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Changes (the Clown) | Victoria | Mayor

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#1 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 13 September 2014 - 11:21 AM

https://www.facebook...466009747002350

 

Changes the Clown is stepping up the Clowns Against Child Poverty awareness campaign by stepping into the electoral race for Mayor of Victoria this November.

Why, you might ask, is a clown running for Mayor? Good question! Changes has become increasingly distressed at the FAILURE OF GOVERNMENTS TO ADDRESS THE CRISIS OF CHILD POVERTY IN OUR COMMUNITY. The rate of child poverty is currently running at about 1 IN 5 CHILDREN IN VICTORIA and Changes wants to ask people to spend a little more time thinking about just WTF that means. According to the most recent statistics, the provincial average rate of child poverty for British Columbia is 18.6 %. Given that the rate of child poverty is higher in urban centers than in rural areas, a moderate estimate suggests it is at least 20 % in Victoria. BC currently has the highest rate of any province in Canada. Astoundingly, BC has in fact had THE HIGHEST RATE OF CHILD POVERTY IN CANADA FOR 9 OF THE LAST 10 YEARS.

Changes the Clown believes that, as the capitol city of the province with the perennially highest rate of child poverty in the country, the City of Victoria should make its residents proud by DEMONSTRATING HOW THIS UNACKNOWLEDGED SOCIAL CRISIS CAN BE ADDRESSED AT THE MUNICIPAL LEVEL, despite the fact that the crisis of child poverty formally falls under provincial and not municipal jurisdiction.

Children living in poverty grow up under the constant influence of an array of stress hormones that children in more affluent households experience only occasionally and fleetingly, and that profoundly affect their intellectual and emotional development and the development of their social relationships in dozens of ways that researchers are only now starting to discover and untangle. We need to ask what the result of these circumstances is for the future of society. The crisis of child poverty is a SOCIAL crisis.

BC’s provincial average rate of child poverty for children living in single mother families is a stunning 49.8 %. That's right, HALF. One in two. Seriously folks! (Changes asks, “Can this really be Canada we’re talking about?”). Given that rates are higher in urban centers than in rural areas, Changes doesn’t even want to think about what THIS statistic might be in Victoria. 60 %? Higher?

BC's minimum wage of $10.25/hr is only 54 % of the living wage for Victoria of $18.93/hr. Someone working full time earning BC’s minimum wage of $10.25/hr makes $1640 a month, BEFORE any deductions. The cost of full time child care STARTS AT $700 or $800 a month. What’s YOUR definition of STUPID?

The first two planks of Changes' platform are AFFORDABLE CHILDCARE and A LIVING WAGE, two initiatives addressing the crisis of child poverty. Changes also has other ideas he would like people to hear about, ideas they’re not likely to hear about from politicians not wearing clown suits.

CHANGES HOPES TO SHARE SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT, SO BE SURE TO BRING YOUR APPETITE!

CHANGES HAS A 12-PLANK PLATFORM!

PLANKS 1 & 2 WILL HELP TO EASE THE CRISIS OF CHILD POVERTY, WHICH IS RUNNING AT ABOUT 20 % IN VICTORIA: 

1. An AFFORDABLE CHILDCARE program at $10/day, to be subsidized by the City. Financed using savings derived from ending police harassment of homeless people & cannabis users, reducing the police vehicle budget, reducing senior management salaries, reducing the roadwork budget, & other efficiencies to be identified in the City budget.

2. A LIVING WAGE POLICY similar to the one in the City of New Westminster, established in 2010, which applies to all full- & part-time employees working for the City, & to any person contracted to perform physical work on City-owned premises. None of these workers are paid less than a living wage. 
www.newwestcity.ca/2010/05/13/living_wage_policy.php 

By putting more money in low-paid workers' pockets, a living wage standard is beneficial for local economies. When people earning less than a living wage get a raise, the additional pay is spent in the local community. It typically doesn't get invested in the stock market, doesn't get spent on a winter holiday in the tropics, & doesn't get squirreled away into a retirement fund. Instead, it immediately gets spent on important needs & goes back into circulation in the local economy, thus increasing local economic activity & strengthening the community. Rather than being driven out of business, any legitimate enterprise will on the contrary be strengthened by this kind of dynamic. On the other hand, BC’s minimum wage ($10.25/hr) is only 54 % of the living wage for Victoria ($18.93/hr). Workers shouldn’t be paid less than they can live on so their employers can make a profit. We need to question the societal value & indeed the moral legitimacy of businesses that depend for their survival on this kind of exploitation. 

3. Cessation of police harassment of homeless people (for example, throwing out their belongings) & cannabis users. As mentioned above, this will help to make funds available for community needs. 

