The only thing more sad and pathetic then doing something so juvenile is having nobody but the terminally stupid and/or those with an axe to grind actually falling for it.
So aside from a professional internet troll, we also have Steve Chapman, a member of the Progressive Group for Independent
We've got some embarrassing incumbents too, like Ric McIver, who fanatically pursued supporting the troops with stickers on city vehicles, but voted against letting the ones serving in Afghanistan being able to vote in city elections.
So all in all, no crazier or more reactionary a mix than you'd find in city council elections anywhere in Canada.
Well, maybe a little.
UPDATE: I can't believe I almost forgot Ward 6 incumbent Craig Burrows, who thinks the real problem in Alberta is that workers have too many rights, specifically he'd ban their right to go on strike. This of course would create second class citizens out of Albertans covered by provincial labor laws - to be fair Alberta's labour laws already make Alberta's workers second class citizens - but wouldn't affect telecom workers, railway workers, federal civil servants, posties - anybody who falls under federal labour law. It's also pretty unambiguously a recipe for chaos and even violence.
See my first post on the election and Calgary Municipal Election: Support the troops edition.
Hit the Calgary label to see all my civic election posts.
6 comments:
I have read some of Evans stuff,unfucking believable how stupid the guy is.Running for office,???yikes
The mind-blowing thing is he's done this same cyber-stalking bullying schtick multiple times.
There are three examples that I know of, that anybody can find the details of with five minutes searching on the google, where he's invested time and money into buying domains in other people's screen names and then re-directed them to racist or pedophile organizations.
That's not just creepy, and it's very, very creepy, that's disturbingly even pathologically obsessive. We're talking about repeated displays of vindictive and irrational behavior that would make Richard Milhouse Nixon say 'Dude, that is just not cool.'
This is a guy who harbors political ambitions, has a career and a family and yet can't seem to stop himself from engaging in behavior guaranteed to follow him for the rest of his life and career. How much of that is short-sightedness - and how much of that is an inability to resist his own self-destructive compulsions?
The biggest surprise is how LITTLE surprise I'm feeling at the crap job the local media have done in general of covering this.
Just so everybody's clear, McIver is another associate of Chandler's. (He's just better than Chapman at keeping quiet)
Chandler brags about "getting McIver elected" as one of PGIB's accomplishments. (I first ran into the pair of them when McIver tried to run against Sue Higgins in the '90s - didn't impress me then, and neither has done anything to improve my opinion of them)
The whole PGIB crowd is fairly noxious. I have to laugh when people talk about how civic politics are supposed to be non-partisan. I lived in Vancouver and there that pretense is almost completely gone.
Alberta Progressives should start recognizing that there's a hardcore wingnut slate that is running candidates in city wards all over the province. These folks are mean as snakes and while they dress their policies in standard fiscal conservative tough minded law and order tropes there's a seething hatred under the surface.
There's hatred for the homeless, disdain for organized labour - take a look at some of the pronouncements at these candidates homepages and blogs, they come close to hate speech for anyone with a union card in their wallet and hatred for anyone who has the temerity to disagree with them ideologically.
Civil politics seems to be the not ready for prime-time slot for the wingers who think Stelmachs PCs and Harper's Conservatives aren't reactionary enough.
Well as anybody could have predicted and some did ...ahem... this grotty little domain redirect habit of Richard's has made the local news.
Prepare for him rail about socialist plots when he goes down to defeat next week. He would have lost no matter what, but now he has his own self manufactured excuse for why.
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