Stephen Harper and Newt Gingrich May be Reunited After All

When Newt Gingrich and the Republicans stole the Mid-terms in 1994, Gingrich gave much of the credit to Preston Manning and the Reform Party.

Manning's lieutenant at the time was Stephen Harper.

In the contest for the Republican presidential candidacy, Newt Gingrich was a long shot, but that shot just got a little shorter.

Mitt Romney has been stripped of his Iowa victory after a recount that gives it to Rick Santorum, Harper's Mini me.

Romney is also in trouble over his financial records, that include hiding much of his $200 million wealth in the Cayman Islands.

And Rick Perry has dropped out of the race, that will help the conservatives who never liked Romney anyway, by reducing the competition.  Perry may back Gingrich who is now surging in South Carolina.

I wonder what the Harper team will do this time to help their conservative allies South of the border?  They tried to railroad Obama in 2008, and I'm sure they've still got a few tricks up their sleeve.

Personally, I think Gingrich would be a gift to the Democrats, but who knows?

When is "Foreign" Money and Influence, Not "Foreign" Money and Influence?

The Harper government has tried a new strategy in pushing through the Gateway Pipeline.  Apparently, we are now under attack by "foreigners".  "Foreign" money is driving the debate.  "Foreign" radicals are trying to stop progress.

And yet "foreign" ownership of the Tar Sands has accelerated since they took power.  Our new Natural Resources minister is in fact an investment banker.  He sees our natural resources not as something that need to be protected, but something that can be exploited.

Foreign corporations, some controlled by national governments, have been using their economic clout to buy into Alberta's oil sands and take control of our natural resources.  U.S., French, British, Chinese, Thai, Korean and Norwegian interests have all bought stakes in oil-sands projects. According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), international companies have invested nearly $20 billion in the last three years through mergers, partnerships and outright purchases of projects.

This increased foreign investment raises questions. Who has the right to develop our natural resources? Who sets the rules for how these resources are developed? Who controls where the resources are processed and sold?

For Harper to use the "foreign" argument is hypocrisy at its worst.
 
Not only is he selling off all of our industry to global interests, but he used "foreign" influence to gain power.  Top Republican pollster, John McLaughlin takes credit for Harper's career. 

Within the past year, John McLaughlin has helped elect Iain Duncan Smith, the leader of the Conservative Party (United Kingdom); Stephen Harper, the leader of the Canadian Alliance Party (Canada); Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore; and a historic 30-seat Republican majority in the Virginia House of Delegates.

The American NRA is writing our gun laws. Frank Luntz and the Americans, including Dick Cheney, helped to write our environmental policy (summarized as "screw the environment, we're going drilling") and Religious Right leader James Dobson poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Stephen Harper's anti same-sex marriage campaign.

Mike Robinson has an excellent piece in the Edmonton Journal today:  History repeats itself with Gateway debate:  Old questions linger about wisdom of project.
 
He wonders why the Harper government is working so hard to push this pipeline through.  Mr. Robinson knows the dangers because he was involved in similar debates decades ago.  The only difference was that many public meetings took place with First Nation communities, where the environmental impact would be felt the most. 

Looking back, I was glad the B.C. offshore play never happened, be-cause at the local information sessions we heard too many seasoned fishing boat skippers talk about 80-foot waves, high tidal energy, howling southeasters in Hecate Strait and the growing fragility of the marine ecosystem.


I also heard scores of First Nations speakers decry putting their home-lands and food chains at risk for the sake of oil. I also remember having a few beers with technical members of the company's public-information team. Privately, especially after a raucous community meeting, they would confide to me that high wave and wind action would hamper and disrupt oil spill boom placement and slick-licker deployment, and a major blowout or spill near a tidal estuary would likely be very difficult to contain.

Another concern of mine is something not getting a lot of media attention.  The secret deal signed in Texas, that allows the U.S. to send its troops to Canada in the case of a "civil emergency".  Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians, rightfully said:

... there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.  “Are we going to see (U.S.) troops on our soil for minor potential threats to a pipeline or a road?”

A license to invade?

