycophants.  This university produces civility indexes and teaches its commerce students neo conservative lies and sends them out to harass productive workers and their advocates.  

Snert wrote:

Civility doesn't demand that you never be angry.  Be as angry as you want, but behave like a grown up.

I've been in the gallery in the House and the idea that the assholes in Tory blue suits are civil is absurd.  Apparently this "civility" index doesn't measure the bully boy school yard taunts that are a regular part of the governments trained seals on the back bench.  They don't yell they stage whisper insults. I guess that is more civil than getting up and forcefully demanding accountability from arrogant Ministers who never, ever answer the question asked.

Its a baiting game that we now have a score card for.  When an MP asks a life and death question on behalf of his constituents and the Minster gets up smiles and goes through a talking point and doesn't answer the question.  The MP asks a supplemental question and the Minister smiles and repeats the same irrelevant answer in a calm manner.  Now if they get tired of getting no answers and get frustrated enough to become agitated then they get a strike against their name.  Hell of a system for rating the performance of our elected representatives.  

Its a bully boys dream.  You get to say nothing and smile condescendingly at other MP's and have a business group rate you as reasonable and the opposition as uncivil boars.

knownothing wrote:

The NDP need to be surgical with the Torys in the House. Expose them with short question like a lawyer.

In a courtroom you have a judge that orders witnesses to answer the actual questions.  Short question, long question it doesn't matter it is getting them to answer that is the problem.

Northern Shoveler wrote:

This is the new reality for discourse in Canada.  No one must be upset about anything. This demand to be calm and cool is a denial of the hard wired empathy in all humans except sociopaths and others with personality disorders.  I hope our NDP MP's always score high on the righteous anger index. 

My partner was just telling me about going to a meeting with a freshly minted HR person straight out of university. When she would not answer any questions about the firing of a long term employee my sweetie began taking her to task.  The response was, "Your getting emotional. There's no reason for being emotional."  

Our new neo con elite, fresh from business schools like the one doing this civility bullshit,  not only believe that unions should be ignored they now are back to trying to demand that the Reps doff their caps and speak respectfully.  Needless to say this little elitist twerp did not stand a chance against an intelligent and hardened BA fired up because of the injustice being wrought on a worker and her family.

Fuck being nice to oppressors and their sycophants.  This university produces civility indexes and teaches its commerce students neo conservative lies and sends them out to harass productive workers and their advocates.

Andrew Scheer was just elected Speaker. What does that say about civility?

Scheer is bilingual?

Scheer has the longest experience as Deputy Speaker of anyone currently in Parliament, according to CBC.

A majority is a majority - its like talking about someone being "a little bit pregnant". People get elected to high office by as little as ONE VOTE. We don't invalidate an election because it was a narrow margin. You win if you get more votes than the other side.

I don't think its a stretch at all. ANY majority is a clear majority in my eyes. If there are endless recounts and hanging chads etc... and the we spend years in court determining whether or not there is a majority - that's another question. I think that if the NDP chooses to define a majority of any kind as a "clear majority" then so be it. Until someone else wants to give a concrete number as to what they think a clear majority is - there is nothing more to discuss.

The reality is - if the PM of Canada woke up one morning and declared that only a referendum that had a 60% majority voting Yes was a "clear majority" and could be considered binding - it would change nothing. If a province voted 55% Yes - it would still spark a major constitutional crisis that would inevitably lead to the break up of the country - so why play games. a 50%+1 Yes vote will mean the end of Canada as we know it.

Stockholm wrote:

The reality is - if the PM of Canada woke up one morning and declared that only a referendum that had a 60% majority voting Yes was a "clear majority" and could be considered binding - it would change nothing. If a province voted 55% Yes - it would still spark a major constitutional crisis that would inevitably lead to the break up of the country - so why play games. a 50%+1 Yes vote will mean the end of Canada as we know it.

Not only that, but such a draconian requirement would likely provoke a strong enough backlash in that province to result in that threshold being reached anyways.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

....

Mid-East policy is extremely difficult isn't it? There are expectations from all sides and more than enough unreasonable positions to go round. I don't pretend to have the answers short of saying blind support of Israel is unreasonable given its behavior. Support of an occupation is untenable. Pretending the occupation is not germane to the rest of the security equation is nonsensical. To ignore the fact that Israel is not just a victim but the more powerful aggressor makes no sense....

It IS difficult because there is no chance for an even-handed portrayal of reality in the mainstream media which forms directly, or indirectly, public political consciousness.  A statement of fact, such as you are doing in this paragraph, would be portrayed as radical and probably worse.

