Sunday, December 28, 2014

2015 - An Election Year


I think the first thing we should do is take the Canada Elections Act off the books. In the first place, the advantage of governments waiting for opportune times to call an election is mitigated by the reality that a government could simply time all sorts of tax-cuts and spending initiatives to coincide with the "fixed" election date. In the second place, when the government that crafted the legislation violated the spirit of it, what's the fucking point? Here we've been, for a year now, guessing whether harper will call a snap election, still under the same Act that's supposed to have eliminated such guessing games. Do we really expect that a Liberal or NDP prime minister would stay loyal to a shitty piece of legislation that even its author didn't respect?

To fuck with it!

Since there will have to be an election this year, go all-out trashing harper in front of your friends and relatives.

One time, I was on a bus with a co-worker from a warehouse. I mentioned how Hamilton (Ontario)'s steel industry originated when Sir John A. Macdonald's "National Policy" tariff forced US industrialists to have to build factories in Canada. Some steel-makers came to Hamilton and found the abandoned works for the Great Western Railroad there and decided that this would be as good a spot as any to build a steel mill because some of the infrastructure had already been built. The GWR itself was where it was because our MP was the corrupt, grasping, anti-democracy thug Sir Allan MacNab. So Hamilton's defining industry had, essentially been a product of one man's self-interest and greed.

My co-worker (an older gent in his 50's) merely nodded and said "Uh-huh." I'd decided that I'd bored the fuck out of the guy and shut-up and we talked of other things.

The next day on the bus, he told me that he'd told his wife about what I'd said and they both thought it was fascinating!

What was the point of my digression? Sometimes you don't think you've made an impression, but you have!

So, I think that if you keep your temper, and find a way to connect with your friend or relative, about how scuzzy and contemptible harper is, you might plant some important seeds of doubt in their minds, which could blossom into beautiful flowers of hatred.

I mean, harper is making it as easy for us as he possibly can, isn't he? Talk about his treatment of the right-wing's precious "troops"! There's a whole laundry-list of atrocities that harper and his stoopid thug Fantino have presided over.

Talk about the F-35 fighter. Any right-winger who pretends to care about fiscal responsibility and accountability should be concerned about the precedent of a government REFUSING to document claims and covering-up TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS on a white-elephant boondoggle.

Finally (for now) talk about harper's sniveling cowardice! A man who appears to find it easy to send "the troops" into harm's way, nickel-and-diming them when they come back wounded, appears to dash for a fucking closet at the first sign of danger, without even telling his colleagues what he's doing. And then attributing this disgusting cowardice to his RCMP "training."

I'd rather discuss positive policy proposals to this crapola, but this is where we are.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here in Manitoba a fixed election date is a great way to disenfranchise renters and to hurt the NDP.

After Trudeau brought in wage controls, Manitoba introduced rent controls and most leases ran from Oct 01 to Sep 30. An October election date makes it harder for renters who have just moved to have the necessary documentation to vote at the new polling location.

A fall or winter election makes it harder for volunteers to go door to door. For these elections, money for advertising has a larger effect.

thwap said...

Well, the good news is that federally, we don't have fixed elections.

We have a useless, stupid law, written by a contemptuous, contemptible coward, that supposedly fixed our election dates, but nobody cares about it.