Rogue

My two cents on the Robocall troubles that have hit the Conservatives in the last couple of days.

The fact that Stephen Harper had to answer questions about the actions of the Conservatives the day after the story broke and the fact that records show that his personal campaign paid money to Racknine is cause for concern for the Conservatives.  When PMs become personally involved in potential scandals it usually is not a good thing for the party at large.

Considering these robocalls occured in up to 27 ridings it is very implausible that a single campaign working, working on a local campaign, could have found the time and the resources to pull this off by himself.  Anybody with any knowledge of how the nitty gritty of electoral politics in the country works would know this.

I include the media in that group so I wonder if they will pursue the truth of this scheme with as much vim and vigour as they pursued the truth in past Liberal government scandal?  I am not holding my breath.

More of the same

After about a year and $75,000, Don Drummond finally tabled his report on how to eliminate the Ontario government's budget deficit.

Coming as no surprise to anybody his prescription was for deep cuts to government services.  That is what we got for the money Ontario taxpayers paid for his services.  Talk about a waste of money.  Really, all Premier McGuinty had to do was ask Tim Hudak for his opinion of what needs to be done to reduce the deficit and he would have provided the same advice as Mr. Drummond but it would not have cost taxpayers a penny.

There were two glaring oversights in Mr. Drummond's advice.

One was perhaps that the Ontario government should consider raising taxes.  Although in fairness to Mr. Drummond his brief expressly stated he was not to consider that option, which I believe speaks volumes about the priorities of the McGuinty government and has me questionning whether his time has come to be replaced.

When the Canadian government was enjoying all of those budget surpluses (you remember those it was only 7 years ago even though it feels like a lifetime) Conservatives and the business community claimed that this was evidence that Canadians were overtaxed.  Well, if governments are running deficits is that not evidence that Canadian are undertaxed?

Government services cost money.  Doctors, teachers, government bureaucrats, cops, judges, etc. do not work for free.  They seem to believe that they should be paid for their time and efforts in serving the citizens of their country, province or city.  (The bastards!)  If you are unwilling to pay them then you can expect to receive less services.  That fact seems to be lost on those who use those services.  They seem to expect that if it comes from the government it should not cost them anything.  So, they demand these services but resent paying the taxes necessary to pay for them.  Politicians in their infinite stupidity pander to that expectation instead of educating their electorate on the basics of economics.  The result is these politicians have to provide these services because their citizen's demand them, they cannot raise sufficient taxes to pay for the services because their citizen's also demand low taxes, so these politicians have to borrow money to make up the difference.  This goes on until someone points out the deficits are getting too big and have to be reigned in, which prompts a government to take measures to do that until the inevitable backlash against service cuts reaches critical mass and the deficit cycle begins again.

If any politician finally shows the courage to point out to the electorate that they cannot have good government services and low taxes at the same time I will vote for them, regardless of their political stripe.  It is about time we all grew up and realized there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The other oversight of Mr. Drummond was he could have pointed out that budget deficits are not the end of the world.  There is not a single government within the G20 that is not saddled with government debt.  Indeed, the debt to GDP ratio for these countries have been rising steadily for decades.  As well, budget deficits are the norm while surpluses are the exception.  None of the G8 economies are running surpluses right now and many of them are running rather substantial deficits.

Has the world economy ended as many deficit hawks claim it would if deficits are left unchecked?  Of course not.  The only developed country that is showing any imminent signs of problems is Greece and those problems are more linked to its integration into the Eurozone than just deficits.  There are other countries who are suffering under similar debt and deficits burdens as Greece that are doing just fine.

There is, of course, a limit to deficit financing.  It cannot go on forever without some consequences but no one ever tries to really objectively define those limits.  Mr. Drummond would have done Ontarians a great service if he would have taken a crack at defining those limits for Ontario.

There is no magic bullet for eliminating the Ontario deficit or any deficit.  All options should be on the table for dealing with it, from service cuts, to tax increases, to accepting a reasonable amount of deficit financing.  Mr. Drummond's report only provides us one option which is why very few of its recommendations will eventually be implemented.

