Canadian Custer

On the day after the leaders of the G20 nations left Toronto -- and left city workers to clean up after the weekend's mayhem -- John Ibbitson wrote that the summit was "a signal achievement for the Prime Minister, who set those targets and lobbied hard for other nations to embrace them."

On the same day, Paul Krugman looked at the targets and concluded: "We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a Third Depression.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world -- most recently at last weekend's deeply discouraging G20 meeting -- governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

Mr. Ibbitson saw Canada leading the way, showing the rest of the world how to tighten its belt:

Now Mr. Harper has succeeded in convincing his peers that the time is right for other governments to follow Canada in shifting to deficit cutting. And once again he has an internationally certified mandate to chop government programs and search for additional revenue.

It bears repeating that Mr. Harper didn't see the Great Recession coming. He refused to read the signs. The problem now, wrote Krugman in Friday's New York Times, is that

This conventional wisdom isn't based on either evidence or careful analysis. Instead, it rests on what we might charitably call sheer speculation, and less charitably call figments of the policy elite's imagination -- specifically on what I've come to think of as the invisible bond vigilante and the confidence fairy.

Krugman then went on to define "bond vigilantes" as "investors who pull the plug on governments they perceive as unable or unwilling to pay their debts." These vultures believe that all countries -- particularly the United States -- are like Greece -- and that "(a) the bond vigilantes are about to attack America and (b) spending anything more on stimulus will set them off."

But, wrote Krugman, "what we do on stimulus over the next couple of years has almost no bearing on our ability to deal with these long range problems." If inflation is indeed a tsunami which is about to sink the world's economies, there should be some upward movement in interest rates. But, after a slight uptick three months ago, interest rates have once again headed for the basement. The facts simply don't support the fears.

Mr. Harper is a very shrewd political animal. But, when it comes to factual analysis, he is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He is planning to build a series of new prisons in anticipation of a crime wave, even though crime (according to Statistics Canada) has declined year after year. The rate of violent crime has remained stable for ten years. His government offers unconditional support for Israel, ignoring the fact that the continued construction of settlements on occupied land and the blockade of Gaza contributes to the misery there.

The truth is that Mr. Harper's certitude is based on faith not fact. And he continues to believe that because he earned a Master's degree at the University of Calgary he is an economist. George Armstrong Custer graduated from West Point; but that did not make him a general. Mr. Ibbitson believes that the Prime Minister deserves kudos for leading the charge against world deficits. Historians may well look at the Toronto Summit and conclude that it was Mr. Harper's Little Big Horn.

This blog entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Learning to Live in Poverty

This past Friday, as protesters began to gather in the streets of Toronto, Anthony DiMaggio's op ed, "Gutting Public Education: Neoliberalism and the Politics of Opportunism," appeared at truthout.org. "America's political and economic elites," DiMaggio wrote, "have declared war on working, middle class and poor Americans.

Progressive critics of Republicans and Democrats have attacked the return of 'Hooverian economics' in recent years -- understood as the do nothing approach to dealing with the economic crisis and declining state budgets.

One of the most egregious examples of Hooverian economics has been the gutting of state education budgets. The problem at the state level is undoing the good accomplished by the federal stimulus package: "The American Association of School Administrators estimates that the number of jobs lost in the next school year from budget cuts (275,000) will roughly equal those originally preserved by the stimulus (300,000)." And, on Thursday, the U.S. Senate refused to extend unemployment benefits, which would create an estimated 200,000 jobs. Many who voted against the package objected to the section of the bill which offered aid to struggling state governments. The bill failed, even though it garnered the votes of 57 of the 100 senators.

But the crisis in the funding of public education goes back much further than today -- and it goes beyond K-12 schools. Public universities have been under the gun for a long time. DiMaggio offers a particularly dismal picture of employment possibilities at American universities:

For those who may reject this picture of higher ed as melodramatic or conspiratorial, one need look no further than the deteriorating state of academia today. Thirty years ago, non tenured professors accounted for 43 percent of all teachers in higher ed; that number had increased to a startling 70 percent by 2007. Most nontenured professors I've spoken to are forced to scrounge in search of course offerings at multiple institutions. When they manage to find work, they typically are paid within the range of $15,000 to $30,000 a year, despite possessing a master's degree or a PhD.

When placed beside the salaries and bonuses of the Wall Street firms which were kept afloat with taxpayer dollars, it's clear that the times -- and the system -- are out of joint. Not only are students being short changed by teacher layoffs, young teachers -- if they find work at all -- face the future as itinerant scholars.

As world leaders gather in Toronto this weekend, they will face the problem of how and when to reduce deficits. It's a problem which will not go away. But, as Paul Krugman has argued, now is not the time to end government stimulus programs: "Penny pinching at a time like this isn't just cruel; it endangers the nation's future. And it doesn't even do much to reduce our future debt burden, because stinting on spending now threatens the economic recovery, and with it the hope of rising revenues."

The protesters on the streets of Toronto are overwhelmingly young. For them, the emerging economic order is beginning to look and smell like week old fish. It's not hard to understand why they have taken to the streets. They are learning to live in poverty, while others continue to live well beyond their means.

This blog entry has been cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Lament for a Nation, Fifty Years On

"Imagine a country," James Travers wrote in Saturday's Toronto Star, "where Parliament is padlocked twice in 13 months to frustrate the democratic will of the elected majority. That country is now this country."

Travers then offered a litany of examples illustrating how the Harper government -- which rode to power insisting that it would be accountable -- has undermined democracy in Canada:

Imagine a country where the national police commissioner skews a federal election and is never forced to explain.
Imagine a country that writes a covert manual on sabotaging Commons committees.
Imagine a country where parties that win the most federal seats are dismissed as "losers."
Imagine a country where party apparatchiks decide who in a nominally free press is allowed to ask the Prime Minister questions.

What is remarkable is that all of this has been accomplished so openly -- and, as Jeffrey Simpson wrote this week -- with so little public support. The Conservatives, except for brief spikes, have consistently been able to muster the support of between 31% to 33% of the population:

The only time conservative forces were weaker than today came in the arrival of the 1993 election of the Reform Party (including Mr. Harper) a development that shattered the political right for more than a decade. Today, therefore, the Harper Conservatives are the weakest united right wing government or party the country has seen in our life time.

