Reversing course after one election? Good luck with that | #cdnpoli #elxn42 #TPP

Yeah, well.

As a couple of friends have pointed out, some of my recent blatherings about voting may seem inconsistent with my “brand.” You know, civic engagement, the responsibilities of citizenship, the obligations we have to society and to each other … yawn.

Can’t be too surprised that that’s not a huge part of the conversation these days. There’s a lot invested in making sure it isn’t, and that shouldn’t be much of a surprise either. The more people are all wound up and angry and yelly and distracted, the less energy and attention they have to focus on the underlying stuff. Fill the window with dead cats and all that.

But once again, maybe we step back and look at this within a larger historical context (dear god, I’m going to hit myself in the head with a hammer — ed.). Let’s reframe this over the course of the last 20 or 30 years. What’s been happening?

The gutting of the public sphere.

The devaluation of civil society.

The emasculation of public institutions.

The dismantling of the social safety net.

Austerity, privatization, deregulation, outsourcing, yada yada yada, all served up with noxious sides of deficit hysteria and tax cuts, and the attendant kneecapping of government’s ability to act.

All predating Stephen Harper, nasty though he is. Again, think back a few decades. Brian Mulroney. Jean Chretien. Paul Martin. Running through it all, like a river of toxic slime: the successive implementation of the same agenda. “Free trade” regimes that concentrate more and more wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. Nods to the knuckle-draggers aside, Harper’s just peddling more of the same. Seriously, can anyone point to a substantive change in the country’s direction over the past few decades?

All of this has been encouraged and paid for, of course, by the CEOs, the international investor class, their flunkies, and their cheerleaders in the corporate media, along with the Serious and Responsible People who guard the parameters of conversation and gaslight everyone else into thinking that whatever’s left of the “middle class” shares the same values and interests as the business elites. And always with the same themes: need to compete and obey the diktats of the market. Trade barriers need to come down. Labour flexibility. Capital mobility. Safeguard the rights of investors lest they take their money elsewhere. Anything that interferes with the accumulation of private profit becomes a target.

And what’s the effect? Well, what happens to anything that’s consistently attacked, demeaned, belittled, stripped of resources, and corroded? Gradually but steadily, the fabric of society wears away because the things that hold us together and allow us to act with common purpose are systematically undermined. We are isolated, exhausted, and/or distracted in the face of economic precariousness. What’s the point of acting collectively? What can we accomplish in the face of impersonal global forces which, we’re told over and over, are inevitable and irresistible?

Is it any wonder that the notion of citizenship starts to mean less and less? Is it a coincidence that the avenues for meaningful engagement are closed off while we’re distracted with the latest shinyshiny?

I’m not necessarily suggesting there are no differences among Harper and the opposition leaders in terms of policy or commitment to democratic ideals. But I do fear that the sustained assault on the things that hold us together has gone on for so long, and that the damage to our body politic has been so profound, that it may be too late to restore it.

This has been going on for decades. Does anyone really think a mere change of government is going to fix it?

Related posts:

• Rolling back the damage: are we a country, or a commodity?
• Civic engagement in the face of democratic deficit
• Let’s stop fetishizing “The Market”
• Deficit reduction, austerity, and the meaning of conservatism
• Reviving #ThePublicGood, part 6: Government is not a business
• Reviving the Public Good, part 3: civic engagement

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Rolling back the damage: are we a country, or a commodity? | #elxn42 #cdnpoli #TPP

Haven’t really crystallized this into a coherent argument yet, but I can’t remember feeling this disheartened about a federal election since 1997. Ever since then, there’s been a growing malignancy in our body politic — a malignancy that goes beyond partisanship.

Successive governments since then have, for whatever reason, surrendered more and more policy tools, and more and more of their innate capacity to advance the public good, in the face of supranational trade and investment regimes. Regardless of who’s been in power in Ottawa (and provincial capitals, for that matter), we’ve been watching the gradual but unmistakable enfeeblement of government, to the point where it may well be irreversible. As awful as Harper’s been on so many files — environment, the war on women, civil liberties, First Nations, the economy, health care, immigration, housing, veterans, integrity in government, climate change — this didn’t start with him.

