Linda McQuaing Calls for Another Canadian "Me Too!"

Funny how Canada toddles after America. Nothing succeeds in Canada until it "proves" itself in the US. Ideas aren't serious until advocated south of the border. And "leadership" in Canada is pointing out that something is done in the US so it surely must be tried out in Canada as well.

Here's a bit from Linda McQuaig offering a "me too!" on taxes and social policy in her column in the Toronto Sun:

Canada’s ultra-rich — those in the top 0.01 per cent — now have a bigger share of national income than at any point in Canadian history, according to data compiled by McMaster University economist Michael Veall. But the median Canadian family income hasn’t grown in 30 years; in fact, it’s declined from $48,800 (in today’s dollars) to $46,700.

This means ordinary Canadians have little buying power, reducing the incentive for business and the wealthy to invest their substantial cash reserves in ways that create jobs.

As growing inequality becomes a global issue, the subject is strangely absent from Canadian politics, including the current Ontario election.

While the NDP has called for increased corporate taxes, it’s retreated in recent years from urging higher taxes on the rich — as even Bob Rae did when he was Ontario NDP leader. In the 1990 provincial election, Rae ran on a platform that included a provincial estate tax — and won a majority government.

Is it too much to hope that our most progressive party would take a stand as progressive as the president of the United States and America’s second richest man?

Don't get me wrong. I'm behind McQuaig's advocacy. My problem is that it is packaged up with a pretty ribbon and bow of "me too!".

Canadian Political Analyst Linda McQuaig Weighs in on the US Debt Ceiling Bill

Linda McQuaig nails it with her Toronto Sun article. Here is the key bit:

Tycoons laughing all the way to the bank

But as the stakes rose in the bizarre negotiations over the country’s debt ceiling, the Republicans managed to push reluctant Democrats into taking all tax increases off the table. All deficit reduction was to come exclusively from government spending cuts, hitting the middle and lower classes hard.

Perhaps this seems like evidence of how resistant Americans are to tax increases. In fact, it shows no such thing. Rather, it shows how a band of far-right Republican Tea Party extremists — financed initially by the billionaire Koch brothers — have managed to effectively take control of the U.S. political system and block the will of the American people.

For the past two years, Americans have repeatedly told pollsters that they support higher taxes on the rich as a way to reduce the deficit. A Washington Post poll last month, for instance, found 72 per cent supported raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000.

The battle over whether to cut spending or raise taxes predates the birth of Elvis. But for decades, compromise was found between the Democrats’ support for social spending and the Republican desire to lower taxes, particularly on the rich.

That changed in the mid-1990s, with the rise of a more radical, aggressive Republican flank. Led by Newt Gingrich and backed by big corporate money, these radicals adopted a no-compromise approach, obstructing all Democratic efforts to enhance social spending, while relentlessly pushing for ever lower taxes, regardless of the impact on the deficit.

Since then, the Republicans have grown ever more extreme, intransigent — and flagrantly indifferent to the public good.

Once the party of Eisenhower-style moderation and fiscal restraint, the Republicans have become the party of big deficits — mostly due to tax giveaways for the rich.

Inheriting a surplus, George W. Bush added $5.07 trillion to the debt, primarily due to his tax cuts and secondarily to his wars, while Obama has added just $1.44 trillion, mostly fighting the recession, according to data from the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

...

But a radical rump of Republicans, threatening to pull the trigger, succeeded in forcing Democrats to abandon tax increases on the wealthy — at a time when America’s wealthy are as rich as the tycoons of the Gilded Age. Feeling the gun at their temples, the Democrats joined the Republicans in the quest for deeper spending cuts — which will only make the disastrous U.S. unemployment situation worse.

So while programs helping students, the elderly and the poor have been picked over with surgical precision, hedge fund managers can get back to work destabilizing financial markets with full peace of mind, knowing they’ll continue to enjoy a tax rate lower than the mechanics who service their private jets.

What I see is a country with two right wing parties. One explicit pro-big business. The other pretends to care for the interests of the bottom 90% but when push comes to shove, they drop the pretense and join their fellow right wing party and vote to cut government in order to preserve the privileges of the billionaires with a "top rate" of 15% and corporations, like GE, that pay no taxes. Instead, both of these clown parties are willing to vote to reduce retirement benefits, remove medical care, cut education, dismantle government services so they can maintain the lucrative wars that keep big defense "industries" busily making billions in profits.

Coaltitions in Canada

The Conservatives are working overtime to make the term "coalition" distasteful, but as these bits from an article by Linda McQuaig make clear, coalitions are quite normal and healthy:

In December 2008, there was an electrifying moment in Canadian politics as the opposition parties threw away their usual scripts and boldly formed a coalition to prevent Stephen Harper’s Conservatives from doing further damage to the Canadian social fabric.

When Harper responded by pressuring the Governor General into shutting down Parliament, thereby denying the opposition the chance to defeat his government, there were demonstrations across the country.

Yet now, with this same Conservative wrecking crew apparently poised to win a majority, there appears to be widespread apathy.

