Pastiche

A little nostalgic fun while I work on a blog on the role of government.

Let it be
just you
and me
this time
having tea
with the tillerman
in Cosmo's factory;

deja vu for the two of us
alone together, again,
holed up in the Morrison hotel, surviving
on one burnt weeny sandwich
and cracklin' rose wine.

So close to you,
everything is beautiful,
but give me just a little more time
on this long and winding road,
for though we've only just begun,
all things must pass, even as

American beauty roses wither,
whether in drought, or fire and rain,
their bruised petals scent the air
around our sex machine,

shooting at the moon, we cross
a bridge over troubled waters, hear
the madcap laughs of the star sailor
who claims the moondance as his own
at the end of the game.

Harried Electors?

I wonder how many voters, being chased by the candidates during the election campaign, felt a bit like the parent crow in this picture, being chased by its youngster begging to be fed? Taken at Esquimalt Lagoon near Victoria a few days ago.

After Breakfast

The Red Queen boasted to Alice that
she could believe six impossible things
before breakfast, and I believe her,
hunger being a great stimulant
of the imagination.

Surely, nothing could be easier
than believing almost anything
before one's eaten.

But after breakfast
--that's a different story.
Once we're fed, scepticism
rears its snake-like head, sneering;
the wildest inventions seem boring
and trite; and the knights of the page
are now very bad riders.

I'd rather believe in
the lie of the land,
the turn of the seasons,
paths raked, dahlias staked,
apple trees dropping their ripe
fruit fermenting on the ground,
the wasps swarm, drunkenly
crawling through pools of raw cider,
they drown, happily, I suppose,
while the crows, having feasted,
sway gently on their toes.

Do the Harper Tories Mean Business?

Do the Harper Tories mean business? Indeed, they do, both in the sense of being determined to carry out their policies, regardless of their counter-productive consequences, and also in the sense of the mean, nasty, petty, never-let-up-partisan attitude that, like a bad smell, permeates everything they do.

When the Harper Tories distribute a 200-page guidebook to their MPs on the workings of Parliamentary committees, they do not intend to make such committees more effective; they mean to prevent them from doing their jobs, especially when they're investigating allegations of Tory wrong-doing, such as the Chuck Cadman affair.

When the Harper Tories bring in fixed election dates, they do not intend to follow the law themselves; they mean to ignore it as soon as it's expedient to do so.

When the Harper Tories cancel a national daycare program, and substitute a paltry, taxable $100-a-month sop to parents, they do not intend to make the lives of working families easier; they mean to abandon them to the indifferent mercies of large corporations as daycare providers. (Tories prate about choice, while in fact limiting it by not funding the spaces needed.)

When the Harper Tories pick and choose which Canadians facing a death penalty they will assist, and which they will not, they do not intend to fulfill their responsibility to all Canadians abroad; they mean to impose their own narrow, punitive views.

When the Harper Tories attack the political motives of the father of a slain soldier, they do not intend to face up to the realties of war; they mean to nullify a perceived enemy.

When the Harper Tories run ads attacking Stephane Dion, they do not intend to raise the level of political debate; they mean to lower it deep into the gutter. (I'm not a Liberal supporter; it's the ads' sour, cynical, misleading mindlessness that raises my hackles.)

When the Harper Tories fire Linda Keen, head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, they do not intend to ensure the safety of a nuclear plant; they mean to intimidate anyone else who might dare think of opposing them.

When the Harper Tories off-load health inspections from government to self-regulation by industry, they do not intend to protect Canadians; they mean to save money.

Just as, when the Harper Tories cut taxes for corporations and services for Canadians, they do not intend to make things better for those who hurt the most; they mean to protect the balance sheets of big business, regardless of who else suffers.

