Paltry Offerings - Part 5

The same, of course, can be said of the other two major contenders in the June 2 election.

H/t Moudakis

Given the dearth of  plausible ideas put forth during this campaign slog, I nominate the following as 2022's unofficial anthem for those seeking office:

Me, Me, And Me

 

Here in Ontario, the 2022 June election will likely see another Doug Ford majority, in part achieved by cynically buying the electorate with cash gifts that I have written about in previous posts. People will use their own inflation-induced economic hardships to justify supporting Doug Ford. Isn't he, after all, the man who has already rebated and ended licence-sticker fees, promised a six-month reduction of gas taxes post-election, etc.?

What is a voter to do other than revert to an 'it's all about me" approach to the world? Voting with principle and integrity seems not within the cribbed philosophy of many. At the very least, they should have the courage to admit their selfish shortsightedness.

The following letter, taken from the print edition of today's Toronto Star, neatly encapsulates the political prostitution a sizable segment of the electorate is willing to engage in:

Ontarians should be ashamed if Ford is re-elected

• Toronto Star
• 24 May 2022

If Doug Ford is re-elected, it will prove Ontarians do not care about the environment.

If Ford is re-elected, it will prove Ontarians do not care about our seniors.

If Ford is re-elected, it will prove Ontarians do not care about nurses.

If Ford is re-elected, it will prove Ontarians do not care about the young.

So what will Ford’s re-election show that Ontarians do care about?

This election is about “affordability,” so in effect, if Ford is re-elected, it will prove Ontarians do care about their own bottom line — they are selfish. To be fair, a majority will probably disagree, but a sizable enough plurality will have shown we’re not “in this together” but, in fact, we’re each in it for No. 1. 

Ernest Tucker Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

The Lighter Side Of Dementia?

In which Rudy Giuliani amply illustrates the old adage that it takes one to know one. May the farce be with him.

Marching behind Mayor Adams is

@RudyGiuliani

who gets into a shouting match with a Democrat. “You are a jackass… You are a brainwashed asshole… you are probably as demented as Biden,” Giuliani told the guy

Slouching Towards June 2

 

It would seem that Doug Ford guessed right: you really can buy people's votes with their own money. 

As the provincial election campaign continues, the Ontario Progressive Conservatives continue to sustain their lead, with a seemingly good chance at a majority government, as we get closer to June 2.

According to a poll from Research Co., conducted online with 700 Ontario adults from May 15 to May 17, 34 per cent of decided voters indicated they support the Ontario PC, 29 per cent support the Liberal, 23 per cent for NDP and seven per cent support the Green Party.

Oh well. I guess the man who, when he was a Toronto city councillor, advocated for a giant Ferris wheel and a monorail on the waterfront knows his alleged P.T. Barnum truisms.

He Speaks - But Will The Truth Set Him Free?

In the following, George Bush offers an opinion that reveals more than he perhaps intended. Was it just one of his usual gaffes, his advancing years, or a subconsciously motivated expression of atonement?

This Is One Part Of The Problem

The other, of course, is the love of the gun that indelibly stains America and which few are talking about in the aftermath of the Buffalo massacre.

H/t Theo Moudakis

Puppets On A String

 

I have to admit to being somewhat puzzled as to how the recent increases in interest rates will combat inflation, given that it is mostly caused by external factors over which we have little control. While some have suggested it will bring a much-needed cooling to a housing market that has soared nationwide to absurd heights, it is only Heather Scoffield who has put it into a different, some would say sinister, context.

She starts off by observing that Joe Biden seems to be directing his attention toward profiteers in the corporate sector.

He issued an executive order, set up a high-profile antitrust unit, told it to crack down on profiteering, and pinpointed exactly where he wanted to see action.

Airlines, telecommunications, prescription drugs, the web giants — the executive order called them out.

Such boldness and focus are absent in Canada.

Here, the focus is on making sure workers hit by higher consumer prices don’t push for higher wages. The fear is they’ll set off a wage-price spiral that would launch already-high inflation into the stratosphere.

Wages have been creeping up at a much slower pace than inflation. In February, average hourly earnings rose 2.7 per cent from a year earlier, while consumer prices rose 5.7 per cent. Of course, the numbers bounce around month to month, and wages are picking up a bit of steam. But they’re not on fire like the prices workers face when they go to buy their groceries or fill their cars with gas.

