The Media and Jim Flaherty's Death

It doesn't really surprise me that Jim Flaherty would be remembered as a competent financial manager by the mainstream media. You see, I belong to the team that is never surprised when the corporate-capitalist system falls flat on its face. We instinctively understand that when corrupt greed-heads compel their politician cat's-paws to impoverish and exploit the majority, then the overall economy is not going to prosper. Wealthy media elites and the journalists that they tend to hire are incapable of such insights. Therefore, the fact that Jim Flaherty was a dangerously deluded simpleton with a legacy of disastrous failure simply doesn't compute for them.

But, what does surprise me, and what is far more ominous, is the way these airheads treat Flaherty as more than just an ideological soul-mate. In death, he's been elevated into having been a "statesman." And this, my friends, is what is so disturbing. Presumably, as finance minister, Flaherty would have been one source for the majority in Parliament (you know, the people's elected representatives) to obtain the cost estimates for his governments building of new prisons and purchasing of white elephant fighter-jets.

If so, they were sorely disappointed, weren't they? You see, Flaherty was finance minister in a government that decided that Parliament shouldn't know how much government policies were going to cost before they voted whether to commit the people's tax dollars towards them. The oral statements that this government did provide turned out to be deliberately fraudulent and under-estimated costs by tens of billions of dollars. (Which is why, when the same people who support Flaherty and harper also support Rob Ford, in the name of "fiscal responsibility," I tend to sneer at them. They obviously don't give a shit.)

Flaherty's government was so insistent on not providing the people's representatives with the information they desired that they were prepared to be found guilty of contempt for it. "Contempt of Parliament." It's actually a serious charge. Just because the sun came up the next morning it doesn't mean that demonstrated contempt for our system of democratic accountability is unimportant.

Anyone with a modicum of understanding should have seen that.

It was Flaherty's government that then engaged in a sordid, anti-democratic, debasing, and evil campaign of election fraud in the 2011 federal election that followed their having been found in Contempt of Parliament. Again, you would think people whose job it is to report and comment on "politics" (which is to say, our democracy) would understand that this is a bad thing. Even those pathetic vermin who mewl that nobody says their vote was changed or prevented by the robo-calls, ought to grasp that attempted robbery is a crime in the same way that robbery is a crime. (And, anyway, were people to come forward and say that the harpercons' election fraud impacted on their vote, the harpercon partisan hacks would then insist that they were lying.)

And, after having stolen a majority government, Flaherty's government then crafted an ENTIRE SERIES of anti-democratic MEGA-OMNIBUS bills, to ram through major assaults on our entire system of government and body of laws, with minimal democratic oversight. And it was Jim Flaherty, as finance minister, who allowed his budgets to be the vehicle for this omnibus legislation.

You know, you would think that people whose job it is to watch and report on our democratic system at the federal level would instinctively grasp why such behaviour is wrong, bad, repulsive, appalling. Alas! This is Canada. A brain-dead democracy from the far-right to the far-left of the spectrum.

Typing this entry has changed my opinion of Jim Flaherty. I still believe that he was too fucking stupid to grasp the enormity of his crimes against democracy. But now, having added it all up, and including his alcohol-fueled "friendship" (if the camaraderie of lower life-forms such as Rob Ford and Flaherty can be called such) with likewise repulsive characters, I think it matters not that Flaherty was mentally incapable of knowing what he was doing. He was a villain who has done monumental damage to the health of Canadian democracy. On top of being, among the worst, if not THE WORST finance minister in Canada's history.

And the journalists and the pundits who can't grasp that (let alone the scum who actively supported him) show themselves for the miserable failures that they are by loading this idiot with undeserved accolades and laurels.

EDITED TO ADD

I've been doing my best to shut-out the media coverage of Flaherty's funeral. The whole coverage of this non-event. I therefore forget the even more distressing fact that opposition politicians, who Flaherty had abused for years, were likewise unable to see Flaherty for what he was. Thomas Mulcair's idiotic tears at Flaherty's death were much more disgusting than media fawning over the man. Sadly, ... this whole sordid episode reveals the incapacity of those opposition politicians who, in his death, saw Flaherty as one of their own rather than their enemy.

They Called It

Numerous leftist commentators stated that one of the goals of the Paul Martin/Jim Flaherty tax cuts was to eventually cripple the fiscal capacity of the Canadian state to impact positively on the economy. [Kinda sick how the great liberal progressive Paul Martin Jr.'s policies flow so seamlessly into the terrible, retrograde Tory Jim Flaherty's 'eh?]

"Tut-tut!' Said Flaherty. As the folks at PEF quote him in January 2008:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Monday that there’s no substance to worries that the country will head back into a deficit situation if the economy slows. Flaherty was responding to a new report by the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), which warned that the federal treasury could easily record a deficit if economic growth slows more than the government expects.

“If [the CCPA] had been paying attention they would have noticed that in the autumn we were anticipating some slowing in the Canadian economy, as a result of the quite significant slowing in the U.S. economy,” Flaherty told reporters at a Vancouver news conference. “For that reason, in the fall economic statement on Oct. 30, we made dramatic historic tax reductions — business tax reductions — in Canada,” he said.

“We will keep spending within the rate of growth of the economy, and quite frankly, I hope to do more than that,” he said. “I want to make sure we keep the budget in surplus.”

Here it is, July-August and:

The federal government has started the new fiscal year in a rare deficit position, announcing yesterday it was $517 million in the red after two months as tax cuts and a slowing economy sliced into revenues. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said revenues fell $1.6 billion combined in April and May, 4.1 per cent less than the same period last year. Ottawa’s take from the goods and services tax fell $876 million, or 20.9 per cent, with the GST’s percentage point cut in January. Last year, Ottawa took in $2.8 billion more than it spent during the April-May period.

Marc Lee of PEF awaits his apology. You won't get it. After Flaherty gets done weeping tears of nostalgia (the current deficit reminds him of his destructive days under the Harris regime in Ontario), Flaherty will begin casting around for some extraordinary, totally unforeseen (except by the witchcraft of the CCPA) exigency to blame for his stupidity.

