A Capra Moment

Frank Capra would have appreciated the present moment. In two of his best films, Mr. Smith Goes the Washington and Meet John Doe, the political system is entirely beholden to big money. And in both films, those financial interests control media empires which can crucify inconvenient upstarts who rock the boat. In the end, the only thing which stands between those interests and doing the right thing is the uncommon decency of the common man.

Financial interests sought and successfully repealed the Glass Steagall Act. The Citizens United decision gave them unfettered access to several media empires. With the exception of Bernie Madoff, no member of the financial elite has been punished. However, workers -- whose pensions that elite managed -- have borne the consequences of its failures.

Today, in Wisconsin and Ohio, those same workers are being told that their states can no longer afford their right to organize. But, in the midst of the debacle, there have been acts of uncommon decency. The Chief of Police in Madison announced that his police force would not serve as the governor's "palace guard." Six Republican state senators defied their governor and almost stopped Governor Kasich's bill to limit collective bargaining. And, when Fox News aired footage of supposedly violent protesters in Wisconsin, ordinary people were quick to notice the California palms in the background.

Capra had an immigrant's faith in the common man. Cynics dismissed his work as feel good schmaltz. After all, life was not that wonderful; and it was foolish to believe that an angel would save you when you stood on the bridge between life and death.

The criticism never diminished Capra's faith in "the people." Not that Capra didn't give money and power a wide swath. In the end, however, the people eventually set things right. It should be remembered that the citizens of Wisconsin have the right of recall.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

The Bogeymen

Paul Wells writes that, when Stephen Harper's attempt to eliminate public funds for his opposition rivals blew up in his face, the Prime Minister was in a very black mood. He was certain that his government -- which had won a minority mandate five months before -- was going down to defeat:

Let them win, he said, with no great conviction. Let Stéphane Dion try to run the country, with Jack Layton calling the shots and Gilles Duceppe sitting in judgment over the whole mess. It’ll fall apart in six months. We’ll pick up the pieces in the next election. Come back stronger than ever.

Then he saw that picture of his rivals shaking hands. And he saw the bogeymen. He and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty began to fulminate -- in apocalyptic terms -- about the dangers of a "socialist-separatist coalition." Flaherty, who grew up in Montreal, should know better. But then, for generations a significant portion of the English population there lived behind the barricades and rarely travelled east of St. Lawrence Boulevard. Harper doesn't understand Quebec. But he knows a wedge when he sees one -- and this was the biggest wedge of all.

Chantal Hebert tells the story of a Montreal businessman who found himself in a Calgary airport lounge as a report of the newly formed coalition appeared on television: "I figured it was not a very good time," he said, "to speak English with a French accent."

If there is any one decision which offers insight into Stephen Harper's character, it is his reaction to his imminent defeat in November, 2008. He fanned the flames of paranoia then prorogued Parliament. He will put personal, partisan advantage ahead of the country's national interest.

And you can bet that he'll use the same argument in the next election. He is a master of McCarthyism -- shrewd but not courageous. More importantly, he personifies what John Kenneth Galbraith wrote over fifty years ago: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

That is the claim he makes about Michael Ignatieff. It would appear that the pot is calling the kettle black.

As We Sleep

Canadians keep saying they don't want an election. And the Prime Minister says he doesn't want one either, because things are going so well. We are a pretty lethargic and smug nation. Jeffrey Simpson writes in Saturday's Globe and Mail that

Another poll released this week showed that Canadians are right up there with the Swedes and Saudis as the world’s leading back-patters on how well their countries have done. That national self-congratulation is exactly what the Conservatives hope will put Canadians in a grateful mood come voting day.

But do the facts merit such self satisfaction? We are running the largest deficits in our history. We are about to spend billions on an airplane which experts say doesn't meet Canada's defence needs. We just chartered a plane to Libya and it came back empty. And the Prime Minister has told us that, even though one of his ministers misled Parliament,  it's alright because she made the right decision.

Then there is the case of the Prime Minister's recently retired Integrity Commissioner, Christiane Ouimete. During her tenure, she was asked to investigate 228 cases. She looked into seven.

The log shows that 42 of the cases involved alleged misuse of taxpayer dollars or government assets. Another 50 or so cases involved charges of what is listed as “gross mismanagement.” About 60 other allegations involved contraventions of Acts of Parliament.

After consulting with the Prime Minister's Office, she found that none of the 228 cases had merit. The Government's handling of arms length organizations -- whose job it is to act as a countervailing force on the government -- is instructive. From the Nuclear Safety Commission, to the Veterans Ombudsman, to Statistics Canada, it's clear that if the Prime Minister's line is questioned, the heads of those organizations will be replaced. The Integrity Commissioner retired after Sheila Fraser reported Ouimete wasn't doing her job. The government, however, was quite happy with her performance. She did not act as a countervailing force.

And, then there is the biggest countervailing force of all -- the Liberal Party of Canada. Gerry Nicholls, who claims to know how the Prime Minister thinks, writes that Mr. Harper wants to destroy the Liberals. Given the ads the Conservatives have been running, that does not appear to be a stretch.

It should be obvious by now that the Harper government has no respect for democratic institutions or rules. Like the governor of Wisconsin, Stephen Harper is committed to clearing a path for oligarchy. Unless we stop feeling so self satisfied, we may wake up after the next election to find that's exactly what we have.

Fighting for Oligarchy

In the United States, the battles over state budgets continue. Governor Scott Walker claims that his state is at the edge of a financial abyss. And -- even though the state's public employees have offered large financial concessions in an effort to reduce the state's deficit -- the real fight is about removing their right to bargain. Some basic arithmetic provides a little perspective. As Robert Reich points out:

Before Wisconsin’s budget went bust, Governor Walker signed $117 million in corporate tax breaks. Wisconsin’s immediate budget shortfall is $137 million. That’s his pretext for socking it to Wisconsin’s public unions.

This fight isn't about the budget. It's about power. While it is true that the Wagner Act of 1935 did not allow the formation of public unions, it did give unions legitimate legal status. Before 1935, unionization met the legal definition of a "conspiracy." Franklin Roosevelt supported private sector unions as a legitimate countervailing force against the concentration of wealth and power which had led to the Great Depression. Unions were a way to force money down the social ladder instead of allowing the wealthy to simply suck it to the top of the pyramid. For this, and several other reasons, Roosevelt was branded a traitor to his class.

Kevin Drum, in Mother Jones, provides an interesting analysis of what has happened since 1935. In the 1940's and 50's, unions were responsible for the prosperity of the middle class. But, beginning in the 1960's, politicians of both parties -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- began to abandon the working class. Democrats, whose traditional power base was Labour, fought for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War. But economic justice slipped from their radar screens.