Live by the sword

The Conservatives are up in arms over the Vickileaks twitter feed and all I can ask is how does it feel to be on the receiving end of a dirty trick?

Since 2004 the Conservatives have been getting bolder in using dirty tricks as part of their political strategy, the latest being the disinformation campaign that was launched in Irwin Cotler's riding a few months ago.  At first they were a little more circumspect as they remembered what happened to the Federal Progressive Conservatives after their highlighting of Jean Chretien's face in an ad campaign in 1993.  That ad campaign probably contributed to the eventual destruction of that party and the Conservatives knew it.  However, as they realized they were not suffering any negative political fallout from these tactics they became much bolder.

Did the Conservatives really believe that their political opponents would not notice this and begin copying these tactics?

Personally, I have to say that it is about time someone started doing it.  The constant wingeing and complaining about Conservative tactics without retaliating was starting to irritate me.

I have stated here on several occasions that conservatives in North America are playing for keeps and that they will resort to any tactic that they believe will advance their agenda.  I have also stated here that it is about time progressives began to stop trying to play fair and start playing to win.  As much as we would all like to believe people respect you when you turn the other cheek it is a false belief.   

So to Conservatives everywhere I say that you are the ones that let this particular Djinni out of its bottle so stop complaining when it comes back to bite you.

Do the Republicans really expect to win the White House?

I have been following the presidential election down south and I can only conclude that the answer to my question is not really.

Despite the troubles that President Obama has been having throughout his first term it would appear that the movers and shakers in the Republican Party have abandoned any real attempt to take it away from him.  They do not seem to believe that his troubles will be enough to allow them to turf him so they are not really going to try.

Evidence of that can be found just by looking at the candidates for the Republican nomination.  None of them really fire the imagination.  None of them really seem to have any innovative or original policy ideas, just Republican Party boilerplate.  None of them seem to have the political stature necessary to unseat a sitting president, even one as disappointing as President Obama during a protracted economic downturn. 

I really have to wonder about the judgement of the decision makers in the Republican Party on this.  After all they only need to look at President Clinton's election in 1992 to know what is possible.  The Democrats did not have any expectations of winning the White House that year but they had to put up someone so the big names stayed out of it and allowed a bunch of unknowns to run for the nomination.  The expectation was President Bush would win his second term and then one of those big names could run against Dan Quayle after that.  They were wrong of course and a relatively unknown Governor from Arkansas won two terms and the opportunity for the big Democrat names was lost.

President Obama is vulnerable.  He has been largely ineffective during a long economic downturn.  Despite this the Republicans do not seem to be really trying to take advantage of the situation and they seem to be content to allow him to retain the White House for one more term.

Iran is not a threat to peace

Stephen Harper disagrees with me of course because I read it on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen this morning.  He goes so far as to state that Iran wants to acquire and USE nuclear weapons.

Such asinine statements coming from the leader of our country just left me shaking my head.

Of course his statements are partly the result of Iran's building of nuclear reactors and the assumption that they are being built to manufacture nuclear weapons.  Any assertion that they are building them to satisfy their need for electricity is ignored because, the argument goes, once they build them to produce power it would not take much to convert them to produce weapons.

The thing with that argument is the same is true of all countries that use nuclear power.  Once you have a working reactor it is really a small step to move it from producing electricity to producing weapons.  Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Scandavian states, just to name a few, are just six months away from the capability of producing nuclear weapons.  All it would take is the decision to do so and the conversion of their reactors would be completed in about half-a-year.  That is why is is not illegal under international law to build nuclear reactors to the point where they can produce electricity.  If it were there would be no legal nuclear reactors anywhere.  A country only gets into legal trouble if it converts those reactors to produce weapons. 