The threat to the pipeline would of course be a threat to Stephen Harper's benefactors, like:

Thailand's state-owned PTTEP who bought a 40-per-cent stake in Statoil's Kai Kos Dehseh project for $2.3 billion.  "Statoil is a Norwegian company whose largest owner is the government of Norway, with 67 per cent of the shares. Under the terms of the deal, Statoil remained the majority owner and operator of the project, which ends up being a Norwegian-Thai, public-private enterprise developing Albertan energy resources."

Korean National Oil Company that took over Calgary's Harvest Energy Trust for $4.1 billion ($1.8 billion in cash and $2.3 billion in assumed debt). The deal allowed the Korean state-run company to grab an estimated oil production of 50,000 barrels per day (b/d) and 154 million barrels of oil-equivalent reserves.  "In 2006, the Korean firm set up an office in Calgary and purchased the Black Gold Oil Sands leases near Conklin. These leases gave the company 10,000 b/d of bitumen for about 25 years."

PetroChina now owns 60-per-cent share of Athabasca Oil Sands Corp.'s giving them a majority share in a company with access to more than five million barrels of oil.

Chinese company Sinopec, a majority-owned subsidiary of a national company, paid $4.65 billion for Houston-based ConocoPhillips' stake in Syncrude. What makes this deal significant is that under the terms of the deal, the state-controlled Sinopec has a veto on the critical decision of whether the company should upgrade bitumen here or export it in raw form overseas.

In January 2011, Enbridge announced Sinopec's funding of the $5.5-billion Northern Gateway Pipeline.

And what do Canadians get out of all this?  The bill for cleanup, the threat of an American invasion and the joy of listening to our prime minister warn of "foreign" involvement in a Canadian (??!!?) pipeline.

So This is Ethical Oil?

The American conservatives appear to be adopting, or at least sharing, tactics being used by the Canadian conservatives to get what they want.  Intimidation and corruption.

The Republican controlled Congress is voting on a bill that would force President Obama to make a decision on TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline by November 1.  An unprecedented tactic that would remove the authority of the president and the secretary of state.  Future abuse could be devastating to both domestic and foreign policy.

Obama had to accept the deal in order to avoid raising taxes on workers, something the Republicans were determined to do, and Jim Flaherty has already done. (Flaherty does love taxing the little guy, doesn't he?)

Protests are growing in both the U.S. and Canada over the controversial pipeline, with the Americans not wanting the environmental mess when bitumen is sent there for processing, and Canadians not wanting the risk of devastating oil spills.

Another factor not getting as much media attention, is that while the U.S. oil lobby is citing all the new jobs in their country, many good jobs in the industry are being piped South.

Why?  Lower wages?  Since our government is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil industry, profit will always be job one. 

Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert claims that Canada must find more markets for its crude oil if it hopes to become a global energy superpower.  Why can't we become a global energy superpower with something other than oil?  And how many Canadians dream of becoming a global energy superpower anyway?  We just want the world to stop hating us.

Another element to this story is one of questionable lobbying practices and conflict of interest.  Apparently at least three politician in the U.S. fighting for the pipeline, have shares in TransCanada; two Republicans and one Democrat.

Time to reduce the powers of the oil industry and put it back into the hands of citizens.

Since You Brought it Up: Stephen Harper and R.B. Bennett

In 1931, during a particularly stormy debate in the House of Commons, a member of the Opposition asked Conservative MP Walter D. Cowan, why he didn't wear his "nightshirt". An odd question to be raised in Parliament, but a very significant one.

Before winning his seat in the federal election of 1930, Cowan had acted as treasurer for the Ku Klux Klan in Saskatchewan. In fact, several new Tory MPs, who joined the government of R.B. Bennett, were affiliated with the Klan.

Quebec Liberal MP, Jean F. Pouliot, produced official Klan documents showing that Cowan, as treasurer, had overseen the collection of more than $40,000 in dues and donations in the province, for which he was paid a salary of $2,170. Pouliot also charged that Ambrose Bury, the Conservative MP from Edmonton, was a Klan member and noted "that body celebrated his victory by burning crosses on the side of a hill near Edmonton." Then in 1934, Pouliot alleged that not only Cowan and Bury, but new Regina MP F.W. Turnbull "and other members of the Ku Klux Klan" were sitting in the Tory side of Parliament.