Many people forget that, when Marin Luther King was assassinated, he was leading a strike of garbage workers in Memphis. While it was true that the overwhelming majority of those workers were African Americans, King was not fighting segregation. The Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts had been passed. What King wanted was economic justice. "Many white Americans of good will," King said, "have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice." When King died, his fight for economic justice died with him.

Since then, Drum writes, working class wages have stagnated to the point where now:

The entire bottom 80 percent now loses a collective $743 billion each year, thanks to the cumulative effect of slow wage growth. Conversely, the top 1 percent gains $673 billion. That's a pretty close match. Basically, the money gained by the top 1 percent seems to have come almost entirely from the bottom 80 percent.

The fight in Wisconsin has been thirty years in the making. Governor Walker says his state can no longer afford the outrageous demands of public sector workers. But, given the fact that his newly minted tax cuts would just about cover the budget deficit, it would appear that the governor's rhetoric is a smoke screen.

This fight is about undoing the countervailing measures Roosevelt set up in the Wagner Act. Paul Krugman is right. It is about entrenching an oligarchy.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

The Future Is The Past

The evolution of the modern Republican Party is a tragic tale.The Party of Lincoln has become The Party of Ayn Rand. The party which once held that government should do what the people cannot do for themselves has become the party which holds that government is the enemy of the people.

Today's Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act; and -- as is becoming abundantly clear in places like Wisconsin -- they want to repeal the Wagner Act. If they could, they would repeal the entire New Deal.

During the last election, the party faithful railed at President Obama for not creating enough jobs. Last week, after the Republican controlled house passed legislation to strip $60 billion from Obama's current budget, John Boehner declared that, if jobs were lost as a result of the cuts, then "So be it." The hypocrisy is stunning.

Republicans have been in charge for twenty of the last thirty years. During that time, President Reagan and the second President Bush left the nation with record budget deficits. When the second president Bush raised taxes to restore fiscal sanity, he was pilloried by his own party. When Bill Clinton passed his first budget -- without any Republican votes -- the Grand Old Party predicted Financial Armageddon. Four years later, Clinton ran the first of four surpluses -- the only time in the last thirty years when the government's finances were in the black.

Now, under the guise of financial responsibility, Republicans have adopted the slogan, "The Future is the Past!' George Orwell understood these folks. So did Franklin Roosevelt. "A conservative," he said, "is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward."

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

The Kingdom of Dada

Andrew Coyne has never tried to hide his political convictions. As a columnist for The National Post, his opinions were grounded in classical economic theory. He had no patience for social engineering. And he was skeptical of big government. But he always insisted that any government -- regardless of party -- should be fundamentally competent. And he has suggested, on more than one occasion, that the Harper government -- despite what some see as its brilliant targeting of voters -- is incompetent.

In the latest edition of Macleans, he writes of the Harper government:

Far from convincing the public that it has no ideology, it simply confirms [Canadians] in the impression that it is both ideological and devious. And since its stratagems and deceptions are invariably found out, we should perhaps add to the list: ideological, devious, and incompetent.

It's more than a question of competence, of course. It is a question of moral legitimacy. It is a matter not just of the Harper government's legitimacy but any government's legitimacy. As Coyne writes:

BUT NOW we are beyond the minister, and beyond even this government. Because if this sort of conduct is allowed to stand — the minister’s first, and then the government’s in its backing of her — then it is not only this government that becomes a moral farce, but also Parliament, since it is Parliament’s job to police such things. And if the Parliament we elect can be so effortlessly mocked and defiled, then it is really us who have been as well.

This is now about us. If Ms Oda does not resign, or if Mr. Harper does not ask for her resignation, then there are grounds for a non-confidence motion. There are some issues which are more important than the management of the economy. Mr. Coyne, economist though he may be, recognizes this fact. He rightly asserts that those who do not recognize the fundamental principles at stake are living "in the kingdom of dada."

Down The Memory Hole

We appear headed for another election. When evaluating the present government, it is enlightening to judge it -- not by what others have said about it -- but by what Mr. Harper has said about his predecessors.

On the subject of concentrating power in the Prime Minister's Office, consider this bit of fulmination from 2005:

Will this be a country in which Parliament will rule on behalf of the people or where a self-selected group of lawyers or experts will define the parameters of right and wrong?

Then there was Mr. Harper's unshakable commitment to government accountability. When he was elected, the Prime Minister -- who has padlocked Parliament twice -- said:

Restoring accountability will be one of the major priorities of our new government. Accountability is what ordinary Canadians, working Canadians, those people who pay their bills, pay their taxes, expect from their political leaders.

When it comes to "separatist coalitions," it is important to remember that in 2004 -- when the future of the Paul Martin government hung in the balance -- Mr. Harper wrote to the Governor General. A coalition with the Bloc Quebecois was not a problem:

We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise,this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all your options before exercising your constitutional authority.

Measured by his own standards, Mr. Harper has been an abject failure and an absolute hypocrite. Apparently, he believes that Canadians live in an Orwellian world, where all his past pronouncements have gone down the memory hole. And, like O'Brien -- Winston Smith's torturer in 1984 -- his message to Canadians is:

We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.

Consider, for a moment, the consequences of Canadians -- "those people who pay their bills, pay their taxes" being filled with the likes of Stockwell Day, Lisa Raitt, Vic Toews, Bev Oda and -- of course -- Stephen Harper.

Perish the thought.

The New Mediocracy

An article in the current edition of The Walrus defines Canada's "New Solitudes." Erna Paris writes that the new chasm in Canada is not about language or religion. It is about two very different views of the world. "For a very long time," she writes,

Canadians have spoken of shared social values as a way of bridging our traditional French-English solitudes. Now I ask myself whether we might be morphing into two Canadas, each with a distinct world view. The more familiar Canada has promoted secular, humanist values, expressing them in a welfare society it took decades to build. The newer Canada is brasher, harder, and angrier. You may have guessed that the kinder Canada is the country I cleave to: it has been my heart’s home wherever I have travelled in the world. But I recognize change. And I am beginning to question how, and if, we can find common ground.

She traces this change to September 11th and the rise of the Harper Conservatives. And she worries that Canadians are not aware of the changes which the Harperites are hell bent on achieving. There is "another" Canada being born:

Its organizing principles are a powerful commitment to individualism, and to maximum freedom in every sector. Governments should be small, their powers limited, their taxing capacity curtailed. The market must be free and unfettered. Individuals are uniquely responsible for their failures, as well as their successes, and they cannot expect assistance from the “nanny state.” The critical distinguishing trait of this alternate lens on the world is a lessening attachment to the welfare state, which historically aimed at enhancing the common good — a sine qua non of the Canadian social contract for more than half a century.

