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Frank Graves poll: The beginning of the end of progress | iPolitics | #cdnpoli

Not only is our rearview now more likely to feature regret and decline, our long-term view of the future is unremittingly grim.

Worse, these negative views are most entrenched amongst the Gen X, Gen Y, and millennial cohorts who will shoulder both the responsibilities and fruits of the future. These outlooks have been getting worse rather than better during the past several years and the sense of up-and-down cycles may be giving way to one of a long-term maelstrom.

To make matters worse, next generations are losing faith not just in the economy, but also in public institutions and democracy.

via ipolitics.ca

Some sobering words from the head of Ekos Research.

The question, clearly, is What Do We Do About It? The trends Frank Graves describes are troubling, yes, but they’re also an opportunity to craft a new narrative — one that finds a receptive audience among the very demographic he says is losing faith and tuning out.

Those of us who’ve been struggling with the apparent strength of the Harper Conservatives (I’m leaving aside quibbles about the use of the word for now) should take note: rational and comprehensive research finds much less support for them among the Canadian body politic. In short, despite what their think tanks and captured media transmitters might keep telling us, Canada isn’t necessarily shifting to the right.

The reasons for their apparent electoral showing last May are complicated, and not really susceptible to summarization in a short blog post. But there are several patterns — some short-term, some longer — coalescing in a way that might spell real trouble for them, and by the same token, offer progressive citizens and activists reason to hope — if we approach the task right. The trigger, if I understood Mr. Graves correctly, is in the new awareness of inequality, perhaps best encapsulated by the Occupy movement.

For decades, we’ve been drinking the Kut Kut Koolaid — cut government spending, cut taxes, get government off people’s backs, live within your means, yada yada yada — and the jobs will come, and the prosperity will trickle down, and a rising tide will lift everyone’s boat. Well, as the Occupiers have pointed out, that hasn’t worked out too well for anyone other than the 1 per cent — or even the 0.01 per cent. 

Combine that with a real and substantial fear that things are going to get worse instead of better, and you’ve got a genuine opportunity to reframe the conversation and make it about fairness, rather than just manufactured fear and resentment. In this pursuit, however, I’ve been cautioned that facts and evidence matter far less than crafting an emotionally resonant narrative. Not sure how comfortable I am with that, but then when you consider the electoral success the Harper operation’s enjoyed, despite being at odds with the views most Canadians say they hold, well … 

More to come on this.

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@AdamCF and @JM_McGrath talk governance, institutional reform, and #TOpoli

I’ll say it again: two of the smartest fellas on #TOpoli.

I’ve already linked to JM’s thoughtful and well-argued piece, but for those of you who haven’t read it, it’s here. 

It sparked a bit of Twittertalk last night (really sad, what passes for Saturday-night fun among #TOpoli tweeps), and while I won’t pretend I managed to capture the full discussion, I did note that it deserves a more thoughtful and considered response than the 140-character limit on Twitter allows.

Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler’s Facebook response, subsequently reproduced by John over at his place, is probably the most thorough rejoinder I’ve seen so far. Both these guys deserve thanks for a worthwhile contribution to the debate.

While JM suggests that the state we find ourselves in stems, in part, from the competing mandates accorded to the mayor on one hand and to individual city councillors on the other, I’m not so sure I’d go along with the conclusion he appears to draw: namely, that we’re in a crisis of governance, and that said crisis isn’t merely a function of personality, but of flawed institutional design. (JM, as always, if you think I’m misrepresenting your arguments, please feel free to post comments, on my Posterous space or my Tumblr or both. You have my word that they’ll be published.)

To some extent, we managed to expand on this last night, so I won’t try to recap it all. While I’m not so sure it’s a crisis - after all, we’re witnessing ad hoc coalitions of councillors finding ways to work around the mayor on various files - JM does make a valid point in suggesting that we can’t just dismiss the fact that any mayor’s going to have a much wider-ranging mandate than any individual councillor. 

