The Wall Street protests continue, with activists promising to hold out for months. However, another element has been brought in, that has no place in a legitimate rally.
Topless women with signs requesting that gawkers not look at them but listen to them. I can't help but think that Karl Rove has outdone himself. They need to stop off at Wall Street, pick up their pay cheques for discrediting the movement, and then let the grown-ups take over.
Did they really think people would listen to them if they took their clothes off?
The message of the protesters is an important one. They represent the 99% of Americans that are propping up the top 1%, and they are sick of it.
Remember the 2006 leaked Citigroup memo? (Equity Strategy, By: Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod, Narendra Singh, Citigroup Global Market Research, October 16, 2005)
The World is dividing into two blocs - the Plutonomy and the rest. The U.S., UK, and Canada are the key Plutonomies - economies powered by the wealthy. Continental Europe (ex-Italy) and Japan are in the egalitarian bloc.
... We can see a number of potential challenges to plutonomy. The first, and probably most potent, is through a labor backlash. Outsourcing, offshoring or insourcing of cheap labor is done to undercut current labor costs .... Low-end developed market labor might not have much economic power, but it does have equal voting power with the rich .... the third threat comes from the potential social backlash.
All we have left is "equal voting power", yet people are still refusing to vote, casting their ballots instead for the continuation of our plutocracy.
When does Stephen Harper ever talk about income disparity or poverty? Never. He was handed a Senate report on how to help alleviate poverty, and he stuck his nose in the air and then threw it in the trash.
Morton Blackwell, the man who helped Preston Manning set up his anti-democracy centre, and trained people like Karl Rove and Rob Anders, is one of the key players in the Neoconservative movement.
He has made their intentions clear. In a forward to Plinio de Correa de Olivier's English language edition of his book: Nobility and Analagous Traditional Elites, that promotes "the restoration of influence of authentic elites over the multitudes", Blackwell writes:
'One does not have to accept Papal infallibility to appreciate a case persuasively made, using theological, moral, and prudential arguments. This book will convince many readers, whatever their faith, that good elites are legitimate, desirable and, yes, necessary'.
Unfortunately these are not good elites. They are just greedy elites and it's time that the "multitudes" started governing themselves again, by taking back their democracy. A little "social backlash"
The Wall Street protests are important and those topless women need to put on some clothes or go home.
Maude Barlow, with the Council of Canadians, once said that Chantel Hebert was the only progressive voice on Canadian television. The last thing I ever heard Hebert say was that she felt that Jim Flaherty was the most underrated politician on Parliament Hill.
I have never listened to another word from her and avoid her columns. If she told me the earth was round, I would have to rethink my position. But was her remark the result of lazy journalism, or was she, like most Canadians, simply brainwashed by the millions and millions of dollars in taxpayer funded advertising?
Who knows, but she was dead wrong. Next to Stephen Harper, Flaherty is the most overrated politician in the country. But with our money he has created a corporate branding. In the same way that we think of Nike as the company promoting fitness and athletic prowess, or Allstate as the all knowing father who keeps us safe in their hands, the Conservatives have successfully branded themselves as good fiscal managers, even when the facts show the opposite to be true.
But so long as we don't have to see the sweatshops where Nike shoes are made, or the people left high and dry by Allstate, we will continue to buy into the illusions.
Journalist and author Matt Taibbi has two excellent pieces in Rolling Stone magazine, one a year old and the other written just this week: Wall Street's Bailout Hustle and Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
I read them both last night and was astounded at how similar the stories are to what is taking place in Canada. In fact, many of the names are directly linked to our current government, the most prominent being Goldman Sachs.
So why is no one in the mainstream media doing an in depth piece on Jim Flaherty? Some have started writing about the sub-prime mortgage mess he's created, and the fact that he "secretly" bailed out our banks to the tune of $125 billion, but what he has actually done with Canadian finances could be a six-part miniseries, in the horror genre.
It's absolutely frightening.
Goldman Sachs
"Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy — they're re-creating the conditions for another crash" - Matt Taibbi (1)
In his piece Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail, Taibbi is incredulous that despite the so-called economic crisis being the result of unlawful and unethical behaviour, no one went to jail. Except of course Bernie Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme wasn't even really part of the the Wall Street highway robbery.
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.
But what the folks on Wall Street did was rob from ordinary citizens, and yet no one went to jail. Apparently theft is legal if you really didn't need the money you stole. Madoff is now going public, claiming that the banks and hedge fund managers were in on his scheme, because they could have blown the whistle, but were making far too much money to risk losing a good thing.