But, while it's entirely appropriate for countries to change course, the Harper Revolution -- unlike what happened in Egypt over the last three weeks -- is entirely top down. Paris refers to the preamble of a document released by an ad hoc group which has christened itself Voices:

Since 2006 the Government of Canada has systematically undermined democratic institutions and practices, and has eroded the protection of free speech, and other fundamental human rights. It has deliberately set out to silence the voices of organizations or individuals who raise concerns about government policies or disagree with government positions. It has weakened Canada’s international standing as a leader in human rights. The impact and consequences for the health of democracy, freedom of expression, and the state of human rights protection in Canada are unparalleled…

An unprecedented level of secrecy now shrouds a long list of government activities and decisions, making it increasingly difficult for the public to hold the government accountable across a range of fundamentally important issues…

In this context, Canadian democratic institutions, civil society organizations, and human rights defenders have been weakened, marginalized and silenced. Their capacity to monitor and safeguard the respect for democracy, free speech, and other rights is in jeopardy. The quality and health of democratic life in Canada is under serious threat.

The Harper government only modifies its course when it is faced with defeat -- and the course correction is only temporary. Geoffrey Stevens, who retired from The Globe and Mail to teach at Wilfred Laurier University, writes in today's Straightgoods that Canada needs an election to answer important questions:

Is a Stephen Harper government the best Canadians can aspire to?
Specifically, are we satisfied with a government that preaches accountability and padlocks Parliament rather than face opposition questions? A government in which all power is concentrated in the Prime Minister's Office?

A government that has no foreign policy beyond what it borrows from Washington? A government that can't win a United Nations Security Council seat that would have been a slam-dunk in years past?

A government that secretly negotiates a border-security agreement that will involve some sacrifice of Canadian sovereignty without allowing Parliament to examine its provisions? A government that accepts Washington's dictate to purchase F-35 strike fighter aircraft that Canada doesn't need and, at $20 billion or more, can't afford?

A government that intends to spend billions to build new prisons for which there is no evident demand? A government that believes attack ads are the answer to all criticism?

Are Canadians content for their country to be as mediocre as their government?

For, in the end, the Harperites are devoted to self serving mediocrity. Canada -- and its citizens -- are capable of much more than the Conservatives give them credit for.

Smugly Complacent

As Stephen Harper celebrated his fifth anniversary as Prime Minister, some commentators -- such as James Travers and Lawrence Martin -- wrote that the prime minister has slowly but surely moved the country to the right. Last week, in an effort to demolish their arguments, Jeffrey Simpson cited a report by Focus Canada -- which claims that Canadians haven't changed much in thirty years:

On crime – the Harper government’s big thrust – Canadians are way offside with the government’s approach. Eighty-two per cent of Canadians don’t fear crime in their neighbourhood, and 77 per cent aren’t afraid to walk there at night.

By a whopping 58 per cent to 36 per cent, Canadians prefer prevention programs and education over tougher punishments as a way to combat crime. This sort of approach, of course, is diametrically opposite the one chosen by the Conservatives, who keep announcing headline-grabbing but functionally useless “tough on crime” measures. Seventy-seven per cent of respondents “strongly” or “somewhat” support federal gun regulations.

And, when it comes to spending priorities, Canadians are not Mr. Harper's people:

Focus Canada’s survey finds Canadians’ top spending priorities to be education, health care, elderly programs, the environment and reducing child poverty. At the bottom are foreign aid, justice, defence, domestic security and arts and culture. The ordering of these priorities hasn’t changed much in two decades, except that support for defence spending – which soared with the Afghan engagement – has returned to the low levels of the 1990s.

But amid all the counter intuitive data, there is one very disturbing number. "The Harper government can take heart," wrote Simpson, "that 52 per cent of Canadians are satisfied with the country's direction, compared to 40 per cent who aren't."

How does one square that circle? It would appear that Canadians have adopted the mantra of Harper and Company. We are smugly complacent. In the face of impending disaster, we chill out. Remember Jim Flaherty's line in the last election, just before the Great Recession? "Canada," he said," will run a small surplus." His message hasn't changed much.

Nowhere is the complacency more evident than in the Ministry of the Environment. Jim Prentice got tired of having nothing to do and left the government. The newly minted Environment Minister -- former broadcaster Peter Kent -- appears quite happy to dance to the sound of nothing.

But one of the factors behind the turmoil in Middle East these days is the sky rocketing cost of food. Some people, Paul Krugman wrote this week, claim there is a conspiracy in the financial markets. But

While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.

Last fall, when Canada lost its bid for a Security Council seat, the world looked at Mr. Harper and the other public faces of his government -- recycled ministers from the old Mike Harris regime -- men like Flaherty, John Baird and Tony Clement, and saw a cadre of the wilfully ignorant. If we truly believe these men have put us on the "right track," we should be deeply ashamed.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Voodoo Economics

During the week just passed, Republicans in the Senate tried and failed to sink the Affordable Healthcare Act. Over in the House, Paul Ryan -- the Chairman of the House Budget Committee -- proposed cutting $58 billion from President Obama's 2011 budget. "Washington's spending spree is over," he announced. "We must chart a new course."

Ryan's plan drew the following comment from The Economist -- a magazine not noted for its leftish flights of fancy:

there is no plausible argument that current unemployment or slow growth stem from the federal budget deficit. The mechanism through which budget deficits can lead to unemployment and slow growth is the bond market: government borrowing raises interest rates, which makes credit more expensive for businesses. But the 5-year treasury bond is under 2%, and the most recent auction had a bid cover of almost 3 times. Unsurprisingly, with interest rates low, the cost of credit ranks low on the list of businesses' chief concerns. Those who acknowledge that deficits don't seem to be driving up the cost of credit, but still want to blame deficits for the poor economy, have pointed to business uncertainty over potential future tax increases to cover government debt. But how does enacting an $800 billion two-year tax cut and then cutting $50 billion or even $100 billion in spending assuage business uncertainty about future debt? In any case, the main reason businesses are not expanding is that they are worried about lack of demand from consumers and other businesses, who are still deleveraging from the debts they built up during the 2000s and the collapse in their asset values during the financial crisis.

Some were relieved that Ryan recommended making only half the cuts which Republicans campaigned on during the last election. But, even so, Ryan's proposal sounded eerily like Andrew Mellon's advice to Herbert Hoover: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate."

Despite Republican claims that business is uncertain about their future tax burden, the real reason they are sitting on all that cash is lack of demand. Why start up production if you fear there will be no customers?

Mark Twain wrote, "History doesn't repeat itself -- at best it sometimes rhymes." Huck Finn said it even better: "I been there before."

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Stephen and Ayn

Stephen Harper returned to Parliament this week, intent on changing the country. He is a true believer. But what -- or, more precisely, who -- is the source of his faith? Modern conservatives like to trace their philosophy back to Edmund Burke, whose lucid defence of social institutions rings true to this day. Without them, wrote Burke, we would all be victims of a Reign of Terror -- and he pointed to the French Revolution as a case in point.