But, once again, ... as with so many other things, the left called it.

Flaherty Trades Health For Prisons and Fighter Jets

So, our useless idiot of a finance minister, Jim Flaherty, announced to the premiers that the harpercon monstrosity is going to be unilaterally abandoning the current federal funding regime for health care. Flaherty isn't discussing anything of substance here. He's just switching to an arbitrarily arrived at formula that translates into far less federal spending on the provinces' health care plans.

Flaherty probably believes in what he's doing. He's a hopeless dullard after all. And while I'm sure he's not alone in being so, we have to be careful. Other austerity preachers are cruel monsters and psychopaths who can attain heights of cleverness that Flaherty is incapable of even dreaming of.

What Flaherty hasn't done is make the connection between his imagined prudence in restraining health spending, and the titanic waste that harper plans to engage in with his prison building (and filling) plans and his F-35 fighter-jet purchases (among other things). Once again, Jim Flaherty helps to make his world an inferior place. His contribution to the world is a negative one. It's rare to see someone being so much worse than useless, but the extent of Jim Flaherty's stupidity is likewise rarely matched.

Weep For Me Jimbo ...

First of all, let me begin by saying that I despise Jim Flaherty. He's a cretin whose economic understanding is stuck in the 19th Century. What he does that isn't based on two hundred year old cliches is based on crude, deliberate fraud. He's a thug, who has made more people homeless, condemned more children to poverty, caused more suicides, caused more suffering overall, than perhaps any other finance minister in Canadian history. He's an enemy of democracy, what with his serial mega-omnibus bills that have entire sections in them with nothing to do with his balliwick. He's a hypocrite. Just recently I pointed out that the snivelling cockroach's yammerings to First Nations peoples fighting for the preservation of their land was rank with double-standard given the career criminals that populate the harper regime.

So, I could do nothing but snicker when I saw Flaherty's stupid face on the TTC's television screens, tearing up  in response to a reporter's question about the drunken, crack-smoking buffoon Rob Ford. Here's a different take on it:

Forget politics, just for a second. Ford’s spectacle has a lot of people talking about politicians as human beings. The mayor deserves not just help, but our sympathy, some say. There’s no place for ridicule that might reinforce the stigma attached to addiction. Ford’s stubborn determination to hold on renders that conversation moot, but at least it reminds everyone that he’s a human being.

Flaherty, standing alone at that podium, gave voice to that humanity. He must have known the question would come. He must have had an answer at the ready. His friendship with the Fords is no secret. Still, he could barely find the words. We expect stoicism from people in power, not tears and tied tongues. Flaherty’s supposed to be able to answer any question. He’s supposed to be measured, or angered, or dismissive, as required. But his friend is going through something no one knows how to handle, and it was all he could do to struggle through a sentence or two.

When politicians show emotion, they’re often subject to ridicule. Yesterday, to the internet’s credit, there was none of that. There was just a man who cares for his friend and wishes him well, otherwise helpless—and dealing with it in public, on the job.

 What bullshit. The mayor and most of his fan-base had zero empathy for crack smokers until Rob himself smoked the shit and then it became impossible to deny it any longer. The shit-head Ford even voted against anti-gang programs, calling them "hug a thug" bullshit. Well, ....

Ford recently teamed-up with uber-shit-head Georgio Mammoliti in a campaign against city workers sleeping on the job. They should be fired. No exceptions, no excuses! ("Fuckin' A Rob Ford! Get those lazy, over-paid sons-of-bitches!") Then it turns out that thanks to police surveillance, we now know that Ford is doing a whole lot of anything but work during all hours of the day and night.

Ford and Flaherty are stupid men. Stupid bullies. I mock Flaherty's tears. They make me smile. It's only when somebody close to him (thanks to similar retrograde political beliefs) is hurting (thanks to his own reckless stupidity) that this imbecile begins to feel emotion.

Jim Flaherty, ... if you feel so bad for Ford (who did have all those possible video holders beaten-up or even killed I wonder?) you can go visit him in prison, in your retirement, after harper's regime goes down in toxic flames. You can then sit and wait after Ford drags his ass back to his cell and talk with the imprisoned stephen harper. Though I bet that even you wouldn't be able to bear the deranged, self-pitying rantings of that egomaniacal mediocrity.

Ah-yasss!!! Ha-ha-ha-ha!

Thoughts on the Passing of Jim Flaherty

I don't subscribe to the ludicrous notion that we must not speak ill of the dead. Tell you what; after I die, yeez kin say anything you want about me and I PROMISE I won't get mad.

The shameless hypocrites of the right-wing and such institutions as SUN Media will probably take this post as a sign of the burning, irrational hatred typical of the left, but they'll put "ROT IN HELL!!!" beside the picture of someone they don't like on the day of their death. I'm not going to say that about Jimbo Flaherty.

I'm simply going to say that I think he was a dangerously deluded simpleton whose policies hurt a lot of people. It seems, upon reading the eulogies, that he showed compassion for parents of disabled children. This, it is said, was a result of one of his children being disabled. And that, ladies and gentlemen, just goes to show the hypocrisy of right-wing ideologues. They pontificate that it's all about personal responsibility and bootstraps and blah, blah, blah, ... but when they personally experience a challenge, then it becomes a universal and then they understand, but everything outside their own personal experience, forget it. Maybe it isn't hypocrisy, but a marked incapacity for empathy. Which is why better people reject the slurry of ideas that comprise the right-wing worldview.

Finally, returning to hypocrisy, let us not forget that Jim Flaherty, always one of the leading players in two of the most disgusting governments this country has ever seen (the anti-democratic stephen harper and the thuggish Ontario government of Mike Harris), who played so willingly to the "tuff on crime" and "personal responsibility" themes, was a sincere and close friend of an animal like Rob Ford. And really people, the more you observe of Rob Ford, the more loathsome he becomes. Childish, vulgar, stupid, bullying, cowardly, cretinous, oafish, disgusting. It speaks volumes about the shortcomings of Flaherty that he saw something admirable in that misshapen psyche.