Initially Bennett refused to address the accusations until the media ran with the story and he was forced to make a public statement denouncing the Klan.

In his new book on Bennett, The Rebel Who Changed a Nation, John Boyko states that the Conservatives in Saskatchewan had been so aggressively anti-Catholic, that even the KKK endorsed several candidates. He's being kind. The relationship between the Conservatives of the 1920s and the Invisible Empire ran much deeper.  We have to remember that the Klan of that day, especially in Canada, were not like the KKK of the post Antebellum  period in the South.

They did not engage in lynchings or castrations, but were more of a religious fundamentalist group, policing morality, endorsing vigilante justice and protecting their White Ango-Saxon Protestant heritage.  As such their targets of hatred were Jews, Catholics and French Canadians.

Boyko's book is the first full-length biography of this controversial prime minister, and he suggests that one of the reasons for that is that Bennett burned most of his papers.  I think it's more likely that Bennett burned most of his papers to avoid having such a book written.

I noticed in the bibliography, that Boyko does not mention two very important books written of this era.  Julian Sher's White Hoods:  Canada Ku Klux Klan (Newstar, 1983) and Martin Robin's Shades of Right: Nativist and Fascist Politics in Canada 1920-1940 (University of Toronto Press 1992)

He also avoids mentioning Cowan, Bury or Turnbull.

Yet at the time, Regina dentist Walter Davy Cowan, was very open about his involvement with the Klan, not only acting as their treasurer, but was a popular speaker at their rallies, including the one advertised on the left, that took place on May 15, 1929.

Klan membership lists were filled with the names of Tory supporters, and their meetings attended and harangued by party activists. According to Dr Walter D. Cowan, the Klan treasurer, Regina Conservative elected for Long Lake to the House of Commons in the general election of 1930, and columnist for the Regina Standard, the Klan was 'the most complete political organization ever known' in the West.  'Every organizer in it is a Tory,' he wrote R.B. Bennett. 'It cost over a thousand dollars a week to pay them. I know it for I pay them. And I never pay a Grit. Smile when you hear anything about this organization and keep silent.' (Robin 1992, p.68)  

Cowan's advice of "silence" was heeded not only by Bennett, but by many "prominent Conservative colleagues who welcomed the Klan's arrival, appreciated its ignition potentials and gloated over prospects of a political windfall."  And according to Robin, " J.F Bryant, the Tory lawyer and Orangeman, was a key player in the Tory-Klan game."

History has sought to downplay the role of the Klan in Canada, but when it is reduced to a few lines in a new book, suggesting only that Bennett's anti-Catholic stance inspired several Klan members to vote for him, it looks like a deliberate attempt to obliterate that history.
 
But why?
 
Telling are some of the endorsements for Boyko's book.  Conservative Senator Hugh Segal claims that it should be required reading "for any Canadian who wants to understand the real roots of modern Conservatism."   Indeed, in the book Boyko compares Stephen Harper to Bennett, though he may understand Harper as little as he understands, or refuses to understand, Bennett.
 
Segal is right in many respects.  Bennett was cool and aloof, a multi-millionaire corporate lawyer who assisted in many mergers, and refused to address poverty.  Under pressure, he attempted a few measures during the Depression, but they were too little, too late.  During the 2008 election debate, when the topic was rising unemployment, Harper claimed to understand, himself once being unemployed for a long period of time.  When pressed on the issue, turns out that it was by choice.  His wife had a thriving business printing material for the Reform/Alliance Party, so he spent his time planning for the next election.  Not really the same thing.
 
And then of course his suggestion that the recession provided an opportunity to buy cheap stocks.  People worrying about putting food on the table, are hardly looking for bargains in the stock market.
 
Both men lack empathy, although Bennett grew up poor, unlike Harper who grew up in privilege.  His father made a bundle on an accounting program he designed for Esso and Harper grew up in a high-middle-class WASP neighbourhood.
 