But modern conservatives -- as Thomas Frank aptly documented in his book, The Wrecking Crew -- have little respect for government and its institutions. They came to Washington to tear them down. They have worked tirelessly during the last thirty years to do just that. And we are living amid the debris they have left behind.

Mr. Harper has taken his inspiration -- as his latest attack ads against Micheal Ignatieff remind us -- from American Republicans. But both they and he bear no allegiance to Burke. Their real Godfather -- or rather Godmother -- is Ayn Rand.

Rand was a Russian refugee who, having experienced one form of governmental tyranny, jumped to the illogical conclusion that all governments were tyrannical. She preached a "moral" philosophy which she called "objectivism" -- a faith in rampant individualism -- and railed against the welfare state which "morally and economically creates an ever accelerating downward pull." In her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, she claimed that accepting government assistance was tantamount to "delivering oneself into gradual enslavement."

Individualism Unbound was her credo. And a true believer, like Howard Roark -- the architect in Rand's turgid novel, The Fountainhead -- would blow the building up if he could not get his way. Mr. Harper feels he can function quite well without Parliament. He has done so twice. And he has proven quite adept at blowing others up. Ask the former heads of supposedly arms length government agencies, like Linda Keen, Pat Strogan or Munir Sheikh, about Mr. Harper's respect for them and their work.

But there is a delicious irony to the story of Ayn Rand. A life long smoker, she succumbed to lung cancer and required surgery. So she applied for Social Security:

An interview recently surfaced that was conducted in 1998 by the Ayn Rand Institute with a social worker who says she helped Rand and her husband, Frank O’Connor, sign up for Social Security and Medicare in 1974.

Federal records obtained through a Freedom of Information act request confirm the Social Security benefits. A similar FOI request was unable to either prove or disprove the Medicare claim.

Between December 1974 and her death in March 1982, Rand collected a total of $11,002 in monthly Social Security payments. O’Connor received $2,943 between December 1974 and his death in November 1979.

The woman who railed against "moochers" was one herself. However, she applied for the benefits under her husband's name. Such reversals require an alias. Mr. Harper has already reversed himself several times -- on income trusts, on government accountability, on running a deficit. But one wonders what name he will adopt after he blows up the building.

``We Do Big Things``

As Barack Obama used the phrase last night, it was no boast. It was a a simple statement of fact. From Abraham Lincoln`s establishment of the land grant colleges, to Franklin Roosevelt`s electrification of America through projects like of the TVA, to Dwight Eisenhower`s construction of the Interstate Highway System, to John Kennedy`s commitment to land on the moon -- what Obama said was no opinion. It was a statement of fact.

Obama also wants to do big things because, as he put it, ``this is our generation`s Sputnik moment.`` It will not be easy. As Micheal Gerson reminded his readers this morning: ``Paul Ryan and many Republicans believe that America has entered a fiscal emergency that requires a fundamental reconsideration of the role of government.`` For Republicans, this is not a new idea.

Obama did not argue for the status quo. Indeed, as his example of the government`s responsibility for salmon illustrated, there is a great deal of wasteful duplication. But he also did not argue -- as Ronald Reagan did -- that government is the problem. As Gerson also observed, he was ``unapologetic about the need for government activism.``

And so the battle has been joined. And make no mistake. It will be a battle. At some point, Obama will be faced with the political equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But last night the president asked Americans to tap their imaginations -- to think big. Because before Americans can do big things, they have to dream big things. May he and his fellow citizens succeed.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Whose Sacrifice?

Over the weekend, Stephen Harper delivered a speech in which he congratulated himself and his party for five excellent years. He claimed that he and his Conservatives were merely humble public servants. "We are not in Ottawa for what we are owed and what we think we can get." he trumpeted. "If anybody is, they are in the wrong party. For Conservatives it is about public service and public service means private sacrifice."

But who, exactly, is doing the sacrificing? James Travers notes that: "On average, Canada's CEO's, the 21st Centrury's income rock stars, lugged home 2009 rewards averaging $6.6 million. In sharp and growing contrast, working stiffs typically pocketed about $43,000, more than 150 times less."

Wealth, too, is concentrating. Less than four percent of Canadian households now control more than 65 percent of our net wealth, excluding real estate. That's up from 61 percent five years ago.

So when Mr. Harper tells us that Canadians are doing better, the question is, which ones?

There has always been a huge gap between what Mr. Harper says and what he does. Back in 1991, he ended his Master's Thesis is Economics with the following conclusion: "The record indicates that particularly activist Keynesian policy has been rare in the post war period. The results indicate that it should remain so." This, from the man who has applied that biggest Keynesian stimulus since The Great Depression.

So, what do the results indicate? They indicate that Mr. Harper will do whatever it takes to survive. When other politicians take that course, he calls them hypocrites. Or he questions their patriotism. His most recent ads questioning Mr.Ignatieff''s patriotism are a case in point.

The question is simply this: "When the Prime Minister opens his mouth, can you believe him?" I suggest the answer is "No." Our humble public servant is neither humble nor honest.

A Stark Choice

In a recent column in The New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote about the chasm which exists between the two major parties in the United States:

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state -- a private enterprise economy but one in which society's winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net -- morally superior to the capitalism, red in tooth and claw, we had before the New Deal. It's only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft.

Historically, the Liberal Party of Canada has stood for the first option. It was a notion which the old Progressive Conservative Party also stood for. The rise of Stephen Harper's Conservatives represents the ascendancy of the second option -- which is why the late Dalton Camp spent his final years warning his readers of the dangers of what he correctly diagnosed as a faux Conservatism.

There have been other Cassandras. In yesterday's Toronto Star, James Travers writes that the Prime Minister has changed the country "more than we realize." Harper has done this by effectively operating below the radar, by shutting down Parliament, by capitalizing on the Liberals' disarray, and by smearing his opponents:

Wrong footing rivals is the Prime Minister's favourite dance step.Those who criticize building super prisons, Canada's laizzez faire environment record, or Canada's diminished reputation are quickly forced to defend themselves against message track charges that they don't share Conservative concerns about victims of crimes, energy jobs or principled values.

The opposition needs to begin its defence with an attack on the Conservatives' so called "principled values." Once again, the Harperites have begun to beat the "separatist coalition" drum. But, in September, 2004 -- when the future of the Martin government hung in the balance -- Mr. Harper penned a letter to Adriennne Clarkson, the Governor General. He wrote:

We respectfully point out the the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise, this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all your options before exercising your constitutional authority.

That principle has disappeared into the aether. So has the principle of government accountability and the commitment to balanced budgets. This Prime Minister will -- to mangle John Kennedy -- avoid any price and abandon any burden to get elected. The only time the opposition parties stopped him dead in his tracks was three years ago when they threatened to form a coalition.