No my friends, I think about the single-mothers agonizing over how to pay the rent or heat the house or feed their kids as a result of Flaherty's cuts. I think about the unemployed by Flaherty's policies who were then faced with the loss of their employment insurance thanks to Flaherty's servicing of his Bay Street masters. I think of people dying in ambulances as the drivers tried to find an emergency room that could take them. I think about the sufferings and even the deaths caused by "Conservative" selfishness, incompetence and sheer stupidity. If I were a public figure, I would keep these thoughts to myself out of consideration for whoever his family is. But I'm not a public figure. I'm sure none of them will ever see this. And I simply can't restrain myself from speaking out against all this talk about people being moved to tears at his death and all these efforts to mitigate his appalling legacy.

Get Rid of Harper-Flaherty Imbeciles: Coalition Now!

Reading some more details about fat-head Flaherty's "economic statement" and I'm more convinced than ever that the Opposition must form a coalition and turf these imbeciles.

The Harper government is chopping spending and selling assets as part of a plan it acknowledges may not balance the books - but could trigger an early election.

Yes, Flaherty. Proving that you're just as stupid and incompetent as when you were allied to another repulsive excuse for a human being (Mike Harris in Ontario), you've decided that at the cusp of a major recession, during a crucial crisis of confidence in the economy, the thing to do is to have the federal government, one of the country's biggest employers, throw even more people out of work, take more cash out of the economy, and hope for better times.

Idiot.

No, wait, ... I get it. In some sort of pathetic, plodding, oafish way, you imagine that the sight of the government balancing its books will fill the private sector movers n' shakers with confidence and fortitude, galvanizing them to ... what exactly? Make goods and services to sell to people who couldn't get credit from a paralyzed banking sector even if they weren't already maxed to the tits?

Idiot.

And then there's Harper-Flaherty's despicable attempt to turn this crisis into an excuse for partisan advantage:

"There will be no free ride for political parties," stated Finance Minister Jim Flaherty after handing down his restraint package that inflicted pain mostly on the public service and politicians.

"Free ride" indeed. Flaherty might be too dull to grasp this, but Harper knows damned well that public funds go to opposition parties so that they can do their job keeping tabs on the government, and financing studies into policies. We live in an advanced industrial society and crafting policies, informing constituents, and keeping an eye on corrupt, war-mongering, civil-rights shredding authoritarian monsters who are elected by idiots, takes money. Being the sort of war-mongering, etc., etc. monsters I'm talking about, the Harpercons would love to deprive the opposition of the money it takes to do their job.

I was depressed to think that because of the vagaries of our electoral system, Canada got stuck with the yahoos as our government, but after this blatant partisan display and the sheer stupidity of the rest of Flaherty's package, I'm angry. This is the aboslute worst government that Canada could possibly have in this serious crisis and it needs to be removed.

The time for an anti-Conservative coalition is NOW. Harper has shown he's too selfish, immature, too much of an asshole with too little respect for Canadian democracy, to enjoy power one day longer. And with Flaherty, Harper has also shown that he's too big an idiot to hold such an important position in such an important moment in Canada's history. Get rid of him. Get rid of them.

Flaherty Doesn't Get It (... No Surprise There!)

So, always incompetent finance minister Jim Flaherty is conceding deficits until 2015 'eh? And to mitigate these deficits, the fucking stupid asshole proposes to raise EI premiums!

The Harper government's plan for whittling down Ottawa's deficit by 2015 includes collecting billions of dollars more in payroll taxes than it pays out in Employment Insurance benefits over a three-year period.
This is stoking fears that overcollection of EI premiums, starting in Ottawa's 2012-13 fiscal year, could hinder employment growth by unduly burdening companies as they are trying to recover and grow.

This is obscene. Both the Liberals and their "conservative" alternative, whether Progressive Conservative or the dog's breakfast of closet-case Jesus freaks and greedheads that constitutes the various incarnations of stephen harper's gang of idiots, have built their careers on screwing over workers and rewarding the parasites in the financial sector and this is no different.


Once again, our problem with deficits and debts was caused by the creation of high interest rate monetarist recessions which broke inflation by breaking workers through unemployment. These recessions lowered government revenues while raising government expenses. To bridge the gap, governments were forced to borrow large amounts at a high rate of interest. Sickeningly, business and government elites blamed the victims for these deficits and said that unemployment was caused by the attraction of unemployment insurance benefits, general welfare assistance and other assorted programs. To wean workers off of these programs, governments slashed them under the rationalization of deficit reduction.


It was the Chrétien and Martin governments that first seized upon the Unemployment Insurance fund (renamed by Martin as "Employment Insurance" in the same silly way that death benefits are called "life insurance") as a cash cow. By hiking eligibility requirements and raising premiums the Liberals could collect money off of working people and use it to pay down the debt. While they were doing this, Martin cut income and corporate taxes which mainly benefited the wealthy. The wealthy, for the most part, "invested" their money in the farcical clusterfuck that is the North American financial sector, giving Canadians the worst possible outcomes. Insane financial products seeking to wring maximum earnings out of a stagnant, gasping, increasingly indebted consumer base. It was the attempt to square this circle that brought about the gigantic financial meltdown and subsequent recession in the United States and then the rest of the world.


Because of this recession, the harper government has been forced (under extreme duress) to go into deficit spending to keep the economy from going into a tailspin. The moronic Flaherty, having a 19th-Century grasp of economics wants to slam on the brakes as quickly as possible in the ignorant belief that we're headed for a crash caused by deficit-induced inflation and all sorts of other doomsday scenarios that just aren't true. (From the link:)

The net financial liabilities of all levels of government combined in Canada are projected to be just 27% of GDP this year, compared to an OECD average of 51%. Our net debt is down hugely from the peak of 71% in 1995. (See OECD Economic Outlook Annex Table 3.) General government net debt servicing costs stand at an extraordinarily low and indeed almost trivial level of 0.2% of GDP, compare to an OECD average of 1.7%. The fact of the matter is that we are in great fiscal shape, and can well afford to borrow more and invest much more now that times are tough and public investment is needed to sustain jobs and set the stage for a more productive future economy.

What is harper's miserable explanation for such ass-backwards behaviour?