4. Videocameras on all police vehicles & police officers. 

5. A “consumerism kills” tax: a municipal tax of 5 % on the sale of all products containing coltan (cellphones & other electronic devices), because coltan mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the location of virtually all of this metal, which is a necessary component of modern electronic devices) has been closely involved in financing endemic warfare in the region for many years and has been documented as involving slave labour, resulting in thousands and thousands of deaths. Proceeds to be used for a local coltan mining awareness campaign & to be donated to organizations involved in raising awareness of the effects of coltan mining & its connection with consumer electronics. 

6. Free buses. Staff will be directed to begin discussions with transit & with other municipal jurisdictions in the region. At very least, a two-week trial period on routes within the City of Victoria, as a pilot test to estimate effects on ridership & on vehicular traffic. 

7. Council should pass a resolution calling on news media to refrain from reporting identities & other details about perpetrators of high-profile murders (for example, accused Moncton RCMP shooter Justin Bork) as well as removal of Facebook pages, Youtube videos, manifestos or other statements, as recommended by experts. 

8. Participatory budgeting, a process empowering ordinary community members to participate in decision-making regarding budget expenditures (as practiced in Porto Alegre, Brazil since 1989, & by Halifax NS, Hamilton ON, the Toronto school system & Housing Authority, the Windsor ON school system, New York, Boston, Chicago, San Juan PR, & in many other locations). 

9. Establishment of a dedicated urban campground run as an cooperative intentional community by members of the outdoor community. 

10. Establishment of a safe injection site in the City of Victoria. 

11. Council should pass a resolution opposing the use of our waterways for the export of petroleum products. 

12. Establishment of a sibling city relationship with Sucre, Bolivia (the capitol of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, currently the most progressive state on the planet, which for instance has 38 official languages, including 37 indigenous languages & Spanish). 

Changes the Clown is part of a local child poverty awareness campaign known as Clowns Against Child Poverty (www.facebook.com/ClownsAgainstChildPoverty). You may have seen CACP crashing the Victoria Day Parade, handing out flyers at a local mall on Black Friday, or joining in a march on a poverty-related issue. Central to the CACP message is the recognition that child poverty is not some unavoidable aspect of the human condition – it’s a matter of policy choices and public priorities.

CHILD POVERTY IS A RESULT OF POLICY DECISIONS, NOT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. Whereas the latest report by First Call (http://worstincanada.org/?p=56) indicates that the rate of child poverty in British Columbia is 18.6 %, the rate of child poverty in Prince Edward Island, Canada’s poorest province, is 9.5 %, just over half (51 %, to be precise) of BC’s rate of 18.6 %, and the rate of child poverty in New Brunswick, Canada’s second poorest province, is 10.5 percent, less than three-fifths (56 %) of the rate in BC. Clearly, a province’s economy has no relevance for its rate of child poverty; the rate of child poverty is determined by policy choices made by those in power, not by economic conditions. According to a recent UNICEF report on child well-being (http://www.unicef-ir...df/rc11_eng.pdf), Canada is 27th out of 29 industrialized countries (ahead of only Latvia and Romania) in terms of the category, “Child Health and Safety,” and in terms of overall child well-being, stable, prosperous Canada ranks behind such countries as Portugal, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, countries which are in crisis and have been for some time. What these various comparisons show is that, in the industrialized world at least, the rate of child poverty is NOT a result of economic conditions, but instead a matter of policy priorities and choices. The rate of child poverty is a reflection of political will.

Part of the CACP method is to look for ways to be out-of-place, the more bizarre, the more memorable - whatever it takes to get people talking about the crisis of child poverty! What better way for a clown to look out of place than to run for Mayor!

Changes the Clown himself is a social scientist. Changes has one PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Waterloo (no kidding!) and is currently working part time on a second PhD in political sociology at the University of Victoria.

 


<p><span style="font-size:12px;"><em><span style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">"I don’t need a middle person in my pizza slice transaction" <strong>- zoomer, April 17, 2018</strong></span></em></span>

#2 Jill

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Posted 13 September 2014 - 12:05 PM

That Facebook link takes you to the VV thread about Lisa Helps's campaign. Curious.



#3 Mike K.

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Posted 13 September 2014 - 12:09 PM

Fixed.

 

Now why doesn't this clown posse go after the mayoral seat in Saanich? Leonard would have us believe his municipality is biggest and therefore the most important, and yet...?


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#4 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 13 September 2014 - 12:09 PM

That Facebook link takes you to the VV thread about Lisa Helps's campaign. Curious.

 

Whoops, my fault.   Fixed.


<p><span style="font-size:12px;"><em><span style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">"I don’t need a middle person in my pizza slice transaction" <strong>- zoomer, April 17, 2018</strong></span></em></span>

#5 John M.

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Posted 13 September 2014 - 01:34 PM

What a terrible clown name


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#6 Nparker

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Posted 13 September 2014 - 03:16 PM

...Now why doesn't this clown posse go after the mayoral seat in Saanich?...