Harper only respects his opponents when they can do him real harm. Otherwise, he rules --as Susan Diebel has noted -- through fear and loathing. Given what is at stake, it is imperative that the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois think carefully about how to deal with Mr. Harper. He is focused on his objective. And he will stop at nothing -- short of an effective coalition -- to obtain it.

Arizona on My Mind

The tragedy in Arizona this weekend has generated an ocean of comment on both sides of the border. In The New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote:

Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming overwhelmingly from the right. It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be "armed and dangerous" without being ostracized; but Representative Michelle Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the GOP.

In The Toronto Star, James Travers saw plenty of blame to go around: "In Ottawa as in Washington, the result is that abuse is now the common tongue of policy debate. Invective and vitriol are heaped on those who reach different conclusions."

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh attacked Sheriff Clarence Dupnick for fanning a left wing conspiracy aimed at shutting down free speech. And Sarah Palin's spokeswoman -- not Palin herself -- suggested that the cross hairs on her electoral map were meant to be taken metaphorically, not literally. Both pundits deny any responsibility for what happened. And they are both right. Neither is legally culpable. The man with the gun is in custody.

But what both Limbaugh and Palin appear absolutely ignorant of is the truth which Abraham Lincoln felt in his very bone marrow -- that words can be used as weapons; and that democracy works best when citizens are guided by their "better angels." He stuck to that conviction throughout the Civil War. He said it best at his second inaugural:

With malice toward none; with charity toward all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who has done the battle, and for his widow and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves and with all nations.

It's worth remembering that when invoking the name of the Creator, Lincoln never claimed that God was on his side. He did, however, hope that he was on God's side. We suffer from the delusion that we are the instruments of righteousness. Certainly Limbaugh and Palin suffer from that disease. We need to find an antidote. We could start by practising a bit of humility.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

The Hollow Man

Stephen Harper claims that he does not want an election. But there he was, in today's National Post, testing the electoral winds and drawing lines in the sand.

He talked again of a separatist coalition: "I think what we've seen is that it's pretty clear that next time, if there's not a Conservative majority, the other parties will form a different government;" and he further claimed that he "will not back down on corporate tax cuts, which he said are essential for the Canadian economy."

Never mind that he was quite willing to enter such a coalition to bring down the Martin government. Never mind that he broke his own fixed election law in calling the last election. No, said Mr. Harper, it's all about principle:

We have made it a fundamental principle of our government since we got into office that we would have a competitive tax structure for job creators, for employers in this country.

It is, indeed, remarkable that Mr. Harper can repeat this stuff with a straight face, after thirty years of growing economic inequality. And, again raising the coalition chimera, he claimed that the coalition partners will move "the next day" to relegate his party to opposition status. No, said Mr. Harper, a coalition would be bad for the Canadian economy. It couldn't take the strain. Never mind that the Canada Pension Plan and Medicare were the products of coalition government. The nation is too fragile for such an arrangement. What the country needs is strong leadership -- his leadership.

Gerry Nicholls, writing in the Globe and Mail, knows what this is all about. Nicholls used to work with Harper at the National Citizens Coalition:

To be blunt, Mr. Harper's ultimate strategic goal really isn't to win a majority government -- it's to eradicate the Liberal Party as a viable political force.

Indeed, his desire to eliminate the Liberals is something he and I discussed way back in the days when we worked together at the National Citizens Coalition. His theory, as he explained to me, was that conservatism would be better served in this country if Canada had a two party system, one that pitted right against left, free enterprise against socialism, Conservatives against New Democrats.

There would be no room for coalitions in such a landscape. But there's more. For Harper, says Nicholls, it's personal:

In his view, the Liberals have exhibited an anti-Alberta bias since the days of Pierre Trudeau, a bias that resulted, among other things, in the disastrous national energy program. Mr. Harper holds a grudge, and he wants payback.

Nicholls is only another in a long list of people -- from Preston Manning to Deborah Grey to former Harper staffers interviewed for Lawrence Martin's book, Harperland -- who have a less than salutary opinion of the Prime Minister.

Canadians would be foolish to ignore these signs. They would be wise to dump this prime minister -- and a coalition government would be the perfect instrument to accomplish that end. Mr. Harper enjoys a reputation for strategic genius. But, as Eliot reminded us, hollow men have head pieces "filled with straw." And, as Joseph Conrad -- who inspired Eliot's poem -- reminded us, such men seek to fill that emptiness with power.

The Jig Is Up

On Wednesday, the unelected Senate -- that chamber of "sober second thought" -- killed a climate change bill which had been passed by the elected members of the House of Commons. Its demise was made possible because the Prime Minister did precisely what he had fumed about in the past: he packed the Upper Chamber with his own partisans.

Liberal senators did not call for a vote to pass the bill. They voted to bring it to the floor for debate. The Conservatives simply killed the bill. The Prime Minister made no attempt to defend the tactic. He condemned the bill as a job killer. And he reaffirmed that his government's environmental policy was to wait until the Americans decided to act on that file.

The vote will not go down in history as a profile in courage. But, since its inception, this government has acted like a gang of school yard bullies. One does not look to them them for courage. However, the vote again illustrated that this Prime Minister and his minions are no democrats. During the previous week -- in yet another illustration of his faith in autocracy -- Mr. Harper announced that the policy of extending the Canadian mission in Afghanistan is an executive decision. Parliament, he said, could debate the decision; but it had no right to vote on it.

This is the same man who prorogued Parliament twice in the last four years. On both occasions, he was on the ropes. If votes of confidence had been allowed to proceed, his government would have fallen. This is the man who sneered when Jack Layton suggested talking with the Taliban -- the very policy which is now being pursued. This is the prime minister who dismissed as spineless the Liberal suggestion that the Canadian mission to Afghanistan be extended in order to establish the foundations of a civil society in that woe begotten corner of the globe. The Prime Minister's hypocrisy is stunning.

It is abundantly clear that Stephen Harper's word is worthless. It is the Canadian equivalent of monopoly money. Jim Prentice understood that his mission as the Minister of the Environment was to do nothing. He decided to go to where the real money is. It's beginning to look like Peter Mackay is ready to return his property to the bank and leave the game.

Consider who will be left: John Baird -- full of sound and fury -- can claim no great legislative achievements. Jim Fahlerty's record is depressingly consistent: as both a provincial and a federal Minister of Finance, he has left mountains of debt in his wake. And Tony Clement has proved that he can dance to whatever tune the prime minister chooses. He simply can't compose one of his own.

The Harper government has managed to survive. But it has run from every challenge -- until the United States has acted. And then it has chimed in with a timorous "Me, too." It has marked time. The jig is up.

