Category: New

How many years ago, did Reverend King have a dream?

Now the Tea Party usurps the Mall. You want to scream.

________________________________________

Watched a red ball of sun rise from the lake this morning,

Then also saw it change to a golden orb without warning.

_________________________________________

Michael Ignatieff spent the summer riding on a bus,

Harper goes to the Arctic and the media make a fuss.

_______________________________________

Politicians and political scientists have been puzzling over the P-O factor in politics for many years. Many see the P-O voter as self destructive. P-O voters are certainly alienated. They defy logic. They re-elected George W. Bush as President of the United States in 2004 when all sensible voters knew the man was a liar, a fool and incompetent.

Many are now realizing that it is the P-O factor that is boosting the chances of Rob Ford to become the next mayor of Toronto. It is the P-O factor that enables a person such as Rob Ford to survive in politics. The man is walking excess. If he has a heart, you would need a very large weighted meat cleaver to find it. He does not talk, he blusters. He does not reason, he goes postal. He has little to say but says it anyway. He suits the P-O voter to a ‘T.’

What few realize is that the P-O voter can also do good. They just do it for the wrong reasons. They could vote for Barack Obama as President of the United States, for example, as a way of giving the finger to their fellow P-O voters. Go figure!

In Canada, we watched the historical journey of Pierre Trudeau through the late 60s to the early 80s in a chaotic love-hate relationship with voters. He was the right person, in the right place, to be elected for the wrong reasons. He had won his first election before the votes were cast with the bottle throwing incident at the St. Jean Baptiste parade in Montreal. When party strategy guru Keith Davey was once—facetiously—accused of being among the bottle throwers, he laughed and said he wished he had thought of it. The incident brought an anti-francophone vote to Mr. Trudeau that embarrassed him. After one of the most stunning one-sided victories in Canadian history, the P-O voters reduced his Liberals to a minority government four years later.

It is the populist politician who preys most effectively on the P-O voter. Populists can be of any political stripe. They are the type of politician who can hear the P-O voter and understand the plaint. They simply reflect back the noise that they hear. If the politician is one who does not bother to listen, they just feed the system with the standard mantra of the P-O. This can include ‘we are over taxed,’ ‘our streets are not safe’ and ‘there are too many civil servants.’ After all, there are darn few of us who really want to pay taxes, so saying that any amount is too much strikes an easy chord. The same voter wants to hire more police and build more prisons and damn the expense. And who among us has not wanted to fire a bureaucratic civil servant?

It is not that the P-O voter is stupid. They are just a people who want to get even. They want the opportunity to vent their spleen. It has been suggested that there should be shouting rooms at each polling place on election day. These are soundproof rooms that you can go into and rant and scream and shout until you have it all out of your system. Then you can go and vote sensibly. Would it work? It’s doubtful.

– 30 –

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

This fall the Supreme Court will rule on our paying for local TV,

PM Harper wants to use our money to bribe the greedy at CTV.

______________________________________________

It fascinates us. Like the storied venomous snake that first hypnotizes its victims, Babel’s mysterious political rites draw us hypnotically into its labyrinth of political why’s and wherefore’s. Elections in Babel are not always happy “win-win” circumstances. Over the past years, they have been more like “lose-lose” situations.

Take the recent mayoralty races, for example. The talk is about the last three mayors who lost their bids for re-election. Each sought re-election and lost. It is not prescience to assume that the incumbent mayor will also be leaving office before the end of this year. Whether he will even run in the October election is a toss-up. He is likely to run but not for the reasons that people would expect. He knows he has no chance of winning.

Some people run for office because of principles in which they believe. Winning is not their first consideration. Others might be seeking a platform to express their views. Some people have been known to run for election to try to keep another from winning. Some may run for office when their real objective is to build name recognition for a subsequent election effort or in exchange for a specific appointment by the winner. In studying municipal politics over the past 50 years, you do not become overly impressed with the altruistic motives of all political candidates.