https://twitter.com/#!/jm_mcgrath/statuses/176144409820278785

While it’s not exactly a revelation to note the dysfunctions inherent in the way municipal governance in Toronto works, JM’s post last night is noteworthy in that it doesn’t lay those dysfunctions expressly or exclusively at the door of the current mayoral incumbent. Indeed, the problems stemming from amalgamation predate the ascension of Rob Ford, and JM’s right to point out the institutional flaws in the way the megacity was designed, and how they continue to fester. Those flaws are in the provincial enabling legislation and in the way it’s been implemented, and ultimately how well any municipal administration functions depends largely on how the officials of the day manage to navigate them. Some will do it better than others … 

https://twitter.com/#!/sol_chrom/status/176140909048631296

Anyway, if I’ve read Adam’s essay properly, his main point of disagreement with JM is that this is a crisis of one mayor, rather than every mayor. (Adam, what I said to JM above? Same goes for you.) As Adam argues:

This isn’t a rogue council exploiting the system; this a council seeking leadership but finding that he whose job it is to provide leadership has abdicated his responsibility.

The question John then seems to ask of someone from my perspective is, If you’re going to ignore the mayor then what’s the point of having one? What we’re in now is possibly the most extreme case one could think of in this model of governance given that it has worked for mayors of all political stripes dealing with councils that were frequently more moderate in their views than the mayor of the day. In my mind, redesigning a system of governance in response to an extreme situation is a recipe for bad governance. We should continue to view our mayor as the person responsible for thinking in city-wide terms …

In the best Matlovian tradition, I’m going to come down somewhere in the middle, and suggest that they’re both right. Admittedly I’m being somewhat simplistic, and I won’t assume I’ve fully addressed their arguments, but on reflection, much depends on how you define mandates.

“Mandate.” It’s a loaded term. Whatever we may think of Rob Ford, he’s sincere enough in contending that his election gives him a mandate to pursue a transit vision based on subways rather than surface rail. (Whether that vision makes economic sense is another argument. And it would be nice if he and Doug stopped mischaracterizing LRT as “trolleys” or “streetcars” or whatever, and stopped talking about the “St. Clair disaster,” but that, too, is another argument.) And JM’s right in pointing out that a citywide election gives Rob Ford a democratic mandate broader than that enjoyed by any individual councillor. Just how much weight that mandate should carry, however, is another question. 

And this is where my elitist bias (bring it on, anti-snooty-downtown-elite-pantywaisters …) comes into play. In my respectful submission, your mandate is only as good as the discussion it’s based on. You can pretty much guess where I’m going with this: a mandate based on shallow, thoughtless, bumper-sticker catchphrases like ”Stop the Gravy Train” or “Respect for Taxpayers” or “Stop the War on the Car” or “no service cuts, guaranteed” (bit awkward, that one) doesn’t really carry much weight (indeed, Ed Keenan’s already pointed out that Rob Ford seems to govern by catchphrases). Certainly less so than one based on thoughtful, respectful engagement, and a reasonably thorough conversation about the issues of the day.

As always, it comes down to the difference between campaigning and governing. While my view of the current administration at City Hall is a matter of record, this isn’t just about Rob Ford. Democratic governance and a healthy civil society depend on active civic engagement. If we allow shallow catchphrases to dominate public discourse, then we end up with lapel-button slogans instead of carefully considered public policy, and that’s true regardless of who’s proffering them. And that’s got more implications for municipal governance than any debate over “treachery,” or whether Team Ford’s capable of compromise or not.

https://twitter.com/#!/karenstintz/status/175779840207749120

https://twitter.com/#!/NickKouvalis/status/175783746929299456

Anyway, both Adam and JM have made healthy and remarkably snark-free contributions to the debate. Thanks, guys. There’ll be more about this in the next few days, I’m sure.

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@jm_mcgrath, Rob Ford, and municipal governance | #TOpoli

What #TOpoli social-media types get up to on Saturday nights. Sad, isn’t it.

[View the story “@jm_mcgrath and the dysfunctions of municipal governance | #TOpoli” on Storify]

Seriously, though, a thoughtful, well-argued piece that raises several worthwhile questions about our current governing structures — questions that go beyond the personality-related issues dominating the current debate.

More to come.

The #Occupy movement and the U.S. party system: a prescription?

It is telling that our founders recognized the need for a semblance of democratic governance, if only to establish the legitimacy of the regime they established.  This is why capitalists and their political representatives have always been reluctant to quash democracy altogether.