Maybe having 2 clowns on the ballot would confuse the Saanich electorate? 

On the other hand, this clown makes voting for Fortin or Helps a whole lot easier.


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#7 sebberry

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Posted 13 September 2014 - 09:14 PM

This is the answer to low voter turnout!  No.  No it's not.


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#8 AllseeingEye

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Posted 14 September 2014 - 08:14 PM

Yet another reason to be suspicious of clowns; actually I like do some of his ideas generally but then he goes and undermines them with dubious suggestions like "cessation of police harassment of blah blah blah..."

 

First I presume he can provide proof of said "harassment"?

 

Second nothing like a new administration at City Hall getting off on the right foot with those charged with keeping broader society safe from the criminal element. Between that and video cameras on all police vehicles etc., I have to presume this individual does not like cops. Also given the serious infrastructure replacement and prioritization and funding that needs to happen in the city I rather strongly suspect any City Hall administration should be focusing their efforts there rather than devoting time and energy pushing a city sister agenda with some place in Bolivia no one has ever heard of....


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#9 Dimitrios

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Posted 14 September 2014 - 08:37 PM

Yeah, the platform sounded pretty solid until he went and mentioned Sucre, Bolivia. 38 official languages? The EU language administration is a nightmare, and they 'only' have 24...

 

Sometimes I feel like I'm a bit of a socialist, but then I read platforms like that and I'm reassured that the centre is not far away.


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#10 AllseeingEye

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Posted 14 September 2014 - 09:20 PM

Yeah, the platform sounded pretty solid until he went and mentioned Sucre, Bolivia. 38 official languages? The EU language administration is a nightmare, and they 'only' have 24...

 

Sometimes I feel like I'm a bit of a socialist, but then I read platforms like that and I'm reassured that the centre is not far away.

Exactly as I stated in another thread the party (provincial, municipal....does not matter) that can find that sweet spot in the middle of the spectrum would be unbeatable IMO. Unfortunately in BC we are too often saddled with Chairman Mao-wannabe's on the Left and those on the Right who see themselves as mini-me 21st century Ronald Reagan's. I think the current BCTF - Liberal standoff smacks of those tendencies.

 

This is why I hated the useless effort by Fortin et al wasting their time and energy writing Vladimir Putin on the LGBT rights issue - clearly nothing more than a PR exercise designed to make nice with a particular voting block that happened to be topical heading into the Sochi Olympics. Because as we all know an ex-KGB General like Putin, who eats nails for breakfast, really gives a rats patoot what some non entity like Dean Fortin has to say about gay rights. Hey Dean here is an idea: instead focus on figuring out how you are going to pay for all those aforementioned infrastructure projects while keeping my taxes low. THAT Is what you get paid to do and what I expect the mayor of my city to doing day in and day out. Oh and perhaps spend more time reading the projects reports re: a certain bridge......


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#11 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 09 October 2014 - 10:48 AM

Looks like Changes will get his stage name on the ballot...

 

http://www.victoria....candidates.html


<p><span style="font-size:12px;"><em><span style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">"I don’t need a middle person in my pizza slice transaction" <strong>- zoomer, April 17, 2018</strong></span></em></span>

#12 Holden West

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Posted 09 October 2014 - 11:52 AM

^I'm truly shocked. I simply can't believe they'll allow that name on the ballot. If he wants to legally change his name that's fine but I don't believe a person should be allowed to run for public office under a pseudonym. 

 

Can I register as "Dean Fortin" or maybe "Steve Nash"?


"Beaver, ahoy!""The bridge is like a magnet, attracting both pedestrians and over 30,000 vehicles daily who enjoy the views of Victoria's harbour. The skyline may change, but "Big Blue" as some call it, will always be there."
-City of Victoria website, 2009

#13 Mike K.

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Posted 09 October 2014 - 11:54 AM

Yup, lame. Someone has screwed up by allowing this. It's ridiculous and makes an absolute mockery of the election process.


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#14 Holden West

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Posted 09 October 2014 - 12:05 PM

How about someone registers under the name "None Of The Above". it would be funny if that was the top vote getter.

 

BTW, speaking of fringe candidates, I came across an old 1993 news clipping about Dietrich Luth, described as a fringe candidate with no fixed address. He was voted in as a protest against the incumbent. Nobody really expected him to win. He ran for re-election but I don't know if he succeeded again. He's still active it looks like.  My point being never discount a fringe candidate's ability to alter an election. Even a big election. Ask Al Gore.


"Beaver, ahoy!""The bridge is like a magnet, attracting both pedestrians and over 30,000 vehicles daily who enjoy the views of Victoria's harbour. The skyline may change, but "Big Blue" as some call it, will always be there."
-City of Victoria website, 2009

#15 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 09 October 2014 - 12:35 PM

^I'm truly shocked. I simply can't believe they'll allow that name on the ballot. If he wants to legally change his name that's fine but I don't believe a person should be allowed to run for public office under a pseudonym. 