What I still don’t understand is, why? Why is government, of whatever stripe, voluntarily abandoning its role? Free Trade, NAFTA, MIA, CETA, FIPA, TPP, whatever. Why are public institutions consenting to, and even participating in, their own enervation? Why are we, through our governments, surrendering our ability to protect ourselves and act in the national interest in favour of a few multinational corporations and allowing them to sue us for notional lost profits? Who benefits from this? Who’s looking out for the common good here?

And that doesn’t even begin to address the glaring faults in our current electoral system. The disfiguring effects of our antiquated, necrotic First Past The Post system have already been discussed, but if there’s any sustained discussion of alternatives or efforts to reform the voting system, or the so-called “Fair Elections Act,” it’s barely being heard above the manufactured controversies and distractions. The conversation’s being dragged into the sewer, and that’s no accident either.

It’s why I’ve been wondering, perhaps at odds with my arguments about the responsibilities of citizenship, about the efficacy of voting. If civic engagement is reduced to casting a ballot every few years for choices that have, in truth, been set out for us, then are we really participating meaningfully in our own governance? Is voting, even if it manages to end the Harper era, going to undo decades worth of damage to civil society? Is it going to put an end to this misguided fetish for austerity? Is it going to reinvigorate the notion of an activist government committed to using the power of public policy to cultivate the greatest good for the greatest number? Is it going to re-assert the primacy of the public sphere in the face of “free trade” regimes and investor-state protections? How likely is it that any government, even the best-intentioned, will move to roll back the damage in the face of the inevitable backlash from international finance, the small coterie of Serious and Responsible people who decide which ideas are “realistic” and which are “lunatic,” and their amplifiers in the media?

I don’t want to sound facile, but doesn’t it come down to the kind of government we want and the kind of country we want to be? Do we want to be governed by the people we elect, or by a small global oligarchy of unaccountable string-pullers? And is the simple act of choosing a brand on polling day going to affect that?

Related posts:

• Civic engagement in the face of democratic deficit
• This election, let’s talk about the Public Good
• In defence of the public sphere
• Bloody well right, we need to tax and spend
• Let’s stop fetishizing “The Market”

Don Drummond’s austerity medicine: suck it, Ontario | #onpoli

I’m a little late to the game, so not much in the way of new or innovative analysis or reaction. For starters, though, I’d recommend you take a look at my friend @cityslikr’s thoughts over at his place. Dude’s been away for a few days (and his explanation isn’t entirely convincing, but we’ll just leave that be for now), but he’s making up for lost time. 

If you take nothing else away from his excellent post, just note what we in the news business like to call the “nut graf.” In this case, it’s the part where he points out that in all this panicky, apocalyptic, sky-is-falling shrieking, there’s been no real discussion of the revenue side. So we’re not allowed to talk about raising revenues. Taxes are still a dirty word. We still can’t have an adult conversation about it, apparently because the Sun will crank up the outrage-manufacturing bullshit machine into overdrive.

(I’d also recommend Erika Shaker’s trenchant essay over at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, if you’re in a sardonic frame of mind.)

Anyway, nothing new or revealing there. It’s not as if Ontario is unique among Western jurisdictions in its inability to put two and two together: in essence, that we create a decent society by pooling our resources and shouldering our collective obligations to our fellow citizens. Filter that through the right-wing stupidity machine and it turns into the old “tax-and-spend-socialism” epithet.

So once again, we’re supposed to sit back and suck it as the fabric of our community and all the things essential to our quality of life are attacked with machetes, meat cleavers and chain saws. While well-paid pundits, columnists, bankers and accountants lecture us pompously about living within our means.

You’d think after god knows how many futile decades of this, we’d have learned something.

Again with the austerity koolaid? These people have precisely one tool in their intellectual toolbox: cut cut cut. We’ve listened to them for decades, and where’s it gotten us?

Right where we are today with increased poverty hunger inequity and millions of people taking to the streets in protest Yet they doubledown Tis the last gasp of a dying system

No. If there’s one observation I might make, it’s this: This is what comes of allowing government and international regulatory regimes to be colonized, captured, and operated on behalf of the 1 per cent, instead of set to ensuring the greatest good for the greatest number. That’s why anything that makes life better for the rest of us is under attack. It’s not rocket science. 