And while all of the major U.S. banks were guilty of fraud, Goldman Sachs' activity was unique, because: "Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling."
Goldman Sachs and the Theft of Seniors Hard Earned Assets
By now, many of us are aware of the treachery of Stephen Harper and his promise not to tax income trusts. But what went on behind the scenes of this fiasco would probably make Bernie Madoff blush.
It started with the hiring of Mark Carney as a financial advisor. Carney, while a brilliant financier, was a long-time Goldman Sachs employee, who knew how to play the game.
Carney managed to convince Canada's finance department to close a tax loophole that allowed huge companies to boost their profits by converting themselves into tax-free income trusts — a practice that he claimed was "draining billions from government coffers". (2) He had first pitched the idea to Paul Martin, but a brilliant financier himself, Martin rejected the notion.
But Carney managed to persuade Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty of its merits, and when the Tories made their surprise reversal in 2006, senior citizens, a core Tory constituency, were furious about the hit on their portfolios. (2)
The story was sold to Canadians as saving us money, and that the only victims were rich corporations. But the opposite was true. Rich corporations cashed in on the scheme to the tune of 35 billion dollars and the only victims were ordinary citizens, mostly seniors, many of whom lost everything.
What Carney did was rather clever. He found a way to exempt Goldman Sachs from the tax, and make a fortune off the unsuspecting Canadian taxpayer. Because when income trusts took a hit on the market, GS bought them up at the deflated prices. Carney then wrote the tax in such a way that 'private' investors would be exempt from the new rules, so GS simply made their new acquisitions 'private'. All others are subject to a 31.5% tax. (2)
And what about those savings we were supposed to enjoy? More smoke and mirrors. It has cost the Canadian taxpayer $1.2 billion in potential revenue, to solve an alleged tax leakage problem of $500 million. (3) Carney was rewarded with an appointment to the Bank of Canada, and Flaherty is constantly being rewarded with quotes from Carney that help to keep up the facade of him being a good financial manager.
He was a personal injuries lawyer for gawd sake, who almost bankrupted Ontario.
Meanwhile, those Canadian seniors are still without their hard earned assets. Only the already extremely wealthy, mostly Americans, saw any benefit.
And as we listen to the Conservatives blather about being tough on crime, as Matt Taibbi says:
Criminal justice, as it pertains to the Goldmans of the world, is not adversarial combat, with cops and crooks duking it out in interrogation rooms and courthouses. Instead, it's a cocktail party between friends and colleagues who from month to month and year to year are constantly switching sides and trading hats.
What other decisions of Flaherty's came from Goldman Sachs, via their Canadian representative? How many others have struck it rich off the backs of the Canadian taxpayer?
Stick around, because this is only the first in a series about Jim Flaherty. The story that the Canadian media is afraid to speak of, preferring to become aiders and abettors in our victimization.
And to Chantel Hebert and others who believe that Jim Flaherty is underrated, do your homework. You're going to look awful stupid when the you know what hits the fan. And it will.
2. Canada’s Merchant Banker: Is the recession really over? A profile of Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, By John Lorinc, Walrus Magazine, Jul/Aug 2009
I rarely miss Bill Maher, though envious that the U.S. actually has progressive commentary, and this week one of his guests (via satellite) was Arianna Huffington.
There has been a lot of chatter about the recent acquisition of the Huffington Post by AOL, and a suggestion that the media could take a leftward swing.
In the discussion of this, Huffington asked when caring about the middle class became a left-wing issue. When caring about the unemployed and underemployed became a left-wing issue. And when concern for a crumbling infrastructure became a left-wing issue.
And she's right. Like myself, she has been a lifelong conservative, though as a Republican she supported Newt Gingrich. He has always been far too right-wing for me. I felt lucky that in Canada we had a Progressive Conservative Party with centrist views. At least until Brian Mulroney came along, but even Mulroney at least pretended to care.
In Huffington's bio it says that she has in recent years moved to the left. But has she? Or was she like me, pushed to the left because she no longer had a viable conservative alternative.
Because to be conservative these days, means having to leave your soul behind.
Senator David Croll
"The poor do not choose poverty. It is at once their affliction and our national shame. The children of the poor (and there are many) are the most helpless victims of all, and find even less hope in a society where welfare systems from the very beginning destroys their chances of a better life."
