A decent government wrapped in a sack of shit.
When Bill Clinton signed the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (welfare reform), he famously described it as "a decent welfare bill wrapped in a sack of shit".
Yesterday, the B.C. Liberals won another majority government while losing 31 (of 77) seats and 11% of their 2001 popular vote, mainly to Carole James' revitalized NDP. The B.C. Liberals are like that welfare reform bill: a decent pro-business government (whose tax cuts, for instance, were so popular that the NDP promised not to reverse them and who succeeded in upgrading the provincial credit rating for the first time in over a decade) who insist on wrapping their agenda in a sack of right wing shit: reinstating the grizzly bear hunt; cracking down on the public sector unions and privatizing hospital services; relaxing manidatory boating safety regulations which may have led to a death last weekend.
A stronger NDP who, combined with the Greens, can hold the Liberals below 50% will probably help to keep Gordon Campbell and his cabinet from galloping off further to the right over the next four years, even if they're not quite ready to retake the reins in the Assembly following their unceremonious ouster four years ago.
And while the Single Transferable Vote referendum looks like its going to fail (with 2/3 votes counted today, it's got 57% support with 60% needed), there was something extremely heartening in the fact that the Liberals kept their promise to put it to a ballot, even though, in the long run, it's more likely to hurt the Liberals than the NDP (since we've got a plethora of little left wing parties for people to rank and relatively few little right wing parties). In other words, I got to vote against the government's sack of shit even while voting for a measure that same government was gutsy and honest enough to introduce and that their oppositions' supporters were more likely to favour. Canadian democracy is, happily, alive and well.
Yesterday, the B.C. Liberals won another majority government while losing 31 (of 77) seats and 11% of their 2001 popular vote, mainly to Carole James' revitalized NDP. The B.C. Liberals are like that welfare reform bill: a decent pro-business government (whose tax cuts, for instance, were so popular that the NDP promised not to reverse them and who succeeded in upgrading the provincial credit rating for the first time in over a decade) who insist on wrapping their agenda in a sack of right wing shit: reinstating the grizzly bear hunt; cracking down on the public sector unions and privatizing hospital services; relaxing manidatory boating safety regulations which may have led to a death last weekend.
A stronger NDP who, combined with the Greens, can hold the Liberals below 50% will probably help to keep Gordon Campbell and his cabinet from galloping off further to the right over the next four years, even if they're not quite ready to retake the reins in the Assembly following their unceremonious ouster four years ago.
And while the Single Transferable Vote referendum looks like its going to fail (with 2/3 votes counted today, it's got 57% support with 60% needed), there was something extremely heartening in the fact that the Liberals kept their promise to put it to a ballot, even though, in the long run, it's more likely to hurt the Liberals than the NDP (since we've got a plethora of little left wing parties for people to rank and relatively few little right wing parties). In other words, I got to vote against the government's sack of shit even while voting for a measure that same government was gutsy and honest enough to introduce and that their oppositions' supporters were more likely to favour. Canadian democracy is, happily, alive and well.
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