There are no doubt some NDPers in high positions who understand this with regret and are only silent “for the good of the party”, or their career, and others who have no problem with pursuing "good press" down whatever sink that leads. And still others who have no problem with Harper's Mid-East stance itself, except that he got there first.

For those in the party who care about justice, the problem is near insoluble: policy statements aimed to placate the rightwing media will, even then, be treated with coolness and skepticism. No matter how far right the NDP moves it will be portrayed as Canada's “leftist” party.  

Meanwhile, it validates Harper policy in the public mind by this equation: “Well, if even the leftist NDP can't find much wrong with it, Harper must be on the right track”.  This process operates for many of the "grown-up" changes in NDP positions--thus rightward moves the political spectrum of Canada, and why non-NDPers care about that party's direction.

I was referring to the use of language. 50% plus one vote - not plus one percent - while it is indeed a majority, it is a majority by the smallest margin possible, not a clear majority at all. Yes, it is clear that 50% plus one vote is a majority, but it is not a clear majority.  A clear majority refers to a majority by a much higher margin - at least that's what I learned in statistics many decades ago. 

Which brings up the question that has been raised by several reporters during the Layton gaffe week: 

"...what of the 49.99% who vote against separation in this scenario ("50% plus one vote")? To allow a majority step like sovereignty to be achieved through a .01% margin of victory seems absurd." 

That question went unanswered, probably a good thing. 

I just watched Paul Dewar. The pressing problem for Libya is how we prevent Gaddafi from using rape as a weapon.  No mention of bombing cities no mention of uranium tips only condemnation of Gaddafi and a call for "humanitarian" aid.  I guess the NDP think that our role in Haiti should be the new standard.

Fidel wrote:

The NDP's shit does not smell.  They are the only party in Canadian history that is always right and thus I just can't understand why they are always attacked.  

My summary of your ongoing, continual post about the NDP.

Whatever you do don't crap on the Liberals. They were only running things at the time.

The cause to resuscitate the Liberal Party from the grave will say anything about the NDP over the next four years.

They didn't oppose the Harpers at all for six years, but the LPC and its groupees will now transform themselves into op-ed commentators of the unofficial opposition to the official opposition, or, "The Loosely Affiliated Synarchist Fringe for the Re-Election of Steve Harper by 2015 because they don't stand a snowball's chance themselves" Liberals in denial groups.

Hostility watch continues...

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/jagmeet-singh-on-omicron-trans-mountain-...

Singh continues to say a whole lot of nothing. 

..this piece was written post mcdonough's death. i have no interest in vilifying  alexa but want to share the ndp history reported on in this piece. as a way of maybe understanding a little bit more about how and why the ndp is where it is today. not just at the federal level but the provincial as well.

Alexa McDonough and the Third Way

quote:

After the collapse

McDonough presided over a federal party on its death bed. In the 1993 federal election, the party collapsed from over 20 percent to under seven percent of the popular vote. The NDP lost 35 seats, and with them, official party status in Parliament. It was the worst NDP performance ever. It was also worse than any result registered by its predecessor party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.

The collapse was driven by the right-wing austerity turn of provincial NDP governments in Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Of the 39 seats won in these provinces in the 1988 federal election, only seven were returned in 1993. The NDP was wiped out in Ontario. The party also suffered for its role as Brian Mulroney’s junior partner in advancing the Charlottetown Constitutional Accord. The Accord was rejected in a national referendum in 1992.

Only 18 months after becoming leader, McDonough led the NDP into another federal election. Scoring 500,000 more votes, she led the party back to official party status with 21 seats. She also spearheaded an eight-seat breakthrough in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. However, the NDP was shut out of Ontario again, and only one more seat was gained in BC.

With Jean Chrétien’s Liberals enjoying another massive majority in the absence of any united opposition party, McDonough’s new task was to solidify new support in Atlantic Canada and rebuild support in the old NDP heartlands of BC, Saskatchewan and Ontario.

Advancing the Third Way

Despite the electoral recovery in 1997, fractures and splits festered within the party. Much of it was fuelled by the Rae hangover, Glen Clark’s stalled populist turn in BC, and Roy Romanow’s unapologetic “Third Way” rule in Saskatchewan.

The right-wing of the NDP had found a new champion in Tony Blair’s “Third Way” breakthrough in Britain in 1997. The so-called Third Way was sold as a rejection of both free enterprise capitalism and social democracy. It was a conscious strategy of social democratic and labour parties accepting permanent austerity through balanced budgets, retreating from universal social services, and abandoning full employment in favour of “competitive” business-friendly policies.