What will likely happen in Babel in October will be that the mayoralty race will be reduced to a two-person contest. It will then be the challenge for the also-rans to see who can best harry the one of the two opponents whom they least want to see win. Those who cannot win have been known to make late and quite irresponsible charges against front runners to try to stop them from winning. The last couple weeks of the campaign are always the most strident. It can create situations where both the candidates and the voters are the losers.

The key to the election for Babel voters is to take the trouble to learn the facts and then to be sure to vote. Less than 30 per cent of Babel voters voted in the 2006 municipal election. That means when you go to vote, you are carrying two non-voters on your shoulders. They are a heavy burden. Some of these non-voters are angry and despise politicians. Some are too lazy to care. The majority of non-voters are people caught up in their own world and are completely unaware of what politics really means to them.

Non-voters are considered the flotsam of the political seas. No real politician ever wants to give up on any possible vote but reality is that if you can identify enough of your vote and then make sure they get to the polls, you have a winning formula. The figures in Babel are simple. No potential councillor is likely to need more than 2000 votes to win in any of the city’s ten wards. The mayoralty will be assured for the candidate who can bring 20,000 voters out to vote. That is about one in five of the city’s total voters.

Think about it. If you choose to vote for one of the two main candidates for mayor in October, you will be carrying the responsibility for four other voters when you leave the voting place. By accepting that load, you can walk tall.

– 30 –

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

A new kind of vandal thinks advertising signs are free,

Throw ‘em in jail with G8 hoods,  throw away the key.

_______________________________________

In the Valley of Swat, the flood waters are raging,

Monsoon rain bringing death, nobody’s managing,

If we don’t go to their aid, the Taliban are winning.

____________________________________

Ford and Smitherman want to be mayor of Toronto,

If McGinty helps Smitherman, isn’t he helping Ford?

_____________________________________

It must run in the family. Joe Tascona is trying for the mayor’s office on the promise of no property tax increases. His nephew, the local MP, is now telling us how he is going to stop federal prisoners from any entitlement to Old Age Security payments. They are both trying to win votes from the ignorant and uncaring among us.

You would think that Joe Tascona would know better. Since he helped Premier Mike Harris dump welfare costs on Ontario’s municipalities, that one expense has meant constant upward pressure on our municipal taxes every year. To keep our property taxes from growing, something has to be cut from the budget. More than 30 per cent of city budget costs are for police, fire and emergency services. Maybe this is where Mr. Tascona thinks he can save money. Our citizens might not want to pay the cost to see him try.

The younger generation are less direct. Speaking of that younger generation, one of the objections Joe Tascona brings up about his major rival for the mayor’s chair is that the councillor might be too young to be mayor. That surprises people who have seen what a great job that the councillor has done over the past four years. It is also surprising when you consider that councillor’s 12 years of experience in advising municipalities on how to manage costs and save money on major civic infrastructure projects.

In a recent conversation with some politically interested taxpayers, one said that the councillor is not only old enough to be mayor but he is also the best qualified. Another answered that the councillor is not only qualified but he is older than Mr. Tascona’s nephew who struts around town as the Member of Parliament. He is not only older, this person pointed out but he is one hell of a lot smarter. This got a grunt from a third person in the group who said: “The councillor is not only more experienced than the uncle, smarter and older than the M.P. but he also has a personality. In choosing a mayor, we are choosing someone to represent us. Is there a choice?”

Which brings us back to the nephew MP’s cavil about Old Age Pensions. Through their working life, Canadians earn the right to Old Age Security payments. The maximum today is something over $500. a month. The MP wants to take away that right. It is not as though the prisoner has anywhere to spend the money. Most arrange for that money to go to their family. Many families need it. One supposes that the MP would prefer that the prisoner’s family go on welfare. We can pay plenty for that.

What a sensible person thinks about it is that there are many reasons why a person might be in jail. That seems to be enough rights taken away from them. No doubt the courts might be better able to determine that. Someone as ignorant as Joe Tascona’s nephew should not be making those decisions. Every citizen has a responsibility to protect everyone’s rights. That is the best protection for ours.

– 30 –

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]