Of course, people will say that this is Iran so they cannot be trusted to play by the rules.  Fair point although I would point out that they are no more guilty of breaking international rules as many other states that are considered more "respectable".  However, from a practical point of view why would Iran want to build nuclear weapons?  To use them?  Of course not.  One of their greatest enemies is Israel and that country already has hundreds of warheads and the means of delivering them.  Iran has none of either so why would they begin building them and spark an arms race where they would be beginning such a race so far behind that they would lose it before it really began?  If they ever actually tried to use them they would face a massive counterattack from Israel and probably the US.  I know that many judge Iran by the statements of its president, who is somewhat of a loon, but we all know that the real power in that country lies with clerics behind the scenes and they have proven to be very pragmatic folks over the years.  They will not risk their Islamic Revolution by being so stupid as to attack Israel with nuclear weapons.  Iran's government stated last month that they have no interest in making nuclear weapons.  I happen to believe them because to do so openly provides them with no advantage and a great deal of disadvantage and they would not be able to do it in secret.

Stephen Harper also made his statements as part of the ongoing campaign by hawks in the west, who want to attack Iran, trying to bring public opinion on to their side.

Hopefully they will be completely unsuccessful.  If the goal of any attacks on Iran is to stop their nuclear development program they would likely fail.  Iran is a modern country with a sophisticated arms industry feeding a sophisticated armed forces.  They have a very capable air defence system that would play merry hell with western airforces and their armed forces are large and they are geared towards one goal and one goal only; to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.  Given unlimited time and resources the West would prevail of course but the cost would not be cheap.  The current western tactic of dropping bombs on their enemies from a safe altitude would not open the Strait if Iran closed it.  The west would have to put both planes and ships into the danger zones and they would lose some of them.  Western public opinion probably would not react too badly to the occasional news of lost airplanes but I do not believe the same could be said to daily reports of aircraft losses and the loss of one or more ships during a war with Iran.

Then there is the economic impact.  In general, the economies in the west are teetering on the edge of another recession.  Taking actions that would probably cause the cost of oil to double or even triple would not help matters.  That would probably cause public opinion towards a third war in that region of the world, in a decade, to sour rather quickly.

Iran is no angel in the international community but they are not the devil either and they are not lead by a bunch of suicidal individuals bent on taking their enemies to Hell with them in a rain of fire.  They bear watching as they develop their nuclear power capability but the overblown rhetoric that we saw today from Mr. Harper and from others in the West during the past few months is not useful at best and dangerous at worst.  It could very well provide the hawks in the various western capitals the cover they require to begin a war with Iran that would result in the unnecessary loss of life of many Western military personnel as well as causing great economic upheaval that would result in the unnecessary loss of livelihoods of a great many citizens in the West.

Lots of smoke, very little fire

After several years of negotiations Stephen Harper and Barack Obama finally announced the North American perimeter agreement.

The agreement is not an actual treaty.  Instead it is a non-binding set of sub-agreements covering many facets of the relationship between Canada and the United States.

The question is why would both governments take this approach?

From the Canadian perspective I believe the Harper government saw what happened to the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada after it rammed the FTA down the throats of Canadians and decided not to risk a repeat.  It is a simple fact that although the majority of Canadians do not actively dislike the United States they also do not actively like or trust it.  Making binding treaties with them that could have implications for Canadian sovereignty is fraught with risks as different groups, who do not like the US, use the general distrust of Canadians to fight that treaty and hammer the government that negotiated it. 

From an American perspective the political situation in Washington is toxic and any treaty the President would put forward would be rejected on spec by the Republicans.  The result would be the real possibility of the US Congress rejecting any treaty negotiated by the President and he would not want that to happen during an election year.  Negotiating a binding treaty at this point would just set him up for failure.

Will this agreement significantly change anything in the Canada/US relationship?  Probably not.

Without the force of law to compel the two governments to implement this agreement in full there is no incentive to do so.  The really significant changes in the agreement will require legislative action in both countries to be implemented and that is just not going to happen.  Even the minor changes that can be brought about by simple changes to existing regulations could be stymied by bureaucratic inertia and the lack of political will to push these changes forward.

