March 9, 2020 - Loonie Politics

One of the unwritten parts of the CBC's mandate is the conjuring of phantoms to scare Canadians into supporting the status quo. The more obscure the phantom, and the less likely it is to actually threaten Canadians, the better, because then they don't actually have to research it.

The obsessive focus on "disinformation", the attempts to elevate anti-blockade forces into a national pandemic of white supremacy, and of course, the breathless coverage of US politics to the exclusion of Canadian issues. CBC devotees can pick out every error in six Breitbart stories before breakfast, and that is all to the good, but when it comes to barely readable rush jobs like this recent offering from Keith Boag on the spooky, scary "dirtbag left" supporting Bernie Sanders, they lap it up without question.

Boag's Old Man Yells At Cloud diatribe in which he admits in the second sentence that this whole concept is over his head, and likely those of his readers too may have been rendered moot by Sanders' underperformance on Super Tuesday, and will likely disappear into the ether. But in reading about this fantasy world, where people are being rude online because of politics, we forget to ask the question of what relevance this has to Canadians. Why was Keith Boag compelled under duress to do a book report about this subject and present it on CBC.ca? Because the overlords fear a plague of incivility amongst Canada's disaffected millennials more than they do the coronavirus and they have no reason to.

I admit to having no particular love for angry leftists, but I dislike obvious attempts to lead readers to conclusions they don't need to draw even more. The sad truth is that the left in this country is too focused on being nice to pull off anything like what the Sanders campaign is trying to do to the Democratic Party.

I hate to be the one to point this out, but the purpose of a political revolution is to replace the elites and institutions in a country. This is what the far-left in Canada should be pushing. But instead of "Canada is broken," they push "Canada is fake," and really, what is the point of a revolution in a fake country?

The dirtbag left, for all of Boag's sneering, believes what they believe honestly. In this respect they have their act together better than the Liberals, who have no beliefs except the idea that they are always right and always entitled to power. Whatever passes for Canada's right have no principles or beliefs, but they at least have a goal obtaining and maintaining power (for a few years). Canada's left has no beliefs, principles or goals. It's just kind of there. Occasionally it has an interesting point about concentrations of wealth, but the idea that it's actually going to DO anything about those concentrations of wealth is hilarious. This is why they frequently get angrier about alleged coups in Venezuela than anything taking place within their own borders.

Somehow, the Canadian left has managed to delude itself into thinking that it can effect massive social change without guillotining those standing in the way of social change. That supporting labour pushbacks against Doug Ford or Jason Kenney won't simply perpetuate the cycle of a conservative government getting elected every 20 years, trying and failing to enact "austerity", and then losing to the Liberals. They think that conservatives are just misled and misinformed, and all they have to do is remove the sources of misinformation and then Peter MacKay, Erin O'Toole, and Ezra Levant will join their brothers and sisters on the picket line and sing "Solidarity Forever."

No other left wing party in the world believes this, mostly because their supporters wouldn't let them believe it. And so instead of a proper left wing party, we have a group of cosplayers. They do not believe in their own left-wing nonsense enough to be rude to people. Liberals defending Trudeau are more willing to drop the gloves and fight for what they believe in. Ironically, those CBC worshippers have more in common with the dirtbag left than they know, because they at least can be motivated to attack a target!

Photo Credit: You Tube

Written by Josh Lieblein

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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When billionaire Mike Bloomberg decided to spend about a gazillion dollars on his presidential nomination campaign, it caused me to have some serious self-doubts about one of my most long-held political beliefs.

And that belief was this: Money can't buy elections.

My point was always, while spending money to saturate the market with glitzy ads might get your message out to a wide audience, it won't necessarily help get you votes.

At the end of the day, the quality of your message is what counts.

This is why I always opposed any attempt by government to limit what political parties or independent organizations could spend on election advertising.

To my mind, any such restrictions were not only unnecessary, but were actually an attack on political free speech.

And that matters because, simply put, in a free and democratic society, citizens should have the right to express political opinions, through paid advertising.

Indeed, so strongly did I believe in this idea that, while working for the National Citizens Coalition, I helped to spearhead several constitutional court challenges aimed at stopping what I like to call "Election Gag Laws."

More technically, these gag laws were sections of the Canada Election Act which impose severe restrictions on how much money independent citizens or groups can spend during elections to promote their ideas.

This gag law basically makes it illegal in Canada for poverty groups or for taxpayer advocacy organizations or for church associations or for anybody else to run effective media campaigns during elections to support or oppose a political party or to even talk about any issue that might associated with a political party.

At any rate, the NCC's argument to the courts in opposing gag laws was straightforward: they contravene the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees every Canadian the right to freedom of expression.

But alas in 2004, we lost in the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that gag laws were OK.

Essentially, the court decided that infringing on free speech was necessary to prevent rich people from having an undue influence on electoral politics.

I thought it was a horrible ruling; in fact, at the time, I told the media, the court had "stabbed democracy in the heart."

But Bloomberg's entrance into the Democratic primary race made me wonder if I possibly could have been wrong.

After all, as a billionaire, he basically had unlimited financial resources at his disposal, and he seemed willing to spend whatever it took to secure the nomination.

Certainly, this was political spending on a level I had never seen before.

And since many smart pundits and experts were warning about how Bloomberg's unprecedented spending spree was going to "buy" him a victory, it made me think, "Maybe we should have spending restrictions in place, lest elections become the exclusive preserve of the super-wealthy?"

Of course, as it turned out I shouldn't have doubted my principles.

Yes, Bloomberg spent a ton to get elected; he poured out nearly $500 million on election advertising, he employed legions of "social media" influencers to create memes, he hired 2,400 people to work on his campaign, paying them top dollar, he opened up more than 200 offices across America, he even reportedly took on a comedy writer.

Yet, despite all that political spending, his campaign was still a dud.

After getting trounced on "Super Tuesday", he pulled out of the race.

Clearly, all the money Bloomberg spent couldn't overcome his failings as a candidate: he was dull, he was inarticulate, his debate skills were horrible, he had a record of taking unpopular stances and at the end of the day, voters simply never warmed up to him.

You could even argue all that splashy spending actually ended up hurting Bloomberg, as it simply reminded voters that he was an oligarchic billionaire, and people (especially Democratic voters) don't like oligarchic billionaires.

So yes, I can put aside my self- doubts and once again proudly proclaim, that money doesn't buy elections.

Take that Supreme Court of Canada!

Photo Credit: Town & Country Magazine

Day: March 9, 2020

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