The democratic character of the regime under which we live has waxed and waned over the past two and a third centuries.  Today, it is at an especially low ebb; and unless current trends are reversed, the situation is sure to become even worse – now that corporate “persons,” as our Supreme Court defines them, are, thanks to that Court, less constrained than they used to be in their pursuit of political influence.

Of course, we still have elections that are bitterly contested.  But however polarized the electoral scene has become, there is little genuine political contestation in it.   Our Tweedle Dums and Tweedle Dees despise one another and display their contempt profusely, but their politics is of a piece; they are all, in their own ways, faithful servants of the capitalist order. 

via counterpunch.org

Definitely worth a look.

While this piece on Counterpunch is written in an American context, much of the underlying analysis is applicable to the Canadian experience as well. It addresses the class aspect, the suborning of democratic institutions by elites, and the fundamental challenge of maintaining popular democratic sovereignty when so much of the economic sphere is seemingly beyond the ambit of democratic governance. While our society may not yet be polarized to the extent that we see to the south, the warnings are there in the widening inequality gap and in the level of popular disengagement evident in the low levels of voter turnout in recent elections.

I won’t pretend that anything here is the definitive explanation of the Occupy movement’s significance, or try to provide an exhaustive set of reasons for its enduring resonance. But it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that a big part of the reason for its success is in its implicit recognition of the futility of electoral politics, as currently practiced. In that light, Andrew Levine’s call for participation in the U.S. primary process seems counterintuitive on first glance, but it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

Yes, there’s always a danger of co-optation. And yes, the figureheads can talk one game while playing another. But given what I’ve seen from the Occupy movement (its lack of hierarchy, its refusal to engage in the kind of stilted and reductionist dialogue demanded by traditional media outlets and communication channels), I believe it has the potential to redraw the entire terrain. The system may well be rigged, but effective and strategic participation in it will, at the very least, force it to react.

Are there lessons here for Canada? I don’t think the possibility can be ruled out.

Related posts:

More on the #Occupy movement and the failure of current forms of politics, via @pogge411

Should we confine the expression of our opposition to the channels that are made available to us by the same media institutions that overwhelmingly support the Conservatives? And if so, why? So we can avoid causing any inconvenience?

The obvious rebuttal is that I’m free to join another political party in the meantime and concentrate my efforts there. But what if there aren’t any politicians in any of the parties saying all the things that I think need to be said? And trust me, there aren’t. I don’t believe there’s a political party out there right now that’s prepared to say what really needs to be said or do what really needs to be done. And I don’t think I’m alone. It’s going to be up to citizens to figure out where we need to go and convince politicians that they need to get out in front of us if they really want to be leaders. And I don’t think it’s going to be all that easy to get their attention.

Limiting ourselves to the options presented to us on the ballot would make us passive consumers, not active participants in democracy. I think the Arab Spring protesters that Hebert invokes would be surprised to discover that they’ve been risking their lives for the right to be passive consumers. And I think it’s disturbing that a veteran political commentator who’s been paying attention for these last five years would try to promote the view that democracy begins and ends with voting.

via pogge.ca

More from one of my favourite observers, argued more eloquently and convincingly than I ever could.

Widening inequality gap, failure of democratic governance, neutering the mechanisms of accountability, kabuki-theatre partisanship, and the best the current crop of pundits can do is lecture us about voting? As pogge says, what if voting isn’t enough?

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Slavoj Zizek on why the traditional media and mechanisms of ‘democracy’ can’t figure out the #Occupy movement

Once you have reduced the Tahrir Square protests to a call for Western-style democracy, as Applebaum does, of course it becomes ridiculous to compare the Wall Street protests with the events in Egypt: how can protesters in the West demand what they already have? What she blocks from view is the possibility of a general discontent with the global capitalist system which takes on different forms here or there.

‘Yet in one sense,’ she conceded, ‘the international Occupy movement’s failure to produce sound legislative proposals is understandable: both the sources of the global economic crisis and the solutions to it lie, by definition, outside the competence of local and national politicians.’ She is forced to the conclusion that ‘globalisation has clearly begun to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies.’ This is precisely what the protesters are drawing attention to: that global capitalism undermines democracy. The logical further conclusion is that we should start thinking about how to expand democracy beyond its current form, based on multi-party nation-states, which has proved incapable of managing the destructive consequences of economic life. Instead of making this step, however, Applebaum shifts the blame onto the protesters themselves for raising these issues:

‘Global’ activists, if they are not careful, will accelerate that decline. Protesters in London shout: ‘We need to have a process!’ Well, they already have a process: it’s called the British political system. And if they don’t figure out how to use it, they’ll simply weaken it further.