Another endorsement comes from Brian Lee Crowley, a Neoconservative activist with ties to many right-wing think tanks.
 
In an interview with Allan Gregg, Boyko states that much of the negativity surrounding Bennett, has been exaggerated, claiming to have found little evidence of "Bennett Buggies", the name given to cars with their engines removed and hooked up to horses (In the U.S. they were "Hoover wagons").  But they were real and images can be found in many places.  A trip to the library will help.
 
Perhaps the most important similarity between Stephen Joseph Harper and Richard Bedford Bennett, is that both used religious fundamentalists and the radical right to get elected, then attempted to dismiss them once they got they wanted: POWER.  And yet the policies of both men reflect the desires of religious fundamentalists and the radical right, including tough immigration rules, a roll back of earned "rights", and an attack on the French language, to name a few.
 
In Allan J. Lichtman's White Protestant Nation (Atlantic Press, 2008), he traces the modern American conservative movement to the Era of the Klan, a strong political force in the 1920s and 30s.  According to Hugh Segal, so can Canada's modern day conservatism, which successfully managed to eradicate the "progressive" years, just as the American conservatives try to forget the impact of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the last moderate Republican president.
 
After accusations of the "new" conservatism being more a "radical conservatism", every bit an oxymoron as Stephen Harper's suggestion that "progressive conservatism" was the same, American Cory Robin claimed that they were reactionary Tories in the same vein as Edmund Burke.  And what Burke reacted to was the French Revolution.
 
After being sent his argument by one of my right-wing followers, I reminded him of another "reactionary conservative" party that had embraced Edmund Burke.  From a radio broadcast on April 1, 1933, "the year 1789 has been expunged from the records of history." 
 
"It was obvious to all why 1933 was being compared to 1789.  "Any contemporary, whether schooled in history or not, instinctively knew that the French Revolution was the measure of things in the modern world. 'We want to eradicate the ideology of liberalism and replace it with a new sense of community'"  (Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust as Historical Understanding, By Alon Confino, Cambridge University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-52173-632-9, p. 6)
 
The man making that announcement? Joseph Goebbels.  According to Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism:

While the seeds of German race-thinking were planted during the Napoleonic wars, the beginnings of the later English development appeared during the French Revolution and may be traced back to the man who violently denounced it as the "most astonishing [crisis] that has hitherto happened in the world"—to Edmund Burke . The tremendous influence his work has exercised not only on English but also on German political thought is well known.

It should be noted that John Boyko is a teacher at Lakefield College School, listed as one of the most expensive private schools in the country.  They are also under royal patronage, due in part to a famous former student, Prince Andrew.
 
The Orange Lodge and the Klan worked in tandem during Bennett's time, and while the Klan has lost most of its influence, the Orange Lodge and their counterpart, the Monarchist League, are working to restore our WASP heritage.
 
They are behind the rewriting of our citizenship guide, returning the "Royal" to our military and are now pushing to have a crown placed on our Olympic uniforms.
 
This new biography on Bennett provides an opportunity to have an adult discussion on the roots of the current movement, and the impact of radical right-wing fringe groups.  We no longer have to open the door a crack, because Boyko has flung it wide open.

And So it Begins. Harper's anti-Homosexual Agenda

Despite denying his anti-gay stance, Stephen Harper continues to remake Canada by stealth, by nullifying thousands of same-sex marriages:

Thousands of LGBT couples across the world awoke this morning to learn that they are no longer married. A Department of Justice lawyer under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada government has nullified all same-sex marriages performed in Canada in which the couples’ native country does not permit gays and lesbians to marry.

This is only phase one.  They no doubt have already selected the "landmark" case by a right-wing fringe group, who will challenge the ruling by saying that it was descriminatory to their religious beliefs, showing favour to the beliefs of "foreigners."  Harper now controls the Supreme Court, stacked with "social conservatives", so it would breeze through.

If you wondered what a Harper majority would like, wonder no more. 

How about a landmark impeachment since this prime minister lied to get what he wanted?

Would a Romney Victory Mean the End of the Conservative Movement?

Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire primary with 40% of the vote and appears to be heading toward winning the Republican nomination.