At first glance, this seems puzzling. What’s at stake is enormous. Harper has presided over a mean-spirited, security-obsessed, business-dominated government that silences whistleblowers, defies election finance laws and shows contempt for Parliament. A majority would allow Harper to implement deeply unpopular policies — such as two-tier health care — which he openly championed only a decade ago as leader of the fiercely right-wing National Citizens Coalition.

The current apathy may be driven by a sense of hopelessness. For the past five years, at least 60 per cent of the electorate has supported parties opposed to the far-reaching changes the Conservatives have in mind. Yet elections come and go, and Harper only seems to become more entrenched.

The opposition parties bear some responsibility for failing to use their parliamentary power to oust him. After Harper shut down Parliament, the Liberals simply walked away from the coalition they’d formed with the NDP. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff launched his current campaign by needlessly ruling out a coalition.

...

Harper’s determined efforts to demonize the notion of a coalition has helped push it off the agenda, even though coalitions are perfectly legitimate, common in European countries, and often more representative than governments elected in our first-past-the-post system.

Harper is now trying to scare off any sort of co-operation among the opposition in the event that the Conservatives win the most seats, yet fail to win a majority.

But in that situation, it would be entirely legitimate — and democratic — for the opposition parties to refuse to support another Harper government. If Ignatieff insists on ruling out a coalition (in which coalition partners jointly form a cabinet), the opposition parties could simply sign an accord. This would allow one party, presumably the Liberals, to assume power, with a binding written agreement to implement certain policies. (And, yes, an accord might include the Bloc — a party that Harper himself actively pursued as a coalition partner in 2004.)

An accord worked well in Ontario in the 1980s, when the Liberals and NDP seized an opportunity following an indecisive 1985 provincial election. Although the long-ruling Conservatives had won more seats and expected to stay in power, the Liberals pushed them out, after signing an accord with the NDP.

That accord called for a number of progressive measures — involving pay equity, social housing and protections for labour, the environment and medicare — which were all passed into law.

And the public liked the results.

In the next election, they rewarded the Liberals with a majority — and the NDP with official opposition status. Three years later, the NDP won a majority, with its leader, Bob Rae, becoming the only NDP premier in Ontario history.

It is tragic that political parties refuse to face the greater evil and instead insist on petty politics. Sadly that is why most people find politicians and politics so distasteful.

McQuaig Skewers Right Wing Economic "Theory"

Here are some good bits from an article by Linda McQuaig in the Toronto Star:

Common sense tells us it’s wrong that hedge fund manager John Paulson made $3.7 billion in 2007, while a typical nurse earned about $45,000.

Paulson made his billions by betting against the subprime mortgage market, helping trigger the 2008 financial collapse. In what moral universe is he worth as much as a single nurse — let alone 82,000 nurses?

Our tolerance for this sort of absurd discrepancy illustrates our abject submission to the dictates of modern economic doctrine. According to this economic dogma, Paulson’s income — just like the income of a nurse — is determined by natural market forces, and any attempt to adjust incomes amounts to meddlesome interference in the free workings of the marketplace.

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But, in fact, there’s nothing natural or innate about the marketplace. The so-called “free market” is nothing more than a set of laws devised by humans.

Change the laws, and you end up distributing income very differently.

Hedge fund managers, for instance, have been able to score fabulous jackpots in recent years because of the particular laws that govern banking and finance. Under the very different set of laws that governed banking and finance 30 years ago, such massive windfalls weren’t possible. (And yet the overall economy did well back then; indeed, it did much better than today.)

Read the whole article. She goes on to point out that pay equity for women is stalled for the same reason as the bloated pay packets for social parasites like John Paulson: laws are set up in a way that encourage the discrimination. If you really want to fix the problem, you need to change the laws.

The Truth About Western Support for Democracy

The mess in Egypt has revealed the cynical commitment to "democracy" that all Western governments have. Here is a bit from an op-ed in the Toronto Star by Linda McQuaig that spells it out for those who can't see the obvious:

The fact that the Arab world is awash with dictators has long been a key piece of evidence used to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment in the West.

Surely all those dictators are proof that Arabs don’t love democracy the way we Westerners do, that they are culturally, religiously and perhaps congenitally attracted to tyrannical strongmen as leaders.

This widely held view will be difficult to sustain here now that wall-to-wall TV coverage of the Egyptian (and Tunisian) uprisings has exposed the truth: Arabs don’t like tyrants any more than we do.

In fact, they love democracy — so much so that hundreds of thousands of them have risked serious harm by taking to the streets to defy a regime that for decades has been a leading practitioner of repression and torture of dissidents.

Another truth has also inadvertently slipped out of the bag: while hated by their own people, Arab dictators have managed to hold onto power because of our support — that is, the support of Western governments, particularly the United States, which provides $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt.

It turns out that some of the most horrific Middle Eastern despots — notably those in Egypt and Saudi Arabia — are there because the West has propped them up, over the fierce opposition and suffering of their own people. If we want to pinpoint responsibility for the lack of democracy in the Middle East, we might stop trying to find defects in the Arab soul and start looking in the mirror.

There's more in the original, go read the whole article.

McQuaig points out that the right wing government of Harper is more committed to its "friend" in Israel than it is to democracy. That is tragic. The governments of Israel will change and so will its policies. But democracy will remain democracy. You are far better off supporting democracy than supporting some faction or transitory government.