veryone talks about unemployment, especially politi- E cians, but no one does, or candovery muchaboutit. Whatever can or is done about it is largely a patchwork job, which eliminates a teeny-weeny of its effect, but does nothing to remove the cause. Hence the wage or salary worker is always behind the economic eight-ball. Today ajobassuringa livelihood of sorts, tomorrow on the ‘‘welfare’’ lineup. “Unemployment” is a built-in evil of the capitalist system, patently evident at its birth, and moreso today as it moves towards an inevitable decline, decay and demise. Today’s Trudeaus, Stanfields, Lewises et al, like the Kings and Bennetts of a generation before, or the Lauriers and Bordens of a generation before them, all try, and want to apply their own panaceas tounemployment, butit justdoesn’t go away. Then they invented new excuses; the unemployed ‘don’t want work’’, they are ‘‘lazy’’ etc. etc. To these flimsy excuses they added new hordes of police, new clubs to crack jobless skulls, new jailsand ‘‘slave’’ camps tokeep the jobless out of the public vision, but all to no avail. ‘‘Unemployment”’ just doesn’t go away, and when the powers-that-be attempt to solve other built-in evils of capitalism, such as “‘inflation”’ etc. etc. all that happens is that they aggrevate and accentuate both evils. Moreover those old-line political hacks who talk about ‘full employment”’ under capitalism are about as low on the IQ score-board as those who advocate a four or five or six- percentpermanent jobless army as a permanent anchor fora “‘stabilized”’ capitalism. That kind of ‘‘stabilization”’ is akin to Nixon’s ‘‘peace’’ in Vietnam via saturation bombing. *‘Full employment”’ under capitalism is a perennial pipe dream.; eminently practical and correct to demand it, but naive to expect it. Ask the man on your nearest ‘‘welfare’’ lineup. Another built-in evil of capitalism, but certainly not so regarded en masse, is that of profits, whichinvariably accom- pany “‘unemployment’’— and “‘inflation’’— up the social scale. Just at the precise time when Messrs. Trudeau, Stanfield, Lewis et al are labouring heavily to give birth to new ideas on the ‘‘problem’’, along comes our multiple monopoly plunderbund with their annual reports of higher and still higher profit rake-ins for the fiscal year. The financial pages of the commercial media are fairly loaded with such glowing ‘‘returns’’. Thus we see again (as we have seen in past decades) that ‘unemployment’ and maximum profits go hand in hand, like a pair of ill-assorted twins, with the breezes of a steadily-rising ‘inflation’ gale blowing merrily around them. What a travesty of common sense? It -is argued that a spate of tax-cuts will “stimulate” _ employment. That would be like giving a capitalist politician a mild laxative to loosenup a chronic mental stoppage. The gist of NDP Lewis’ ‘‘corporative ripoff” (ifithasany gist?) ispre- cisely tax rebates, subsidies, concessions, callit what you will to big monopoly. Havesuch handsome handouts *‘stimulated”’ any plethora of jobs? Not so anyone would notice it. So we'll give them more public dough to keep up this additional farcial illusion. And all the political shysters of Big Business play this game. It wouldn’t be capitalism if they didn’t. Thus when you hear of some maverick in the old partisan chicken coop getting all hot and bothered because of some such handouts finding their way back to the corporaterecipients, it just means that these monopoly fat cats haven't been so adept as the house Tabby in covering up their corruption from the public view. Now it’s ‘‘courting time’’ among the political gigolos in Ottawa. Who will get ‘into bed’ with whom and what will the matrimonial ‘‘dowry”’ (presumably) to the people be? It is anyone’s guess, but one thing we can be damn sure of: that whatever deal may be hatched ( to hang on) the returns to the people will be as little as possible. FOR ALL YOUR TRAVEL NEEDS Contact:. 2679 E. Hastings St., Vancouver 6, B.C. 253-1221 254-2313 PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1972—PAGE 2 By ALD. HARRY RANKIN Theoretically, in a demo- cratic country such as ours, all people and all parties and groups have equal political liberties including freedom of speech and right to run for public office. In practice, however, these political rights can be exer- cised to the full only by those parties and candidates thathave wealthy backers. The reasons for this are not secret— the most important means of communica- tion with people (and that is what elections areall about) are in the hands of oneclassand they slant the news to suit their inter- ests. Secondly these means of com- munications are commercial undertakings and their owners charge such high prices that only the candidates and parties of one class can afford to use them. Take our civic elections for example. Prime radio time costs about $40 for 15 seconds, prime TV time $300 a minute. A one page ad in the Sun and Province costs $4,000 To send every voter in the city just one brochure during the civic