Those words came from a senate report presented by the late David Croll (1900-1991) entitled "Report of the Special Senate Committee on Poverty". Tabled in 1971, it prompted Pierre Trudeau to triple the family allowance benefit and later introduce the Child Tax Credit, designed to reach those who needed it the most.
The Canadian Senate has just finished their own study on poverty in Canada, that took 2 1/2 years to complete, but the Harper government barely even gave it a passing glance before spending our tax dollars to tour the country promoting more corporate tax cuts instead.
They braced for a disappointment, but the brush-off was more callous than they anticipated. This week, the government delivered its response to the Senate’s 2009 report, In From the Margins: A Call to Action on Poverty, Housing and Homelessness. It rejected every one of the report’s 74 recommendations. It ignored the senators’ evidence that Ottawa is spending $150 billion a year on social programs that merely perpetuate poverty. It concluded with these all-too-familiar words: “The best long-term strategy to fight poverty is the sustained employment of Canadians.”
The glimmer of hope that anti-poverty activists, people with disabilities and overburdened charities had nursed since last December when the Senate’s social affairs committee released its comprehensive plan to eradicate poverty, went out.
Senator Croll also compiled a report on aging in Canada, and his recommendations were adopted by the government of the day. But statistics show that there are now more children living in poverty in Canada than seniors. But in Harperland corporations come before both.
I guess when you have a prime minister who once said, “These proposals included cries for billions of new money for social assistance in the name of “child poverty” and for more business subsidies in the name of “cultural identity”. In both cases I was sought out as a rare public figure to oppose such projects.” (Stephen Harper, The Bulldog, National Citizens Coalition, February 1997)
I thought he was just blowing smoke. I mean who is callous enough to brag about being a rare public figure who opposes money going to child poverty? It boggles the mind.
The late senator Croll also claimed that he was not left wing, but growing up in Windsor he empathized with the working class. Later, serving as their mayor, he'd say that he would rather walk with auto workers than drive around with GM executives. And he meant it, spending his entire life in public service, when being in public service meant something.
In their new book Persistent Poverty, Voices from the Margins, Jamie Swift, Brice Balmer and Mira Dineen discuss Senator Croll and the problem of child poverty.
Much has changed since Senator Croll's 1971 report on poverty, but much remains the same. Other nations, notably those in Northern Europe and Scandinavia, have in the intervening years tackled and almost eliminated rates of poverty among seniors, working-age adults, and young families. Canada has had success with seniors, but largely ignored the plight of the disabled, unemployed, working poor, Aboriginal peoples, and children ...
Poverty among children leaves the longest legacy and saps the future potential of societies and economies alike. And it is among children that it becomes devastatingly clear that fighting poverty requires more than strong labour markets alone. (1)
Of course Stephen Harper who once called Canada a 'Northern European Welfare State in the worst sense of the term", wants us to be more like the United States where their child poverty rate is a whopping 22%. And while Canada's situation was improving, the latest corporate greed induced recession "promises to undo that slow and wholly inadequate decline in child poverty."
I don't know about you, but I'd rather emulate a Northern European welfare state, where they have "almost eliminated rates of poverty among seniors, working-age adults, and young families", than the U.S. with a 22% child poverty rate, and a Tea Party holding their president hostage, to make sure he does nothing to change that.
Since the recession we have seen not only unemployment rise, but underemployment, which used to be a term that applied to professional immigrants, and recent university grads, having trouble finding positions in their field.
Now it applies to those who lost good paying jobs with benefits, and now work two or three part-time, minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet. The ranks of the working poor are growing, while our wealthy continue to get wealthier.
And our government would sooner ride around with executives, than walk with the rest of us.
I've never considered myself to be left-wing, but I care about things like that, and feel that in a country with such vast natural resources, no child should have to go hungry if it can be prevented. I don't know where that puts me on the political scale, but it sure no longer defines conservatism.
Next election we have to put eradicating poverty on the table. There is a new grassroots group called Dignity for All, that is striving to bring this back into the Canadian consciousness. They have a list of all federal politicians who have pledged their support. If your MP's name isn't there, call them and ask why. (If they're Conservative, you already know why)
This is something we all need to get behind.
