A Culture Of Entitlement

Following the news that Pamela Wallin has resigned from the Conservative caucus, Andrew Coyne takes a hard look at the Mike Duffy fiasco:

So Duffy’s behaviour is not the issue. The issue is the culture that enabled it. The Tories may find it expedient to disown him now, but it wasn’t five minutes ago they were cheering him to the rafters, inviting him to campaign in their ridings and defending him in public, long after his misconduct was known. Expelling him from caucus at this late date changes nothing. The time to discipline him was when when he was first caught out, not after every alternative had been exhausted. Indeed, he should never have been appointed, if for no other reason than that he was legally ineligible: to be the senator from PEI, you have to be from PEI.

The Harperites went to great lengths to protect Duffy. They offered Patrick Brazeau no such protection. The question -- the elephant in the room -- is Why?

The revelations of recent days suggest one reason: because of the sorts of things the auditors were likely to uncover, had they been allowed to do their work. And, perhaps, because of the many other rocks that might be overturned as a result: for example, Duffy’s alleged lobbying on behalf of Sun News. (Who was the “Conservative insider with connections to the CRTC” Duffy is reported to have approached? What could possibly have led him to believe his efforts to influence a quasi-judicial tribunal would be fruitful? Did he do this entirely on his own? Unprompted? Unpaid?)

Duffy was a Conservative Party operative on the public payroll. He wasn't the first. And the problem certainly extends to senators  from other parties. But this party -- this government  -- came to office railing against the corruption in the House of Sober Second Thought and in government in general. Rather than insisting on accountability, the Harperites have hopped on the bandwagon. Michael Harris  reminded us of the numbers last week: "By October 2015, 62 per cent of the 105-member Senate will have been appointed by Stephen Harper."

And Harris simply stated the obvious this week. Mike Duffy may be gone. But Stephen Harper is the one who should be roasted. It is he who drives the current culture of entitlement.

The Henchman's Curse

Two of Stephen Harper's senate appointments have been shoved out of the Conservative caucus. The Senate was their reward for doing the Prime Minister's dirty work. But one of life's axioms is that what goes around comes around.

Patrick Brazeau helped Stephen Harper kill the Kelowna Accord. It was Brazeau, the deputy national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, who supported Harper during the 2006 election. The Assembly of First Nations backed Paul Martin and the Accord. Michael Harris writes:

It was the age-old battle over reserve and non-reserve aboriginals and the differing treatment they receive from the federal government. Harper got his first minority government in 2006 in part because Brazeau, then CAP’s deputy-national chief, helped kill the Kelowna Accord. Two years later, he was in the Senate.

Mike Duffy also performed an essential service for Harper during the 2008 election. Lawrence Martin reminds his readers that:

Duffy has been a favourite of the PM’s. He was viewed as having done the Conservatives a great favour in the 2008 election. At the end of the campaign, when momentum could have tilted either way, Liberal leader Stephane Dion stumbled in responding to a CTV question he couldn’t understand. The CTV reporter promised Dion he wouldn’t run the clip — but Duffy turned around and made a major story of it. The Conservatives later acknowledged it really swung votes their way in the final days. It wasn’t much later that Duffy was named a senator.

Stephen Harper would not be where he is today without the assistance of Brazeau and Duffy. But henchmen come with their own baggage. Mr. Harper operates on the assumption that he exercises complete control over his minions. The problem is that minions eventually screw up. And men like Brazeau and Duffy screw up big time.

Henchmen are their own curse.

That Vision Thing

Tom Walkom's analysis of the BC election is interesting.  In the end, he writes, British Columbians were asked to choose between two negatives:

On Tuesday, B.C. voters were left with two negative questions: Did they hate the Liberals enough to get rid of them? Or did they fear the New Democrats enough to avoid them?

In the end, they chose fear over hate.

Fear seems to be the operative word these days. It was fear that was at the heart of Adrian Dix's campaign. Like Stephen Harper, Dix didn't offer a vision. He simply portrayed himself as an incrementalist:

Throughout the campaign, Dix did his best to reassure voters that the new New Democrats had been thoroughly defanged. Unlike the NDP governments of Dave Barrett in the 1970s and Glen Clark in the ’90s, he insisted it had no plans to do anything remarkable.

This time, however, the NDP was determined to portray itself as bland. Dix may have been Glen Clark’s chief of staff during the tumultuous ’90s. But his campaign motto this time was minimalist: “one practical step at a time.”

His promises — such as one to ensure that nursing home residents receive two rather than just one bath a week — were underwhelming.

That strategy gave Stephen Harper a majority government. Now Canadian corporations are sitting on $500 billion of dead money.Tom Mulcair and Andrea Horvath should be taking notes. Canadians are looking for what the first President Bush called "that vision thing."

 

Time To Ditch The Duffer

Tom Walkom writes that when it comes to residency, Senate rules are unambiguous:

The constitution act is crystal clear on this. It says a senator must be at least 30 years old, own $4,000 worth of real estate in the province he represents and be “resident in the province for which he is appointed.”

And, try as he might, the Artful Dodger can't dodge certain facts:

As the Senate’s own internal economy committee found, Duffy does not hold a P.E.I. health card. He does not pay income tax to P.E.I. He spends only 30 per cent of his time in the province. How then can he be resident in P.E.I.?

And if he’s not resident in P.E.I., he cannot be a senator from that province. Indeed, the constitution act specifies that if a senator is found not to live in the province he was appointed to represent, his seat is deemed vacant.

The Senate has always been a home for political partisans. But, under Stephen Harper, the Senate has become the last defense against the will of the House of Commons. Micheal Harris reminds his readers that it was the Senate which enforced Harper's denial of climate change. It was the Senate which killed

by stealth Bill C-311 after the House of Commons had passed the climate change bill. And this under a prime minister who once promised that he would never allow an unelected Senate to go against the will of the majority of Members of Parliament.