How does one account for this startling and sad turn of events? Certainly a divided and inept opposition has something to do with it. Mr. Layton and Mr. Ignatieff have more difficulty cooperating with each other than they do with the Prime Minister. And Mr. Duceppe has skilfully exploited both Mr. Harper's and Mr. Ignatieff's ignorance of the way Quebec works.

But underlying everything is the public's distaste for another election. And, given the pettiness of what passes for debate these days, that is -- somewhat -- understandable. Nevertheless, if the government has been allowed to subvert parliamentary democracy in Canada, it is because its citizens have chosen to look away and go back to tilling their gardens. They may soon be surprised by what they have sown.

This blog entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

The Injustice of Being President

In a recent essay, David Shribman, the executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, writes that President Obama's troubles stem from "a moment of great achievement and a moment of great failure." The irony, Sbribman says, is that the achievement belongs to Obama and the failure does not. The President's situation reminds us that -- if one seeks justice, or at least a modicum of fairness -- the presidency is not the place to find it.

Obama's essential problem, Shribman says,

is not that he gets the policy wrong, as Mr. Johnson did, perhaps with the big spending Great Society, almost certainly in Vietnam. It is that in his first 17 months in office, Mr. Obama repeatedly gets the politics wrong. For if he showed anything in a bruising primary fight with Hillary Rodham Clinton and then a tough general election battle with John McCain, it was that Barack Obama had a political instinct as fine tuned as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy.

A prime example of Obama's blurred political instincts, writes Shribman, is his health care legislation. It is definitely what the nation needs. Unfortunately, "the biggest benefits of the plan will not be evident when voters go to the polls in midterm elections this November or when the President runs for re-election in 2012."

And now -- when he planned to sell his health care legislation to the American public -- the Gulf Oil Disaster has completely riveted the nation's attention. Obama didn't create the problem. He may not have understood how totally the second Bush administration had destroyed the country's regulatory infrastructure. But, as Gettysburg College's Shirley Anne Warshaw says, he and his administration "are paying the price for that right now."

The ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has become a metaphor for all that was wrong with public policy for the last thirty years. Just as the Wall Street meltdown robbed millions of ordinary folks of their livelihoods and their futures, the oil which is killing wildlife and depositing black sludge on the pristine beaches of the South is destroying a culture and a way of life.

And -- because Obama is president -- he owns the problem. With each day that the hole is not plugged, citizens lose faith in their president. Some are even suggesting that historians will compare Obama to the well meaning but ineffective Jimmy Carter.

The Carter analogy is misplaced. There is a long way to go before citizens cast their votes. Like Abraham Lincoln, Obama is enduring dark days. And, like Lincoln, Obama finds himself beset by forces which would do the nation eternal harm. The challenges he faces are most certainly tests of his intelligence and his political instincts. But, more than that, they are a test of his character.

This blog entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

A Voice in the Wilderness

In Saturday's Globe and Mail, Jeffrey Simpson reviews Lament for America: Decline of the Superpower, Plan for Renewal, by Earl Fry of Brigham Young University. What is interesting about the book -- aside from Fry's analysis -- is that it has been published by the University of Toronto Press -- which, Simpson notes, is "hardly a household name in U.S. publishing circles."

Apparently, no American press -- university or otherwise -- has seen its way to publishing the book. And that, writes Simpson, is tragic, "because piling fact on fact, Prof. Fry outlines his country's immense and largely self inflicted problems, starting with an increasingly polarized political system lubricated by money and barnacled by lobbyists." Fry predicts that

bogged down in future years by the twin deficits (government and current account) which have required it to borrow most of the surplus savings accumulated in the rest of the world, and saddled with a weaker and more erratic currency, the United States will be hard pressed to sustain its role as the world's superpower.

We Canadians have no right to gloat. Like the previous U.S. administration, the present Canadian government blew through a $12 billion surplus in less than two years. During the last election, Mr. Harper and company claimed that there would be no recession in Canada -- in fact, he predicted, we would run a small surplus. Twelve months later we were almost $56 billion in the hole.

The Conservatives fervently believe that, ultimately, Milton Friedman will be vindicated. And that is why Mr. Harper visited European leaders this past week, arguing against a bank tax -- which the U.S., Britain and France advocate. He argues that, because Canadian banks are in better shape than most, they need no such tax to curb their speculative urges.

What he neglects to mention, of course, is that it was a previous Liberal government which left him with a surplus and a sound banking system. He also neglects to mention that his government has injected $125 billion into The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation -- the equivalent of the FHA -- thus offering Canadian banks the assurance that they will not be stuck with toxic housing assets.

Professor Fry knows that the way out of this mess is to both raise taxes and to cut spending. Ironically, Canadians have been here before -- in the early nineties. But any talk of raising taxes -- in both the U.S. and Canada -- is, at present, considered heresy. The financial crisis and the environmental crisis remind us that our so called "best and brightest" have been neither. And Simpson reminds us that those who are both best and bright have a hard time finding an audience.

A Ghost from the Past

Claiming that it was "a good day for a hanging" Jean Chretien returned to Parliament Hill last week. He proclaimed public service "a very noble life;" and, like most former politicians, he enjoyed being the centre of attention.

Of course, some in the audience were drawing lessons from his time as prime minister. Stephen Harper -- in a remark that revealed more about himself than it did about Chretien -- said, "He knew instinctively what it took to win." Perhaps the lesson Harper took from Chretien also explains why the present prime minister didn't bother to attend the ceremony in the Centre Block two years ago, when they hung Joe Clark's portrait next to Chretien's.

But the man who should really be pondering Chretien's success is Michael Ignatieff. To his credit, Ignatieff is not the dictator Chretien was. But, as Lawrence Martin wrote in The Globe and Mail last week, anyone trying to mimic "the old lion's tough ways" is taking the wrong lesson. "He was at his best," Martin wrote, "when he was the little guy from Shawinigan, when he stood his ground, at one with the values of everyday people and the country."

It was when Chretien insisted that the Clarity Bill would be passed; when he refused to join George Bush's "coalition of the willing;" and when -- with Paul Martin's help -- he destroyed the "debt wall" which Brian Mulroney and his predecessors had bequeathed to him, that Chretien earned his place in Canadian history. He could mangle both official languages; and (when the pen he gave Queen Elizabeth refused to cooperate) he could mutter "merde" -- a remark which seems to have endeared him to the monarch.