Sources:
1. Persistent Poverty: Voices From the Margins, by Jamie Swift, Brice Balmer and Mira Dineen, Between the Lines Toronto, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-897071-73-1, Pg. 15
"The test of serious moral commitment to the family is a willingness to spend public money. Effective child protection, universal access to health care, affordable child care, first-rate primary and secondary education - these are the building blocks of the protective arch that society must raise over its families. This institutional arch doesn't come cheap, but those exponents of family values who won't stump up for it are just engaging in cheap talk." - Michael Ignatieff (1)
In Michael Ignatieff's year end interview, he claimed that his Party would be focusing their attention on the middle class. Some in the media are suggesting that Rob Ford, Toronto's new neoconservative mayor, is representing the middle class, which is pure nonsense.
Because to me the middle class were never mean, at least not collectively. Rob Ford represents millionaires who want all services privatized so they can make more money, by destroying the unions there to protect public servants. People who have been able to make their way to the middle because of fair wages and benefits.
The problem with Canada since Brian Mulroney, and the United States since Ronald Reagan, is that the middle is now being ignored, while all focus is on improving the lot of the wealthy, with some ridiculous notion that those wealthy will look after the poor.
That isn't happening and as one Conservative Christian said recently "we cannot foodbank our way out of poverty." We need government intervention to protect all citizens, because it's the right thing to do.
I've come down hard on Jack Layton and the NDP recently, after learning that they will be propping up the Harper government in January, and supporting future corporate tax cuts. Canada will not survive if they move to the right. We need a good strong party governing the centre, with good strong voices from the left making sure that the needs of citizens are being met. The NDP need to get back to the values of people like Tommy Douglas, Ed Broadbent and David Lewis, who took on corporations, not bowed down to them.
And the Liberals need to get back to the values of Pierre Trudeau and Lester Pearson, and even John Diefenbaker, now that his party has been wiped out.
Because when these guys were around, Canada worked. We were envied and admired. I never even heard the word "homeless" until neoconservative Mike Harris ran Ontario. There were vagabonds and tramps, but their lives were romanticized, because many chose that free lifestyle.
But no one chooses to be homeless. And families should not be living in their cars.
Today's Billionaires Do NOT Earn Their keep
The neoconservative principle of everyone being free to make as much money as possible, and then everyone will be taken care of through the trickling down; may be the biggest fraud since the pyramid scheme.
Canadian and American society has had it's classes, and most of the wealthy got that way through hard work, or inheritance from someone else, who worked hard to get rich. There were exceptions, but for the most part you could trace names back to an invention or the improvement of an invention.
I read the story of Henry Ford, a few years back, and when he was working on his ideas, his wife was there tinkering with him (literally, not a euphemism). She told of how she would have to remove engines from the kitchen sink before she could use it, and wipe motor oil off the counters. And eventually through hard work and innovation, they gave us the modern automobile. And the auto industry provided good union jobs and swelled the ranks of the middle class. The Fords got rich and everyone benefited.
Gerber baby foods also started with an idea. The Gerber family was struggling with the canning industry, almost bankrupt, when Mrs. Gerber first suggested that they try making baby food. Initially, her husband rejected the notion, so she left him to feed their baby, attempting to mash the food fine enough for consumption. He relented and turned a small portion of the plant into canning for infants. It went so well that within a short time, a prosperous baby food company and industry was born. The Gerbers got rich and everyone prospered.
Howard Johnson first made flavoured icecream when a boy, peddling it in his wagon. The radio, the television, movies. All started with someones idea and hard work to sell that idea.
But how are many of today's millionaires and billionaires making their fortunes? Some like Bill Gates, with an idea, but too many others with a scam.
And one of the biggest scams of late is the sub-prime mortgage industry.
In their new book: The Trouble With Billionaires, Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, tell the story of John Paulson and Goldman-Sachs, who cashed in big on the misery of others.
Paulson didn't invent sub-prime mortgages, only took them to unheard levels, after reading a newsletter by an aging, little-known economic consultant named Gary Shilling. While everyone else was painting a rosy picture of continued growth and prosperity, Shilling predicted a crash.
It was now up to Paulson to find a way to exploit this.
Paulson had been looking for an opportunity to bet that the housing bubble would burst. There was enough information around about the shoddy nature of many of the subprime mortgage deals—with clients who had little in the way of assets, income, or employment—that a number of close observers realized a lot of "homeowners" would soon be in dire straits, unable to meet their monthly payments. In the betting parlours of Wall Street, this represented a chance to make some serious money.
