Showing posts with label the neoliberal agenda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the neoliberal agenda. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Your Neo-liberal Government At Work



Included in the Trudeau sellout is the following:
- Prepared to indemnify the project from any financial loss;

-Is willing to offer this financial security to any company who wants to build the pipeline, should Kinder Morgan back out;

-and, the financial backing must be fair, and beneficial to Canadians.

"If Kinder Morgan isn’t interested in building the project we think plenty of investors would be interested in taking on this project, especially knowing that the federal government believes it is in the best interest of Canadians and is willing to provide indemnity to make sure that it gets done," Morneau said, noting that he is “confident” an agreement will be made.
If you aren't outraged yet, I suggest you check your vital signs.

Monday, March 5, 2018

The Grand Plan of Obfuscation: A Guest Post



In response to Saturday's post about the increasing momentum of the neoliberal creep evident in the Trudeau government, frequent commentator BM offered his detailed take on this sorry situation:

It's all part of the Grand Plan of Obfuscation.

Put in a haphazard system of Pharmacare, so that no citizen knows what is covered and by whom. Allow the private sector like Morneau Sheppell to set up systems to track every citizen to make sure they're covered by the eclectic mix of public and private schemes for pills, because it's so complicated, and thus skim off management fees for their "services".

Big Pharma rejoices. Not having a national scheme means nobody is going to bargain for cheap pill prices on a national scale. So drug prices stay high, and the financial corporatists skim off the cream for services rendered tracking all the mush with ZERO value-added for anyone but themselves. All the public has to do is pay over the odds for all the shenanigans, while the politicians issue glib statements as to how they've helped everyone. It'll all cost more overall than what we have now, you can be sure.

Then, at Bay Street banquets, the corporatists will toast each other as to how well they sold the citizenry that piece of goods. The talking will of course be in business code and jargon, the obfuscation of our age. Financial mags will feature glowing articles on how some "genius" spotted a service "missing" from the "market", and worked out a scheme to profit from it. All hail a new "business" Titan! And if you believe all that guff, you'll believe the BS from corporate media on war reporting too.

These business people strike me as the lowest of human life forms, sucking and siphoning money into their pockets from the masses, while maintaining what they have helped society out, but in reality being parasites on the body politic. There is no shame left for those people. They believe their own lies, and act all patrician like Morneau, a man so apparently ill-informed and dim-witted, he'd never heard of business divestiture for holding public office, or if he had, regarded himself as so honest, ethics policies simply didn't apply to him.

Does anyone trust Bell and their ripoff cell phone and cable/internet plans? How about the banks? - Nah, they don't try and flog useless services to little old ladies over the phone, do they? Upstanding corporate citizens, the lot of 'em. The execs claim the moral high ground - "That's not our company policy!" Meanwhile, they incentivize middle management with bonuses to get more and more business, and leave that rapacious class to work out the details on the QT, while issuing highly moral company "policy", and tut-tutting their lowest-ranked employees' behaviour. Then doing bugger all to change things. It's all utter and complete bollocks from beginning to end.

Is anyone honest these days? I find precious little evidence of it. Everyone is trying to rip off everyone else just to make a living. It didn't use to be so obviously bent. But big business with the federal government in their pockets seem intent on ruining the ethics of the average citizen by lying, innuendo and complex ripoff schemes like National Pharma, and allowing it to be just obvious enough that we all turn into scheming thieves ourselves because it's the norm. You can't trust anyone these days - we're all stealthily trained to be greedy. Everyone is out for their own advantage.

A population ruined like this has no empathy, couldn't care less about anyone else, and if you expect them to really care about the environment, well good luck. Thus the brain dead cheer lower "taxes" as if it were some sort of universal truism, and society gradually turns into sh*t, with no hope of altruism whatsoever.

Saturday, March 3, 2018

The Neoliberal Creep - An Update



I'm not sure what I find more offensive. Is it the fact that Bill Morneau, despite all that he has said about his limited vision regarding pharmacare, is apparently lying when he now says he is open to all ideas regarding a national drug-coverage program? Or is it that he holds the Canadian people in such contempt that he thinks we are either too stupid or too inattentive to see through his dissembling?
Finance Minister Bill Morneau now says he’s “agnostic” on proposals for a pharmacare plan after criticism that he was trying to dial back ambitions for a new program to ensure Canadians get the prescription drugs they need.

