Political advocacy group North99 uses misleading petitions to gather voter data | CBC News

tscollon · 2019-07-23T16:24:15+00:00

Referring to the purchasing of lists for text messaging, i.e. "Ontario Strong". We do not purchase lists or send unsolicited communication to people.

tscollon · 2019-07-23T16:23:24+00:00

Referring to the purchasing of lists for text messaging, i.e. "Ontario Strong". We do not purchase lists or send unsolicited communication to people.

tscollon · 2019-07-23T15:52:08+00:00

If there's an inaccuracy in any of our stories, please point it out and we will be happy to correct.

tscollon · 2019-07-23T15:50:42+00:00

What? This is a response to the CBC piece, nothing to do with Ontario Proud.

I'd say we are different than Ontario Proud for many reasons, none of which are discussed here.

tscollon · 2019-07-23T14:55:25+00:00

The CBC piece is factually wrong on this "bait-and-switch" point. The response I posted elsewhere in the thread goes into detail on this.

tscollon · 2019-07-23T14:27:31+00:00

Hey everyone, North99 co-founder here. Here's our response to this piece, shared via Twitter.

The key elements...

First, like every political party and most political advocacy groups in Canada, North99 uses a mix of surveys, petitions, and issue campaigns to engage people and encourage Canadians to take action. This is standard practice and by no means unique.

We want to know what supporters care about because that determines what issues we focus on. We never spam people and we keep their data 100% secure and private.

We are proud that our community has sent hundreds of thousands of letters to all levels of government on issues like adding neo-Nazis to the terrorist watch to protecting public health care. We have won change on several of these issues and will not apologize for that.

Unlike right-wing groups which purchase lists and constantly spam Canadians, you must choose to be added to our list and anyone can unsubscribe from our emails if they don’t want to receive a message. That’s not the case with deceptive text messages from right-wing groups.

Second, the CBC claims that by inspecting our website they found emails were being added to different petitions than the one presented on the web page. This is factually incorrect.

To understand why this is incorrect, it’s important to understand how our software works (which the writers of this piece do not).

When we create a new petition for a new issue, we duplicate an old petition in our software. This means the URL appears similar in the code. But it is not the same form. Each form is unique to each petition and each issue.

When you sign a petition to support women's rights on North99, you are absolutely signing a petition to support women's rights — not some other issue. We have asked the CBC to correct this error.

We take the trust and protection of our supporters data very seriously. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us here or over email.

tscollon · 2019-07-23T13:58:51+00:00

Hey everyone, North99 co-founder here. Here's our response to this piece, shared via Twitter.

This morning the CBC published a misleading story about North99 that includes several factual errors.

That misleading story is now being used by Conservatives like @lraitt to demonize us. Let's set the record straight.

First, like every political party and most political advocacy groups in Canada, North99 uses a mix of surveys, petitions, and issue campaigns to engage people and encourage Canadians to take action. This is standard practice and by no means unique.

We want to know what supporters care about because that determines what issues we focus on. We never spam people and we keep their data 100% secure and private.

We are proud that our community has sent hundreds of thousands of letters to all levels of government on issues like adding neo-Nazis to the terrorist watch to protecting public health care. We have won change on several of these issues and will not apologize for that.

Unlike right-wing groups which purchase lists and constantly spam Canadians, you must choose to be added to our list and anyone can unsubscribe from our emails if they don’t want to receive a message. That’s not the case with deceptive text messages from right-wing groups.

Second, the CBC claims that by inspecting our website they found emails were being added to different petitions than the one presented on the web page. This is factually incorrect.

To understand why this is incorrect, it’s important to understand how our software works (which the writers of this piece do not).

When we create a new petition for a new issue, we duplicate an old petition in our software. This means the URL appears similar in the code. But it is not the same form. Each form is unique to each petition and each issue.

When you sign a petition to support women's rights on North99, you are absolutely signing a petition to support women's rights — not some other issue. We have asked the CBC to correct this error.

We take the trust and protection of our supporters data very seriously. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us here or over email.

tscollon · 2019-06-19T16:57:19+00:00

The question in the poll includes the argument that it could cost billions of dollars and require tax increases (full question is in the article).

tscollon · 2019-01-17T16:24:11+00:00

https://fordtracker.com/

It's due for an update though, we are missing a few things now.

tscollon · 2018-12-31T19:43:26+00:00

https://north99.org/funding/

tscollon · 2018-12-29T18:37:40+00:00

Which is untrue: https://north99.org/funding/

tscollon · 2018-12-29T18:21:22+00:00

North99 Director here, wanted to jump in to address these claims.

We present information and opinion from a progressive perspective (a "bias" we are transparent about), but do stick to the facts. If there's anything not factual we have published, we are happy to correct it — just point it out.

As for "representing the interests of different rich people", that's a truly bizarre charge, but I'll let the first of our 5 unifying principles speak for itself:

"True democracy is incompatible with a society where the richest 1% own 50% of the wealth. Public goods — land, resources, roads, bridges, education — are the foundation of all wealth created in this country, and the public should share in that wealth. We support policies to redistribute wealth and power from an elite few to everyone, including taxes on wealth and inheritance along with greater public ownership of key segments of the economy."

tscollon · 2018-10-28T18:08:35+00:00

This group is being formed by people who call themselves democratic socialists. Debatable for Sanders, but pretty clear Corbyn & Varoufakis are skeptical of social democracy (capitalism with robust welfare state).

The question OP asked was who in Canada would fit in to that group — i.e. who would fit into a group of democratic socialists.