But the Tories defend the measure as necessary to ensure the EI program breaks even, particularly given a current freeze on premiums that's keeping them artificially low right now.
...
The Harper government said it's merely trying to ensure that the EI program balances out over time. It wants to recoup shortfalls in EI collections that it expects will have built up over the next few years as a result of the recession – which has sent unemployment skyrocketing.

“We committed to freezing EI premiums as part of the economic action plan to help Canadians weather the recession,” said Chisholm Pothier, spokesman for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

“We are keeping that commitment and rates will remain frozen until 2011.”

The problem is that while he's frozen premiums he hasn't expanded eligibility. Furthermore, the damned "fund" (which doesn't exist as premiums go into general government revenues and the Supreme Court has ruled that the government doesn't have to pay it back) had been in surplus since 1995 and all the way to 2008! All that time over half of unemployed workers (including two out of three women workers) have been facing rising average levels of unemployment and receiving no benefits, ... all part of the process of stagnation and desperation upon which the parasitical financial sector demanded maximum returns from. So, in response to a recession caused by the collapse of the economy due to the implosion of a financial sector bubble built on the backs of indebted, underpaid, overtaxed consumers, fuckhead Flaherty grudgingly embraces deficit spending but hopes to curtail it as soon as possible by raising taxes on that same consumer base that's been gasping for breath for over the past two decades.

A better option would be to raise income taxes on the wealthiest and the corporations. Our business world had at least a decade of low taxation, stagnant wages and a cheap currency (making our exports attractive and keeping imports artificially expensive) and they did little to raise productivity. Our wealthy, as I said, for the most part, "invested" their money in Bay Street and Wall Street snake-oil. They have more money than they know what to do with and the REAL ECONOMY could use it.

Jim Flaherty, Fry-Cook Trainee (in Prison)

One of the latest outbursts from Jim ("Low-Functioning") Flaherty is that white-collar professionals should take the first job that comes along rather than stay on EI and look for work more commensurable with their skills and training.

That's rich coming from a complete shit-head like Flaherty. Stupid fucker didn't notice the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression and predicted surpluses into the foreseeable future. When the right-wing gravy-train runs out of bullshit fuel, if Flaherty isn't 67 by then (and the gnome looks like he's in his seventies but for his costume-shop hair-piece) he'll have to find work at a level with his skills, experience and raw brain power. Hence the title of this post.

Why prison? Well, unlike stephen harper and peter mackay, flaherty doesn't have a lot of blood on his hands. He's just criminally stupid.

Jim Flaherty's Deficits

Now, one thing the left has got to do is to understand economic reality and then to speak so as to demonstrate this understanding.

Case in point is the blanket condemnation of Jim Flaherty's deficits, which, coming as a result of a stimulus program that was forced onto him by the opposition parties, must sound hypocritical and incoherent to people.

If Flaherty's deficits were slammed because they're a result of useless tax-cuts to the wealthiest and to corporations (tax-cuts that deprive the government of revenue but do practically nothing for society once those revenues go into the private sector), that would be one thing. But it's just "deficits bad!" "a burden of debt for our grandchildren!" and etc.,

When an economy is in free-fall (as ours might have been and may soon be) a government has no choice but to spend massively to reverse things. Deficits will result. So too, if a government wants to build something massive and important, like some infrastructure project that will pay significant dividends later, then a deficit will probably be required.

If a left-wing government is going to do things for the Canadian people, obviously it should tax people who have more money than they know what to do with, but occasionally it will have to incur some deficits and we all need to understand that debt-to-GDP ratios of sixty percent are entirely manageable (indeed that's a far lower debt level than your average Canadian household).

Defeat Them and Get It Over With

So, during his holiday, stephen harper thought up the brilliant idea to turn the issue of the Afghan detainee documents over to retired judge Frank Iacobucci? What drivel! Do we have responsible government or not? Is this a democracy or isn't it? Do we believe that there should be oversight in how our governments conduct their wars or do we believe that our executive branch has a carte blanche to do whatever it pleases in a war zone?

stephen harper, baby, ... turn over the fucking documents and cut the crap with the "national security" bullshit! If it means that you end up going to prison, along with Rick "shit-head" Hillier and Peter "fuck-face" MacKay, so be it. You're a useless excuse of a prime minister anyway.

What sort of government is this? Homophobe (or pathetic closet-case, take your pick) Jason Kenney as immigration minister expunged references to homosexual rights in the latest citizenship guide. What's next pud? Eliminate references to women winning the right to vote? Deleting any mention of the existence of the First Nations? Face it putz, there was a struggle for human rights and the good side won, okay? These human beings have rights, they've recently been won, and it's an important part of who we are as a country. The fact that you're (for reasons we can only speculate about) all twisted up in knots about this shows that you haven't yet brought yourself into the 20th Century (let alone the 21st!).

And Jim Flaherty! And his stupid budget! There was a picture in yesterday's Globe & Mail of Flaherty and Harper grinning and giving the thumbs up on their way into the Commons Chamber before he presented his budget. Harper looked like the cynical psychopathic monster that he is, while Flaherty was grinning like the simple-minded idiot that he is. If Flaherty was a leftist, he'd be the guy spouting incoherent snippets of Marxist jargon, doing the leg-work for his local party leadership, handing out pamphlets he can barely read to striking workers who can't understand what he's saying. Luckily for Flaherty, he's absorbed the cliches and delusions of the status-quo, to such an extent that his right-wing dogmas serve established power and the dunce has managed to rise to the level of finance minister. As such, he's a very dangerous man, because his 19th-Century ideas about investment and the role of government simply have nothing to do with economic reality. He's out of his depth. Under his reign of error in Ontario, living standards for the majority plummeted, public services deteriorated, and economic activity and investment shrank to the extent that the province was well on its way to join the ranks of the "have-nots" requiring equalization payments for the first time in its history.

That's called failure. And it's the best that a deluded knuckle-head like Flaherty is capable of.