NDP socialists and many labour activists bristled at the Third Way which was often wrapped up in the language of “modernization” and “moderation.” However, their opposition proved insufficient. At the NDP convention held shortly before the 1997 federal election, McDonough and the party establishment abandoned opposition to corporate free trade. The policy of abrogating corporate trade deals like NAFTA was replaced with a policy of renegotiating them with “stronger” labour, environmental and human rights provisions....

..ending with this

quote:

The 1999 convention

Delegates at the 1999 convention were split over the policies coming from McDonough and the party establishment. A resolution in favour of balanced budgets passed in part because it was rolled in with tax cuts for lower and middle-income Canadians. It also sought a GST cut. Convention debates over working-class tax cuts signalled a deep confusion in NDP ranks. Only a decade earlier, the party was firmly opposed to the GST and sought to shift the tax burden away from working and poor people and on to the rich and corporations.

Delegates did rebel and defeat a resolution in favour of public-private partnerships, and threw out a job creation policy that was considered too weak in supporting public sector jobs and defending the right to strike.

The balanced budget policy, however, was seen as a victory for the Third Way and its practitioners, such as Romanow and his finance minister Janice MacKinnon. It was also a repudiation of those within the party who attacked Rae for abandoning deficit spending in hard times.

Another indication of right-wing advance was the convention’s approval of a policy to build alliances with small and medium-sized businesses. The new effort was predictably spearheaded by Riis.

In her speech closing the convention, McDonough focused on social issues such as poverty and avoided discussion of fiscal policy and taxes. Svend Robinson believed the speech confirmed the NDP was a “clear democratic socialist party that says the market is not God.” Few were convinced.

Defeat at the millenium

By early 2000, the “anti-globalization” movement had burst onto the public scene. Major demonstrations against corporate trade deals and international capitalist institutions began to forge an international movement that was challenging the prerogatives of capital. The left-wing “Pink Tide” in Latin America also began to offer inspiration for a new left in Canada.

Amidst these protests, Chrétien called an early election in the fall of 2000. The Liberals won a third huge majority thanks to the failed “Unite the Right” effort of the Canadian Alliance. The Alliance was contained to western Canada and helped split the vote with the Progressive Conservatives in the eastern provinces.

The Liberals were also aided again by a disastrous NDP campaign. The gains of 1997 largely evaporated. The popular vote fell to 8.5 percent and the caucus was cut down to thirteen seats. Support fell in every province but Manitoba. Half the party’s Atlantic seats were lost, and while the party won its first Ontario seat since 1988, the heartlands of BC, Saskatchewan and Ontario produced only five seats....

That was a great stroll down memory lane. Thank you, epaulo!

My involvement with the NDP tapered off in the early 1990s. I was never an active member since then although my husband and I did try to volunteer in the provincial election campaign of an Ottawa city councilor jumping into the ring sometime in the late 1990s. Her campaign manager went on to be high up strategic advisor in the ranks for Jack Layton campaign. Because we were not "party insiders", they wanted our involvement to be limited even though we both had lots of communications experience. It was a real turn off.

laine lowe wrote:

I was never an active member since then although my husband and I did try to volunteer in the provincial election campaign of an Ottawa city councilor jumping into the ring sometime in the late 1990s.

That was my first election living in Ottawa Centre. My main memory from that campaign was how annoying the PC candidate was. He couldn't seem to articulate a political vision of his own apart from being Mike Harris' #1 fan. Outside of the Rhinoceros Party, he's probably the only candidate I could imagine running under the slogan "Elect a Sycophant", but mean it unironically.

laine lowe wrote:

Her campaign manager went on to be high up strategic advisor in the ranks for Jack Layton campaign.

Within the context of Ottawa politics, that makes the Arnold campaign a rousing success. Winning elections is seen as a nice-to-have. But securing a spot in the NDP brain trust is where it's really at.

..it's not possible to know but i believe the leadership race that chose singh was an opportunity to take a different path. i'm not saying it would have but that i would have liked to have seen it play out. especially the partnerships with movements..including the indigenous movements. who can say if the fiasco with the wet'suwet'en would have occurred. then again maybe it wishful thinking.

..the argument for singh was electability. that was the same reason for the move to the third way. it hasn't proven to be the case. imo electability is a very shallow foundation to address the massive hole capitalism has built for us.