Looking Back In Sadness

I have, on more than one occasion, expressed my admiration for the work of James Travers. On this Remembrance Day, he wrote of his father who "learned to be a soldier at Kingston's Royal Military College" and his uncle who "died soon after wearing pilot's wings for the first time."

They would, he wrote, not recognize the Canada of 2010. "They wouldn't understand a country where patriotism is partisan, where men and women in uniform are used as political props or where death and sports are shamelessly conflated on Hockey Night in Canada."

For we have become a mean spirited country and -- according to the prime minister -- we have done it as a matter of principle. But, as Lawrence Martin made clear this week, the prime minister's principles are pure piffle -- whether they be government accountability, fiscal frugality, a firm commitment to an end date in Afghanistan, or the free market sale of Canadian assets like potash.

Many of us never accepted those principles. What is remarkable is that Harper is still selling himself as a Conservative. For the truth is that he is no such thing. His convictions are totally malleable and are easily altered by his quest for power.

He seems to have befuddled Canadians. But the rest of the world has his number. Under Harper's leadership, Travers wrote:

Canada fell from global grace because it is no longer a modest but constant light among nations. Rather than holding steady, it flickers in the gusting winds of great challenges -- among them Arab Israeli peace, African poverty and climate change -- that are to this generation what world wars were to our parents and grandparents.

Canada, like its prime minister, has become puffed up by its own self importance. It is worth remembering that we used to be a much different -- and a much better -- country.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

A Victory for Wooden-headedness

In the week the Republican Party took back control of the House of Representatives, Richard Cohen weighed in on the subject of Sarah Palin: "The fierce stupidity of this woman," he wrote, "is hard to comprehend. It is the well from which she draws her political sustenance." It's obvious that many Americans have been drinking from the same well.

The historian Barbara Tuchman had another term for the Palin Effect. In The March of Folly, she defined "wooden-headedness," as "the source of self deception:"

It consists [she wrote] in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring and rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.

For the simple truth is that the mess Mr. Obama inherited will take more than two years to clean up; and the Republican objective -- stated with laser like clarity by Mitch McConnell -- is to make Obama a one term president.

When John Boehner says that his priorities are the "peoples' priorities" one must ask, "Which people?" That is what the mid-term elections were all about -- which people will be served. The Republicans have been very successful over the last thirty years in convincing common folk that the priorities of the wealthy are their priorities -- even though the facts point to a much different conclusion.

At the end of his life, Mark Twain -- who, like modern American voters, had no respect for Congress -- concluded that there was little hope for "the damned human race." Thornton Wilder was a little more charitable."Wherever you come near the human race," said the stage manager in Our Town, "there's layers and layers of nonsense."

Rand Paul declared last night that he and his ilk have arrived to take back the country. It will be interesting -- and truly sad -- to see what they do to it.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Mad As Hell

James Travers is one of the most astute political analysts in Canada. Writing in The Toronto Star on Thursday, he observed that voter anger in both Canada and the United States is fueled "more by disillusionment than by ideology." Sifting through the entrails of Ontario's municipal elections -- particularly Rob Ford's storming of Toronto's mayoral barricades -- he wrote:

Seeping north from our stricken southern neighbour is the slow realization that the great political divide is no longer between right-leaning conservatives and left-leaning liberals. What now separates elites from the madding crowd is optimism and pessimism, secure pensions and vanishing jobs and, most of all, privileged access to a system that can be so profitably gamed.

The Tea Party crowd -- and we have them north of the border, too -- is appallingly ignorant of their countries' constitutions. In the United States, Christine O'Donnell questions the separation of church and state. In Canada, a right wing rump believes we elect a Prime Minister, not a local member of the national legislature. They do not understand that, when the government loses the confidence of the house, another party or parties can assume power without an election.

Travers rightly traces a line between Pierre Elliott Trudeau's concentration of power in the office of the Prime Minister -- largely a response to the October Crisis of 1970 -- to Jean Chretien's benevolent dictatorship through to Stephen Harper's pursuit of a majority at any cost.

Lost along the way was trust in a system that, despite its many faults, could once be counted on to act in the best interest of most citizens, most of the time. Growing in the vacuum created by lies, fraud and countless broken promises is the acidic judgment that parties are guided by self interest and the powerful few who whisper in their ear.

Voters are mad as hell. They understand that the game is fixed. But, if that anger is married to ignorance, we will all be worse off than we are. Next week's election in the United States -- and the coming election in Canada -- will be more than referendums on the politics of the present. They will, indeed, be tests of the wisdom of the people. For, when all is said and done, the old saw is still true: we get the politicians we deserve.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Learning Nothing from History

Back in the last century, when I taught high school in the Province of Quebec, the Ministry of Education insisted that every student take Canadian History. But there was no requirement that every student pass the course.

That memory came to mind on Friday, when I read Paul Krugman's column in The New York Times. On the subject of the British government's new austerity measures, Krugman wrote:

Both the new British budget announced on Wednesday and the rhetoric that accompanied the announcement might have come straight from the desk of Andrew Mellon, the Treasury Secretary who told Herbert Hoover to fight the Depression by liquidating the farmers, liquidating the workers, and driving down wages. Or if you prefer more British precedents, it echoes the Snowden budget of 1931 which tried to restore confidence but ended up deepening the economic crisis.

So too were there significant historical cautions about invading Afghanistan -- from Alexander the Great, to Great Britain, to the Soviet Union. If there is one thing that marks Western political elites, it is their appalling ignorance of history. And it is that ignorance which led Krugman to declare that:

Maybe Britain will get lucky and something will come along to rescue the economy. But the best guess is that Britain in 2011 will look like Britain in 1931, or the United States in 1937, or Japan in 1997. That is, premature fiscal austerity will lead to a renewed economic slump. As always, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Harry Truman said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." That's why the Quebec Ministry of Education's insistence that every student take history but not pass it was so woodenheaded. I'm beginning to wonder if the same rule applied in several international jurisdictions.

And, lest Canadians begin to feel smug about their own situation, they should remember that the Harper government plans to turn off the stimulus taps in March, 2011. In fact, at last summer's G20 Conference in Toronto, the Prime Minister worked hard to get members to accept the very policy which he and Mr. Cameron plan to follow.

The lemmings are on the march.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

In Search of Sanity

Perhaps Frank Rich is right. Sanity will not return to American politics until there is "a decisive rescue from our prolonged economic crisis." Until then, he wrote in Sunday's New York Times:

Don't expect the extremism and violence in our politics to subside magically after Election Day -- no matter what the results. If Tea Party candidates triumph, they'll be emboldened. If they lose, the anger and bitterness will grow. . . Not for the first time in history -- and not just American history -- fear itself is at the root of a rabid outbreak of populist rage against government, minorities and conspiratorial "elites."

