Whats up? Volpe gets neutralized by Liberal party brass

TORONTO-Mission accomplished! Since Liberal leadership candidate Joe Volpe has been neutralized, I'd like to take you on a triumphal march towards Montreal where the Grits will elect the new leader of the Liberal Party.Or, not too fast. I have some housekeeping to take care of first.What happened in the last six months is not new, but the Liberal leadership race has been very useful in bringing to the surface what the present state of the Liberal Party is all about.The housekeeping is not about Volpe, instead it is about a rotten system, it's about the media, it's about the role of minorities in the political system and it's about fairness.There are many reasons why Volpe is now out of the race (and, if he's not, he should get out of a game in which the team owns the referee, the judges and the TV commentators). However, before elaborating on that, I would like to talk about the environment surrounding the Liberal leadership race.First, the system.The New Democrats and the Conservatives have moved towards the one-personone-vote system and have taken advantage of new technology to strengthen democracy within their parties by giving more power to the rank-and-file. It's a process still with some glitches, but it's simpler, reduces the role of manipulators, and, most importantly, reduces the costs, meaning that there's more democracy and less dependency on corporations.In fact, the New Democrats and Conservatives have also radically changed their systems to finance themselves.They use the internet more and more to collect money directly from rank-and-file members and supporters.On the other side, the Liberals are the only ones who have decided to stick with the old system.Here's how it worked: the usual known Liberal bagmen (most of them ending up in the Senate) invited 10 to 15 rich friends for a private chat with a Cabinet minister or a Prime Minister for a bargain price of $5,000 to $10,000 each. So, while eating some salmon and bocconcini, they talked about the need to help the disadvantaged, the way to reduce unemployment and pollution, and how to make life for all Canadians better, especially for the owners of the companies paying for the pricey bocconcini.So, why change a system that served the Liberals and their rich friends so well for decades? It allowed the top players to control the process; in fact, by controlling the money they could get rid of unwanted candidates, and, by using activists and manipulators, they could control the party's apparatus.That was the general idea the party's establishment had in mind at the beginning of the race.The members of the establishment had, or they thought they had a candidate, Frank McKenna.The money was already committed, and the party machine was almost solid behind the project.TORONTO-Mission accomplished! Since Liberal leadership candidate Joe Volpe has been neutralized, I'd like to take you on a triumphal march towards Montreal where the Grits will elect the new leader of the Liberal Party.Or, not too fast. I have some housekeeping to take care of first.What happened in the last six months is not new, but the Liberal leadership race has been very useful in bringing to the surface what the present state of the Liberal Party is all about.The housekeeping is not about Volpe, instead it is about a rotten system, it's about the media, it's about the role of minorities in the political system and it's about fairness.There are many reasons why Volpe is now out of the race (and, if he's not, he should get out of a game in which the team owns the referee, the judges and the TV commentators). However, before elaborating on that, I would like to talk about the environment surrounding the Liberal leadership race.First, the system.The New Democrats and the Conservatives have moved towards the one-personone-vote system and have taken advantage of new technology to strengthen democracy within their parties by giving more power to the rank-and-file. It's a process still with some glitches, but it's simpler, reduces the role of manipulators, and, most importantly, reduces the costs, meaning that there's more democracy and less dependency on corporations.In fact, the New Democrats and Conservatives have also radically changed their systems to finance themselves.They use the internet more and more to collect money directly from rank-and-file members and supporters.On the other side, the Liberals are the only ones who have decided to stick with the old system.Here's how it worked: the usual known Liberal bagmen (most of them ending up in the Senate) invited 10 to 15 rich friends for a private chat with a Cabinet minister or a Prime Minister for a bargain price of $5,000 to $10,000 each. So, while eating some salmon and bocconcini, they talked about the need to help the disadvantaged, the way to reduce unemployment and pollution, and how to make life for all Canadians better, especially for the owners of the companies paying for the pricey bocconcini.So, why change a system that served the Liberals and their rich friends so well for decades? It allowed the top players to control the process; in fact, by controlling the money they could get rid of unwanted candidates, and, by