Micheal Ignatieff would do none of these things. But neither will he stand his ground. When he told Mr. Harper his time was up, he then decided to give the prime minister more time. After he said that Quebec's new health care user fee was acceptable, he backtracked and said that it could not stand. And, after saying that the Auditor General should not be allowed to scrutinize MP's expenses, he now says he will accept Ms. Fraser's oversight.

He should have accepted that oversight in the first place. But that is not the point. When Mr. Ignatieff takes a stand, Canadians have come to expect that -- like this country's climate -- it can change quickly and radically. Ignatieff's vacillation is the reason Liberal poll numbers are now in the 25% range.

Ignatieff is a very intelligent and a very articulate man -- in both English and French. But what he lacks is Chretien's political experience. When Chretien became prime minister, he had toiled in Ottawa for nearly thirty years. He had apprenticed under Pierre Trudeau and Mitchell Sharp; and he had served as the Minister of National Revenue, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the President of the Treasury Board, the Minister of Industry Trade and Commerce, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Energy Mines and Resources, the Minister of External Affairs, and Deputy Prime Minister. In short, he knew how Ottawa worked.

Michael Ignatieff has had an illustrious career. And he has apprenticed under Issiah Berlin. But he lacks Chretien's experience and Chretien's common touch. Those deficits are becoming more -- not less -- apparent.

The Triumph of Cynicism

When historians tell the story of the Harper government, they will surely dwell on the fact that this prime minister was Cynicism personified. That cynicism was apparent again last week, when Mr. Harper had a supposedly freewheeling discussion with Canada's youth. When the event was over, one of the participants -- Raimey Gallant, a student at Winnipeg's Red River College -- revealed that questions had to be submitted to the Prime Minister's Office before the exchange took place.

Ms. Gallant had asked the Prime Minister,

In light of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the reluctance of the companies involved to accept responsibility, what new controls for oil drillers will the Canadian government put in place to reduce the risk of oil spills in Canadian waters and ensure the continuance of marine ecosystems and the sustainability of our fisheries?

Senator Mike Duffy -- who used to call himself a journalist before Mr. Harper appointed him to the Senate -- never asked the question. And two Quebec students, who wished to remain anonymous, insisted that, while Duffy posed the questions they had submitted, the questions themselves had been rewritten.

James Travers, a much better journalist that Duffy, noted in The Toronto Star that "keeping facts from ruining a slick story has been standard operating procedure in the four years since the Conservatives came to power promising a new era of truth and transparency. But even measured against that status quo, Harper's screening of questions from 120 university co-eds arches the eyebrows."

Mr. Harper insisted during the encounter that any concerns which were not related to the economy were, in his words, "a sideshow." Ms. Gallant was amazed at the Prime Minister's audacity. "The whole sideshow thing, I think that insulted me the most," she said. "I was really upset by that. I find it extremely insulting because we are Canadians, too, and these issues are important to us. If our Prime Minister thinks they are sideshows -- I mean this isn't a government of one."

Ah, but Ms. Gallant has hit the nail on the head. After all, this is the Prime Minister who -- when faced with a non confidence vote in the House -- and who -- when questioned about possible Canadian complicity in the torture of Afghan prisoners -- simply prorogued Parliament. Mr. Harper stands for two things: the acquisition and the exercise of power. All the rest is a sideshow.

The Libertarian Mob

In a recent article in The New York Review of Books, Mark Lilla puts the Tea Party Movement in historical context. It is, he writes, the natural outgrowth of both the Counter Cultural Revolution of the 1960's and the Reagan Revolution of the 1980's. On the surface, the latter seems to be a reaction to the former. But, in reality, both are cut from the same piece of cloth:

A new form of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is estranged, aimless and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that.

Like Huck Finn, they wish to live on a raft and have little contact with the civilization on the shore -- which, they see as corrupt, while they are noble savages. The problem, of course, is that occasionally one has to go ashore for supplies. And occasionally -- like the two frauds with whom Huck and Jim share that raft -- civilization invades your living space.

From their imaginary raft, Lilla writes, the Partiers have conjured up a vision in which

. . . educated elites -- politicians, bureaucrats, reporters, but also doctors, scientists, even schoolteachers -- are controlling our lives. And they want them to stop. They say they are tired of being told what counts as news or what they should think about global warming; tired of being told what their children should be taught, how much of their paychecks they get to keep, whether to insure themselves, which medicines they can have, where they can build their homes, which guns they can buy, when they have to wear seat belts and helmets, whether they can talk on the phone while driving, which foods they can eat, how much soda they can drink . . . the list is long.

There is something appealing about their rebellion. And so, over the years, citizens in both the United States and Canada have voted for governments which have advocated deregulation -- or, in the words of the late Pierre Elliot Trudeau, have "no place in the bedrooms of the nation." And they have approved, as governments dismantled the mechanisms which previous generations constructed to deal with disasters.

For some problems require a communitarian response -- because they are too big to be solved by individuals. The past decade has had more than its share of such problems. Hurricane Katrina, the Financial Meltdown of 2008, and the present catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico are beyond individual solution. Nonetheless, a significant number of people refuse to recognize that fact. And, when president Obama proposes a solution for a particularly big problem -- the lack of medical care for 40 million Americans -- they rise in anger, convinced that the president is a new King George, who must be deposed.

They call themselves "conservatives." But they are the diametrical opposites of Edmund Burke. Rather than preserving social institutions they are hell bent on tearing them down. Rather than standing against the mob, they are the mob -- in Lilla's phrase, "the libertarian mob." And, as such, they represent a challenge to both political parties. As a mob, they are a clear and present danger. But their anger cannot be denied. The challenge for political leaders is to direct that anger rather than -- like the Jacobins of the French Revolution -- to follow it.

For Obama, they are a conundrum. Led by Glenn Beck -- who looks at Obama and sees Hitler; and Rush Limbaugh -- who looks at the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and sees an administration conspiracy; and Pat Buchanan -- who looks at Obama's choice to replace John Paul Stevens and sees "too many Jews" -- they are Ignorance with a big megaphone.