The problem with all of this is that the opposition can't get its act together. Since Michael Ignatieff pulled the plug on the coalition, we've all just been spinning around playing games. The NDP was content to vote against the harpercons when it didn't matter. Then, when Ignatieff came out of nowhere last August, petulantly huffing that he wasn't going to take being pushed-around anymore, it seems that the NDP has been more concerned with thwarting the Liberals than with dealing with the political crisis. BOTH parties have to work together to convince the people of Canada that it is, and has always been, harper's fault that parliament isn't working. It's been harper's brinkmanship that has poisoned the atmosphere. And now, it is harper's blatant contempt for democracy that HAS produced a constitutional crisis.

Don't talk about how this budget is shit and harper is pissing all over democracy but "Canadians don't want an election." How difficult is it to comprehend? If harper is making it impossible to work with him, then you can't work with him! If it doesn't look like the electorate trusts any party with a majority, then come to an arrangement with each other to take power away from the psychopath's hands.

If the opposition consents to allowing harper to circumvent parliamentary supremacy by waiting on retired justice Iacobucci's word, then we've fully entered US-American political garbage land. Next we'll allow the harpercons to blatantly steal elections and invade other countries on obvious lies. And Canadian "progressives" will impotently wring their hands waiting for the opposition to grow a spine.

Today is Budget Day

Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty is pumped. Today is budget day, and Flaherty (suprisingly still a politician after his participation in the murderously incompetent and corrupt Ontario government of Mike Harris) believes that:

"We're going to resolve once and for all this continuing problem we've had, this bickering between governments in Canada about fiscal imbalance, ... We're going to restore fiscal balance on a principled long-term predictable basis in Canada."

Given the fact that Flaherty is both a moron and a liar, this is probably not even remotely true. My guess is that Flaherty will simply give this money to the provinces with no strings attached, thus crippling the federal government's future ability to fund national programs and giving neo-liberal provincial governments the freedom to give the money back to voters in tax-cuts, or to pay down their deficits, or any other version of the brainless sort of non-policy that is part of the neo-liberal campaign to drag Canadians' material standard of living down to that of the United States.

(By "Canadians" I mean, of couse, the vast majority of the population, who work for a living or who now subsist on our patchwork of social programs designed to keep the reserve army of the unemployed from rebelling. By "United States," I refer to the conditions of the vast majority of Americans who work long hours for low pay, who have shitty, or no health insurance, or who live in abject poverty. I acknowledge that their are Canadians who, under Harper, will see their living standards rise substantially, approaching those of the tiny minority of Americans who benefit so handsomely from wringing-out the lion's share of the wealth produced by their own economy by hook or by crook.)

What else will Flaherty be doing?

"The finance minister is also expected to introduce tax cuts and credits totalling about $3 billion that would give each taxpayer about $200 a year."

This is part of an already well-established process of destroying the surplus and the federal government's ability to fund programs that benefit the majority and that do so far more efficiently that does the private sector.

Flaherty says that it's up to the Opposition if they want to defeat this budget and force an election. The Conservatives are ready for an election, though it's not his sense that the public wants one. Indeed, as a minority government, Harper has assidiously been tossing money around (again, with no focus or direction, though it might come under nice-sounding titles making one think that it's going somewhere) and being "reasonable." Paul ("I raped Haiti") Martin jr. did the same thing when he was in a minority situation. Like Paul Martin, Stephen Harper is merely biding his time, hoping for a majority that will give him five years to abandon even the pretence of using the majority's money for the majority's benefit.

Jim Flaherty on First Nations Protests

Canada's incompetent finance minister, the gnomish Jim Flaherty, warned that a nation-wide campaign of blockades would negatively impact his delusions about Canada's economic growth. (The story is at "Stun New" who I won't give links to.) Flaherty also warned the First Nations themselves that there aren't different legal regimes in Canada. There's one set of laws and if the First Nations break them, they'll be in BIG trouble.

His words would have a lot more weight if his own government wasn't a serial violator of the law. But even if harper wasn't a criminal on many levels, on Native land, retained by them through solemn treaties with the Crown/Us, there ARE different legal regimes. So shut the fuck up you ignorant dweeb.

Harris Scum at it Again

Via pogge, we hear that Jim Flaherty, incompetent former finance minister to corrupt moron premier Mike Harris, has been found to have broken Treasury Board rules for awarding contracts. From the Toronto Star:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has broken federal rules by handing a former Mike Harris speechwriter an untendered contract worth more than $120,000, the Toronto Star has learned.

The $122,430 contract to Hugh MacPhie, who worked in the former Ontario Conservative premier's office, violated Treasury Board guidelines requiring multiple bids for contracts over $25,000.

To which pogge adds: " Further along in the story you'll find that the contract was for two months work."

Link, link, link ....

This is the way this particular sort of fuck-up operates. Conservative politicians are generally as thick-headed as their blogging fanboys. As such, they realize that they can't make their money honestly, and so they enter politics, spewing the sort of simplistic crap that our present political-economic system is based on (that's why I oppose our present political-economic system don'tcha know) and then they ride that gravy-train for all they're worth.

Oh yeah, and the gutless hypocrisy, ... that's your typical "conservative" as well.

I'm working on a couple of extended essays. One is a long, leisurely swim in the fetid stupidity that is a right-wing blog. The other is going to address the reasons for my hostility towards Liberal Party supporters. Essentially it's because they're worse than useless and they only serve to confuse our political culture.

Ahem. Back to other kinds of work.

Let's Make a Deal! You give me $150 Billion, I give you less than nothing!

I don't really have much time to blog these days but I gotta do something. So today's effort is simply to remind everyone how revoltingly stupid our present political-economy is. You know, the media, the political parties, most sources of opinion are working to normalize the atrocities we're forced to live through, whether it's illegal wars, torturing immigrants and Canadian citizens, war crimes, assaults on health care, the continued rape of the environment, etc., etc..

I'm not a 100% fan of parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page, ... he's too much of a deficit hawk for me, but he's honest and he says what he wants to say in spite of stephen harper's petty attempts to bully him. Given his integrity, let's hear what he has to say about Flaherty's fiscal projections:

Page projects the federal deficit will fall from C$56 billion ($56.57 billion), or 3.6 percent of GDP, in the 2009-10 fiscal year to C$10 billion, or 0.5 percent of GDP, in 2015-16.

