Having read the article, I'd say it's the latter. Paul Martin deliberately pursued austerity for its own sake. What the harpercons are doing is reacting to the collapse of the single main plank of all their economic hopes n' dreams by slashing government spending still more in order to achieve a meaningless goal of a balanced budget.
Let's stop and pause for a moment and recall the wise words of Dick Cheney, who said "Deficits don't matter." Did the American economy collapse under bush II because of deficits or because of massive financial-sector fraud? T'was the latter. Is the American economy collapsing now under the weaknesses caused by bush II's deficits? No it isn't. In fact, Obama has presided over continued deficits, incurred to bail-out the corrupt financial sector. Nobody important is saying the American economy is tottering on its last legs because of deficits.
Japan's economy has had a larger debt-to-GDP ratio than the USA for decades now. This includes occasional resorts to further annual deficits. Nobody is talking about the implosion of the Japanese colossus.
Deficits, to a much larger degree than people understand or experts will admit, don't matter. It's high time we splurged on ordinary people, instead of unproductive financial sector criminals.
Our next story: The CBC talks with Gwynne Dyer and Kyle Matthews as to whether Canada has a moral obligation to intervene in Iraq and Syria against ISIS.
Matthews says that we do, and lists the various peoples threatened with mass murder or even genocide at the hands of ISIS/ISIL. Dyer says we don't. He says that we've even allied with monsters in the past, so why posture as if we simply can't tolerate this particular group of monsters today? Also, can we define what "success" will be, whether we have a reasonable chance of attaining it, and at what cost? Dyer doesn't think the harper government knows what they really want, whether its achievable or what the collateral damage will be.
Not a bad discussion except they leave so much unsaid. Who thinks the USA and Saudi Arabia are only targeting ISIS/ISIL in Assad's Syria? Who thinks the USA and Saudi Arabia are also attacking Assad's infrastructure? Because it's well known that ISIS/ISIL originally got their funding from wealthy donors in Saudi Arabia and other Sunni monarchies and principalities. This is a Saudi-led Sunni-Shiite sectarian war. This whole thing is a snake-pit of imperialist cynicism, American delusions, Orwellian propaganda, and plain, old mass murder.
This nightmare is, at its core, the USA's fault. The threat of Islamic terrorism is negligible in Canada. (It's at least fall smaller than the threat of death due to the Conservative party's embrace of deregulation of industry and gutting of safety inspectors. "Keep us safe" indeed!)
The world is run by madmen, idiots and fools.
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