So, Applebaum’s argument appears to be that since the global economy is outside the scope of democratic politics, any attempt to expand democracy to manage it will accelerate the decline of democracy. What, then, are we supposed to do? Continue engaging, it seems, in a political system which, according to her own account, cannot do the job.

via lrb.co.uk

A compelling essay from the LRB sums up, beautifully, why traditional analysis and conventional communication channels can’t deal with the global Occupy movement.

I’m not going to single out Anne Applebaum; Zizek’s done that already, and dissected her argument far more elegantly than I can. But it’s worth pointing out that she really doesn’t have much to suggest other than traditional electoral politics. She’s not alone in that, of course, but if the Occupy movement symbolizes anything — and its significance is, as much as anything, in the fact that it can’t be compartmentalized or reduced to an easily digestible storyline — it’s the failure of such conventional forms of politics.

Not hard to see why, really. Sure, we can vote every now and then, but it’s not as if voting is doing much to rein in the bankster class or slow down the growth of the inequality gap. The formalities of responsible government and social cohesion may be observed, but it doesn’t take much to see the substantial failures.

What’s needed, if I’m reading Zizek right (no guarantee there), is a fundamental rethink of what’s included in the “political” sphere. Setting the terms for such a rethink is a daunting task, but we can be fairly certain that we won’t find much guidance in the corporate media or in contemporary mechanisms of democratic governance.

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Setting up for #OccupyTO | #OccupyBaySt #OccupyWallStreet #ows

Thanks, @OpenFileTO.

and just to keep hope alive … 

More from Chris Hedges on #OccupyWallStreet: Why the Elites Are in Trouble

Published on Monday, October 10, 2011 by TruthDig.com

Why the Elites Are in Trouble

by Chris Hedges

Ketchup, a petite 22-year-old from Chicago with wavy red hair and glasses with bright red frames, arrived in Zuccotti Park in New York on Sept. 17. She had a tent, a rolling suitcase, 40 dollars’ worth of food, the graphic version of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and a sleeping bag. She had no return ticket, no idea what she was undertaking, and no acquaintances among the stragglers who joined her that afternoon to begin the Wall Street occupation. She decided to go to New York after reading the Canadian magazine Adbusters, which called for the occupation, although she noted that when she got to the park Adbusters had no discernable presence. 

The lords of finance in the looming towers surrounding the park, who toy with money and lives, who make the political class, the press and the judiciary jump at their demands, who destroy the ecosystem for profit and drain the U.S. Treasury to gamble and speculate, took little notice of Ketchup or any of the other scruffy activists on the street below them. The elites consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible. And what significance could an artist who paid her bills by working as a waitress have for the powerful? What could she and the others in Zuccotti Park do to them? What threat can the weak pose to the strong? Those who worship money believe their buckets of cash, like the $4.6 million JPMorgan Chase gave a few days ago to the New York City Police Foundation, can buy them perpetual power and security. Masters all, kneeling before the idols of the marketplace, blinded by their self-importance, impervious to human suffering, bloated from unchecked greed and privilege, they were about to be taught a lesson in the folly of hubris. 

Even now, three weeks later, elites, and their mouthpieces in the press, continue to puzzle over what people like Ketchup want. Where is the list of demands? Why don’t they present us with specific goals? Why can’t they articulate an agenda? 

The goal to people like Ketchup is very, very clear. It can be articulated in one word—REBELLION. These protesters have not come to work within the system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify their voices, and so they created a press of their own. They know the economy serves the oligarchs, so they formed their own communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back.

This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are. They don’t understand what is happening. They are deaf, dumb and blind. 

via commondreams.org

Some further thoughts from the guy who pulled Kevin O’Leary’s sweater up over his head.

What does this mean for the similar actions planned for Canadian cities this weekend? Stay tuned …

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