Again in the United States, the poisoned and rancid political situation would stand in the way of any legislation to implement the major provisions of the agreement.  Even if the President were to make the attempt of introducing the necessary legislation he has shown on many occasions that he lacks the spine to fight for them.  Whenever he has experienced push-back from the Republicans he has caved, including for his signature initiatives.  I could only imagine his reaction to Republican objections to legislation about issues that he really does not care that much about.

In Canada our government has demonstrated many times that it will only use its precious political capital on legislation that it believes will make its base happy or on legislation it believes will buy it votes.  Nothing in this agreement will meet those two criteria so this government will not be pushing too hard to implement all of the provisions of it.

This agreement was more about show than substance.  It was good for a photo-op but in the end it will not change much.

Crossing a line

I have written several times in this space that I believe that it is silly for anybody to make a big deal about a cabinet minister using military aircraft to travel, even if that travel may be for personal reasons.  Ours is the only G8 country that expects members of the cabinet to travel commercial.

That being said I have to say that Peter MacKay had no business using the Cormerant helicopter to get out a fishing camp in Labrador. 

The military has a whole fleet of aircraft available whose sole purpose is to move people, in luxury and otherwise.  If he wants to use any one of these aircraft as his personal air taxi I have no problem with that.  That is what they are there for.

The Cormerants on the other hand are there for Search and Rescue.  The only people they move are SAR Techs and the victims of accidents.  They are not meant to be used as taxies.  Canada does not have many of these aircraft so we really cannot spare one for the personal transportation of a cabinet minister, even if it was not the "on-call" aircraft.

What would have happened if while this helicopter was off flying the minister around a major air or sea accident would have taken place requiring the services of all the SAR aircraft in the area?  Thankfully, we did not have to find out but the potential was there, particulary at this time of year in that part of the world. 

Mr. MacKay's utter lack of good judgement in this case is breathtaking so here is a piece of advice for him.  Stay off the yellow birds.

Economic Storm Clouds Brewing

It is only a matter of time before Greece defaults on its debts.  Italy is on the brink of its own debt crisis.  The United States has not recovered from the Great Recession of 2008 and appears to be heading for a second one.  The projected economic growth rate for China is expected to decrease by as much as 2.5 percentage points next year, which would still give it very positive economic growth but which could be the pin that finally pops the extremely inflated real estate bubble in that country.

Any one of these events on their own could dump the world economy into the crapper.  The fact that more than one of these events could happen within the next 6-12 months would be distasterous for the world economy, including Canada's.  Although, we should be really worried about China.  That is the country that is buying most of our natural resources, which is the sector of the economy that is keeping up Canada's economic growth.  If China runs into a serious bout of economic trouble the economic recession that has been hammering Canada's industrial sector will come to its resources sector and the whole of the Canadian economy will go into a deep and probably prolonged recession.

What are we to do?

Do not count on central banks.  Interest rates in the Western world are at or near zero so the central banks' ability to stimulate the economy by loweing interest rates is very limited. 

That would leave only governments to take up the slack with fiscal measures to stimulate the economy.  However, do not count on them.  Any measures they take will probably just make things worse. Governments are completely unable to stop or reduce the duration of recessions.  Unfortunately, most people do not realize that so they demand governments to act and when they do the situation invariably gets worse, which leads to demands for more action which leads increasingly desperate governments to take action, any action, that gives the appearance that they are dealing with the recession when in fact they are usually screwing things up more.   At any rate, we should be watching what governments do after the next recession.  They may not be able to stop or reduce the duration of a recession but they can make the recovery from one more even across their societies by what they do after the economy begins to bounce back. 


Do not count on businesses either.  They will demand that governments hand them billions of dollars to stay afloat "to save jobs" but they will retrench and lay people off by the 10s of thousands.  As well, as they did in 2008 they will stay on the sidelines waiting for someone else to make the investments that will be necessary to finally pull the economy out of any recession.

So really, you can only count on yourself. Scary thought is it not?