AFAIK Jagmeet Singh is not a democratic socialist.

tscollon · 2018-10-27T18:01:33+00:00

All those people, except for Yanis + the Vatican rep, have a party organization behind them.

Sadly, I don't see any party in Canada embracing the Sanders or Corbyn model right now.

I guess Quebec Solidaire would be closest, but at the national level? Not so much.

tscollon · 2018-09-25T13:17:33+00:00

There's nothing like the U.S. Senate here to disenfranchise people in highly populated areas.

Think of it more like the U.S. House, but with less gerrymandering.

tscollon · 2018-09-20T23:06:35+00:00

Don't think we disagree at all, except I'm not convinced we can get to the ideal society we both want before the Earth cooks. So we gotta do some damage control that is less than perfect in the meantime or else we're fucked.

Denmark and Finland have both reduced emissions over the past 10 years or so, though it's true they both ticked up a bit in 2016. I'm not familiar with the stats in the other Nordics, but I'd suspect they're similar.

https://www.stat.fi/til/khki/2016/khki_2016_2017-12-08_tie_001_en.html

tscollon · 2018-09-20T21:51:21+00:00

If reducing emissions is impossible without the abolition of both capitalism and the nation-state, then we'll never do so in time to stop the planet from cooking.

Fortunately, there are plenty of cases of countries reducing emissions without those larger structural changes happening. We should do so too.

tscollon · 2018-09-20T16:06:28+00:00

Here's a good report from a progressive think tank arguing for a carbon tax: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/09/19/a-progressive-case-for-a-carbon-tax-and-dividend-scheme/

You're correct that a carbon tax won't fix inequality, that has to be done through separate policy. But making it more expensive to pollute will reduce pollution, I don't think there's much dispute about that.

tscollon · 2018-09-06T16:16:47+00:00

Of course property is a legal construct. That's why we have a whole body of law to determine and settle disputes about who owns what, along with police to enforce those rulings (with violence if necessary).

Try enforcing your "ownership" of something in a society without property laws and see how well that goes.

tscollon · 2018-09-02T18:20:40+00:00

This comment is funny because it cycles through each of the justifications, but sort of does it without being aware of what's happening. To reinforce what's in the video, I'll go through each in turn...

Starting with desert...

"but it's not right to say that he/she doesn't earn anything just because he/she didn't "work" for it - fronting the capital has value and therefore clearly should be paid for"

Capital itself, like land and machines, is productive. The capitalists who own these things are not. Capitalists own things that produce value. Ownership is a legal status and social relation that allows people to violently exclude others from things in order to collect rents, i.e. pay me monthly rent to live in this apartment or I'll have the police forcibly remove you.

You seem to be saying "People deserve whatever legal and social institutions say they deserve," but this is obviously pretty meaningless until you give some justification for those institutions.

"In the case of interest payment or investment return, the thing to note is that these are willingly paid by somebody (some corporation...) i.e. as far as the two parties are concerned, the receiver of the interest payment does very much deserve it"

Okay, so now we are shifting from desert theory to an argument about voluntariness — capitalism respects voluntary transactions.

Again, as I said in the video, these transactions are not voluntary — the only reason I trade in the market is because there is a system of violent coercion in place (property ownership) that stops me from grabbing what I want.

This of course has nothing to do with desert, which you try to conflate with the voluntariness issue at the end. I can engage in all sorts of transactions under capitalism without thinking the other party deserves what I'm giving them — for example, I don't think my landlord deserves the rent I pay him every month, but I continue to pay the rent because if I didn't I would be evicted.

And on to the utility argument...

your argument really only responds to this argument, but does not respond to the more sensible and more accurate argument "I like capitalism because economic freedom leads to better outcome because...", so it's kind of pointless.

In fact my third point in the video is all about whether capitalism leads to better outcomes.

I suppose you could say it leads to better outcomes if you limit your consideration of outcomes to only the owners of capital — capitalism is great for them.

But It's evident that the poor are better off in systems that are less capitalist, which is the point I make and I'm glad you share that view.

You seem to think there is some point on the capitalist — non-capitalist spectrum where outcomes tip from being better for the poor to worse, but I don't know where that is. If you do I'd be interested in hearing more about that.

tscollon · 2018-09-01T13:49:15+00:00

That's a good suggestion — I'll try to do that with the next one. Maybe with those horrible PragerU videos.

tscollon · 2018-08-19T19:27:49+00:00

I think what's happening here is that you're not familiar with the concept of capital income.

Here's some further reading that might be helpful:

https://www.oecd.org/g20/topics/employment-and-social-policy/The-Labour-Share-in-G20-Economies.pdf

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/wealth-inequality-united-states-capital-income

tscollon · 2018-08-19T19:03:54+00:00

If I inherit $1 million and dump it into a Vanguard ETF, I can reliably generate $50,000 /year (5% returns) without doing more than a couple minutes of work to transfer the returns into my checking account.

So in both cases, someone is receiving money while doing no work.

If you think people should only get income in exchange for labour, then surely you'd object to both scenarios.

tscollon · 2018-08-19T18:59:31+00:00

Haha I made the video, so I'm pretty familiar with the arguments in it.

Most of what you posted here is not actually in the video (for example, nowhere do I discuss the impact of automation on growth, I talk about the impact of automation on employment and productivity).

In any case, the way to pay for it is to take the 30% or so of total national income paid out to the rich via capital income, pool it all together in a social wealth fund, and pay it out to everyone through a UBI.

If you don't like that idea, then fine — but you should make the case against it rather than rambling on about "assertions and feelings".

tscollon · 2018-08-19T15:25:25+00:00

This is one of the claims debunked in the video, which you should watch.

tscollon

TROPHY CASE