Green's reject big money

[twobits]

http://www.castanet.net/edition/news-st ... htm#177052

Pretty easy to reject corp and union donations when neither were donating much anyway.

[Veovis]

True. It's easy to be celibate when no one wants to #%$* you

[madmudder]

The Lieberals had the chance to do the same but decided to bow to their puppet masters.

[fluffy]

The Lieberals had the chance to do the same but decided to bow to their puppet masters.

I don't know if "puppet masters" are the words I'd choose, but the whole principal of corporate and union donations is an open invitation to cronyism. The whole idea of a democracy is that the candidate with the most support among the electorate gets voted into office. Giving one candidate deeper pockets when it comes to buying publicity and advertising space does not lead to a level playing ground, "buying" votes in effect.

This same thing comes up in Penticton's civic elections. There was once a time, and not that long ago, where it was illegal to place campaign signs on public property, thus candidates had to have the support of property owners in order to display their signs. This way the number of signs you saw for any one candidate was an indication of the support they had among the citizenry. All you're seeing now with scads of signs pounded into public boulevards and green spaces is an indication of how many signs the candidate can afford to buy. That law was rescinded by city council of course, likely with the support of councilors with a few bucks in their pockets.