Read on Twitter
Here's the blurb by @VaughnPalmer on the back of the book, taken from his foreword. Make no mistake, BC is still suffering the consequences of those "wrong-headed ideas" and the BCLibs have never acknowledged the "real victims in all this." #bcpoli #bcelxn2020
Also from the foreword: Abbott manages to respect his oath to keep cabinet confidences but still gives us the dirt by enlisting senior public servants as anonymous sources. #bcpoli
When I was a child, Gordon Campbell was mayor of Vancouver and his sons were on my brothers' baseball teams. I found him loathsome for the way he schmoozed the parents instead of watching the games. From the time I was 11 years old, he never proved me wrong. #bcpoli
I'm nearly finished Abbott's book & it's election day & I'm petrified the BCLibs are going to get back in. He catalogues a litany of cuts affecting the most vulnerable in our society, justified by the financial hole that the BCLibs' own tax cuts created. #bcpoli #bcelxn20202
Whether they were stupid enough to believe their tax cuts would pay for themselves or evil enough to knowingly crash the province's finances in order to impose austerity, the end result was 16 years of cuts to important social functions. #bcpoli #bcelxn2020
Andrew Wilkinson was the party president and then became a deputy minister in Campbell's office to help implement the cuts. He is now proposing a tax cut 4x the size of Campbell's tax cut. He knows this will lead to deep cuts to services. #bcpoli #bcelxn2020
BC has not recovered from the damage the BCLibs did from 2001 to 2017. We cannot afford to let them back in. Today, if you haven't already: VOTE, please. VOTE for anyone but the BCLiberals. #bcpoli #bcelxn2020
PS: don't let the articles & polls predicting an NDP win lull you into a sense of complacency/laziness about voting. GO AND VOTE! #bcpoli #bcelxn2020
I've finished @GeorgeAbbottPhd's book, you're probably happy to hear. I'm relieved: reading it filled me with rage & sadness. Rage at the callous cruelty on display; sadness about what might've been had BCLib "unrepentant neo-liberalism" (p 192) not run wild for so long. #bcpoli
How DID the BCLibs stay in power so long? As I see it, #1, they lied. They lied in portraying the NDP as financially inept & they kept up that lie about the 90s until now. In truth, the NDP left a small surplus in 2001 (p 38–39). #bcpoli
Furthermore, "average GDP growth, as well as new investment in machinery and equipment, was greater during the 90s under the NDP than in the 2000s under the BCLibs" (p 181). #bcpoli
And "most examples of purported NDP waste and mismanagement involved past capital rather than current operational expenditures" (p 187). ie: there wasn't a lot of "fat" to be cut. #bcpoli
Their 2001 platform was impossible: they promised big tax cuts AND large increases in services. They only kept 1 of those promises. The other was lost in the dust of preemptory $2B tax cuts & the drive to balance budgets despite the resulting $4.4B hole (p 192/whole book) #bcpoli
Another reason they stayed in power so long was by targeting their cuts at the most vulnerable and voiceless among us. They "protected" (ie froze) education & health funding, which chickens eventually came home to roost, but they SLASHED social service ministries. #bcpoli
So the average BCLib voter got a tax cut & their kids' school continued to exist & they still had a hospital, so who cares that welfare recipients, disabled ppl, kids in care, and abused women saw services disappear? This calculation clearly worked for 16 yrs. #bcpoli
This calculated cruelty is the reason I'm immensely glad the BCLibs got trounced last night, & the reason they need a wholesale turnover. The ppl in charge there still share the playground bully's view of "winners & losers" in life & politics that fueled this cruelty. #bcpoli
I'll leave this book behind me with 2 quotes from @GeorgeAbbottPhd: "The tragedy was not that the premier bet and lost [on budget cuts paying for themselves], but that the vulnerable & disadvantaged paid so heavily for his engagement with the roulette wheel." #bcpoli
Finally, from p. 182: a reminder to all politicians that society consists of humans, not money. #bcpoli