Related posts:

• Let’s stop fetishizing “The Market” | #cdnpoli #TOpoli #classwarfare #austerity
• In defence of the public sphere | #TOpoli #TeamFord
• Adam Smith: It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion
• Austerity’s Targets « Framed In Canada | #cdnpoli #classwarfare
• BBC: Markets dive in reaction to unfortunate outbreak of democracy in Greece

Austerity’s Targets « Framed In Canada | #cdnpoli #classwarfare

As the post-recession politics of austerity tattoo a bull’s eye onto the backs of workers in Canada and elsewhere, Iceland stands out as a refreshing alternative.

Iceland was the first country to feel the effects of the Great Recession of 2008. Its banks owed nearly six times Iceland’s GDP in the Fall of 2008, threatening to bring the entire Icelandic economy down with it.

The people of Iceland broke out in protest, egging their own Prime Minister’s car and spurring a change in government.

Since then, the Icelandic government has gone after the bankers responsible for the crisis, arresting several bankers in an ongoing investigation into questionable activities.

Iceland is being lauded by many observers, including the IMF and Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman, as a model example of how a country can respond to an economic crisis such as the Great Recession.

Greece, the birthplace of democracy, is a study in contrasts.

In Greece, the government has unleashed a massive austerity program that has been met with citizen protests, strikes, political instability, and ongoing social unrest.

In Iceland, they’ve arrested bankers who caused the economic crisis, but in Greece, they’ve arrested unionized workers for protesting property tax increases.

Iceland appears to be on the road to economic recovery.

Greece, on the other hand, is mired in social, political and economic turbulence which show no sign of abating.

via framedincanada.com

Another must-read from the indispensable Trish Hennessy at Framed in Canada.

All the more timely in light of things like the recently released CCPA report on CEO compensation, juxtaposed with Caterpillar’s lockout of Canadian workers on the heels of a demand that they accept pay cuts in excess of 50 per cent. Our tax dollars at work, helping foreign companies screw our fellow Canadians.

So, two possible responses to “austerity,” or shock doctrine if you like Naomi Klein’s framing. Gee, I wonder which way the Harper Government will go?

Related posts:

• Income inequality, the 99 percent, and the dysfunction of American society | via Esquire | #uspoli #OWS
• The cruel reality of the American class system: We Are Not All Created Equal | #classwarfare #uspoli
• From @mtaibbi, a Christmas message from Wall Street | #classwarfare #uspoli
• The Sun: Demonizing organized labour, no matter what | #cdnpoli #onpoli
• BBC: Markets dive in reaction to unfortunate outbreak of democracy in Greece

From @mtaibbi, a Christmas message from Wall Street | #classwarfare #uspoli

Apparently, we’d all be in much better shape if the poor were as motivated as Steven Schwarzman is to make America a better place.

But it seems to me that if you’re broke enough that you’re not paying any income tax, you’ve got nothing but skin in the game. You’ve got it all riding on how well America works.

You can’t afford private security: you need to depend on the police. You can’t afford private health care: Medicare is all you have. You get arrested, you’re not hiring Davis, Polk to get you out of jail: you rely on a public defender to negotiate a court system you’d better pray deals with everyone from the same deck. And you can’t hire landscapers to manicure your lawn and trim your trees: you need the garbage man to come on time and you need the city to patch the potholes in your street.

And in the bigger picture, of course, you need the state and the private sector both to be functioning well enough to provide you with regular work, and a safe place to raise your children, and clean water and clean air.

The entire ethos of modern Wall Street, on the other hand, is complete indifference to all of these matters. The very rich on today’s Wall Street are now so rich that they buy their own social infrastructure. They hire private security, they live on gated mansions on islands and other tax havens, and most notably, they buy their own justice and their own government.

via rollingstone.com

Matt Taibbi plays his violin for the poor, victimized, super-rich of America. The sociopathic ways they behave, their parasitic and corrupting effect on civil society, and their open contempt for everyone else … of course, there aren’t any lessons for Canada in any of this.

Nor could we possibly see any of this in terms of class, because of course, this is America, where anyone can make it to the top if you just work hard enough. Bootstraps and all that.

(Say the C word, Matt. Come on. You can do it.)

