{"id":1700,"date":"2013-04-27T14:28:31","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T21:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2016-09-04T21:54:21","modified_gmt":"2016-09-05T04:54:21","slug":"union-support-for-the-bc-new-democrats-is-not-equivalent-to-corporate-support-for-the-bc-liberals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/archives\/1700","title":{"rendered":"Union support for the BC NDP is not the same as corporate support for the BC Liberals"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:30px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/archives\/1700\" send=\"false\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"recommend\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>A sore point for supporters of the right-wing BC Liberals is that their party seems so financially beholden to corporations. An immediate retort is that the NDP is equally beholden to unions. The NDP, in other words, is just as bad, so let\u2019s move on.\u00a0 The problem with this response is that, in British Columbia, the two major political parties are <em>not<\/em> equally indebted to their largest sponsors. More precisely, the leading right-wing party is much <em>more <\/em>beholden to corporations than the leading left-wing party is to unions. Thus, an argument of equivalence \u2013 a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.skepticalraptor.com\/skepticalraptorblog.php\/logical-fallacies\/false-equivalence-logical-fallacies\/\" target=\"_blank\">false equivalence<\/a> in which both sides are equally obligated to outside masters, so both are excused \u2013 simply doesn\u2019t hold up to examination.<\/p>\n<p>A case in point is a recent five-day analysis of campaign donations conducted by the long-standing corporate media icon, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Vancouver Sun<\/span>.* Through the use of parallelism, the newspaper asserts a position of equivalence:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s well-known that unions are big supporters of the NDP, just as corporations bankroll the B.C. Liberals. (<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Vancouver Sun<\/span>, April 24, 2013, A4)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>However, when we start examining the numbers closely, something startling appears from the statistics provided by the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Vancouver Sun<\/span> itself &#8211; statistics which go largely unexamined in the newspaper\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/v2smallextra.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; display: block; padding-right: 0px; margin-right: auto; border: 0px;\" title=\"v2smallextra\" src=\"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/v2smallextra_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"v2smallextra\" width=\"443\" height=\"523\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>From the numbers above** we can make the following calculations:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Corporate donations to the BC Liberals are <strong>five times greater<\/strong> than that of union donations to the BC NDP.<\/li>\n<li>Corporate contributions make up <strong>61% of BC Liberal donations<\/strong>, whereas union contributions are only <strong>23% of BC NDP donations<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>These calculations are never mentioned in the text of the newspaper&#8217;s\u00a0five-day series.<\/p>\n<p>Equivalence indeed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">*April 23, 2013 to April 27, 2013<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">**I could not find this particular chart online, so I scanned the original paper version. (<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Vancouver Sun<\/span>, April 23, 2013, A8)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A sore point for supporters of the right-wing BC Liberals is that their party seems so financially beholden to corporations. An immediate retort is that the NDP is equally beholden to unions. The NDP, in other words, is just as bad, so let\u2019s move on.\u00a0 The problem with this response is that, in British Columbia, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,8,14,16],"tags":[147,40,148,52,41],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bc-politics","category-canadian-politics","category-economic-issues","category-language","category-media","tag-bc-liberals","tag-election","tag-government","tag-media-2","tag-ndp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2332,"href":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions\/2332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lexiconic.net\/wheatfromthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}