Look at it this way: The masters of the universe, the grown-up, fiscally responsible "conservatives," the economist stephen harper, the small-government/free-market Jim Flaherty, are set to deliver on over $150 billion in deficit spending over the next few years, and they'll tell us to pay it back through cuts to public services, increased EI premiums, and so-on, and what are they spending that money on?

Are they spending it to move us from carbon-emitting energy sources? Nope. Can you imagine those guys telling us they're spending $150 billion over four years on alternative energy research?

Are they spending it on Canada's health care system? Improving access to education? Creating new jobs?

None of those things. Because of the incompetence, stupidity, and criminal greed of the world's big "investors," the economy has screwed the pooch. Because of the neo-liberals' control of policy in the OECD, the populations of these countries can't afford to buy the goods and services that the Chinese and the Mexicans are making for us. As a result, in order to keep the economy from spiralling into a tail-spin, Flaherty, like all the other finance ministers, has had to prop it up with deficit spending.

The $150 billion (and then some) that's required for this could have come from taxes on the useless parasites who have sucked us dry for decades. It could have been spent earlier in the real economy and produced benefits for the majority. But that would have been crazy pinko nonsense. So instead, we let the bankers soak us, con themselves, produce a disaster, bail them out, and then suffer for it, while mainstream opinion gives Flaherty a pass by not pointing out that the dim bulb never saw it coming and that his whole economic worldview is apparently nothing but shit.

Double Standards

I don't like Bob Rae because he stupidly infuriated the labour movement, and basically panicked when premier of Ontario, and bought into all the neoliberal, capitalist bullshit about how social justice, the arts, the environment, etc. are all just frills, to be afforded when the capitalist economy is doing well.

At the same time, I've said on numerous occasions, the ONDP was the best party the province could have had during that lengthy, Bank of Canada (and then Allan Greenspan)-caused recession. The plodding oafs in the Ontario PC or the Ontario Liberal parties would have been more than happy to impose catastrophic spending cuts, doing more damage to the province's social fabric.

However, to this day, the ONDP and its former leader Rae receive condemnation for their "disastrous economic record." I've never heard of any other party or any other leader receive such constant, perpetual mention of the economic conditions during their government. It's as if no other party ever had a recession; no other leader ever had deficits!

To see the unjust double standard here, just look at the media treatment of incompetent asswipe finance minister Jim Flaherty. He's the same bungling idiot today in Ottawa that he was as Ontario finance minister in the 1990s. During the middle of the Clinton prosperity (mostly a mirage, but with good economic indicators nonetheless) Flaherty managed to reduce the deficit, but only by breaking the backs of the municipalities, many major schoolboards, selling the province's assets to friends in business at fire-sale prices and through vast, cruel social service cuts. Even then his record was unimpressive compared to many other provinces.

But even after his rock-headed economic statement, which is universally condemned as a disaster, there's no historical context for people, to help them understand that this stupidity is really the best that Flaherty can do.

Fifty-Billion Flaherty

Note: I've always had nothing but contempt for finance minister Jim Flaherty.

I'm leery about joining in on all the hyperbole about $50 billion. The pathetic stock market rally aside ("Wow! It's possible the government will bail out all of our mistakes! Let it ride!!") this is still a huge economic slowdown in the USA our main trading partner. We don't have as many people losing their homes here in Canada, but we have a lot of unemployment.

I'm fine with trashing Flaherty for his idiotic projections (from small surpluses to a $50 billion deficit within half a year) and for trashing the herpercons for their incompetence and callousness ("stimulus" that requires cash-strapped municipalities to pony-up half the dough, funding projects primarily in "Conservative" ridings, telling everyone that we're poised for a speedy recovery so everybody shut the hell up).

This scare-mongering about deficits is very dangerous though. If we need them, we need them. End of story.

stephen harper "Rising to the Challenge"

Recently, one "trevorus" gave me a youtube link which turned out to be the harpercons' propaganda effort "Rising to the Challenge." Taking great advantage of their tenuous grip on government power, the commercial shows harper waddling around the hall of Parliament, and in his office, doodling cartoons about bestiality and drinking from a mug of his own piss. Occasionally, some words would appear over top these scenes, advertising the competence and dedication of harper and his gang of idiots. I would like to address these points in order:

225,000 jobs saved

Saved? Saved from what? The biggest recession since the Great Depression. It was a result of the deregulation of the US financial sector during the Clinton years, as well as by the hollowing out of the real economy by decades of pro-business assaults on the foundations of social wealth built up since the 1940s.

I'd like to point out that harper's shit-head of a finance minister, Jim Flaherty, never saw it coming. harper did, but to admit that he'd have to admit that that is why he broke his own fixed elections law, in a failed attempt to win a majority before the shit hit the fan. Regardless, it remains the case that harper entrusts a great deal of economic management to a cretin who genuinely believed that he'd have surpluses into the foreseeable future.

$62 billion to fight the recession

Yes. And you had to be dragged kicking and screaming into spending it! As already mentioned, Flaherty never saw the recession coming, and furthermore, having learned the crude basics of economics in the same way that a dog struggles to grasp what it's owner's bewildering combination of unintelligible vocal sounds and hand gestures are meant to communicate, he was stubbornly unwilling to do what obviously needed to be done until the opposition forced his hand. Then, when empowered by them to begin deficit spending, the harpercons proceeded to turn their "action plan" into a system of rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies.

Cut the GST

I've always thought the GST was a regressive tax and I continue to do so. It replaced another tax though and when harper cuts it, he doesn't replace the revenues. He does this because deficits eventually provide fantastic excuses to slash public services. We were well on our way to deficits before the Great Recession hit, thanks to Flaherty's GST and other tax-cuts.

Extended Employment Insurance Benefits

Wow. Really difficult move, that one. Very complicated as well as far-seeing! Imbeciles.

23,000 projects across Canada

See above.

Lowest debt and deficit in G7

Not through any work on the harpercons' part. They hadn't yet gotten around to freeing up the entrepreneurial creativity of the financial sector the way bankers on Wall Street, in London, and in Ireland and Iceland had been. But harper was going to try. Then events intervened.