The best vehicle for betting against the housing market, as Paulson and a few other Wall Streeters had figured out, was to take out "insurance" on packages of mortgages that had been bundled together and sold as a stock. This was an odd concept that twisted the conventional notion of insurance .... What was unusual here was that the Wall Street types were taking out insurance on something they had no personal stake in, on something that involved other people's assets. It was like buying insurance on a car owned by a stranger, in the hopes of collecting money if the stranger's car crashed. (2)
It was gambling on the misfortune of others. But the problem was that the needed risks were not there. Still too much caution, and you can't make money with this scheme if people are too cautious.
So Paulson decided to take a more pro-active approach. What if he worked through a lending institution, to convince the most vulnerable to buy houses they couldn't afford? That way when they lost those homes, as they almost always did, his insurance policy "against" those foreclosures, would kick in.
This "insurance"—known as a credit default swap (CDS)—was simply a bet. One frustration for Paulson was that there just weren't enough of these stocks, known as collateral debt obligations (CDO), to bet against. So he decided to become proactive. He approached a number of investment banks with the request that they create more CDOs to sell to clients, so that he could then take out insurance betting these would fail. The arrangement Paulson had in mind was rife with potential conflicts of interest. He clearly wanted to help pick the mortgages that would make up the new CDOs. And he would obviously favour particularly risky subprime mortgages, thereby increasing the likelihood that the CDOs would become worthless and he would be able to collect on the "insurance" he had taken out.
Bear Stearns, the giant investment bank where Paulson had once served as managing director, said no to his scheme. But Goldman Sachs agreed to the arrangement, providing Paulson with his dream opportunity: a chance to bet on toxic CDOs worth about $5 billion.(2)
And when the bubble burst and $5 billion dollars worth of mortgages were deemed worthless, Paulson pocketed $1 billion in "insurance." And as his gambling continued to pay off, his net gain was $3.7 billion.
He did not earn this money, he stole it, and yet he was heralded as a hero on Wall Street. The triumph of an underdog. The Greatest Trade Ever, became the name of a book of his exploits, written by Wall Street Journal reporter, Gregory Zuckerman. How can this be?
Certainly, the Paulson—Goldman scheme set off a series of events with extremely negative repercussions. Investors purchasing the toxic CDOs lost billions of dollars, unaware that they were buying faulty merchandise. Furthermore, the scheme exacerbated the impact of the housing collapse and the near-bankruptcy of insurance giant AIG, which had sold some $64 billion of CDS "insurance" on CDOs related to subprime mortgages. AIG was unable to pay out the money it owed to those, like Paulson, who had bought insurance on now-worthless mortgage-related CDOs.
... But it gets worse. Insisting that AIG's bankruptcy would devastate credit markets, the U.S. government stepped in to prop up the giant insurance conglomerate. In a deal overseen by then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson [no relation],' Washington bailed out AIG with $170 billion. Out of that huge pool of taxpayer money, AIG paid Goldman $14 billion to make good on the insurance Goldman had bought on its CDOs.' Similarly, it paid Paulson $1 billion.
This means that a billion dollars of taxpayer money went to ensure that Paulson was able to collect his gambling jackpot. ... So Paulson not only helped spark the financial collapse—with its ruinous repercussions for millions around the world—but he made off with $1 billion of the public's money for his role in what appears to be a crooked gambling scheme. (2)
These are the new heroes. Antiheroes who are able to garner admiration for destroying countless lives. And who we are being told we must give more of our money to, if we hope to survive. Pull out that public trough and gather the wealthy. Slurp, slurp, slurp.
It reminds me of the Irish genocide, dubbed the "potato famine". While people were starving, eight shiploads of produce a day, was leaving the island in export. The hungry masses would gather while the ships were being loaded, hoping to grab a few carrots or ears of corn that fell from the overloaded carts. But if they were caught, they were beaten or sometimes imprisoned.
That is exactly where our society is headed if we don't smarten up.
But What Does John Paulson Have to do With Us?
In 2006, while Paulson was cooking up his scheme, peddling subprime mortgages to unsophisticated would-be homeowners, on a notion that every American had the "right" to own a home, Jim Flaherty was also rubbing his hands together and frothing at the mouth, over his scheme that he said would “result in greater choice and innovation in the market for mortgage insurance, benefiting consumers and promoting home ownership...”
But an investigation by the Globe and Mail revealed:
... as the subprime mortgage crisis was exploding in the United States, a contagion of U.S.-style lending practices quietly crossed the border and infected Canada's previously prudent mortgage regime. New mortgage borrowers signed up for an estimated $56-billion of risky 40-year mortgages, more than half of the total new mortgages approved by banks, trust companies and other lenders during that time, according to banking and insurance sources. Those sources estimated that 10 per cent of the mortgages, worth about $10-billion, were taken out with no money down.
