Musings —04.24.2013 06:51 AM
—Two views of BC election 2013
One from a Westerner, here. And, from an Easterner, here.
The pan-Canadian consensus? Her goose is cooked.
The problem with the BC Liberal strategy is that they considered Christy Clark to be their key strength. When, in fact, she was their central weakness. She makes Kim Campbell circa 1993 look like the finest strategic mind since Talleyrand.
Adrian Dix is going to win. It’ll be fine.
Clark is cooked but her party won’t suffer the near-annihilation the NDP did a decade ago at the polls. There are still too many resource-dependent areas and cities and towns filled with retirees and just general conservatives to see the complete destruction of the BC Liberals yet.
I can’t in good conscience support the Liberals again, mostly due to the fact that Clark, who was originally a federal Liberal the first time she left office, has brought in a lot of ex-Harper staff (Sara McIntyre, Ken Boessenkool, etc) to work in Victoria for her and on her campaign, including Nick Kouvalis. Kouvalis was the final straw. NDP have always been a non-starter even though I’m a union worker.
This time I’ll burn my vote on the Green Party. Hopefully things change down the road but I’m not optimistic.
She knew that she would never win after Gordon Campbell was forced to step down. The lib party has been corrupt and on its way out for 4 yrs, BC has had to suffer an extra 2 yrs instead of having a provincial election called when Campbell was run out of town. She is finished…she knows it too. My guess is she is trying to pack all the money, jewelry, silver and perks she can in the next two weeks before Dix takes over.
She was a MUCH better education minister.
Funny things happen to former ed. ministers and school board types when they hit provincial and federal politics.
Chipping in for the NDP candidate here in Northeast BC, the oil patch! Unskilled labour, putting together signs, shuffling papers, sweeping up, errands, doing my Dobbin best!
Very right wing here, NDP usually get 12-20%. Running against a BCLib (advertises himself as a Conservative voice in the BClibs) and an independent (closest to libertarian, good guy), all local people.
BCLibs were taken over by Howe Street and a grinny huckster beginning of the1990’s, won power in 2001. Grinny huckster is now High Commish in London, and has now been replaced by a fast talking cheshire cat, all of them giving away as much of the farm as possible to (increasingly foreign) free enterprise, – a lot of it for as long as the grass grows and as long as the rivers run.
You federal Liberals will enjoy the BCLib basic talking point, which is that 1990’s under NDP was a dark decade, many left for Alberta(even Alise “I’m the parent figure here” Mills left for Alberta. ) Then, 2001 and BC LIbs brought the golden age of fiscal propriety and economic freedom and such.
(Hmm…what if NDP wins power and Alise leaves again…I must work harder)
I have to say, in my local ridings at least, if the BC Libs are going down, theyre going down with guns ablazing………my ridings have bible belt candidates, and as a result they can get the workers out, they can get the signs up,(they have) and the phones manned…..and can motivate a large contingent of the electorate who want to keep the godless socialists out……many other BC Liberal candidates are not as fortunate….
I will be surprised if Clark keeps her own riding. She is wildly unpopular and only narrowly won her seat last time around. I’m in that riding and I know I’ll be voting decidedly against her. But I usually vote for losers, so maybe I’ve cursed the whole thing!
Many lower-middle-class income earner in the health care support fields have lost their jobs due to Campbell’s union-busting privatization moves. Not only did BC not save any money (the lion’s share of the profits go overseas in many cases), but these contractors cheaped out on workers’ salaries and supplies needed for the job. It has also become apparent that training for these jobs is sorely inadequate.
So we ended up with too few maintenance staff (because these contractors cheaped out on adequate staffing), resulting in workers who either don’t know or don’t care about doing the jobs properly, a severely damaged tax base and loss of spending power (which keeps an economy functional), and most importantly, filthy, dirty, scummy, shit-covered hospital rooms and equipment–and the superbugs that come along with them. Along with the superbugs, comes greater expense to the health-care system and greater suffering for patients.
When Christy Clark was Education minister, school lunch programs were cut and schools got closed. Also, at the same time, health care assistance for poor children (like emergency dental care and vision care) were either severely cut back or eliminated altogether. People on disability were subjected to reevaluation which proved to be a cruel and unnecessary exercise in bullying those who were least able to fight back.
The legal aid office in Prince George was shut down under Campbell’s watch.
Before the BCLiberals got into power, welfare recipients were allowed to earn X dollars (depending on size of household) without having their benefits clawed back dollar for dollar, allowing for a smoother transition back into the workforce. Murray Coell, under Gordon Campbell’s watch, cut that out, too. After years of recipients having this incentive taken away from them, Christy Clark reinstated these allowables, but only after it became clear that people were becoming painfully aware of how child poverty had skyrocked under the BCLiberal’s watch, and were hurting any chance of re-election.
There was scathing report after scathing report from the children’s watchdog, Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafonde about the BCLiberals’ Children’s Ministry’s utter failure to protect vulnerable children from abuse and the effects of hunger and family dysfunction.
In 2000, I grilled a BCLiberal candidate about any affiliation with the Federal Liberal Party. At first he sidestepped the issue, rather lamely, I might add, then after being patient, I got in his face a bit and demanded a straight answer. He told me that the BCLiberals were NOT affiliated with the Federal Liberal Party. When I asked him who they WERE affiliated with, he refused to answer and ordered me to leave–
–but I already had that answer, and even though people said I was nuts, I was proven right.
This was a case where it was no fun being right about something.
There will be a lot of revelation when they are booted out. My interest is just how badly the BCLiberals cooked the books, and how much of a mess is actually left.
Sorry for the lengthy post, Warren, but I have lived in BC for forty years, and this is, hands down, the worst government BC has ever had.
I ,too, have lived in BC for 40 years – I guess it’s our 40th.
I agree with most of what you say.
I am not confident about your 2nd last pargraph, though. I’m not confident that a different government is going to pursue (what seems to some of us) the indictable behaviour of these hucksters and their carpet bagger cronies.
I’ve heard rumblings around the poli-circles that Dix may hold a public inquiry into the sale of BCRail, but I am still trying to find a credible sourse. The campaign is still rather young, though, so we’ll see.
Nonetheless, I am looking forward to seeing the tail end of this nightmare. The original leader of the BC Liberals, Gordon Wilson, was a genuine Liberal, whose beliefs were closely in line with the Federal Party. Gordon Campbell, on the other hand, was an extreme right-winger surrounded by failed Socreds and such, and was handsomely rewarded by Harper for doing very, very serious damage to the Liberal name in BC. It took some time, but people now realize how phony these so-called “Liberals” are. And, most certainly, the abuse of taxpayer dollars (not unlike Harper’s Conservatives) has come full circle.
Weather permitting, I’m pulling out the “beer-be-cue” when the BCFakeLiberals are OFFICIALLY DONE.
Thanks for the feedback, dave. Cheers!
Good job on the picture – you made/they made her look totally deranged.
Looking forward to Bingogate – FastCats 2.0.