Have no fear. harper isn't finished wasting the billions yet either! He's pissed our money away at the Vancouver Olympics. At the 2009 G20. He still wants to spend $35 billion on useless fighter jets and untold billions (he's hiding the numbers) on unneeded prisons.

Over 450,000 jobs created since June, 2009

Really? Gosh! You know, except for the fact that this crowing totally eviscerates their entire worldview (held and believed for decades) that it is impossible for governments to create jobs, that's pretty cool! How did you "create" those jobs anyway? What kind of jobs?

Balanced budget by 2015/2016

Awesome accomplishment! I'm having a foursome with Kim Kardashian, Meagan Fox and the beautiful one next week myself! But good on you for that future achievement. (Who wrote that one anyway? Sandy Crux?)

Unemployment lower than US

You mean the country with the economic policies you've been trying to get Canada to emulate your whole professional life? That one? The one whose policies you WERE pursuing until fate intervened? Whatever dipshit.

Canada an "economic star" (the Economist)

I honestly don't give a flying-fuck what The Economist thinks. Canada has decent employment because our housing bubble hasn't burst yet. Our governments haven't been asked to bail-out imploded banks because harper wasn't able to deregulate them fast enough. The policies that created the world-wide economic disaster are precisely those advocated by the financial-sector shills who write for The Economist.

The commercial's narrator goes on about how Canada is "walking tall in the world." Which must refer to the drubbing we got at the UN over our Security Council seat application (despite all that maple syrup), or Canada's total irrelevance in the Middle East, or our pariah status on the subject of global warming and indigenous peoples' rights.

He then concludes by saying how "We're in safe hands with stephen harper." Yeah, sure. Unless you eat some tainted meat. Or you feel like protesting against one of harper's abominable policies.

Why are we supposed to be afraid of this doofus again? Bring him down.

"Conservatives" are Shitty Economic Managers

Check this out:

In a speech yesterday, Harper stopped just short of saying voters should give him a majority government to protect the health of the economy.

"They can choose a strong government to keep Canada on track," Harper said. "Or they can choose a weak Parliament that will put our economic stability at risk."

What a crock of shit. Um, Stevie boy? D'you know who your finance minister is? Jim Flaherty. Yeah, ... that guy. You picked him Stevie.

That's a pretty expensive "green" tax package too Stevie. Too bad it doesn't do anything.

You're such a fucking sickening liar. You don't give a shit about sound finance. You don't give a shit about the health of Canadian society. You exist to make your masters rich. You don't even care about the red meat that your chump voting base slavers for.

But it's easy for Stevie to say this crap, because the media (when they're not deliberately singing the corporate tune and excluding sane voices from the marketplace of ideas) imagines that to report on what a politician says and to then tell people whether the politician is lying or not, is departing from "objectivity."

Harper and Flaherty have wreaked the public finances and there's nothing to show for it. Harris-Flaherty-Eves screwed Ontario over. Mulroney did a number on us. Grant Devine fucked up Saskatchewan. The SoCreds loved their deficits in British Columbia. South of the border, it's the same thing. Reagan and bush II in particular, love blowing other people's money on militarism and presents for rich people.

Regarding the media, I, like others, wish they'd do some work and follow-up on important political claims. When Harper blames the Liberals for deaths from tainted meat that happened over two years into his watch, it ought to be a simple task to establish whether he's just being a fat, gutless, lying asshole, blaming others for his own murderous incompetence and corruption.

Lastly, I'd just like to say that Alison at Creekside's presentation of the convinction in the Paintball 18 case is chilling and testimony to how far these Liberals, with their mewling stupidity and corporate arrogance which they regard as "pragmatism" and these "Conservatives" with their naked authoritarianism and their sheer stupidity, have debased our political culture.

A Comment on Jim Flaherty

It is patently obvious that Flaherty dyes his hair.

It's pretty rich that a dunce who didn't even see the great recession coming (even after it had already hit the USA), and whose "action plan" had to be forced out of him, can still present himself as a sober, steady hand on the economic tiller.

It's a testimony to the intellectual bankruptcy of our hegemonic political-economic ideology.

[I wrote this in response to Montreal Simon's post about "Jimbo Flaherty's Hunger Budget"]

This Looks Like It'll Be A Stupid Editorial

Got to it thanks to Canadian Cynic. From the Vancouver Sun, Craig McInnes: "Budget deficit: An act of betrayal." I just started reading it and decided that it could stand a good drubbing. Let's see:

Today, hell freezes over.

The puffed-up posturing by opposition leaders in preparation for today's phoney showdown on the Rideau has distracted Canadians from an act of betrayal few of us ever thought we'd see.

This starts out as traditional pseudo-populist, mindless slagging of politicians. But note, how it's all going to descend into incoherence. McInnes refers to one of the few moments of genuine democratic debate in Ottawa as a "phoney showdown" but will go on to condemn the Liberals' Michael Ignatieff for even daring to defeat the government. Which is it McInnes? A "phoney showdown" or a "coup d'etat"?

A small-c conservative from Alberta is leading Canada into a new era of deficit budgets with a plan that over the next couple of years will turn back more than a decade of progress in reducing the national debt.

Yes, that's about right. A "decade of progress," which in reality means starving necessary programs of funds, ripping workers off via the "Employment Insurance" scam of all premiums and no benefits, all to bring the deficit down a couple of years earlier than it would have if only economic growth had had to have done it alone. (As well, this "economic growth" was pretty thin gruel. It was really just a needed respite from monetarist anti-inflation insanity which sent government deficits spiralling in the first place. Furthermore, this "debt-reduction" was mitigated by Paul Martin's touching dedication to giving Canada's wealthiest individuals and corporations continuous tax-cuts so that they could build monster homes or lose the money in the stock-markets. The depths of neo-liberal insanity and failure become mind-boggling once you really get going, don't they?)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's extraordinary reversal of a lifetime of bashing big-spending governments, deficits, debt and Keynesian economics is a stunning betrayal of his politics, the promises he made in the federal election just three months ago.