Unlike most of his opponents, he has not "surged" but just plodded along, attacking when he needed to attack, and standing up to the blows from his tag-teamed conservative opponents.

In the weeks leading up to these important votes, there was a lot of talk about the conservative movement mobilizing to knock him out, yet they were unable to do that.

They appear instead, to have burned themselves out, by focusing too much on issues that are now non-issues.  Same-sex marriage (more than half of Americans now support it), gay rights, abortion and immigration.  It's getting old and at a time when the American economy is in crisis, people are looking for someone whose attention will be on that.

The conservative movement was successful only when they downplayed the social conservative elements, instead working behind the scenes to pursue their agenda.  Ronald Reagan was able to play the role of a moderate, despite the fact that he was anything but.  Stephen Harper appears to be having some success with the same strategy, though the extremism is always there just beneath the surface.

The candidates endorsed by conservatives wear their views on their sleeves and because of that, will never be able to win an election, when the majority of Americans simply don't share those views.

What is telling about the New Hampsire results, is that Ron Paul, the Libertarian, came in second with 23%. 

On Chris Matthew's Hardball this week they discussed the possibility of Paul running as an independent, since he seems to be a hit with the younger generation.  He's not a social conservative, opposes big government and government spending, is anti-war and believes that marijuana should be legalized.

He may not win the presidency, but could split the right-wing vote.

Mitt Romney's chances would depend on who he chose as a running mate.  I actually liked John McCain and believe that he would have done much better, had it not been for Sarah Palin.  The thought that she would be president if McCain's health failed, was terrifying.

Romney also appears to be reaching out to corporate America, where the real Republican clout is. In his speech after the Iowa caucus victory, he said that he would get America on its feet with the help of the "job creators", conservative code for lowering taxes for the wealthy.

Same old, same old.

Harper Government on the Wrong Side of the Drug War

Harper's new omnibus crime bill will mean stiffer sentences for those growing a few marijuana plants, clearly designed to go after the user.  However, if he really wanted to do the war on drugs right, he would be targeting the pharmaceutical industry; the real drug pushers of this generation.

I often mock the ads on U.S television for new prescription drugs;  "cures" for ailments you never heard of.   Clearly they're just starting to make things up.

Direct-to-consumer advertising can be very effective, but also dangerous.  According to the Canadian Health Coalition, the ads push the newest medicines, those without a history of the affects of long-term use.

Truth in advertising demands that they list the side affects, but they are practically sung at the end or read so fast you can't keep up.

"Did she just say that this drug might make me want to jump out a window?"

What you remember the most from the ads is "ask your doctor".  Arthritis sufferers asked their doctors about Vioxx, a heavily advertised pain medication, and yet 115,000 died from heart attacks as a result of taking the drug. 

CHC also warns that the ads are designed to turn the normal into a problem, convincing people who feel fine but with "symptoms" of a new medical condition, that they need drugs. Others who have symptoms of a legitimate condition, could instead treat the fabricated one and mask the symptoms that need to be addressed.

In Canada direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicine is still prohibited, but Canwest Global is hoping to change that, calling it an infringement on their freedom of expression.  I believe the case is still pending.

With Harper now controlling the Supreme Court, if it goes that far, CanWest will win.  They'll just have to bring him a hockey sweater.  It won't hurt that Pfizer is now running the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, either.

History Repeating Itself

In his 2008 book White Protestant Nation, Allan J. Richtman traces the modern conservative movement to the 1920s and Prohibition, which was not only about banning the sale of alcohol but an attempt to crack down on all vices, including drug use.

A near panic over drug-induced crime that hit the United States during the 1920s led public officials and private reformers to declare America's first war on drugs. The nation closed its public drug treatment clinics and as it had done with venereal disease, adopted a moral and law enforcement approach to narcotics. Addicts had no recourse other than illegal sources of supply ...