But the solution is not a bigger megaphone. The solution will require all the rhetorical skills Obama possesses -- and the ability to think beyond the anger of today.

The Wages of Righteousness

Last week, on Fox News, Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin expounded on their conviction that "America is a Christian nation." Palin -- who Steve Benen of Washington Monthly called "the former half term governor" -- claimed that those who wrote the Constitution were "quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the 10 commandments. It's pretty simple."

Her formulation is, indeed, pretty simple. The problem is that it is simply not true. Consider what three of the founding fathers -- all of whom eventually became president -- wrote about Christianity:

Thomas Jefferson: "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. The greatest enemies of Jesus are the doctrines and creeds of the church."

James Madison: During almost fifteen centuries, the legal establishment known as Christianity has been on trial and what have been the fruits, more or less, in all places? These are the fruits: pride, indolence, ignorance and arrogance in the clergy. Ignorance and arrogance and servility in the laity, and in both clergy and laity superstition, bigotry and persecution."

John Adams: Nowhere in the gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find Christianity encumbered with.

None of these men raised any objection to the teachings of Christ. But experience had led them to distrust his followers. And, while they insisted that there should be no state church -- no theocracy in the United States -- they specifically made room for freedom of religion. They were emphatic, however, in their belief that religious freedom could only exist as long as the nation's affairs were free from the entrenchment of any religion.

Many on the right believe that what the United States needs is a dose of "that old time religion." It is a disposition which many in the Harper government share. It rears its head most noticeably in the government's tough on crime agenda. As Jeffrey Simpson wrote last week in The Globe and Mail, ". . . this is also a government that has scorned the expert advice of every criminologist, judge and lawyers group in Canada, even as they say how ineffective, useless and even dangerously counterproductive are most of the Conservatives' 'tough on crime' proposals." For, like the Palinites, the Harperites see themselves as the righteous. And righteousness, they believe, is fact-free -- because it is self evident.

We are free to disagree. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, we are all entitled to our own opinion; but we are not entitled to our own facts. What is most annoying with modern Conservatism is its insistence that facts can and should be ignored. How else can one explain the success of the "former half term governor," or a Canadian prime minister who claims to be an economist?

A Question of Character

The day after Peter Milliken delivered his historic ruling on the Afghan prisoner file, the Prime Minister rose in the House and declared, "The government cannot break the law, it cannot order public servants to break the law, nor can it do anything that would necessarily jeopardize the safety of Canadian troops."

That comment led Don Martin, in The National Post, to opine:

Silly people. Have they learned nothing about this prime minister in the last four years? Mr. Harper allowing Bloc Quebecois MPs access to secrets deemed a threat to Canadian security? Never happen. And even if rival MPs are granted seek and find powers, any smoking gun detainee documents would be declared a matter of national security and never see the light of parliamentary day.

And Andrew Coyne, in Macleans, was having none of the prime minister's argument. Mr. Harper, he wrote, was trying to create "total strategic confusion."

. . . the whole argument's bogus. No one is asking the prime minister to break the law. The conflict of which he complains exists only in his head. This was a key point of the speaker's ruling: a law may impose a general prohibition on the release of certain documents, but unless it expressly states that the ban applies to Parliament, it doesn't. The presumption, that is, is in favour of parliamentary privilege.

When commentators on the right see through the prime minister's posturing, it is obvious that something is seriously amiss. Mr. Coyne has been skeptical of Mr. Harper's "conservatism" for some time. The late Dalton Camp saw through the ruse early. The prime minister is a libertarian, not a conservative; and his path to power has been -- and is -- a carefully managed bait and switch campaign.

It may be that Mr. Harper will conclude, with Falstaff, that "discretion is the better part of valour." It may turn out that there is no -- as Mr. Martin suggested -- "stink bomb somewhere in the paper mountain or sitting at the bottom of a shipping container en route from Afghanistan." If there is no damning evidence in the files, then Mr. Harper's contempt for his opponents has assumed pathological proportions. If there is a stink bomb in those files, we are all besmirched. In either case, the man should be removed in office.

It seems pretty clear that, in the next election, Mr. Harper will run as a competent and patriotic manager. It is now up to the opposition to reframe the debate. It comes down to a straightforward question: Is the prime minister a democrat? Or is he the man who would be king? It's all about character.

Fraud By Any Other Name

In a recent speech, Noam Chomsky told his audience, "The level of anger and fear in the country (the United States) is like nothing I can recall in my lifetime [and] unfortunately, these attitudes are understandable."

For over 30 years, real incomes for the majority of the population have stagnated or declined, social indicators have steadily deteriorated since the mid 1970's after closely tracking growth in earlier years, work hours and insecurity have increased along with debt. Wealth has accumulated but into very few pockets, leading to probably record inequality. These are, in large part, consequences of the financialization of the economy since the 1970's and the corresponding hollowing out of domestic production.

Thus, when the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman Sachs with fraud last week, a collective cry of indignation was heard around the world. The SEC charges offered a vivid illustration of what Chomsky was talking about -- and the bluest chip on Wall Street became the target of international anger. It will be interesting to see if Goldman -- which has very deep pockets -- fights to the bitter end, or settles.

But there is another kind of anger stalking the land and its institutions. It is more troubling than the anger directed at Goldman. It found expression last week in a fund raising video produced by the Republican Governors Association. Claiming the mantle of Guy Fawkes, the governors encouraged their viewers to "Remember November" and the day Fawkes tried to blow up the British Houses of Parliament:



This, from the party which claimed that the president's health care bill would institute "death panels;" and which also claimed that the proposed financial reform bill was just a guarantee of more bailouts -- forgetting to mention that the massive bailout of The Street was the work of one of their own presidents -- a bailout they voted for. Interestingly, after claiming solid 41 vote opposition to the bill, the Republicans turned on a dime, saying they could support the legislation if it were tweaked a bit. As Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times, after discovering "a Pew poll that even in a divided America 61% favor financial regulatory reform, the unity pledge in McConnell's pocket was now worth as much as a mortgage backed security."

Fraud, simply defined, is misrepresenting what you are selling. It is a bald faced lie. The Republicans have become very good at selling lies. Or, more precisely, they have become masters of the simplistic solution. For, as H.L. Mencken wrote, "For every complex, human problem, there's a neat simple solution; it's just that it's wrong." An example of one such solution is the one Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, Sue Lowden, is suggesting (seriously) -- that the way to pay for health care is through a barter system.