Even if Republicans regain control of both houses, Barack Obama will still be president on November 3rd. What will he do? What should he have done before Americans reached this crossroads? In the most recent edition of The New York Review of Books, Michael Tomasky wrote an extremely perceptive analysis of what has gone wrong for the Democrats:

In American politics, Republicans routinely speak in broad themes and tend to blur the details, while Democrats typically ignore broad themes and focus on details. Republicans, for example, routinely speak of "liberty" and "freedom" and couch practically all their initiatives -- tax cuts, deregulation, and so forth -- within these large categories. Democrats, on the other hand, talk more about specific programs and policies and steer clear of big themes.

What Democrats have typically not done well since Reagan's time is to connect their policies to their larger beliefs. In fact they have usually tried to hide those beliefs, or change the conversation when the subject arose. The result has been for many years that the Republicans have been able to present their philosophy as somehow truly "American," while attacking the Democratic belief system as contrary to American values.

Many commentators have noted that, while Ronald Reagan sought to repeal much of what Roosevelt put in place, his leadership template came straight from Roosevelt. President Obama will have to face whatever the storm leaves behind on November 3rd. In preparing for the aftermath, he could do worse than to return to Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech -- delivered a month after Pearl Harbor. In that address, Roosevelt enumerated what he saw as the four essentials -- not just for Americans, but for all human beings:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want -- which translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which translated into world terms, means a world reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit a physical act of aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world. This is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our time and our generation.That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

Roosevelt's speech married vision and and poetry -- something Obama did during the 2008 campaign -- but something he has not done in office and something he is not doing now. The President has often expressed his admiration for Mr. Lincoln. One hopes he has the same admiration for Mr. Roosevelt. And one hopes that Roosevelt will act as a muse as Mr. Obama addresses his nation in the future.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

He Didn't See It Coming

"If any Canadian woke up this morning," Robert Silver wrote in yesterday's Globe and Mail, "still under the mistaken impression that Stephen Harper is some kind of political strategic genius, surely to God the result of the UN Security Council vote has put that once trendy canard to rest once and for all."

Canada was rewarded yesterday with the same kind of shrug Mr. Harper has shown the United Nations during his entire time in office. His two speeches in the last couple of weeks marked the first time he had addressed the UN since he first came to office in 2006. During the last UN Climate Conference he was conspicuously absent. And he has pointedly let it be known that his time is better spent chatting up the locals at a northern Tim Horton's.

The Harperites reacted to their defeat by claiming the members of the General Assembly are less "principled" than the Government of Canada. But, once again, Silver had their number:

I say other than unwavering support for Israel and indifference towards Africa, can you articulate those unpopular but principled positions? Moreover, did those principled positions suddenly become popular in the last 24 hours in a quickly shifting public opinion environment? Surely Harper had some clue before the vote that Canada's foreign policy couldn't carry two thirds of the countries?

And that is the point. The Prime Minister didn't see it coming -- just as he didn't see the Great Recession coming. When he was re-elected, he forecast a "small surplus." On the day Canada's bid for a Security Council seat failed, Jim Flaherty announced the biggest annual deficit in Canadian history -- $55 billion. And historians pointed out it was 63 years ago to the day that Lester Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to defuse the Suez Crisis.

The day after the Security Council defeat, Allen Gottlieb -- who served both Conservative and Liberal prime ministers in Washington -- noted how the Foreign Affairs Department, located in the building which bears Pearson's name, has slipped into obscurity during the Harper years:

In Ottawa, power and influence have shifted away from the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council. Afghanistan and climate change are handled by agencies outside of Foreign Affairs. Three deputy ministers report directly to the Prime Minister on foreign and national security affairs.

And, of course, the Harperites blamed Michael Ignatieff for the loss. "Not being able to speak with one voice as a country had a negative impact on Canada's bid," said Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon. That statement completely ignored the letter which Harper sent to The Wall Street Journal after Jean Chretien politely refused to join George W. Bush's Coalition of the Willing: "For the first time in history," Harper wrote, "the Canadian government has not stood beside its key British and American allies in their time of need." He was certain that Canadians were on his side; they were, he said, "overwhelmingly with us." Such was not the case. Once again, he missed the boat.

The Tory propaganda machine has told us repeatedly that the Prime Minister is blindingly brilliant. It becomes more apparent with each passing day that Mr. Harper is simply blind. The General Assembly served notice yesterday that they get it.

This Angry Season

In the United States, the conventional wisdom holds that, when the nation is on the wrong track, "we the people" will set it right. It's a comforting thought. But, in this angry season, one must ask if that axiom is always true. There is a pathological quality to much of the anger one sees and hears these days. When Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Carl Paladino keep returning to the refrain that Americans are mad as hell, it is worth remembering the late Lee Atwater's explanation of how the so called "Southern Strategy" worked:

You start out in 1954 saying 'Nigger, Nigger, Nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a by product of them is that blacks get hurt worse than whites. . .' We want to cut this' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'nigger, nigger.'

Given the assertions that President Obama is a Muslim alien and Kenyan anti-colonialist, one wonders how much of the anger stems from an unemployment rate of 9.6%, and how much of it is a socially sanctioned way to yell, "nigger, nigger."

I do not wish to minimize the legitimate anger Americans feel towards those from both parties whose faith in unregulated capitalism has led to the loss of their homes and their jobs. Those whose 99 weeks of unemployment insurance have expired are in a particularly precarious position. Their fury is completely understandable. But, when Rand Paul muses that he might not have voted for the Civil Rights Act, and when those protesting the recently passed health care bill throw the "N" epithet at people like John Lewis, it is clear that there is more than unemployment behind their rage.

Moreover, when people like retired Utah Supreme Court Justice A.H. Ellett argue for the repeal of the 13th, 14 and 15th Amendments to the Constitution -- the so called "Reconstruction Amendments" -- you know there is a lot more in the mix that just joblessness. Justice Ellett wrote:

The validity, or should we say the invalidity, of the Civil War Amendments is very important to reinstating the inalienable rights of free white citizens of the United States of America. At every juncture where the government of the United States of America and/or the governments of the several States attempt to usurp inalienable rights, the Civil War amendments are ultimately claimed to be the authority for such deprivations of rights.

And precisely what right or rights have those amendments breached? Before 1865, white Americans were immune African American political influence. Ellet pulls no punches. In his view, the Constitution was desecrated by the extension of the franchise -- and the right to hold office -- to America's citizens of color. Before the Civil War:

. . . only White State citizens held the privileges and immunities known to Article IV, Section 2 among the several States, and no State could confer that Constitutional protection on any other race. In consequence thereof, the "also" could not authorize a "non white" to be an Officer of the United States government.

Two years ago, when Barack Obama was elected president, a significant majority of Americans were euphoric that their country had finally torn down its most significant barrier. At the same time, a significant minority ground their teeth in disgust. How much of the angry rhetoric comes from those who not only want to repeal the New Deal but who also want to repeal the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments?