The mushrooming of a Canadian version of subprime mortgages has gone largely unnoticed. The Conservative government finally banned the practice last summer, after repeated warnings from frustrated senior officials and bankers that the country's financial system was being exposed to far too much risk as the housing market weakened. Just yesterday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty repeated the mantra that the government acted early to get rid of risky mortgages. What he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper do not explain, however, is that the expansion of zero-down, 40-year mortgages began with measures contained in the first Conservative budget in May of 2006. (3)
And like Paulson and his ilk in the United States, there were legions of the unscrupulous, targeting the vulnerable in this country.
"The subprime lenders trashed the market. They were doing loans that no one else would do and people were shaking their heads saying, 'What are these guys doing?' " The data also revealed that scores of wealthy individuals dabbled in subprime lending at a time when many believed the real estate market was on a never-ending ride. Doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers and former bankers offered high-interest-rate mortgages to debt-laden homeowners, many of whom are now facing foreclosure proceedings." (4)
And it could very well hit us in the same way, as the Globe again revealed in 2009:
Since the subprime mortgage meltdown in the United States, Canadian leaders have assured the public that a similar tidal wave of foreclosures can't hit here. They have cited the prudence and market dominance of Canada's five most prominent banks, the conservatism of Canadian consumers and the tiny, 7-per-cent market share of subprime lenders, which is much lower than their 22-per-cent market share in the United States. Just four days ago in a speech, Prime Minister Harper said: "We have avoided the extreme of the unregulated, or barely regulated, financial and mortgage industries that has caused such grief around the world."
However, The Globe's investigation shows that while Canada's real estate sector hasn't suffered as much as its counterpart in the United States, the Prime Minister and others have grossly underestimated the impact of that small portion of subprime lenders.
... The number of subprime lenders who have initiated foreclosure proceedings isn't a surprise to anyone in the business, said Kap Hiroti, the owner of Foreclosurelist.ca, one of the companies that tracks foreclosures and supplied data for this story. "It was almost as if the lenders didn't see the big picture".... (4)
Or were they like Paulson, and did see the big picture? Flaherty allowed AIG (3) to insure our mortgages. Is there a Canadian John Paulson out there, now stuffing their pockets with our money, seeing as how the Canadian taxpayer was forced to bail out the banks when the crisis first hit?
Of course there are. In fact, many I would imagine. These people are not earning their money. They are con-artists and Canadians are being robbed at both ends.
We need to get back to our middle. During the post-war years the middle class began to thrive, often due to good paying union jobs. The rich still got richer, but we were OK with that, unless they got rich by stealing or trickery, and then they went to jail.
People bought homes and raised families, and governments could focus on issues that improved society. Public schools, healthcare, women's rights, equal rights ... All of the things that moved us toward a Just Society.
By suggesting that people like Rob Ford represent the middle class, suggests that the middle class don't care about the environment or poverty, only making a buck. How out of touch the media are.
Many lost good paying union jobs, and are now forced to work two or three part-time jobs, at minimum wage just to make ends meet. This keeps them from their families longer, and for young couples, they put off starting a family until they can afford it, which may be never.
Neoconservatives want to abolish unions altogether, instead allowing corporations to determine wages and employee standards. Many will boast that they are the children of factory workers and labourers who have made it on their own, forgetting that those factory workers were unionized, and their wages and benefits helped to keep them off the streets. And public healthcare and public education gave them the hand up they needed.
No one is really "self-made". We all had a hand in it.
The "Revolt of the Rich" is over. It's time for a revolt of the middle. But even when we vote out the neocons, we can't stop fighting.
And we have to remember that no political party and no politician has all the answers. What we need is a government that never stops questioning, and an informed public that does the same.
THINK!
Sources:
1. The Rights Revolution: CBC Massey Lectures, By Michael Ignatieff, Anansi, 2000, ISBN: 978-0-88784-762-2, pg. 111
2. The Trouble With Billionaires, By Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, Viking Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-670-06419-9, Pg. 93-99
With income disparity being the hot topic topic today, there are many of us questioning how the wealthiest citizens, have been able to convince the poorest, that they should be on their side. If conventional wisdom is to soothe the huddled masses, to avoid civic unrest, I don't think it will work in the long term. Eventually growling stomachs will drown out the burps of the well fed.