using activists and manipulators, they could control the party's apparatus.That was the general idea the party's establishment had in mind at the beginning of the race.The members of the establishment had, or they thought they had a candidate, Frank McKenna.The money was already committed, and the party machine was almost solid behind the project.Unfortunately, the world did not unfold as it was supposed to according to the "Trombones". The "star" candidates dropped out and the Trombones were left with no 'spartito'to play. They were stranded without a candidate while the organization came unglued and the money vanished.The party routine just fell apart and the "Trombones"had to start from scratch: so first they needed a candidate.They did not like what they had on hand, so they started recruiting outside the party and outside the country. They thought about having a "newTrudeau,"Michael Ignatieff, and, with the help of some mouthpieces in the national media, they thought everything was in place for the parade to Montreal.Well, again, the world did not follow as it should.Why? First of all, the people who helped the top players to gather support among the rank-and-file in the past, had learned the trade and decided to work for themselves.Make no mistake: what's happening in this Liberal leadership race is a replay of what happened when the Liberals elected John Turner, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin; and, for that matter, even in the other political organizations before they changed the systems. Recall the fight between Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark.One of the people, of course, among many others, who mastered the Liberal machine was Joe Volpe. His presence in the leadership race was a glitch in the old, oiled Liberal machine and he had to be promptly eliminated.So for the whole summer Liberal players parked the would-be-Trudeau in the shade of some holiday resort and, with the help of some in the media, worked on the elimination of "the glitch," a.k.a. Joe Volpe.The second problem the Liberal players had was financing because financing was, and is, a tougher nut to crack due to Bill C-24.Former prime minister Jean Chrétien decided to approve a new set of rules (Stephen LeDrew, the same person who asked for Joe Volpe's resignation, described the rules "as dumb as a bag of hammers") that ban the major source of income for the Liberal machine: the corporations.So, because of the eagerness of the former and new "Trombones" of the Liberal Party to get rid of "the glitch" in their organization, they were forced to expose the holes in their obsolete financial system as well as the archaic organization that favours the "smart people,"not the intelligent and honest ones.The proof that the system is broken is evident, it only takes a look at the website of the Liberal Party (www.liberal.ca): after almost two weeks from the so-called "Super Weekend," they still don't have the final results of the vote (as of last Wednesday they had posted the results of 441 meetings out of 471).So, now that they have used the holes in their old system to get rid of someone who learned the trade better than the masters, they want to put a lid on all of it and get back to the normal business. In other words they're trying to put the toothpaste into the tube. Is it impossible? Not if you have a friendly and lazy media.And this brings me back to Volpe. He has been ridiculed for accepting a cheque from 11-year-olds and he was fined for $20,000 because some of his volunteers signed a dead Liberal and paid the fees for three others.The Toronto Star, of course, broke the story on the fact that some membership fees were paid by some volunteers ofVolpe's organization and one new member of the Liberal Party was dead.Wow, can you imagine!The Toronto Star splashed the story on Volpe's campaign on the front page of a Saturday edition.Now back to the money from 11-year-olds. We're talking about legal money and a legal cheque. Of course, it all can be interpreted as a way to circumvent Bill-24, but what about the big loans to the other leadership contenders? Do you think that money was handed to other candidates from people on welfare or from workers on the assembly line from GM?No investigation pieces there.Moreover, where were the front-page massive splashes, with big play, about Bob Rae's campaign chair in British Columbia resigning because of fake signatures on the new memberships? It didn't happen.What about the dead person who was signed up as a supporter in Ignatieffs riding? According to the party, it's the fault is of the dead person who forgot to notify Ignatieff about his departure.The present organization of the Liberal Party is a joke. And the fact that so many dead people turn up on the lists of a dead party, makes all the sense in the world.What surprises me instead is the unbalanced coverage from some national media, in particular The Toronto Star and CTVNewsNet; one of the few that has covered the events in a more balanced and professional way, is Don Newman on CBC Newsworld.

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Whats up? Volpe gets neutralized by Liberal party brass

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