Comments for Not an Official Green Party Canada Site

Comment on Not an Official Green Party Site over 20,000 visitors by John Ogilvie

John Ogilvie — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:58:58 +0000

Update. I contacted the GPO CFO on Monday. He said he didn’t know anything about this plan, and put me in touch with the person who was running it.

I contacted that person (he’s also my regional rep), requesting info.

No response as of Friday..

Hey Bill, since the sun shines out of Guelph’s ass, can you put in a good word for me? Do you think I’ll be allowed to fundraise in my own riding?

Comment on Not an Official Green Party Site over 20,000 visitors by bluegreenblogger

bluegreenblogger — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:48:20 +0000

Simpler for you, for the rest of us, politics is complicated eh?

Comment on Not an Official Green Party Site over 20,000 visitors by John Ogilvie

John Ogilvie — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:26:20 +0000

I have a simpler solution: I will largely go away.

Comment on Not an Official Green Party Site over 20,000 visitors by Bill Hulet

Bill Hulet — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:20:30 +0000

You’re right. It drives me nuts the way people in general seem incapable of discussing things and coming to a collective decision. I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of this stems from the profound inability of most people to express themselves in a clear and precise manner. Add to that our societies inability to teach people how to make decisions in groups and the paranoid assumptions that people routinely jump towards—and you have the typical political dysfunction. (My reading tells me that the sort of problems the Greens face are endemic in other parties as well.)

Comment on Not an Official Green Party Site over 20,000 visitors by bluegreenblogger

bluegreenblogger — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:54:32 +0000

Ah….
@Bill and John. Haven’t we all been here before? It’s a predictable discussion in GP circles. Scarce resources, not always wisely allocated, workarounds that either favour, or seem to favour one faction over another. Sometimes it’s worth the extra effort to anticipate, and accomodate other ‘interests’ within the Party prior to ‘going for broke’ for what you want. It’s a hollow victory if you ‘win’ your short term objective, at the expense of a future factional battle.
I still think that the problem largely goes away if there is a dedicated staff function of outreach, and membership relations. (ie renewing memberships, fundraising, and connecting prospective volunteers with unperformed tasks.)

Comment on Not an Official Green Party Site over 20,000 visitors by John Ogilvie

John Ogilvie — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:53:03 +0000

Yes, I’m sure that is also part of the agenda.

If this was laid out publicly I don’t think there would be very much support for this approach at all. It’s a replay of the Elizabeth May strategy. It won’t work for her, and it won’t work for Shane and the other handful of “designated winners”

Comment on Not an Official Green Party Site over 20,000 visitors by Bill Hulet

Bill Hulet — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:31:08 +0000

You could also say that the head office has decided that it wants to concentrate upon a small number of key ridings where it thinks it has a chance of electing someone. Since there head office is so cash starved, the only way that they can think of raising the money is by doing the sort of thing you are talking about.

The Green Party routinely does weird “work arounds” because the sorts of things that other parties would routinely do are not possible because of the naive ideals of many members. Personally, I don’t think the GPO should be focusing on electing people so much as public education, but I can see how if you did believe in getting MPPs into office (both as being possible and essentially the purpose of the party), then this sort of thing would make a lot of sense.

Finally, I don’t see how they money in your region “belongs” to you if you aren’t out there raising it yourself—. This gets back to my point that if a CA is doing its job already then it has nothing to worry about.

Comment on Not an Official Green Party Site over 20,000 visitors by John Ogilvie

John Ogilvie — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:02:37 +0000

I’m not saying other CAs are not allowed to take advantage of the program. I’m saying that none of them were even *told* about the program.

My assertions:
1) GPO has a new CRM.
2) Most CA execs have not been told about this CRM or given access.
3) This CRM is being used today by pet ridings like your own to fundraise.
4) That fundraising is in *my* riding. Which pisses me off.

I’m not whining about HQ poaching my donors. This is OK, actually, as I said in an earlier comment. It keeps CAs on their toes.

I’m whining about GUELPH poaching CMM donors :-) Enabled by HQ, using a confidential member database. This is happening (my theory) because Guelph is inside the new GPO tent, and CMM isn’t.

You’re starting to sound like a Bush Republican, complaining that poor people deserve to be poor because they’re too stupid to go to Harvard.

My CA deserves to get money-siphoned because we were too stupid to know that there is a secret fundraising program.

Please.

Comment on Not an Official Green Party Site over 20,000 visitors by Bill Hulet

Bill Hulet — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:32:33 +0000

PS:

There has been a constant whine-fest in this party from people who complain about the head office “poaching” their donors. In Guelph our response has always been that if they beat us to the punch that is because we are incompetent and nothing else.

Comment on Not an Official Green Party Site over 20,000 visitors by Bill Hulet

Bill Hulet — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:31:15 +0000

Well John, you seem adamantly sure of the facts on this matter. The way you are saying it, none of the other CAs are being allowed to take advantage of this program. I simply do not believe that this is the case. I know a lot of people in the leadership of the GPO and I do not believe that they would a: be that mean, or, b: be that stupid. In contrast, I have repeatedly seen people in this party fly off the handle and make wild accusations about both the intent and implications of other programs that turned out to be categorically untrue.

It can’t be too much of a secret if you know about it and we are discussing it on this blog, can it?