(h/t Edstock at The Galloping Beaver)

Related posts:

• The Sun: Demonizing organized labour, no matter what | #cdnpoli #onpoli
• @mtaibbi on How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the #OWS Protests | #Occupy #OccupyTO
• @Cityslikr, @NickKouvalis, and the need for civility in public discourse | #TOpoli #TeamFord
• Beyond the Port Lands: Dragging Swamp Ford for the remnants of civic engagement

Some Republican nobody on the #OccupyWallStreet action | #uspoli #classwarfare

Smart comment — he’s right.

Here’s the quote from PolitickerNY (h/t reddit blogger cos):

Long Island Republican Congressman Peter King blasted the Occupy Wall Street protesters as anti-American today on a right-wing talk show.

“The fact is these people are anarchists. They have no idea what they’re doing out there,” King told host Laura Ingraham. “They have no sense of purpose other than a basically anti-American tone and anti-capitalist. It’s a ragtag mob basically.”

Note the use of anti-hippie code words. All that’s missing is a reference to the devil’s weed. (Man, talk about arrested development; not in him, in the people this language is manipulating. Were they all born in 1930?)

But that stuff is just for the rubes. The real message is for the media and the policy-makers, people with power (like the current weed-hating administration):

“We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy,” he said, adding “I’m taking this seriously in that I’m old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can’t allow that to happen.”

“Legitimacy” — remember that word. He’s not referencing the protest; he’s referencing the complaint.

If the #OWS anti-banker, pro-Constitution grievance ever gets legitimized, our Billionaire Owners and their millionaire retainers (Peter King included) will be playing on defense for the next few years. King thinks that would be bad; he also thinks it’s a possibility.

Playing to win; making the other team play defense while you march down the field. Want to see what that feels like? All it takes is persistence.

You could even help the Occupy Wall Street protesters persist, by joining them.

GP

via americablog.com

This guy isn’t really that important on his own, but his words are symbolic of something a lot bigger. Some powerful people are feeling some powerful threatened.

Related posts:

• Video: @NaomiAKlein talks to MSNBC about #OccupyWallStreet
• Chris Hedges schools Kevin O’Leary | #OccupyWallStreet
• Video: Chris Hedges spanks Kevin O’Leary | #OccupyWallStreet →

The Israeli protest has turned into a revolution – Haaretz

For more than three weeks Israeli society and polity have been shaken by waves of social protest of the sort that has never been seen here before. This protest reached a new peak on Saturday night with demonstrations that saw hundreds of thousands of Israelis take to the streets. Such a display of power is apparently far from being over.

The protest has already achieved much. It has stirred civil society to become involved, and to show solidarity following many years of complacency. It has also altered the social agenda in Israel, and political-security discourse has given way to a socioeconomic one, which has taken center stage in an unprecedented way.

The group of young protesters has also managed to instill an element of popular democracy, managing its affairs far away from politicians and political parties. The demonstrators have shown exemplary organizational abilities, which also peaked during the latest, incredibly orderly demonstration in Tel Aviv. The group of speakers during the demonstration was impressive for its diversity.

The themes of the protest have, to a certain extent, also managed to hit home. When the masses cry out throughout the country “the people demand social justice,” it does not yet suggest an orderly and detailed socioeconomic theory or defined set of demands, but it is doubtful whether these are necessary at this stage, in the forging of a new movement.

We are in the midst of what is increasingly shaping up to be an Israeli revolution. Following decades in which the public has curled up in its indifference and allowed a handful of politicians to run the country as they wished, with no significant involvement from civil society, the rules of the political game have changed.

The public has realized that it has much more power and influence than it imagined. Henceforth, every prime minister in Israel will have to take into consideration this emerging force.

It is still hard to know where this protest will lead, and how it will end. For the time being, we can be impressed by its power and the direction in which it seeks to move. We must therefore praise the protesters for the changes in perception they have already instigated and hope that they will be able to continue their efforts in the future, in the same impressive way that has characterized them to date – and bring about genuine change.

via haaretz.com

Hmm. I wonder if they got any ideas from watching what’s been happening in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Arab countries? Of course, that could undermine the whole Israel-is-the-only-democracy-in-the-Middle-East narrative. Which may be why we’re not hearing more about it. That and the possibility that people in North America may get ideas …