Doug Collins © get this straight @ THE VANCOUVER media are discretion itself when it comes to talking about Harry Rankin’s communist connec- tions and those of his ‘‘independezt party’’, COPE, other. wise known as the Committee of Progressive Electers. They mention them about as often as Ronald Reagan comes in for a pat on the back in Pravda. His fellow aldermen of non- communist persuasion are equally discreet. He may be St. Harry to the Communist Party organ Pacific Tribune, but no one makes anything of it. Presumably, they think that to do so would be in bad taste. Or counter-productive. A Vancouver columnist who Py Quality work at a fairj price did point to Rankin’s book A Socialist Perspective for Van- couver, did present some passages from the book, but said it would be wrong to make too much of them. But why? Perspective shows exactly what our hero would do with Vancouver and the country if he could. It is Rankin’s Mein Kampf. “All the major industries of the province and country, the banks and the financial institutions, the big chain and department stores, etc., would be placed under public ownership...Production would be centralized and planned.’’ Small business firms, he stated magnanimously, ‘‘would not necessarily be nationalized. Many would be permitted, even en- couraged, as long as they fulfill a useful need in the economy.” (Harry and the boys at the Pacific Tribune would decide what's useful, of course.) “The whole state apparatus,” declares Comrade Rankin (who makes much of not being a member of the Communist Party) “would be overhauled and staffed with civil servants devoted to serv- ing the public in a socialist society.’* What that means, if 1 can still read communist jargon, is that the civil service would be purged of all “unreliable clements’’ and replac- ed with party people. Which par- ty? Not your party. How about the private media, most of whom hold Rankin in high esteem and give him more ex- posure than the hamburger business gets at McDonald's? With Harry in command, they’d be the first to go. “The media,’’ writes Rankin, “should be owned and controlled by the people and serve the peo- ple...We have no free press to- day,” he states flatly. All the talk about a free press is myth. Even pappy old Reader’s Digest is an enemy of the people, being ‘theavily subsidized by the CIA”’ —~ according to Harry reliable sources, There must be a free press in the USSR, though, because neither in Perspective nor in his voluminous scribblings in Pacific Tribune is there a word from Rankin about possible Russian press failings. In the book, however, he does stress that the class struggle is as valid today as it was in Karl Marx’s time. He even re-hashes the tired old Marxist ‘‘theory of surplus value’, meaning that underpaid, exploited labor is the source of the rotten boss’s wealth. “diamond ‘on: her fitiger. Voutll “YOUNG ever Wanted:her to: hear z procioll . ; Walters Drama ain aan 7 Uilet time: On less monumental themes, he talks about local taxes. The flat tate business tax should be abolished, with the little guy pay- ing six per cent and the corpora- tions 20 per cent. CPR lands should be taxed 100 per cent, (The CPR is another enemy of the people.) Rankin does not explain how there would be any corporations to tax if they were taken over. Perhaps his subconcious tells him that Utopia would be on hold for a while even if he and his party did dominate, But if I were a Van- couver businessman and Rankin were mayor with a majority on council, I'd get the hell out of town. It’s not only businessmen who would suffer the joys of ‘‘socialism” of course. ‘Doctors, architects, lawyers, dentists and other professional people’? would work for the state on salary. (Just like in happy Cuba, etc.) And all these goodies, he tells us, ‘‘can’s come too saan’, Rankin’s -word for communist is ‘‘socialism’’. That’s what the Russians call it, too. But socialism is not foreign, he assures us. It’s as Canadian as can be. Didn't Kar! Marx’s International Worker's Association have Cana- dian branches? . I'm not wild about Harry. (Second of a series, Next: A look at COPE.) CAPILANO MALL 987-8904 ¢ LOUGHEED MALL 420-9005 NOW WITH 33 STORES ACROSS CANADA!