Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, March 30, 2012

Federal budget 2012: It’s about cutbacks, no matter what Flaherty says

Keen not to resurrect the adage that “Tory times are tough times,” federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is eager to have you know that his budget Thursday will be long on stimulating growth and short on austerity.

“If you concentrate on the savings [the expected $7 billion or so in spending cuts in the March 29 budget], you’re going to miss most of what the budget is about.”

Why should we believe that from a regime of small-government ideologues heady with their first majority mandate, and free to slash at will?

The anticipated $7 billion in cuts is, after all, at the top end of the $4 billion to $8 billion range that Flaherty’s department earlier signaled.

That magnitude of cuts would seem counter-intuitive, given Canada’s remarkable good fortune on the deficit-reduction front. Ottawa’s improving fiscal health would, one might expect, ease the pressure on Ottawa to enhance Canada’s attractiveness to foreign investors on the altar of Canada’s least advantaged – a misguided preoccupation of many debt-strapped governments.

Flaherty, failing again as he has in his entire tenure as finance minister to hit a future budget target, is on a path to eradicating the deficit as much as two years earlier than his forecast 2016-17.

In the current year alone, Canada’s stunning progress in emerging faster and stronger from the global Great Recession than its peers might see the federal deficit come in at between $20 billion and $25 billion, sharply lower than Flaherty’s projected $31 billion.

And you can take that cheery outlook as a worst-case scenario.

The economy of our chief trading partner appears to be recovering just barely enough to secure Barack Obama’s re-election. But reaping the benefits of a fully recovered U.S. economy still lies ahead. So does the collateral boost from the eventual turnaround of a European economy that has slipped into recession.

Skepticism about the Tories’ stated concern with growth over austerity is merited, too, by the banality of their official goals for today’s budget. Flaherty’s priorities are innovation, “responsible resource development,” training and infrastructure spending, and “supporting families and communities.”

The latter could mean anything from the required billions of dollars for adequate affordable housing and daycare, or just be funds for additional crossing guards in large cities. (Don’t laugh: this is a government that boldly created tax breaks for buyers of hockey equipment and table saws.)

Responsible resource development? That could be stricter laws to better protect the environment, or “streamlined” (that is, lax) regulations to expedite projects to shave the tops off mountains to expose mineral deposits. And innovation is one of the cheapest words in the language.

And where the Tories have been more specific, it’s on austerity measures. Expect a proposal in Flaherty’s budget to “better secure” Old Age Security. That’s code for reducing outlays on seniors’ benefits, in keeping with the PM’s mistaken belief that future funding of OAS is jeopardized by the Baby Boomers’ shift into retirement.

For all that, there are a couple reasons to take Flaherty at his word.

One is that his austerity measures announced in the Commons on Thursday will roll out over several months, giving objectors the chance to thwart them. Ottawa really doesn’t want the knife fight it’s inviting with the powerful seniors’ lobby over its OAS plans.

The other reason is that governments have a way climbing down from their initial resolve to inflict austerity.

In last year’s U.S. debt-ceiling fiasco that cost America its Triple A credit rating, a Republican Congress caved on its ludicrous demand for an overnight deficit eradication hours before the Republic would have reneged on its debts for the first time.

Just after fiscal hardliner Jyrki Katainen’s hectoring of fellow European Union (EU) members to embrace austerity with more gusto, the Finnish PM’s own government unveiled a March 22 economic statement that scaled back its ballyhooed spending cuts by almost half.

In a budget tabled the previous day, similar public pressure saw British PM David Cameron continue his staged retreat from the brutal austerity that soon followed his 2010 arrival at No. 10.

A European public grown weary of austerity found voice recently in the observation of Martin Schulz. “For too long, our crisis management has erred too far towards austerity,” the European Parliament president told a confab of EU heads of government earlier this month.

With its budget earlier this week, the McGuinty government made several of its cuts where it hoped few would notice, scrapping promised hospital expansions in the likes of Wingham and choosing small towns for jail closings.

Two of the latter are in Chatham and Goderich, ideally suited to Stephen Harper’s tough-on-crime agenda. These existing gaols can be obtained without the planned extravagance of building new ones.

Original Article
Source: Star
Author: David Olive

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