April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

economy

‘Tis the Season of the Pharisees

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Just like many other Canadians this holiday season my family will be ‘making do’. For us the war on Christmas is not the inclusiveness of the many celebrations that take place at this time of year. It is not a choice of Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays on a sign or Christmas card. Heck I have Christmas cards that I received as a child back in the sixties that say Happy Holidays. It is not nativity scenes being kept off public property. The real war on Christmas is declared by the corporatists and right wingers. Corporations continue to move jobs off shore while at the same time advertising tells us we are somehow lacking without the latest and greatest new thing we should go into debt for. Right wingers and their ideologue political choices continue to filter money to their corporatist friends while gutting programs that help those in need.

How many children will wonder why Santa bypassed their homes this year? How many families will recall Christmas’s with son’s, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, uncles , aunts, civilians and soldiers alike now dead because of war? How many families will spend Christmas wondering if the New Year will include employment or knowing it won’t? Wondering if they will even have a home next Christmas. How many are waiting for the political will to ensure there are jobs instead of rhetoric about people needing to tighten their belt or accept service positions that won’t cover the bills?

The war is on the people and it is year round. It relies on mean spirited, selfish motivations. It relies on those willing to spout a philosophy they cannot live. Those who spend the year advocating against relief programs then professing to protect the legacy of one who was born homeless and into poverty to young single mother.

COAL for Christmas

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Little Stevie has been very naughty. Going around thinking he is special, breaking things he sees no value in — like democracy — and generally not playing well with others.

Traditionally Santa brings such children coal for Christmas. I think this year should be no exception, Harper deserves a coal [ition government] and while that is punishment for him it will be a grand gift for the rest of us.

The last few years have been very depressing watching the opposition waste opportunity after opportunity bowing to the manipulations and machinations of a party for whom ideology trumps all. Duceppe put it best;

What the Conservative government presented today was not an economic statement but an ideological statement. This ideology so blinds the government that it fails to see how urgent it is to act.

Instead of presenting a plan to help the economy recover and breathe some air into it, the Prime Minister has chosen to smother it. . . The Prime Minister has preferred ideology to economics. He has placed partisanship above democracy.

Despite the surpluses accumulated over 10 years, the Conservative government not only refused to present its plan, to provide relief, it consciously chose to stifle the economy to advance its outdated ideology on the reduction of government.

Naturally, we are prepared to cut our salaries and to reduce growth of expenditures by the government bureaucracy. But the purpose of these savings should not be to reduce government in order to avoid a one-time deficit, but to support the economy, to support the people.

The government has decided to take advantage of the crisis to attack the rights of women and workers. The government is proposing to suspend public servants’ right to strike. It has decided to attack women’s rights by submitting their right to pay equity to negotiation. Since when are rights negotiable? It is scandalous. We will never accept such an attack by the government on women’s and workers’ rights. We will never allow it.

Not content with putting ideology before the economy, not content with attacking workers, women, and Quebec, the Prime Minister is adding insult to injury by putting his own extreme partisanship before democracy. When speaking on December 8, 2005 about reforming the financing of political parties, the Prime Minister said:

“These measures are directly inspired by reforms introduced by René Lévesque 30 years ago, reforms of which all Quebeckers can be very proud. Quebec has led the way in electoral reform.”

By announcing his intention to eliminate public funding of political parties, the Prime Minister is betraying the memory of René Lévesque. Public funding was at the heart of René Lévesque’s reform. This desire to slash funding is a direct attack on democracy. Using the economic crisis as an excuse and under the pretense of saving $30 million, the Conservative government has shown the world the extent of its hypocrisy.

Hardly a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister called an election for strictly partisan reasons. He spent $300 million, ten times more than what he is trying to save by eliminating political party funding. What will the Prime Minister announce next in the upcoming budget? Does he plan to shut down Parliament to save $500 million?