The Republicans have anger on their side. They just can't find any wisdom -- and they have very few ideas -- to go with it. And, at the end of last week, the Republican governor of Arizona signed a law which allows police to stop someone on the street -- in this case, Latinos -- and demand that they present papers showing that they are legal residents of that state.

Chomsky and his relatives -- immigrant Jews -- recognize the tactic all too well. It is the equivalent of having to wear the Star of David. Those who support the new law call themselves patriots. That is the biggest fraud of all.

A Tale of Two Sources

There was sound and fury in Ottawa last week, as the opposition parties and the press tried to uncover the sagas of Helena Guergis and Afghan prisoners of war. The sagas were based on the testimony of two very different sources. The charges against Guergis came from a private investigator named Derrick Snowdy, who is -- The Globe and Mail reported -- "a flamboyant character who [drives] a Porche 911 Turbo" and is $13 million in debt. The charges of prisoner abuse came (again) from Richard Colvin, a career Canadian diplomat, who was posted to Afghanistan and is now stationed at the Canadian Embassy in Washington.


When Snowdy brought his information to Arthur Hamilton, a Toronto lawyer and member of the Conservative Party, it went immediately up the chain of command, directly to the prime minister, who characterized the information as "serious and credible."



Colvin, on the other hand, experienced repeated road blocks when trying to reach those at the top of the government pyramid -- even though soldiers in the field were complaining that, as Provost Marshall Captain Steve Moore wrote on February 27, 2008, "There is a disturbing tendency to keep information within and to resist MP [Military Police] advice and oversight."

On the one hand, there was immediate action on information which some might have questioned as less than reliable. On the other, there were repeated attempts -- from those at the top -- to remain blissfully ignorant, even though the source in the past had been deemed unimpeachable.

If there is a common thread that ties these starkly different stories together, it is the government's attempt to sit on the information surrounding each case. The information which Snowdy provided the prime minister was ferreted out by the press. The unredacted files on the transfer of Afghan prisoners remain under lock and key -- even though Alain Prefontaine, the government lawyer appearing before the Military Police Complaints Commission, admitted having seen the files, a privilege the commission itself has been denied.

How did we come to such an impasse? Murray Dobbins wrote this week that "it could not have happened except for the broader context of a corrupted democracy:

For twenty years we have witnessed the inexorable transformation of government, from one that really did base itself on moral imperatives, democratic principles and political integrity (for the most part) to the corporate model of governance. We are not a country anymore, we are an economy; we are not citizens, we are clients; public services are not the things we do together for each other, they are products (the easier to privatize them.)

The goal of economic man is self preservation. Ms. Geurgis, the government and the prime minister share the same goal. Any attempt to get at the truth behind both stories is a threat to self preservation. Mr. Snowdy is essential to Mr. Harper's political survival. Mr. Colvin is a threat to his survival. It should come as no surprise that both men have been treated so differently.

Man the Barricades

Last week, Helena Guergis finally fell from her perch. It was not a surprise. As Adam Radwanski suggested in The Globe and Mail, her downfall did not mark a turning point in Canadian history. Her story and her husband's story are not new; in fact, they are as old as the Book of Genesis. We have been treated to a tale of two young and ambitious people who began to believe their own press releases -- or, in Guergis' case, the letters to the editor which were written by her own staff.

And, beyond the obvious hypocrisy of a party which is obsessed with bringing in mandatory sentences -- except for fellow public servants -- the saga represents another object lesson in how this Prime Minister handles problems. Having told a press conference that "serious allegations" had been brought against Guergis, Mr. Harper then announced that he had received Guergis' resignation, had called in the RCMP and the Ethics Commissioner to investigate, and had thrown Geurgis out of the Conservative caucus.

Tossing elected representatives from the caucus is nothing new for Harper. He did the same thing to Garth Turner and Bill Casey. And, when embarrassing information emerged about Brian Mulroney, he ordered his minions to treat Mulroney as persona non-grata. Mr. Harper frequently banishes -- or tries to banish -- those he deems toxic to the brand.

But, once again, he has tried to pull down the Cone of Silence. When asked what the allegations against Guergis were, he said, "Under the circumstances I will not comment on them further." It was another example of a well established pattern. Mr. Harper has just returned from his second prorogation of parliament in thirteen months -- the first time when he faced a vote of non-confidence in the House, the second time when the committee investigating Afghan prisoner abuse demanded uncensored documents about how those prisoners were handled.

He tried to dump thousands of redacted documents at the committee's doorstep, hoping to create a diversion. But information keeps leaking out -- most recently in Sunday's Globe, which recounts the story of Canadian military involvement with Kandahar's infamous Brigade 888. When Guergis' husband -- defeated MP Rahim Jaffer -- walked away from a drunk driving and cocaine possession charge with a $500 fine, Kevin Donovan of The Toronto Star, began digging into Jaffer's relationships with people who have been charged with fraud, as well as the former MP's claims to have had access to the Prime Minister's Office.

There is probably no substance to Jaffer's assertions that the levers of power were at his finger tips. Like Duddy Kravitz, he seems to have been perpetually pitching, engaged in a never ending effort to promote himself and to rise in the world. It would appear that Guergis herself has a similar history. They both have encountered similar fates.

But the real issue is the character of the Prime Minister. His is obsessed with control -- and control of information is his first line of defense. He has a hard time dealing with public scrutiny; and he seeks to limit it at every turn. He has no problem when it comes to appearing at public events, like the Olympics, or the remembrance ceremony to mark the death of Canada's last veteran of World War I. But he draws the line when the opposition parties or the press seek information. Like the Pope, he has concluded that all they wish to do is to spread "petty gossip."

But the information keeps seeping through the dam Mr. Harper has constructed. The second Bush administration, seeking allies when it ginned up the War in Iraq, co-opted large segments of the American press. This prime minister has always been suspicious of the Canadian press; and, from the very beginning, he declared that they -- people like Garth Turner -- were the enemy. And, in the end, it will be those "ink stained wretches" who will bring him down.

The Fierce Urgency of Now

Yesterday, the forty-second anniversary of Martin Luther King's death, various commentators focused on one of his lesser known speeches. That speech was delivered at the Riverside Church in New York City; and it made him a pariah among the movers and shakers of his time. In the speech, King voiced his opposition to the War in Vietnam. His reasons were many. But, taken together, they added up to the fact that the war was an affront to justice. Admitting that truth, however, was not easy. "Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth," King said,

men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

The war was also an affront to King's faith in non-violence. But, more than that, it was "devastating the hopes of the poor at home" by transferring the resources that were originally targeted for the "war on poverty" to the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Citing a recently released report, "State of the Dream 2010: Drained," from the group United for a Fair Economy, Bill Moyers on Friday drew his viewers' attention to this sentence: "The Great Recession has pulled the plug on communities of color, draining jobs and homes at alarming rates while exacerbating persistent inequalities of wealth and income." Despite the election of Barack Obama, not much has changed for the people whose concerns King championed. "We are at a perilous moment," Moyers said:

The individualist, greed driven free market ideology that both our major parties have pursued is at odds with what most Americans really care about. Popular support for either party has struck bottom, as more and more agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics has corrupted our system, and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help because the free market has failed to generate shared prosperity -- its famous unseen hand has become a closed fist.

A year to the day after King delivered his Riverside speech, he was assassinated. He knew that anger was brewing in the ghettos of the country. It erupted after that rifle bullet ended his life. That was why he warned his audience that "tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now." That was also why Americans had to choose wisely. "The choice is ours," he said, "and, though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment in history."

The Vietnam War has come and gone; and it is now generally acknowledged to have been a colossal mistake. Like the financial meltdown, from which we are now emerging, it was the consequence of monumental arrogance and stupidity. But the plight of the poor and the disenfranchised remains the same -- in the United States and around the world. Once again we live at a crucial moment in history. King was a man for all seasons. Forty-two years after his death, he still asks us to choose justice.

In the Kingdom of the Unhinged

From North of the 49th Parallel, watching the opposition to President Obama's health care legislation has been like watching a play from the Theatre of the Absurd. Those of us who have lived with a more radical version of health care -- single payer -- know that medicare does not put insurance companies out of business; and there are no "death panels."


But as congressmen and women entered the Capitol last Sunday to cast their votes, it was particularly disturbing to hear the slurs which were directed at some of them. And last week, when the bill was reconciled and signed into law by the president, the rhetoric turned even uglier. As rocks were thrown at windows, and the bombastic Rush Limbaugh and the less than brilliant Sarah Palin announced that it was time to get rid of "these bastards," others were suggesting that every Democrat who voted for health care was about to face "Armageddon."


A Baptist minister in Orange County asked his flock to pray for the deaths of the apostates. Choosing Psalm 109 as his text -- "May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow" -- the Rev. Wiley Drake assured his followers that justice would flow down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. It did, indeed, appear that a significant portion of the population -- and all the elected representatives of the Republican Party -- had lost their minds.


It was Frank Rich, in yesterday's New York Times who -- as he does so often -- helped make sense of the nonsensical. "To find a prototype to the overheated reaction to the health care bill," he wrote, "you would have to look a year before Medicare to the Civil Rights Act of 1964."  That bill "signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance."


The election of Barack Obama was a similar moment. It served as a sign that American politics had caught up with the rest of the world. No longer were white men in charge. When Tea Partiers shout, "Take our country back!"  they are -- like William F. Buckley -- standing "athwart history yelling STOP." That was Buckley's prime directive; and it led him to support racial segregation -- a position he later admitted was wrong. Those who were spitting on black legislators last weekend have never undergone Buckley's epiphany. But, Rich pointed out, demographics are against them:

The week before the health care vote, the Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non Hispanic white births will be in a minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven't had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three since 1935.

It's worth remembering that the first Republican president signed the Emancipation Proclamation, established the land grant colleges and signed the Homestead Act --  all  of which looked forward to the future and the 20th Century. 


The March Backward began when Richard Nixon conceived his Southern Strategy -- which was a cynical attempt to capitalize on the anger white southerners felt after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. It continued when Ronald Reagan began his campaign for the presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi -- where three Civil Rights workers were killed shortly before the act became law. From then on, Republicans began talking in code. Anyone who knew anything about the South understood the code.


The remnants of the Republican Party are those unhinged voters who Nixon courted -- and they have stopped talking in code. The United States has moved on. But a significant number of people, trapped inside their own paranoia, refuse to recognize that fact.

The Clock Is Ticking

Now that the opposition parties have rejected the Prime Minister's proposal to let former Justice Frank Iacobucci recommend which documents in the Afghan prisoner file should be made public, the ball is in the Prime Minister's court. The man has a talent for avoiding the consequences of his actions. But, in this case, he's in a box. It appears that he has three options. 

The first is to continue to stonewall.The problem with this strategy is that there are people outside the government, such as Amir Attaran, who know what is in the file. If Mr. Harper continues to ignore the House's order to see the uncensored documents, they will be leaked. Mr. Harper is smart enough to know this. 


That leaves the prime minister with two other options: he can either broaden Mr. Iacobucci's mandate and ask him to conduct a public inquiry; or he can call an election and argue that it is time to put the opposition in its place.


Having seen -- and having taken advantage of -- the political damage which the Gomery inquiry did to Paul Martin's government, Mr. Harper might reject this option. On the other hand, a public inquiry would buy the government time -- as the recent padlocking of Parliament was meant to do; and, if the  public has a short attention span, Mr. Harper might be able to change the channel and send the whole issue down the memory hole. 

However, if Mr. Iacobucci does his job, the revelations from the inquiry would force some departures; and it could eventually lead to the government's defeat in the next election.

Which leads to Mr. Harper's third option -- to call an election.   The advantage of an election is that it might bury the issue. The Conservatives could attempt to turn the discussion to the economy and the "government's action plan." Moreover, an  improving economy might shift public opinion in the government's favour. But elections -- like wars -- seldom go as planned. And the prisoner abuse scandal might sink the Harperites.


Which option will the prime minister choose?  The best option for all parties would be a public inquiry. It is a time honoured parliamentary tradition. But Mr. Harper has already shown that he has little respect for parliamentary traditions. And he clearly takes pleasure in sticking it to his opponents. At present, polls suggest that none of the parties would win a majority. But, if he could talk himself into it, Harper might roll the dice. 

If -- when all was said and done -- the Conservatives found themselves in opposition, Harper would probably return in a sulk to Alberta. If the government again won a minority , the knives would come out. So he might make one last attempt to seize the brass ring. If he succeeds, we are all in deep trouble.


Whichever option the prime minister chooses, the clock is ticking. We are headed for a showdown.

Thirteen Days

Last week, my wife picked up a DVD with this title. Apparently, the film bombed at the box office. She found it in a bin at one of our local stores -- the equivalent of the remainder shelf at your local bookstore.

As I watched the film this weekend, I was taken back to my days  as an elementary school student, when I ducked under my desk in the absurd hope that, in the event of a nuclear attack, I would be spared. And I remembered the day when, as a fledgling high school student, I left for school -- not knowing if I would make it home that night. 


It was October 24, 1962. The United States Navy had built a blockade around Cuba. The whole world knew we were on the edge of Armageddon. I remember being in class when the intercom came on with a live radio report that the Russian freighters had turned back. I got on the bus and returned to my parents' home in Montreal.

I did not understand at the time that the crisis would go on for several more days. And I did not read until years later that it ended with the United States removing missiles from Turkey, while Russia removed its missiles from Cuba. 

The film documented the meetings and heated discussions between President Kennedy and his advisors, as they struggled to arrive at a solution to the crisis. At one point, Kennedy told some of them that he had recently read Barbara Tuchman's book, The Guns of August, a history of the events leading up to World War I.  

I was reminded of Tuchman's definition of  wooden-headedness, which she offered in a subsequent book,  The March of Folly. Wooden-headedness, wrote Tuchman, "consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing onself to be deflected by the facts."

Most of Kennedy's advisors, including the joint chiefs and former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, favoured an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy and his brother Robert were not convinced that invasion was the best course of action. But they lived in the shadow of their father, who had advocated appeasing Hitler. They risked looking weak. 

Most members of the Kennedy administration, however, had served as front line soldiers and officers during World War II; and they were aware by experience, if not by acquaintance, of what Karl von Clausewitz had written in On War: that war is "politics by other means;" and, that  it "increases the uncertainty of every circumstance and deranges the course of events."

The proof of war's unpredictability occurred off Cuba, when a Russian submarine came between the freighters which were carrying  the disputed armaments and the American armada. When the Russian ships refused to change course, Kennedy gave the order to blow the submarine out of the water. Suddenly, however, the freighters slowed down. Kennedy quickly countermanded his order and -- luckily for all of us -- the communication was received in time. Kennedy understood just how close the world had come to "mutually assured destruction;" and, unencumbered by wooden-headedness, he began to work on a nuclear test ban treaty.


Not everything worked out so positively in the Kennedy administration. There was, of course, the matter of Vietnam -- although recently released documents suggest that, before he was assassinated, the president had decided to remove all American troops from Vietnam by 1964. We will never know what would have happened.


But, as I watched the film, I could not help but think of the second Bush administration and the run up to the invasion of Iraq. The caution the Kennedys displayed was nowhere in evidence. Instead, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney served as prime examples of wooden-headedness. It would appear that Bush's and Cheney's lack of battlefield experience -- which both men worked very hard to avoid -- had something to do with the "preconceived fixed notions" with which they faced the world after September 11th.


Beyond that, the Cuban missile crisis proved that history is not an uncontrollable series of events. Character -- and intelligence -- make a difference. And, despite his personal flaws -- flaws which George W. Bush evidently does not possess -- the world can be grateful that Joseph P Kennedy's son was in office in 1962, instead of George H.W. Bush's son.

The American Battle for Health Care

Barbara O'Brien -- who blogs at Mahablog, and who occasionally writes for Crooks and Liars and Alternet -- reflects the frustration many Americans feel as they watch President Obama attempt to steer a health care bill through Congress. 

We tend to forget that Tommy Douglas faced many of the same frustrations and distortions in his battle to bring public health care to Saskatchewan. It was his drive and his courage which made Medicare a reality for all Canadians. Like Senator Kennedy, Douglas left a legacy which has long outlived him.

The benefits of public health care are myriad. In this guest post, Ms. O'Brien touches on just a few:


Would Health Care Reform Help You?

Many obstacles and stumbling blocks remain in the way of health care reform. The House and Senate bills will have to be merged, and then the House and Senate both will vote on the final bill. We don’t yet know what will be in the final bill, or if the final bill will be passed into law. Passage will be especially difficult in the Senate, where it will need 60 votes to pass. It is still possible that after all this angst, just one grandstanding senator could kill the whole thing.

But just for fun, let’s look at what conventional wisdom says will be in the final bill and see if there is anything in it that will be an immediate benefit to people with mesothelioma and other asbestos-related disease.

It is likely that the final bill will provide additional funding for state high-risk insurance pools. Currently more than 30 states run such pools, which are nonprofit, state-sponsored health insurance plans for people who can’t buy insurance because of pre-existing conditions. The biggest problem with such pools is that, often, the insurance they offer is too expensive for many who might need it. Both the Senate and House bills provide $5 billion in subsidies for state high-risk pools to make the insurance more affordable.

Under the Senate bill, beginning in 2014, private companies would no longer be able to deny coverage to adults with pre-existing conditions, nor could they charge higher premiums for people with pre-existing conditions. Until then, the state high-risk pools could provide some help.

Closing the Medicare Part D coverage gap — also called the “doughnut hole” — is another potential provision that could help some patients with asbestos-related disease. The “doughnut hole” is the gap between the coverage for yearly out-of-pocket expenses provided by Medicare Part D and Medicare’s “catastrophic coverage” threshold.

For example, in 2009 Medicare Part D paid at least 75 percent of what patients paid for prescription drugs up to $2,700. After that, patients must pay for all of their prescription medications until what they have paid exceeds $6,154. At that point, the catastrophic coverage takes over, and Medicare pays for all but 5 percent of the patient’s drug bills. The final health care reform bill probably will provide for paying at least 50 percent of out-of-pocket costs in the doughnut hole.

You may have heard the bills include budget cuts to the Medicare program, and this has been a big concern to many people. Proponents of the bill insist that savings can be found to pay for the cuts, and that people who depend on Medicare won’t face reduced services. But this is a complex issue that I want to address in a later post.

The long-term provisions probably will include many other provisions that would benefit patients with asbestos-related disease, including increased funding for medical research. Although there are many complaints about the bill coming from all parts of the political spectrum, on the whole it would be a huge benefit to many people.
— Barbara O’Brien
March 9, 2010

A Justification for Selfishness

The Conservatives' proposed budget -- which was the highlight of last week's return of Parliament  -- was a remarkable document, for several reasons. But it was most remarkable for its optimistic projections of economic growth. 

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty claimed that the economists he consulted assured him that Canada would experience "moderate growth" for the next five years. But one should remember that, the last time he consulted economists, none of them (according to Mr Flaherty) forecast the recession -- which arrived, full blown, shortly after the Conservatives were elected.





As the above clip demonstrates, Mr. Flaherty has a talent for denial -- as does his boss, the Prime Minister. After all, it was Mr. Harper who claimed during the election campaign that "The country will not go into recession next year and will lead the G7 countries." And it was Mr. Flaherty who promised that "We will not run a deficit." Yet, this week, the Finance Minister boldly asserted that -- while the country is now in hock to the tune of $55.9 billion -- it is not facing a structural deficit, despite what Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page claims; and, therefore, there is no need to raise taxes.


Except the budget does raise taxes -- by increasing Employment Insurance premiums an additional fifteen cents on every $100 of insurable earnings. This tax increase is broad based. It hits everyone who brings home a pay cheque. But, as he raised taxes on every working Canadian, Mr. Flaherty reduced taxes on corporations yet again. When the Conservatives came to power, the corporate tax rate was 22.12%; they reduced it to 19.5% two years ago, then to 18% last year. The government plans to further reduce the rate to 15% by 2012. "We are staying the course," Mr. Flaherty bragged,  "to having the lowest corporate income tax rate in the G7 (group of nations) by 2012."


We are just beginning to emerge from the wreckage of the economic policies of the last thirty years. Those policies brought us to the edge of another Great Depression; and this government continues to believe that more of the same is the way to prosperity. Girded with that certitude, the Finance Minister boarded a government jet and flew off to southwestern Ontario to sell his plan. The cost of the flight was just under $9000. It would have cost just over $800 to fly commercially; but we were told that Mr. Flaherty's schedule required that he fly on government aircraft.


The latest budget lays bare this government's priorities. And it proves that John Kenneth Galbraith was right when he wrote, "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."

When "Freedom" Means "Privilege"

In Saturday's Toronto Star, Tom Walkom noted that, over the last fifteen years in this country, we have seen reverse class resentment. "Class resentment used to be the preserve of the left," he wrote. "Indeed, the entire post welfare state was designed to better the conditions of the poor, thereby ensuring that these class resentments didn't get out of hand."


But things have changed. These days "class resentments have been turned on their head. The focus of anger is not the silk hatted capitalist, but his unionized workers, with their job protection guarantees, their pension plans and their good wages."


The Harper government has signaled that its unionized work force is now under the gun. Their argument is that, if private sector benefits have been pared back because of the financial meltdown, then it is only fair that public employees share the same pain as their brothers and sisters on the shop floor. On the surface, it sounds like a matter of simple justice.


But, as Walkom points out, that argument ignores the causes of the recession and the damage neoclassical economics has done to those folks on the shop floor. For thirty years, the ideologues of the right have tried to dismantle the progressive income tax system. They have  argued, as has our prime minister, that there is no such thing as a good tax; and that,  if taxes are a necessary evil, then the best tax is a simple tax -- a flat tax -- on both the rich and the poor. And in their search for tax simplicity, they have maintained that corporate taxes are redundant, because corporations are owned by people; and, therefore, people who own corporate shares are taxed twice -- on income and dividends.


They ignore the fact that some people start life with more advantages than others -- claiming that just because some are born with silver spoons in their mouths, there is no reason why they should  pay more than anyone else. "Freedom," they say, means freedom from progressive taxes. Outcomes might be unequal; but that is the result of honest toil, not the result of privilege. And, therefore, it is necessary to demonize those on welfare who, although they were not born to privilege, have the audacity to demand privileged outcomes. That was Mike Harris' argument when he came to power in 1995.


And when he appointed John Snobelen -- a high school dropout -- as Ontario's Minister of Education, Harris argued that the management expertise Snobelen had acquired at the helm of his own waste management company made him the ideal candidate for the job. He neglected to mention that Snobelen had inherited the company from his father. Applying the principles of waste management to education, Snobelen created a mess which he left to others to clean up.


George W. Bush -- a man who former Texas governor Ann Richards liked to say was "born with a silver foot in his mouth" -- followed the same philosophy as the Harris government; and he left catastrophe in his wake -- whether it was the aftermath of Katrina or the aftermath of the Wall Street Meltdown.


Now, in the upcoming budget, the Harper government -- which contains three charter members of the Harris government --  Minister of Finance Jim Flahlerty,  Minister of Industry Tony Clement and Minister of Transportation John Baird -- plans to follow the same playbook. "For the Harper Conservatives," Walkom wrote:

all this is useful. First, it removes the focus from the country's real pension problems: Most Canadians don't have workplace pensions; those who do have found their plans savaged by this recession. British Columbia and Alberta have suggested ways of dealing with this, as have the federal New Democrats and the Liberals. The Harper government has done nothing. Second, and more important, an attack on public sector pensions refocuses class resentment along lines more amenable to the Conservative government.

As was the case with prorogation, this is an attempt to create a diversion. The best way to do nothing -- and to get away with it -- is to have the public look away. And the effect of doing nothing is to further entrench the privileges of the wealthy. If someone from that class, like TD president Ed Clark, suggests that people like him should pay more taxes, the Harperites immediately demonize him as an enemy of the little man. Clark, they say, wants to raise the taxes of ordinary folks. However, even people like Michael Bliss -- a steadfast defender of the government in recent months -- have suggested that the government should demand more from the wealthy.


The question is, how long can Mr. Harper and his confreres maintain this fantasy? They are betting that the public is too stupid to figure out what is going on. My bet is that they are wrong. Ordinary folks have a visceral understanding of the difference between freedom and privilege.