This November, Americans will be asked to distinguish between legitimate anger -- which is an extension of their economic situation -- and an illness which is as old as the Republic itself. Their choice will ultimately prove the truth or falsehood of the conventional wisdom.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

When Ignorance Is King

Last week, Peter Mackay decided to rescind an invitation to Zijad Delic -- the Executive Director of the Canadian Islamic Congress -- from a defence department event marking Islamic History Month. His reason for taking back the invitation was that Delic's predecessor, Mohamed Elmasry, had proclaimed publicly that Israeli soldiers of 18 were fair targets for suicide bombers because they were "not innocent." When Zelic assumed the leadership of the CIC, he pointedly disavowed those comments.

James Travers noted in Tuesday's Toronto Star that:

Elmasry's comments pushed a couple of closely connected political hot buttons. Stephen Harper's Middle East policy skews hard to Israel and a Christian fringe firmly in the Conservative camp believes there's a connection between the restoration of Israel's biblical borders and the rapturous return of Christ.

These are the same people who firmly believe that Bishop James Usher correctly determined that the Almighty began creation on "the night preceding Sunday 23 October, 4004 B.C." Modern science has turned Bishop Usher into a laughing stock. MacKay's decision should have turned him into a laughing stock. Instead, it sowed more seeds of division and stoked the anger of Canadian Muslims, not to mention Muslims around the world.

One would think that public reaction to the prorogation of Parliament -- and the universal condemnation the government faced when it decided to deep six the long census form -- would cause the Harper Party to think twice about such obviously volatile decisions. But they have had no such epiphany.

These folks must believe that God is on their side -- or perhaps they are simply stupid. But, as Lawrence Martin's recently released book Harperland makes clear, these decisions can be traced back directly to the Prime Minister himself. As Don Martin wrote in his review of the book, "There's no absence of malice in this prime minister's political conduct. At times, malice is all there is . . ."

Malice is the handmaid of Ignorance. Any nation which chooses to put Ignorance in the driver's seat is in deep trouble.

Whose Populism?

As tens of thousands of Americans gathered on the National Mall this past weekend, Frank Rich -- in the New York Times -- warned them and their supporters not to underestimate the "useful idiocy" of the Tea Party's most recent star, Christine O'Donnell. For comedians -- particularly Bill Mahar -- she is the gift which keeps on giving. But, Rich wrote:

O'Donnell is particularly needed now because most of the other Republican Tea Party standard bearers lack genuine anti-government or proletarian cred. Joe Miller and Ken Buck, the Senate candidates in Alaska and Colorado, actually are graduates of elite universities like those O'Donnell lied about attending. Rick Scott, the populist running for governor of Florida, was chief executive of a health care corporation that scooped up so many Medicare and Medicaid payments, it had to settle charges for defrauding taxpayers. Rand Paul, the scion of a congressman, is an ophthalmologist whose calls for spending restraint don't extend to his own Medicare income. Carl Paladino, the truculent man of the people of New York, grew his fortune as a developer with government handouts and favors. His California bookend, Carly Fiorina, received a golden parachute worth as much as $42 million from Hewlett-Packard, where she liquidated 20 thousand jobs.

O'Donnell, on the other hand, claims that her income for the last two years has been $5,800. That information -- like her assertion that she attended Oxford University -- may be a figment of her overactive imagination. But she is the only Tea Party candidate who appears to be lower middle class. Like the Gary Cooper character in Frank Capra's film, Meet John Doe, she is the perfect dupe for the sugar daddies -- as detailed by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker -- who are funding a pseudo populist rebellion.

The rally on the Mall was a late and desperate attempt to generate another kind of populism. Its target audience was the disenchanted progressives who are angry that health care did not include a public option and that American troops are still in Afghanistan. If they sit this election out, it's clear that -- while the change Obama has brought may not be the change they believed in -- the Republicans will ensure that there is no change at all.

Rich's colleague, Bob Herbert, wrote again on Saturday that what the country needs is real populism:

One in five American kids was living in poverty in 2009. Across the country, once solidly middle class families are lining up at food pantries and soup kitchens for groceries or a hot meal. In New York City, a startling indicator of the continuing economic crisis is the rise in the number of homes that don't have kitchens.

O'Donnell would seem to fit that profile. If, like John Doe in the Capra film, she would turn on her benefactors and explain what they stood to gain by the return of Republicans to power, she would -- despite all her other foolish statements -- gain some credibility. But don't count on it.

Despite the elaborate subterfuge, John Boehner let the cat out of the bag last Friday. "We are not," he said, "going to be any different than we've been." That statement should convince all sorts of disillusioned Democrats to go to the track and start placing their bets.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Spinning the Absurd

"The Harper government's spin machine," Jeffrey Simpson wrote this week, "is so pervasive and over the top, daily exposure leads to the dilemma of laughing or crying." This is particularly true when the propagandists assume their usual self congratulatory tone and trumpet claims about Canada which are clearly untrue:

As in, Canada is "a clean energy superpower," a claim demonstrably false by any conceivable international measure. As in, Canada is "a free trade leader," a claim belied, among other yardsticks, by being shut out of the Pacific trade talks and being an obstacle to a deal at the World Trade Organization, both courtesy of agricultural supply management. As in, Canada is an economic model for debt management, a claim destroyed last week by the OECD, which lumped personal, provincial and federal debt together and showed Canada to be among the most indebted of member countries.

The Harper crew is nothing if not boastful. But the party line in defence of the purchase of new F-35 fighter jets has taken spinning the absurd to a new level. The new mantra is that we need the jets to defend ourselves from a Russian attack. Thus, we were told that our old CF 18's recently convinced a Russian bomber -- a prop driven aircraft which has been flying patrols in international air space since the beginning of the Cold War -- to head back home, as it has been doing for fifty years.

The story has all the ear marks of little boys showing the other kids in the neighbourhood their new toys -- a clear case of "Mine is bigger than yours." It should be funny. But, in truth, it's offensive. In both Canada and the United States we have elected leaders who have no experience of war. This writer is among those who have not known combat. And, while I would not wish that experience on anyone, it's clear to me that those who have been caught in the middle of a war have a much different mindset than those who now give the orders to dispatch soldiers around the world.

My father's generation -- those who managed to come home from World War II -- were not boastful. They lost spouses, family members and friends to bigger and better weapons. They understood war in terms of human cost and human loss. They saw human cruelty up close. And, having been there, they did not want to return. When he came home, my father refused to keep a gun in the house, saying he had had enough of them during the war. And, he said, he owed his survival to "pure dumb luck."

He passed away last year -- having voted for the Harper government in 2006. But I cannot imagine that he would nod approvingly at the PMO's latest absurdity. He had the kind of experience which is beyond the comprehension of Mr. Harper his silly band of patriots.