The Prime Minister has manufactured a democratic crisis, simply to give himself a partisan advantage, because this government’s goal is to silence all forms of opposition: silence artists, silence women, silence unions and silence the opposition.

The latest rumour is that Harper has taken a step back and will reverse the decision to end the public financing of all parties.

Giorno, Harper’s Chief of Staff, has released a memo with such gems as;

* We’re not even two months removed from the last election, and a group of backroom politicians are going to pick who the Prime Minister is. Canadians didn’t vote for this person. We don’t even know who this person will be.

Oh Noes!!! we don’t know who it will be. How can we start smearing them?

* Not a single voter voted for a Liberal-NDP coalition. Certainly not a single voter voted for the Liberals to form a coalition with the separatists in the Bloc.

Actually the PR vote went more to a coalition than to the CONs

* This is what bothers me the most. The Conservatives won the election. The Opposition keeps saying that the Conservatives have to respect the will of the voters that this is a minority and so on.
* …how about Liberals, NDP and Bloc respecting the will of the voters when they said “YOU LOSE”.

YOU LOSE!? HAW HAW You’re rubber I’m glue… This is the best a government that thinks they were born from gods right nut can do?

* And what’s this going to do to the economy. I’m sorry, I don’t care how desperate the Liberals are — giving socialists (Jack Layton) and separatists (Gilles Duceppe) a veto over every decision in government — that is a recipe for total economic disaster.

SOCIALISTS RUN!!! HIDE!!! LOOK UNDER THE BED. Oh hai Sarah

* But how more phony could these guys be?

Yours? Geez I don’t know I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of them yet

* I mean, I follow the news, virtually every single day you have Harper or Flaherty out there telegraphing exactly what they plan to do with the economy. And not once did you hear the Liberals, NDP or separatists talking about toppling the government in response.
* No — do you know what set this off. When Flaherty said he was going to take taxpayer-funded subsidies away from the opposition. Now there is a reason to try and overturn an election— because the Conservatives the audacity to say “Hey, it’s a recession, maybe you should take your nose out of the trough.”
* And I wish the media would be more clear on this point — the opposition aren’t being singled out by this fact the Conservatives stand to lose the most money of all. The only difference is that Canadians are voluntarily giving money the Conservatives, so they don’t need taxpayer handouts. The only reason the opposition would be hurt more is because nobody wants to donate to them. They should be putting their efforts towards fixing that problem.
* I don’t want another election. But what I want even less is a surprise backroom Prime Minister whom I never even had the opportunity to vote for or against. What an insult to democracy.

Hmm so every other democratic country has the system you guys want to dismantle but anyone who calls you on it is against democracy? So how are things there in the Ministry of Truth?

Sign the Petition. Support a Coalition

Giorno memo from the G&M

Remember, Canada is not the United States

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He who seeks to be Canada’s first President, tries to remind Canadians the Canada is not the United States.

Harper, at his campaign stop in Val d’Or last evening, sought to comfort skittish investors and to distance the campaign debate from the turbulence south of the border. “Today we see more volatility in financial markets due to the crisis in the United States,” said the prime minister. “Remember, Canada is not the United States.

Sadly though Harper then chooses almost the exact same words as the Republican Presidential candidate with which to assure us all is well.

The fundamentals of the Canadian economy are sound.

Source

On the campaign trail in Jacksonville, Florida, the Senator declared this morning that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” despite what he described as “tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street.”

Source

Let them eat cake!
Let them eat cake!
Layton tried to convene an all party conference on the apparent economic collapse going on, however was rebuffed by the others who are more concerned with partisan sniping than in recognizing that economic depression in the US is certainly going to affect our economy as well. Harper, in fact, rejected any co-operative effort outright saying that such matters are for debates. Well it is hardly surprising that the same mindset that sees human rights, reproductive rights etc. as fodder for debate would also see the economic security of Canadians as simple debate material.