I actually blogged on this before, questioning the phenomenon, and while I still haven't figured it out completely, I'm getting closer to understanding the tactics used to create this perverse logic.
The wealthy speak the language of their "peasants". It's despicable, but brilliant.
George Bush belongs to one of the wealthiest families in America. His grandfather, Preston Bush, made a fortune financing the Nazis. And the Bush Administration was by far the best friends that Wall Street ever had. And yet much of his support came from Americans with little help of acquiring much wealth.
Karl Rove insisted that when President Bush had "a choice between Wall Street and Main Street," he came on down on the side of "the little guy." And yet the exact opposite was true. Elitism masquerading as populism:
A president who believes in "preventive" military wars certainly understands the value of preventive rhetoric in political wars. At the start of the 2003 battle over his "jobs and growth plan," while talking to reporters at his Crawford, Texas, ranch on January 2, Bush said, "I understand the politics of economic stimulus—that some would like to turn this into class warfare. That's not how I think."
What should it be called, then, when a father and his son attacked rival Michael Dukakis for representing the "Harvard boutique"? Or when Bush Id AP reporter Scott Lindlaw—during a month long vacation at his ranch said--Most Americans don't sit in Martha's Vineyard swilling white wine." Or when W., telling how a teacher and a fireman had difficulty finding a doctor during a pregnancy, blasted high medical malpractice rates, concluding with "What we want is quality healthcare, not rich trial lawyers"? Writing in the Washington Post, E. J. Dionne observed that "if setting up a teacher and a firelighter against 'rich trial lawyers' is not class warfare, then Karl Marx is the current editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page."
In George W. Bush we have a president who's a fourth-generation business heir, a man who never really pounded the pavement but accumulated his wealth through family contacts and favors. As president, he moves aggressively and successfully to enact a fiscal program that (a) reduces taxes on the "investor class" more in percentage terms than on the middle class, b) abolishes the "dead billionaires' tax" (estate tax), (c) shifts the burden of taxes to "earned" income and away from "unearned income" (dividends and capital gains), and, for good measure, (d) changes IRS practice so fewer multimillionaires are audited and more poor people are. (The number of civil fraud penalties against corporations plunged two-thirds, from 555 in 1993 to 159 in 2002.) Given that tax cuts for the top I percent equal all the cuts to the bottom 90 percent—and given the trillions of dollars quietly shifting from the accounts of labor and future generations to today's investor class—George W. Bush is redistributing wealth far more than George McGovern or Huey Long ever dreamed possible. (1)
And Bush's tactics are not his alone, but part of the neoconservative strategy.
In Ontario, Neocon Mike Harris used this tactic with NDP leader Bob Rae, often referring to him as "The Professor", because he was a Rhodes Scholar. He also feigned empathy with those struggling due to his policies, by suggesting that he knew what it was like to have to live on beans and bologna, something his parents were quick to refute. Harris never ate those things out of necessity, if ever. He grew up in an affluent home.
Stephen Harper, also grew up never knowing hunger, and yet he tries to paint himself as a man of the people. Opposing those who live in "Ivory Towers", to justify his cuts to the Arts and the Draconian crime bills. And like Bush, who criticized rival Michael Dukakis for representing the "Harvard boutique", Harper is constantly using "Harvard" terms to discredit Michael Ignatieff, who not only got his PhD from there, but also taught at Harvard for about five years.
And let's not forget during the last debates, when Harper pretended to understand how the unemployed felt, by saying that he himself had been unemployed for several months. Yet when reporters later asked him about it, he admitted that he was sitting at home waiting for an election, while his wife ran a lucrative printing business. Her biggest client was the Reform Party that he would be running for. That's not unemployed, it's lazy.
And then there's Rob Ford, another millionaire trying to speak "peasant". And he brings on board yet another millionaire spokesperson for the "little guy", Don Cherry.
We have got to start breaking down the Neocon language. Corporations are funnelling huge amounts of money to think tanks and foundations, all attempting to convince citizens that extreme wealth held by a few is good for us. THINK!
Does that make any sense to you? THINK!
Are the seniors (Baby Boomers) really at fault? THINK!
Is Stephen Harper really a Tory? THINK!
Should Canadians go further into debt to give corporations another huge gift? THINK!
And when you're done thinking, VOTE!