To digress for a moment--it amazes me how blind so many businesses, especially small businesses, are when it comes to where their real interest lies regarding the relationship between taxes and government investment in social programs. Instead of a cut in their tax rate--which does nothing to increase their sales--businesses in general, and local merchants, in particular, would benefit more from measures such as raising welfare rates to a realistic level (double what they are now, with generous exemptions for earned income); loosening EI regulations so that far more of those who pay into the fund get to benefit from it; and bringing in a negative income tax and other measures.

Those on low incomes (who benefit the least from a tax cut--even a GST cut--because they don't make enough money, and their purchases are too limited, for them to save much through lower taxes), by and large, spend their money where they live, and increasing their purchasing power will directly benefit local economies. Cutting income taxes, in contrast, benefits mostly those with the highest incomes, who are just as likely, if not more so, to send their money off-shore by investing in foreign corporations, thus minimizing any positive effect of the tax cut on the Canadian economy. A social democratic government dedicated to supporting the purchasing power of low income earners would be a much more useful government for small businesses, especially during a recession, than the stingy, services-cutting Tories.

The Tories are bad at recessions because they think the Federal Government's budget should operate like a household budget. While for a household, with its limited sources of revenue, it makes sense to cut back on spending during a recession, the Federal Government's role, with its much wider revenue base, should be (following classic Keynesian practice) to counter-balance contractions in household spending by increasing its own spending and investment in the ways described above, along with rebuilding and expanding infrastructure (clean water, trains, public transit), encouraging alternative industries, and the like. (Let's not forget that close to half the money spent on such projects flows back to governments at all levels in various kinds of taxes.)

But the most significant business the Tories mean to pursue is the dismantling of the Federal Government as an effective force in our lives. Adhering to the British North America Act of 1867's division of powers between federal and provincial levels of government, the Harper Tories operate on the theory that the Federal Government should be as small as possible, and not 'interfere' (as they see it) in those areas which they regard as exclusive provincial jurisdictions, such as health care, daycare, education, and welfare (although they are willing to hand over millions of federal tax dollars to the provinces without any assurances on how they will be spent).

Stuck in their 19th Century conceptual rut, the Tories have failed, or refused, to grasp the fact that the Federal Government, as the representative power for all Canadians, is responsible for setting and maintaining standards across the country. Our health, and other social needs, are not the exclusive concern of the government of the province in which we reside. Canadians may live anywhere in the country we please, and we have an equal right to high-quality social programs in Victoria and St. John's, Iqualuit and Windsor. It is the Federal Government's duty to ensure that these services are properly funded and accessible to everyone from coast to coast to coast.

Furthermore, as a federal taxpayer, I want my federal tax dollars made available to the provinces with stout strings attached. For example, the Federal Government should raise welfare rates across the country, and impose on the provinces the proviso that every cent of federal money is to supplement, not replace, provincial payments. That is, provinces would be forbidden to 'claw back' or reduce their own contribution to welfare rates because of federal increases. As a Canadian, I have a right to the benefits of federal funding in my province, and the province has no right to take away or limit the services which that money funds by cutting back on its own spending in that area.

This position will be fiercely rejected by some provincial minds, especially in Quebec (and Alberta), but Quebeckers, francophone and anglophone alike, and Albertans, as well as other Canadians, can appreciate the usefulness to all citizens of having both levels of government involved in social spending, complementing and counter-balancing each other. I think very few Canadians would wish to have only their provincial government to turn to for social programs.

But the Tories, if they ever get a majority, mean to reduce Canada to a collection of provincial fiefdoms (it was Harper who proposed a 'firewall' around Alberta) with Canada itself becoming an empty shell of a nation, filled mostly with American content.

Do the Tories mean business? Unfortunately, they do. If they become government again, minority or majority, they will push their narrow-minded, sin-ridden agenda with all their might, and all their usual disdain for other points of view. Harper is a partisan animal through and through, and he and his Tories have exhibited nothing but contempt for Parliament, and anyone who dares oppose them. The more power they have, the greater their contempt will grow. They're mean that way.