Morneau said Friday that he’s not seeking to prejudge the outcome of a newly created advisory council that will be looking at the idea or dampen the scope of their recommendations.

“What’s really clear to us is we need to get expert advice on how to do this best,” Morneau said during a visit to Montreal to discuss the budget measures.
What might account for his faux 'come to Jesus' reversal? Could it be that he has outraged influential groups?
... the Canadian Federation of Nurses, Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Labour Congress [have written] an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding Morneau be removed from the file.

They said Morneau has already decided it will not be a universal “plan” that covers all workers — to the detriment of Canadians, and the benefit of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and, they suggested, Morneau Shepell.

They said it contradicts “overwhelming evidence” on the need for a universal program and undermines the work of Hoskins’ council before it begins.

“It is our hope that insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry interests will not play a role in the implementation of universal public pharmacare,” the letter to Trudeau stated.
Some will say we should not prejudge the process, and that we must give Morneau and his team a chance to get things right. To take such a position, in my view, would be to harbor a political naivete that I am incapable of.

More realistic, to me, is to see the truth of this entire charade, the truth made known when Mr. Morneau, in a moment of carelessness, let his mask slip, revealing what lies beneath - a living, breathing, neoliberal creep.

Friday, March 2, 2018

The Neoliberal Creep

The above title epitomizes both the direction of the entire Trudeau government and the character of specific high-profile individuals within it, most notably Finance Minister Bill Morneau and International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau. The latter two are using their offices, not to promote the public good, but to do the bidding of their corporate masters.



Let's start with Morneau and what has to be one of the most rapid turnarounds/reversals I have ever witnessed in politics. On Monday, I was delighted to learn that Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins had resigned his post to head an Ottawa study into pharmacare, a universal program covering drug costs for all, a feature of all countries with universal health care save Canada. Then, less than two days later, Morneau 'clarified' his intention (doubtless after hearing from the pharmaceutical and private insurance companies) that
a new national pharmacare program will be "fiscally responsible" and designed to fill in gaps, not provide prescription drugs for Canadians already covered by existing plans.


Why the walkback/misdirection? Well, part of the allure of real pharmacare is the fact that bulk-buying of drugs means massive savings. This, however, does not sit well with the powerful pharmaceutical industry.
Traditionally, they have threatened to stop manufacturing drugs in jurisdictions that engage aggressively in bulk buying.
Consequently, Morneau is now facing conflict of interest accusations on the pharmacare file.
The Canadian Federation of Nurses, Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Labour Congress wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding Morneau be removed from the file.

They said he has already decided it will not be a universal “plan” that covers all workers, merely a “strategy” to fill in the gaps for those who currently don’t have coverage — to the detriment of Canadians, and the benefit of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and, they suggested, Morneau Shepell.

They said it contradicts “overwhelming evidence” on the need for a universal program and undermines the work of Hoskins’ council before it begins.


“It is our hope that insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry interests will not play a role in the implementation of universal public pharmacare,” the letter to Trudeau states.
Moneau's cowardice has earned the scorn of The Toronto Star:
...the projected savings that have made comprehensive drug coverage such a popular proposal in policy circles depend in large part upon the program’s universality. Most of the savings created by a pharmacare program would be achieved through the bulk-buying of drugs and the elimination of bureaucracies – potential benefits at least partly forgone by the sort of means-tested approach that Morneau is hinting at.

Morneau doesn’t really mean “fiscally responsible.” He means politically palatable. With no plan to return to a balanced budget, the finance minister wants nothing to do with the inevitable initial costs of such a project, even if avoiding these means forgoing enormous long-term savings.
Increasingly, the Trudeau government is proving itself to be a massive disappointment to progressives in Canada who, unlike some, demand substance, not just the vapid photo-ops that are coming to define this government.

In Part 2, I will look at International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau's plans to cut the private sector in for a piece of the foreign aid action.

Friday, July 7, 2017

A Timely Reminder

George Carlin died in 2008, but the following could have been performed last night. Although some of the language is coarse, it somehow seems entirely appropriate: