An Idea Whose Time has Come?

Trust the French. They’ve come up with an idea to vent frustrations over their country’s rightwing demagogue, Nick Sarkozy. It’s a voodoo doll. From The Guardian:

A Nicolas Sarkozy voodoo doll that became a bestselling cult classic when the president tried to have it banned is to remain on sale after a French court threw out the case today.

A judge ruled that Nicolas Sarkozy: The Voodoo Manual, which features a doll, a set of pins and a book explaining how to put the evil eye on the president, fell within the boundaries of “free expression” and the “right to humour”.

With recession staring Canadians in the face there might soon be a lot more of us looking to fill some time. Wouldn’t a Stevie doll be just the thing?

 

Harper’s Dilemma

Inheriting a government with a balanced budget, a solid economy and big surpluses is a pretty sweet deal. Ideology doesn’t matter much when the good times are rolling.

Facing the prospect of having to govern in a recession with a big unemployment problem and government deficits is something else altogether. That’s where ideology comes into play and where it can truly make or break a minority government.

Dealing with a nation in trouble doesn’t come naturally to Stephen Harper. In hard times, Canadians expect you to govern from the left. They begin to worry about themselves and their kids and their neighbours and how everyone is going to get by.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives study released yesterday couldn’t be clearer. 96% of the 2,000 surveyed want the government to move, now, to protect their jobs. Four in ten believe they’re just one to two paycheques away from poverty. 90% want government action to reduce poverty.

There’s the dilemma for Stephen Harper. Social spending goes against his grain. He’s defunded the government so that he’ll have to go into deficit if he has to introduce recession relief programmes. And yet the Canadian public won’t be thinking of that 2-cent GST cut when they’re feeling vulnerable and a right-wing, doctrinaire government doesn’t meet their expectations.

Right now no one knows what’s in store for Canada, how bad the fallout from the American meltdown is going to get. Steve has already committed billions to bail out Canadian banks and the insurance industry is looking for a bailout too. If Steve “spreads the wealth” around the financial sector but doesn’t come through for the populace, he may be writing his own pink slip.

 

Four in Ten Canadians Fear Imminent Poverty

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has released a poll showing that 39% of Canadians believe they’re but one or two paycheques away from poverty.

From CTV News:

Pollster Environics surveyed 2,023 Canadians for the left-of-centre think tank. It found that Canadians are almost unanimous in their call for governments to protect their jobs.

“A shocking 96 per cent are saying ‘Do something about investing in jobs and skills (and) training right now. Don’t wait until there are better balanced budgets,'” CCPA senior economist Armine Yalnizyan told CTV’s Canada AM on Monday.

The CCPA poll found that:

39 per cent of Canadians think they’re just one or two paycheques from poverty
47 per cent struggle with personal debt regardless of income
44 per cent worry about having enough to retire comfortably
26 per cent say they are worse off than a decade ago

“The interesting thing about the poll is that Canadians looked beyond their own pocketbook issues and said … that governments need to step up to the plate, too,” Yalnizyan said.

She said Canadians look at Scandinavian and European countries’ focus on poverty reduction and say, “Why can’t we do that here?”

According to the survey:

90 per cent want the government to take leadership to reduce poverty
86 per cent believe concrete government action can greatly reduce poverty
81 per cent support reducing poverty by at least 25 per cent over the next five years.

Well, if our Furious Leader, Stevo, is looking for a mandate, there’s one for him. 96% is one helluva mandate, Steve.

Curious that so many Canadians are looking to those awful “Northern European welfare states” isn’t it Steve?

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081027/jobs_poverty_081027/20081027?hub=TopStories

 

Tories Have No Reason to Smirk

It was only 15-years ago. The Tories were led by Kim Campbell and she called an election she looked likely to win. When it was over there were but two Tories standing. They’re certainly back, after a decade in the desert and a humiliating capitulation to the Reform/Alliance movement of Stephen “Uncle Joe” Harper.

So the Libs need to take heart in that the Dion loss, bad as it was, is still about 35 times better than the drubbing the Tories took way back when. We don’t have nearly as much to do to rebuild. The core support of Canadians hasn’t been lost, just temporarily displaced. Find the right chord that resonates with the electorate, start making Harper own his gaffes and excesses, and the Liberals will be back.

We have to face hard facts. We need a significantly different leadership than what we had during the first Harper administration, one that doesn’t back down from him (or flee the Commons on tough votes), one that pins him to his own record. We need someone who connects with the Canadian public, a communicator and a fighter.

I can’t entirely blame the Tories for smirking. They got cleanly away with so very much. Imagine Harper, who sat mute during the campaign, announcing less than one day after the polls had closed, plans to stack the Senate in order to force his notion of reform through the upper house. The guy was too cowardly, too craven, to seek a mandate from the voters on that one. He just pulled the wool over their eyes and he couldn’t wait to make that plain, not even for 24-hours. Breathtaking.

No it’s time to find a leader who’ll put the boots to this scoundrel at every turn, time to form another rat pack to hound Harper relentlessly until everyone sees this character for what he is. It’s time.

 

Harper & Dion Served Up Mallick-Style

Heather Mallick, writing in The Guardian, filed this post-mortem on our election and, if nothing else, it should lift your spirits:

There are three wings to Canadian political life. Harper, the Conservative PM, is a rightwing extremist, although he doesn’t suck up like Cameron. He is an anti-choice, pro-prison, poverty-ignoring, food-safety-privatising, arts-ridiculing, Afghanistan war-loving, cowboy hat-wearing guy.

The Liberals, the nation’s natural rulers, are in the middle of the road like an expiring woodchuck. They are sensible people without passion; they own just the one house; they’re New Labour without the ratlike cunning, without the Cherie, shall we say. The New Democratic party is old Labour.

Harper began passing laws making Canada more like the States. His most complimentary adjective was “CEO-like”. He wants life sentences for 14-year-old murderers, of whom we have maybe three in a nation of 33 million citizens. He wants to build more prisons, ban safe-injection sites for heroin addicts, privatise universal healthcare, make the foetus not just a person, but someone who can dress for success – you know the drill.

…So we voted. As in the movie Groundhog Day, where the post-election morning was the same as the last one, with the result being another minority government born of a quiet desperation that won’t be soothed until the Liberals get a new leader, not a sweet smart guy like Stéphane Dion, but someone with claws like Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian you Brits took to your bosom some years ago.

Thanks for sending him back. It’s getting hot here, our trees are sawdust and our ice is melting. Canada needs a smart decisive cynic. Anything to haul that crushed woodchuck off the road.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/16/canada-georgebush

 

Our So-Called Prime Minister, Liar in Chief

Well it sure didn’t take very long to see how Stephen Harper deliberately kept voters in the dark. Less than 24-hours after winning his no-issue minority romp Harper unveiled Mr. Dion’s economic platform, virtually item for item.

Then his aides told the press that they kept him from revealing what little he did have by way of a platform out of fear he would run off at the mouth and cost the party precious seats. There was a smart bet.

Now even the Americans warn that Harper’s “no deficit” promise is so much smoke blown straight up the electorate’s backside. From Bloomberg.com:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper framed his re-election campaign around promises to avoid deficits and a costly rescue of the country’s banks.

While his Oct. 14 victory left him with more Conservative Party seats in Parliament, the deepening global financial crisis may force him to backpedal on both pledges.

Throughout the 37-day race, he boasted that Canada’s financial system was still sound as other countries bailed out their banks and said a rescue wouldn’t be necessary.

“The Americans are bailing out their banks and financial institutions,” Harper, 49, said Oct. 11 at a rally in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil. “We are investing in jobs right here in Canada.”

Harper Reversal

Yesterday, Harper reversed course, indicating taxpayers will probably need to cover the cost of ensuring that Canadian banks stay solid. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, 58, may increase deposit insurance beyond the current C$100,000 ($83,900) per person and guarantee short-term bank debt, the Globe and Mail reported on Oct. 14, citing people it didn’t identify by name.

The Bank of Canada may let mutual funds and pension funds take part in its short-term debt purchases aimed at shoring up liquidity in credit markets, the Globe also said.

So, there it is. Harper conned Canadian voters so rapaciously that his lies didn’t hold up for even 24-hours after the polls closed. I’m sorry but this guy has as much respect for the Canadian people as Parizeau had for Quebeckers in the last referendum when he described them as lobsters ready for the pot. Harper duped his way to a minority win and he deserves our full contempt for the way he did it.

 

The Dion, ….er Harper Economic Plan

The Globe & Mail says it all. Harper has pretty much lifted Stephane Dion’s plans for getting Canada through the hard times that we face:

Most of these measures are in fact actions one would expect a prime minister to take and the list looks similar to the five-point action plan proposed by Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion during the campaign.

They include:

• Taking “whatever appropriate steps are necessary to ensure that Canada’s financial system is not put at a competitive disadvantage.”

• Discussing the crisis at Friday’s Canada European Union Summit and talking about strengthening the economic partnership with this bloc.

• Summoning Parliament to meet this fall and tabling an economic update before the end of November.

• Participating in the Group of 20 finance ministers’ meeting November 8-9 and calling for a further meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers to “build on progress made at their meeting.

• Keeping government spending “focused and under control” by continuing a four-year review of government departmental spending.

• Convening a meeting with the premiers and territorial leaders on the economy to discuss a joint approach to the global financial crisis.

 

Another Reason Not to Vote for Harper- He’s an Economist, Supposedly

Preston Manning tells us that we should re-elect Stephen Harper because he’s an economist and that’s just what Canada needs to get the country through the hard times that lie ahead.

But wait a minute! If an economist of Mr. Harper’s stature is critical to our future in the years to come, how did we find ourselves spread eagled in this mess when we’ve had this same economist at the helm for two and a half years already?

As a highly educated economist, what didn’t Steve Harper see coming and when didn’t he see it?

Put another way, our Economist-in-Chief ought to have seen this coming and ought to have introduced measures to protect Canadians from it, no? I mean he’s gone to university and everything, right? He’s an elite guy after all, full of all that book learning. And even if he couldn’t find his economics ass with two hands, even he could read what that other economist, Paul Krugman, was writing twice a week in The New York Times or am I wrong again?

Now I know that Steve has been pretty busy running in full-bore campaign mode these past couple of years but surely he can tell us something he did to protect Canadians from the downside of this mess. Something. Anything? And if, as it so plainly appears, he did nothing, nada, zip, zilch – why then I’m sure he had some good reason for that too, no? So, why did our Conservative Brain Trust not use that expensive, taxpayer funded education to help us?

The fact is Steve wasn’t playing heads up ball. He was busy implementing an agenda and looking for a way to create just the right conditions to pull a snap election. As for the economy, this joker was asleep at the wheel and that’s why, kids, we’re now headed for the ditch.

Stephen Harper has totally let Canada down on this one and we’re all going to feel plenty of pain from his neglect and raw political ambition.

 

Canada’s Economy Just Keeps Getting Stronger and Stronger, $25-Billion At a Time

Doing his best Martha Stewart impersonation, our Furious Leader has assured the voting public that his government’s $25-billion bank bailout is “good for the economy.” It’s a “good thing” eh Steve? Maybe not quite as good as if the fundamentals of the Canadian economy were really strong and we didn’t have to spring for $25-billion to unclog the credit drains but these days good things come in several flavours, all of them bitter.

Steve says he wants to ensure “greater liquidity” for Canadian banks. Does that mean the banks had a liquidity problem? Why, that would mean that the fundamentals of the Canadian economy really weren’t strong, eh Steve? You were just screwin’ with us, weren’t you?

Just think how much better we’re going to be when you spring for your next bailout. I’m sure that too will be a good thing for Canada.

I’d like to know a bit more about these mortgages we’re buying. You say they’re CMHC guaranteed. If the banks are holding mortgages that are 100% backed by CMHC guarantees why would they be desperate to flog those to you, Steve? Are these definitely Canadian mortgages or are these those miserable, subprime derivatives from the States?

Okay, Steve, one more time. Tell us that the fundamentals of the Canadian economy are strong.

 

Whatever Happened to "The Economy Is Strong?"

So Flaherty’s opening bet is $25-billion to buy “insured mortgage pools” in order to keep Canada’s credit pipes from gumming up.

But, it’s not a bank bailout. No it isn’t. No really, you need to understand that the fundamentals of the Canadian economy are strong. That’s straight from our Fuhrious Leader.

Let’s just do a little math. Yesterday we were told that the Afghanistan mission bill will come in at $18-billion (excluding buried costs) which means about $1,500 per household. That would put the bank bailout at about $2,000 per household. Now if you’re watching your retirement investments melting at the same time, those figures look even larger, more dismal.

But what happens if the bailout turns out to be as ineffective at unclogging the credit drains as the American bailout? Are we going to be throwing more of the Canadian taxpayers’ money into this and, if so, how much more, Mr. Flaherty?

And what have you got in mind for when the Canadian public – not the banks, the working people – take the trade hit that’s coming our way out of the south? Have you got a cash cushion tucked away for them or is it just the banks who’ll get bailed out?

Now I know you don’t want to talk about this, not with an election just days away. Too bad because we certainly deserve a little openness, a little transparency, a good dollop of accountability from this government right now.