elections would cost close to $15,000 for printing and mailing. At these prices the use of the media is almost a monopoly of the candidates and parties of big business. And everyone knows that such groups as the NPA and TEAM have the financial backing of big corporations. TEAM couldn’tspend$100,000in this campaign if it didn’t have such backing. And of course the developers and other business interests that contribute to TEAM and the NPA rely upon them to carry out policies bene- ficial to these business inter- ests. Big business control of media is denial of civic democracy Can this situation be corrected? Can the use of the media be opened to ordinary people and to labor and com- munity groups that haven’t big business backing? Cancontribu- tions by vested interests to candidates and parties be con- trolled? Some steps in that direction that could be taken include the following: (1) Every candidate and every party or groups contesting the election should be required to give a public accounting of all money received and spent during the election campaign by itor on its behalf. (No NPA or TEAM candidate should be able to shrug off enquiries by claiming that he or she doesn’t know where the money iscoming from to finance his campaign and doesn’t care. ) (2) The media should be required to give a certain amount of free time and free space to each candidate or party” as a public service and a cond tion for receiving its license. (3) Every candidate for civl€ office should be required tofilea statutory declaration revealing the major sources of his income — salaries and wages, com missions, investments, directol- ships, business interests, etc. _ (4) The city should provide each candidate or party groups with a minimum amount of funds to conduct its cam paign. : The candidates and parties of big business and the media itself will resent these proposals. They have a monopoly on the media today and would like to keeP it that way. But these steps wou help to make our political rights more meaningful. Times ar changing. People today want -participatory democracy for all, not just for the few. ————— New voice—new direction aim of N. Van civic group By JIM BEYNON NORTH VANCOUVER: The Association for Community Action (ACA) formed here is a broad alliance of people for a new voice and new direction in civic government on the North Shore. The ACA has chosen Ann Fall and Michael Hurst to run for Dis- trict Council, Dorothy Lynas for District school board; and in North Van City it endorses John Braithwaite for council. Some points of the ACA policy statement are: e Planned development keep- ing in mind that human values are more important than mon- etary values. e Lease municipal land 1 keep land in the public domain. - | e Present recreational an@ other public facilities are inade= quate and that on new project developer must provide them. In already developed areas the municipality must supply them by means of funds from 4? adequate development fee. ; e Priority intransportation}s the movement of people an goods by the most efficient means. With’ the proper utili: zation of apublictransportation system, there is no need for a” immediate Third Crossing 9° Burrard Inlet. Saturday, Dec. 9 twill be civic election day in municipalities, towns, districts and villages throughout B.C. All levels of civic government coming under the B.C. Municipal Act will vote at that time. ( Vancouver, which has its own City Charter, votes on Wednesday, Dec. 13). An important feature of the civic election in many provin- cial centres is the wide partici- pation of many labor and progres- sive candidates who have filed nominations for office. They are too numerous for the PT to mention all. In previous issues of the PT we reported that well-known trade unionist Elmer Pontius is running in Trail and that Bert Ogden, Vancouver Island organizer of the UFAWU, is running for council in Nanaimo. Also on Vancouver Island Ernie Knott is contesting a school board’ seat in Sooke, near Victoria. In Kamloops well-known trade unionists whoran for civic office before, are running for school board. They are William Ferguson and Ray McInnes. Another well-known civic figure running for office in North Vancouver District is school trustee Dorothy Lynas whoisup DOROTHY LYNAS, running for re- election to school board in North Van District. WILLIAM FERGUSON, well-known Kamloops trade unionist, running for school board. B.C. municipalities vote Dec. 9 for re-election. This year she i running on the slate of the newlY- formed North Vancouvel Association for Community Action. In Surrey, well-known trade unionist and community worke! Wilf Lennox is running fF — council. In the last civic election Lennox rah as an independent and rolled up a large vote. Burnaby this year sees the Burnaby Citizens Association making a strong bid for election — withalargeslate. The BCA slaté has been endorsed by the Val couver and New Westminste! labor councils. _ WILFRED LENNOX, trade unionist and community worker, running ~ for council in Surrey.