Walkom puts the case succinctly:

Mike Duffy came from P.E.I. It is a heritage of which he is justly proud. He vacations on the island. But he doesn’t really live there any more. And because of that, he cannot — by law — represent P.E.I. in the Senate.

Citizens, Not Consumers

Natalie Brender writes in The Toronto Star that, if disasters such as the factory collapse in Bangladesh are to be avoided in the future, we are going to have to stop acting as consumers and start acting as citizens. Private initiatives by non governmental agencies aren't enough:

As usual, the reason for this state of affairs is that things are complicated. The locations, actors, incentives and pressures involved in today’s global supply chains are so diverse and complex that uncoordinated action from any number of angles isn’t enough to make a major difference.

If private voluntary initiatives aren’t enough to produce consistent results, another solution is to weave them more closely together with governmental regulation. Getting government involved with buyers and suppliers across a given commercial field has the potential to ensure that all firms abide by common rules. Accordingly, new kinds of public-private partnerships are emerging. In some, national or regional governments work with the private sector to develop goals and metrics for compliance with environmental and labour standards. In other cases, a government might encourage corporate compliance with regulations by offering lighter penalties for violations in return for corporations’ transparency and disclosure.  

The assumption, of course, is that governments act not only in their own workers' interests, but in the interests of workers across the world. And the present Government of Canada is going to do no such thing. It has firmly planted its flag in the employers camp. Trade deals are written to protect international investors; and -- as far as the Harperites are concerned -- citizens are consumers.

Brender's colleague at the Star, Susan Delacourt, has done a lot of work lately documenting the Conservative take on citizenship. In the Harperian universe, everything -- including the self respect of the Conservative caucus -- is for sale. The workers of Bangladesh and other Third World nations will continue to suffer as long as the present Government of Canada remains in power.

Stiglitz On Higher Education

Joseph Stiglitz writes in this morning's New York Times that, just as America is beginning to recover from the crisis which rocked the world financial system, another storm is about to hit:

The crisis that is about to break out involves student debt and how we finance higher education. Like the housing crisis that preceded it, this crisis is intimately connected to America’s soaring inequality, and how, as Americans on the bottom rungs of the ladder strive to climb up, they are inevitably pulled down — some to a point even lower than where they began.

Just as home owners found themselves with mortgages they couldn't repay, American students now find themselves with debt they can't repay:

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, almost 13 percent of student-loan borrowers of all ages owe more than $50,000, and nearly 4 percent owe more than $100,000. These debts are beyond students’ ability to repay, (especially in our nearly jobless recovery); this is demonstrated by the fact that delinquency and default rates are soaring. Some 17 percent of student-loan borrowers were 90 days or more behind in payments at the end of 2012. When only those in repayment were counted — in other words, not including borrowers who were in loan deferment or forbearance — more than 30 percent were 90 days or more behind. For federal loans taken out in the 2009 fiscal year, three-year default rates exceeded 13 percent.

And the aftermath of the Great Recession has made things worse:

Like much else, the problem of student debt worsened during the Great Recession: tuition costs at public universities increased by 27 percent in the past five years — partly because of cutbacks — while median income shrank. In California, inflation-adjusted tuition more than doubled in public two-year community colleges (which for poorer Americans are often the key to upward mobility), and by more than 70 percent in four-year public schools, from 2007-8 to 2012-13.

With costs soaring, incomes stagnating and little help from government, it was not surprising that total student debt, around $1 trillion, surpassed total credit-card debt last year. 

It's a depressingly familiar story. Caught in the jaws of a financial system which piles up profit for the few, the economy stagnates -- because, faced with a mountain of debt, students neither form families nor buy homes:

Those with huge debts are likely to be cautious before undertaking the additional burdens of a family. But even when they do, they will find it more difficult to get a mortgage. And if they do, it will be smaller, and the real estate recovery will consequently be weaker. (One study of recent Rutgers University graduates showed that 40 percent had delayed making a major home purchase, and for a quarter, the high level of debt had an effect on household formation or getting further education. Another recent study showed that homeownership among 30-year-olds with a history of student debt fell by more than 10 percentage points during the Great Recession and in its aftermath.)

It’s a vicious cycle: lack of demand for housing contributes to a lack of jobs, which contributes to weak household formation, which contributes to a lack of demand for housing.

The Masters of the Financial Universe have given birth to a vicious, not a virtuous, cycle. They really aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

The Nasty Party

Andrew Coyne's opinions tend to fall on the right side of the political spectrum. That fact, however, does not make him a fan of the Harper government. In this morning's National Post he writes:

We’ve had some thuggish or dishonest governments in the past, even some corrupt ones, but never one quite so determined to arouse the public’s hostility, to so little apparent purpose. Their policy legacy may prove short-lived, but it will be hard to erase the stamp of the Nasty Party.

The Harperites have deliberately chosen to present themselves as the Nasty Party. Coyne, in fact, agrees with some of Harper's initiatives -- like raising the age of eligibility for Old Age Security. The problem with the government is its style: "as overbearing as it is under-handed and that on a good day:"

When they are not refusing to disclose what they are doing, they are giving out false information; when they allow dissenting opinions to be voiced, they smear them as unpatriotic or worse; when they open their own mouths to speak, it is to read the same moronic talking points over and over, however these may conflict with the facts, common courtesy, or their own most solemn promises.

There are certain laws -- like the law of gravity -- which govern existence on this planet. This government's essential flaw is that it ignores the principle of what goes around comes around. It has nothing but contempt for its opponents, the press and -- most surprisingly -- the public. The result, Coyne concludes, is that:

"The odium in which they are now held is well-earned, and entirely self-inflicted."