 

Can I register as "Dean Fortin" or maybe "Steve Nash"?

 

Maybe Changes The Clown is his usual name.

 

Nomination documents must be submitted in writing to the local Chief Election 
Officer – or a person designated by the local Chief Election Officer and must include 
the following: 
the person’s full name (first, middle, last); 
• the person’s usual name, if it is different from their full name and they would 
rather have that name appear on the ballot – e.g. Mike instead of Michael; 
• the office for which the person is nominated (e.g. mayor, councillor, or 
electoral area director); 
• the person’s residential address; 
• the person’s mailing address, if different from their residential address; 
• the names and residential addresses of nominators, and, if one or more of 
the nominators is a non-resident property elector, the address of the property 
owned by the nominator(s) in the jurisdiction; and, 
• a statement signed by each nominator that, to the best of their knowledge, 
the person is qualified to hold local government office in British Columbia. 

 

 

http://www.cscd.gov....ate's_Guide.pdf


<p><span style="font-size:12px;"><em><span style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">"I don’t need a middle person in my pizza slice transaction" <strong>- zoomer, April 17, 2018</strong></span></em></span>

#16 Holden West

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Posted 09 October 2014 - 02:40 PM

I'm wondering if the guy insisted on being listed by his fake name and the City registrar got spooked thinking back to the Mr. Floatie lawsuit and obeyed pending the City lawyers getting involved. Or the registrar was just some clueless clerk that didn't know better.

 

I think it would be acceptable if the Inner Harbour busker Dave Harris registered as Dave "Slim" Harris if he ran as everyone would agree that's his "usual" name, 

 

The onus is on the candidate to prove that's his "usual" name, the one he's best known by and not just a prank name he came up with two weeks ago.


"Beaver, ahoy!""The bridge is like a magnet, attracting both pedestrians and over 30,000 vehicles daily who enjoy the views of Victoria's harbour. The skyline may change, but "Big Blue" as some call it, will always be there."
-City of Victoria website, 2009

#17 AndrewReeve

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Posted 09 October 2014 - 04:23 PM

^I'm truly shocked. I simply can't believe they'll allow that name on the ballot. If he wants to legally change his name that's fine but I don't believe a person should be allowed to run for public office under a pseudonym. 

 

Can I register as "Dean Fortin" or maybe "Steve Nash"?

 

I filed my nomination papers today, and recalling the comments in this forum, decided to ask the city's Chief Electoral Officer about "Changes the Clown" while was going over my documents. He chuckled and remarked "That's democracy for you!" There seems to be an awful lot of freedom with ballots regarding usual names here in Canada.

 

As a political buff, I can think of a great example of this, John Turmel over in Ontario. He has ran in 82 elections and in many of them he appeared on the ballot as John "The Engineer" Turmel. 


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#18 Greg

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Posted 09 October 2014 - 10:32 PM

Seems like a dangerous precedent. I imagine Greg "lower taxes" Candidate would pull in quite a few votes with minimal campaign expenses.



#19 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 10 October 2014 - 05:30 AM

Seems like a dangerous precedent. I imagine Greg "lower taxes" Candidate would pull in quite a few votes with minimal campaign expenses.

 

I'm concerned too.  More with Holden's examples, a second Dean Fortin or a Steve Nash.


<p><span style="font-size:12px;"><em><span style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">"I don’t need a middle person in my pizza slice transaction" <strong>- zoomer, April 17, 2018</strong></span></em></span>

#20 Holden West

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Posted 10 October 2014 - 06:47 AM

A more detailed example: say I sign up under the name, "The Real Dean Fortin". This time, the clerk gets a little nervous but I'm prepared--yes, that's my "usual" name, and here is my nominator. He says, "Yep, for a long time we'd always say your political ideas are better than Dean's--your the real Dean Fortin, dude! Everyone says it, man!" The clerk shrugs and says "that's democracy for you". 

 

Word gets out there are two Deans running for mayor and there's enough confusion at the ballot box that the joke candidate pulls in a couple thousand undeserved votes, altering the outcome.

 

The City failed miserably here. A nickname in between your actual name can be permitted ("Lower Taxes", "Slim", "VicHockeyFan") but anything else is deceptive. 

 

And what is the ballot going to look like? Is he going to be listed as "CLOWN Changes the"?


Edited by Holden West, 10 October 2014 - 06:51 AM.

"Beaver, ahoy!""The bridge is like a magnet, attracting both pedestrians and over 30,000 vehicles daily who enjoy the views of Victoria's harbour. The skyline may change, but "Big Blue" as some call it, will always be there."
-City of Victoria website, 2009

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