Despite a continued drug war, however, the nation's experiment with Prohibition crashed in the late 1920s. Prohibition exposed the tension between moral reformers and a business community opposed to govern­ment control over industry ... a continuing thirst for alcohol gave rise to a thriving underground market operated by organized criminal syndicates that waged bloody street battles for control of market share and paid off law enforce­ment officials to look the other way. The prisons swelled with felons con­victed of violating the dry laws and collateral crimes. The cost of federal law enforcement quintupled during the '20s and intruded into the lives of ordinary Americans. (1)

Many believe that the narcotic trade is new and addiction something that can be cured with tougher laws.  They thought the same thing in the 1920s when federal laws were passed and a war on drugs was launched.

Throughout the Victorian era, narcotics were readily available and sold as patent medicines.

Cannabis Indica, patented by the American Druggist Syndicate in 1906.  Bottle reads:

"Fluid Extract. Cannabis Indica. USP eighth revision. The flowering tops of cannabis sativa. Alcohol 60 percent. Physiologically tested. A.D.S.

This was one of many cannabis products promising to cure migraines and "nervousness".  The 60% alcohol didn't hurt.

Bayer began selling liquid Heroin in 1899 for pain relief.  It earned it's name because those testing the miracle cure claimed that it made them feel heroic.

However, by the early 1900s heroism turned to addiction, so pharmaceutical companies began to patent a range of cures for addiction, including the German Liquor Cure.

To those addicted to the habit of using opium or morphia in  any form or manner whatever. We guarantee this preparation to be absolutely harmless, to contain no poisonous narcotics. Can be taken freely without producing any of the deleterious effects on the system, such as are caused by the use of opium and morphia. Immediately on taking a dose of this remedy, a calming and soothing effect is produced. It acts as a tonic to  the nerves;it will act at first as perfect substitute, rendering the patient independent of these poisonous drugs, and after continued use for a short period the nerves will become strong and the general health improved, so that the remedy can be taken at longer intervals and soon altogether discontinued; then the cure is complete". Cannot be sent by mail on account of weight".

They don't say what was in this stuff, but perhaps more alcohol than Cannabis Indica.

Enter the crusaders of the conservative movement, who were going to end all that, with a whole range of federal laws.  We'll call it an omnibus bill. 

Since Ronald Reagan launched his war full scale war on drugs, the results have been pretty much the same.  Some examples:

- the U.S. per capita spending on schools increased 32%. The per capita spending on prisons grew 189%

- California built 21 prisons since then but just one college.

- From 1985 to 1998, the number of deaths per 100,000 for drug-induced causes almost doubled. In other words, having a drug war proved twice as deadly as not having one. (2)

By the 25th anniversary $4 trillion dollars had been spent on the war on drugs with a record expansion of prison and jail systems.

Martin Beckford, Health Correspondent for the UK Telegraph writes that the War on drugs has failed:

Leading peers – including prominent Tories – say that despite governments worldwide drawing up tough laws against dealers and users over the past 50 years, illegal drugs have become more accessible. Vast amounts of money have been wasted on unsuccessful crackdowns, while criminals have made fortunes importing drugs into this country.

So why does the Harper government, at a time of record deficits, insist on making the same mistakes as those who have tried "crack down" before?

Robert O. Paxton blames it on the mindset of these kinds of populist movements. They "despise thought and reason" and "abandon intellectual positions casually" (3) .  Preferring emotional arguments to proven facts, is the basis of the new conservatism.  Even if their leaders know otherwise, manipulating emotion is what puts them into power and keeps them there.  They often refer to it, as Guy Giorno, Harper's former chief of staff, did, as "playing to the base". 

I tried to debate Canada's new drug laws with one of my conservative followers.  Frustrated, he said "You can't tell me that things weren't better in the Victorian era", (we'd already run the gamut from the 1920s).  And yet I can.  Every generation has had their problems and there has never been any quick fix.

Bill C-10 will only create a new set of problems.  Or an old set of problems, as history will repeat itself.

Sources:

1. White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, By Allan J. Lichtman, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008, ISBN: 10-0-87113-983-7, pp 14-15

2. BOTTOM LINE: The true costs of Reagan and extreme capitalism, by Sam Smith
 
3. The Five Stages of Fascism, By Robert O. Paxton, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 1. (Mar., 1998), pp. 1-23. The University of Chicago Press