Well, first of all, harpo's political-economic convictions don't really rest on any principled theories or beliefs. What he's always on about is serving his corporate masters, although in his cold, shallow mental processes he's developed no real rationalization for his sycophancy. He just adores power. Secondly, any sane capitalist political leader would have to resort to Keynesian economics because, truth be told, they were designed to save the capitalist system from itself. All that 19th-Century rot about free markets and small governments is just for the rubes. Lastly, those weren't promises he made in the last election. The right word for those things was "lies." harpo broke his own fixed election law because he knew an economic shit-storm was coming and he didn't want to face the electorate in 2009, right in the middle of it.

Yet the only issue today seems to be whether he will be driving Canada into debt quickly enough. In the days leading up to the federal budget that will be tabled this afternoon, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has set himself up as judge and executioner for the Harper government if he finds the budget introduced by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty falls short of his expectations.

So, which is it Craig? Is Ignatieff illegitimately granting himself the power to be Leader of the Opposition in a parliamentary system of government or is he just playing pretend? And I guess he's damned if he do, damned if he don't in your colouring book 'eh?

But unless Harper includes the kind of nasty surprise he dropped into November's economic update, the Liberals won't be keen to match their tough talk by forcing the prime minister to go see the Governor-General again, even if Ignatieff really believes Michaelle Jean will allow him to form a coalition government with the NDP rather than immediately face the voters.

But if he did match his tough talk, you'd be all over him for usurping the president prime minister, wouldn't you?

Even so, the budget Flaherty unveils today is the biggest test of Harper's political career. His startling and sudden conversion to deficit budgeting as a cure for economic ills rather than a cause may be useful in slipping through the political crisis he provoked in November. But it comes with a cost that has yet to be fully calculated.

"Deficits as a cause of economic ills," ... it is to laugh. Tell you what Craig, ... why don't you crack open a textbook about how economics works and get back to us? If McInnes has a mortgage or a credit card he should take a paintbrush and paint "Hypocrite" across his chest and wander the earth pleading for forgiveness.

First, there is his personal credibility. Consider this statement by Harper on Oct. 6, just over three months ago:

"I know economists will say well, we could run a small deficit, but the problem is that once you cross that line, as we see in the United States, nothing stops deficits from getting larger and larger and spiralling out of control."

harpo's "personal credibility" was shot to shit when he called that election, remember? (It was probably shot to shit long before that, but what the hell.) With regards to his quote, it's sheer stupidity. If "nothing" prevents deficits from spiralling out of control, then how the hell did we manage to reduce them and eventually obtain surpluses? (Not that I'm praising Paul Martin's surpluses, just pointing out the meaningless drivel of harpo's statement.)

He argues that the world has changed in the past three months, and it has. Or at least the outlook for the coming year has changed as, one by one, economists have abandoned their optimistic
forecasts.

But Harper has yet to explain how even a rapidly deteriorating economic climate negates our previous terrible experience with red ink in Canada.

harpo has been forced to snap back to reality in order to save his political skin. My guess is the buffoon allowed half-wit Flaherty to concoct a 19th-Century economic update to which harpo added the poison pill knee-capping the opposition parties' finances in a game of chicken which would either force yet another election on Canadians or frighten the Liberals into agreeing to their own financial suicide. What harpo didn't count on was the opposition proposing to the Governor General the exact same coalition option he'd presented himself when he was busy toppling Liberal governments. Realizing his government was at death's door, the fat fuck ran shitting and pissing in terror to Rideau Hall to get his prorogation and time to put together something less idiotic. (Meanwhile, Flaherty stood their with his usual stupid expression babbling "What'd I do??")

Regarding Canada's last experience with deficits and debts; it isn't well reported but the real culprit behind those deficits was the monetary policy of the Central Bank. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Deliberate engineering recessions with high interest rates led to massive government spending on decaying social programs, that required borrowing at high interest rates. Don't worry though. The financial sector that benefited from all of that put our money to good use, gambling on tech stocks and then mortgage-backed securities and credit-default swaps. Assholes.

Neither has he pointed to any evidence of the kind that will persuade small-c fiscal conservatives that the benefits of a multibillion-dollar stimulus package can outweigh the cost of plunging back into the debt whirlpool from which we have only recently emerged.

Jesus, what empty-headed windbaggery! Perhaps all these "small-c conservative" ignoramuses can explain to us how government austerity will outweigh the cost of plunging into a recessionary whirlpool?? You know, the one we're experiencing now? As lack of spending leads to contraction of the economy, which leads to unemployment, which leads to less spending, etc., etc., et-fucking-cetera??? This isn't the time for brainless generalities Craig. The grown-ups have work to do!!

All we have really seen is the unending parade of supplicants who see the economic crisis as an opportunity to squeeze money out of the federal government for their pet projects.

As opposed to an endless parade of corporate hacks calling for more tax-cuts, deregulation, less job-security, more freedoms for themselves, more pain for everyone else. More criminal privatization schemes, more homelessness, more poverty, more imperialism, more surveillance, less civil rights, and on and on.

Politically, the Conservatives' conversion to deficit financing will cement the reputation of the Liberals, fairly or not, as the party of balanced budgets and leave Harper in league with Brian Mulroney, whose legacy includes the tens of billions of dollars that were added to our national debt while he was prime minister.

Newsflash for you Craig: "Conservatives" tend to be incompetent because they're stupid. But, in fairness, Mulroney's woes were partially the fault of monetarist fanatic John Crow of the Bank of Canada. Trudeau's big deficits came under the monetarism of Gerald Bouey who was going along with the Friedmanite insanity of the Reagan administration.

If the Bank of Canada is right, and the recession ends next year, this may all end well for Harper. But it's an awfully large gamble, for Harper, his party and the country.

Actually Craig, most mainstream economists have their heads up their asses. And most official pronouncements have been trying to stave-off panic more than be straight with the public, so they're not worth the air they're spoken on. If braindead disciples of discredited economic dogma such as yourself continue to pollute the political climate with this garbage this economic crisis will get worse and worse and last a long, long time.