One can imagine the Harper Government™ having the opinion as Bush spokesman Tony Fratto; “It’s unfortunate that those people will lose their homes, and there are other options,” Fratto said. “You know, they can rent.”

Has Marie Antoinette taught them nothing?

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Conservatives Artfully Dodging Reality

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Conservatives and the art of deception
Conservatives and the art of deception
In the Globe and Mail Margret Atwood writes on the Harper Conservatives™ cuts to the arts. She explains how this is not in truth about targeting “elites” but is in reality about targeting Canadians of any socio-economic status or political persuasion.

The Conference Board estimates Canada’s cultural sector generated $46-billion, or 3.8 per cent of Canada’s GDP, in 2007. And, according to the Canada Council, in 2003-2004, the sector accounted for an “estimated 600,000 jobs (roughly the same as agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, oil & gas and utilities combined).”

Perhaps Mr. Harper feels there are far too many Canadians employed in Canada and therefore jobs are expendable.

This sums up my thoughts about Harper and his neo-con co-oped Conservative party perfectly;

What’s the idea here? That arts jobs should not exist because artists are naughty and might not vote for Mr. Harper? That Canadians ought not to make money from the wicked arts, but only from virtuous oil? That artists don’t all live in one constituency, so who cares? Or is it that the majority of those arts jobs are located in Ontario and Quebec, and Mr. Harper is peeved at those provinces, and wants to increase his ongoing gutting of Ontario – $20-billion a year of Ontario taxpayers’ money going out, a dribble grudgingly allowed back in – and spank Quebec for being so disobedient as not to appreciate his magnificence? He likes punishing, so maybe the arts-squashing is part of that: Whack the Heartland.

Or is it even worse? Every budding dictatorship begins by muzzling the artists, because they’re a mouthy lot and they don’t line up and salute very easily. Of course, you can always get some tame artists to design the uniforms and flags and the documentary about you, and so forth – the only kind of art you might need – but individual voices must be silenced, because there shall be only One Voice: Our Master’s Voice. Maybe that’s why Mr. Harper began by shutting down funding for our artists abroad. He didn’t like the competition for media space.

Read the full article here

h/t skdadl @breadnroses

Harper misleads on Economy

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A new Depression?
A new Depression?
An article in the Sept. 15th edition of The Hamilton Spectator, quotes Harper as saying; “My own belief is if we were going to have some kind of crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now a year into the (financial) crisis”

Just as we don’t want to be governed by the religious beliefs of the New Conservative Party, we should be suspect of their leader’s economic beliefs. The fallout from the bank crisis in the states may only just be beginning. By giving the money industries a free hand we have created economies that are doomed to crash like the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. And just as he lost his home, far too many American’s and Canadians in danger of losing, or have lost, theirs.

On Sunday CBC ran The Great Wall Street Swindle, based on fact and not ‘belief’, the background and presumed effects of this debacle are frightening.

You can watch the 30 minute program here.

That there is more and potentially worse economic fallout to come, may in part explain why Harper disregarded his own rule about set election times and called an election before the full effects of neocon policies can be seen.

Harper Smoked in Welland

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Harper offered further proof of his inability to care about or understand the needs of the average Canadian on his recent stop in Welland.

Welland recently hit by the loss of manufacturing jobs and a likely severe “downturn” in the local economy was treated to a promise by Harper that he would get tough on ‘kiddie’ smokes. I’m sure that was a great comfort to Welland residents. It will do wonders to provide jobs, income security, stave off mortgage foreclosures and…… well Harper thinks everyone should just get over it;

A local reporter pressed the prime minister about his party’s plans to deal with staggering job losses. Harper replied: “I know it’s tough for some people, but it’s not all doom and gloom. We have to stay the course.”

The Spec

Take note Harper thinks that a part time job making minium wage is just as good as a job that lets you feed AND shelter your family at the same time. After all if stats can prove there is work that is all Harper cares about.

Canada Harper has dedicated this song to you,;

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