Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Kill the subsidy, but kill them all

With the impending heat death of the Liberal party—er, rather, with the approaching end of the $2-per-vote party subsidy—the commentariat is consumed with what this will mean for the various political parties, and what Stephen Harper’s motives might be for introducing it.

Well, that last bit’s obvious, isn’t it? He wants to destroy the Liberal party. Everybody knows that. But wait: maybe by obliging the opposition parties to rely more heavily on their own supporters for funds, rather than the taxpayer, he will only create a more motivated cadre of foes, while his own troops grow fat and complacent in office. Or maybe by starving the opposition of funds, he will force them to realize there is only room for one left-wing party, hastening the very unite-the-left movement that could one day be his undoing. But how could such a master strategist not see that? Maybe he wants a united left, the better to…

People. Isn’t it possible, just possible, that he’s doing this because…it’s the right thing to do?

Nah. I was just messing with you. Still, even if it’s supremely self-interested—the Conservatives raise more each year than all the other parties combined—that doesn’t mean it isn’t sound in principle. The Tories’ success isn’t a matter of a few monocled millionaires passing the top hat: their average donor gives less than $200. A system based on thousands of small contributors, inspired by a belief in a party’s principles rather than the expectation of some reward: that’s supposed to be what we all want, isn’t it? So how does it become wrong, just because the Tories are good at it and the other parties aren’t?

Abolishing the subsidy isn’t, as critics on the left object, a betrayal of Jean Chrétien’s reforms to party funding, which effectively banned corporations and unions from contributing and capped individual donations at $5,000 (reduced to $1,000 under Harper, or $1,100 after inflation). Neither, as the right suggests, should the corollary of abolishing the subsidy be a loosening of the other constraints. Certainly that would give substance to the left’s fears, that without the subsidy there will be pressure for a return to “big money” politics. But there’s no logical necessity for the one to follow the other.

Both groups share the same basic assumption: that if the parties are denied one source of largesse, private or public, the other must be opened to them. The possibility that the parties could simply make do with less does not seem to occur to either. But there is no fixed amount of money the parties “need” to carry out their activities. Much of what the parties spend their money on today—push-polls, attack ads, meaningless leaders’ tours—we might all be better off without, especially in these days of email and social media, which cost nothing.

Logic would rather suggest the natural corollary to a ban on corporate and union donations is a ban on government donations. Indeed, if the Prime Minister were motivated by principle—remember, I said if—he’d not only close off the per-vote subsidy, but those other spigots through which public funds flow to private parties: the tax credits on private donations, as much as 75 per cent, and the partial reimbursement of campaign expenses.

The principle I refer to is that people who want to give to political parties should do so with their own money. Corporate CEOs should not be giving their shareholders’ money, union presidents should not be giving their members’ money, and individual party supporters should not be giving the taxpayers’ money, whether in the form of subsidies or tax credits.

Full Article
Source: Macleans 

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