It's time to take this country back, because the only ones feeding from the public trough are the gluttons, and the Harper government is spoon feeding them.
Sources:
1. The Book on Bush: How George W. (mis) Leads America, By Eric Alterman and Mark Green, Penguin Books, 2004, ISBN: 0-670-03273-5, Pg, 54-55
A Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.
It used to refer to countries with a system where rich persons had more votes than poor, but the definition has been modernized.
Plutocracy is now used to define the "disproportionate influence the wealthy have on political process in contemporary society ... Kevin Phillips, author and political strategist to U.S. President Richard Nixon, argues that the United States is a plutocracy in which there is a "fusion of money and government."" (1)
There is no argument that there has been a fusion of money and power in this country.
But perhaps a better term to describe our system of government today, under Neoconservatism, would be a Corporatocracy, which "denotes a system of government that serves the interest of, and may be run by, corporations and involves ties between government and business. Where corporations, conglomerates, and/or government entities with private components, control the direction and governance of a country, including carrying out economic planning ..." (2)
I first heard the term, when used in a story on the Haiti earthquake, by author and activist Marguerite Laurent. She was the first to suggest that the Earthquake may have been man-made, since American oil companies had been drilling on a faultline there. Soon after she published her theories, the industry went into damage control, and began discussing the oil gushers on the island, that they claimed were triggered by the quake.
After being called crazy and un-American for writing that the 2010 earthquake gives the US the perfect disaster-capitalism opportunity to come out from behind the UN and openly occupy Haiti to secure Haiti's oil ... [a] strategic location and other riches for the corporatocracy... a veteran oil company man comes forward in Business Week to say, and one wonders how he can so authoritatively speculate about the area of the faultline without intimate knowledge of the drillings .. Haiti lies in an area that has undiscovered amounts of oil, and the earthquake "may have left clues" to petroleum reservoirs! Oil that, uhmmm, "could aid economic recovery in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation." (3)
In his annual bluster (once a year that he talks to the press), Stephen Harper cited his handling of the Haiti crisis as one of the shining moments of the year. And yet if you step outside of the Canadian media, you learn that once again Canada has embarrassed itself on the International stage. Only 1.5% of aid came from us.
Stephen Harper was in Haiti to protect corporate interests, fearing that Cuba, one of the first countries to actually provide medical care, might try to lay claim to the poorest nation's riches. He was photographed with our big war machines, letting the communist country know that he had big guns and someone presumably knew how to use them.
Harper once again, used our tax dollars to help his corporate sponsors. And he threatened our charitable organizations, who were actually assisting the victims, with loss of funding if they attempted to criticize his government's handling of anything.
But our Corporatocracy goes much deeper.
The concept of corporatocracy is that corporations, to a significant extent "own" or have massive power over governments, including those governments nominally elected by the people, and that they exercise such power not by back-room conspiracies but by their enormous, concentrated economic power, and by legal in-the-open mechanisms (lobbyists, campaign contributions to office holders and candidates, threats to leave the state or country for another with less oversight and more subsidies.) (2)
These latest corporate tax cuts, which are now being sanctioned by the NDP, are absolutely mind blowing. We are deep in debt and mired in deficit, and yet we are going to give the corporate sector more money? What have they done for us so far, besides create the latest economic crisis?
They are like the spoiled child, continually threatening to run away from home. I say pack their bags and put them on the doorstep. They won't leave. We've got the well stocked refrigerator (all the natural resources) that they need to thrive.
But if they want to live under our roof, they will abide by our rules. It's that simple. We are not raising their allowance because it's more than sufficient. They will clean their room (environment), they will do their chores, and they will behave. Otherwise, there's the door.
The biggest problem facing our country today, is the same problem facing society in the lead up to the Great Depression. Income disparity. And to fix this problem, before it turns into another depression, we need to raise corporate taxes, not lower them. And we need to channel those funds into legitimate job creation.
And we need to get rid of the failed system of neoconservatism. But we can't do that until the media stops calling them 'Tories'. When Canada had a Tory Party, everyone, media included, called the Reform movement, neoconservatism. Everyone. We used to dub Reform the "Revolt of the Rich", because we knew they were a party created by and for, the corporate sector.
Now journalists are banished if they even try to call them neocons, and it is doing this country a great disservice. Sixty-six Reformers may have bought out the interests of 12 PCers, but part of the package was not a 150 year tradition.
That is the point where we must begin to educate Canadians. This is a movement, not a government, and it is promising to destroy us.