Just to make sure wages don’t surge, the federal government is easing the way for a huge influx of temporary foreign workers in low-wage industries. 

While the Bank of Canada is putting its foot on the necks of workers, corporations seem to be enjoying a free and fast rise to record profits.

Net income for corporations across all industries was up 5.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the three months earlier. On an annual basis, non-financial industries were seeing profits 52.2 per cent higher, while financial industries were up 14.2 per cent on the year.

And while the government has made mewling mention of improper corporate behaviour, our country

has fallen far behind its global counterparts in cracking down on anti-competitive behaviour.

And I have yet to see any sweat forming on the collective brow of Corporate Canada, no doubt reassured that it is pulling the strings on a federal government it knows identifies with and fears it far more than it does the working person.

Perhaps Allan Baker of Scarborough, writing in The Star's Sunday print edition, sums it up best and demonstrates that corporate fealty is not limited to the feds:

Politicians help corporations as people go hungry

• Toronto Star
• 15 May 2022

Lagging wages just how Ottawa wants it, May 6

Heather Scoffield writes that, in contrast to Washington, where President Joe Biden has taken “a big swing at corporations,” in Ottawa “the focus is on making sure workers don’t push for higher wages.”

To ensure that wage rates for Canada’s lowest-paid workers remain at a minimum, “the federal government is easing the way for a huge influx of temporary foreign workers in low wage industries.”

This is a deliberate attempt to keep corporations highly profitable at the expense of hard working people.

Our friends and neighbours, who are working in low-wage industries, are already suffering from higher housing costs, increased food prices and gouging at the gas pumps.

 Scoffield also reports on the increases in corporate profits over the past year: “Non-financial industries were seeing profit 52.2 per cent higher.” At Loblaws, Canada’s largest grocery chain, profits were up nearly 40 per cent over 2021, which was also a profit-making year for the company. Loblaws eliminated a temporary increase in pay for front-line workers long before the pandemic ended.

In Ontario, Doug Ford has refused to change Bill 124, which limits wage increases for nurses and other government employees to one per cent.

Ontario politicians need to demonstrate to voters how they will reduce income inequality, and, I hope, eliminate the need for food banks.

 

 

 

Paltry Offerings - Part 4

For those in Ontario who care about the environment, this editorial cartoon from Graeme MacKay requires no explanation, but serves as yet another apt warning of the perils entailed in giving Doug Ford another majority on June 2.

About That Conservative Leadership Campaign

It would seem that the leading contender for the helm of the federal Conservatives, Pierre Poilievre, brings neither credit nor credibility to his party.

H/t de Adder

Bruce Arthur writes about the divisive tactics of this strange man, tactics that seem in many ways reminiscent of the nonsense that goes on in the U.S., where Joe Biden is blamed for inflation, ignoring the fact that it is a worldwide problem caused by a variety of external factors.

The Bank of Canada is a target thanks to the rise of inflation, which is largely due to the war in Ukraine and oil prices, house prices, China and COVID, and maybe some profiteering. People notice pocketbook economics.

In response to this thorny global financial challenge, Poilievre blames domestic spending and Bank bond-buying to support government deficit spending — he has always been against the pandemic financial supports to Canadians — and pitches … Bitcoin?

That would be the same Bitcoin that is down 50 per cent since November.   

His attacks on the Bank of Canada are similarly reckless. He wants the Bank to focus on keeping inflation as low as possible, while knowingly pushing lines of attack that could undermine its ability to do so. Expectations of inflation affect wage expectations, which affect prices, and if the market doesn’t think the Bank of Canada is serious about bringing down inflation, inflation doesn’t slow.

Maybe Poilievre truly doesn’t understand that. More likely, he just doesn’t care.

And his seemingly nonsensical advocacy for crytocurrencies has a sinister implication.

 Jessica Marin Davis is the president of Insight Threat Intelligence, a former senior strategist in Canadian intelligence, and the author of a book on international terrorist financing. She points out that of the money sent to the Ottawa convoy, the vast majority of the million or so via crowdfunding sites was frozen, leaving approximately $30,000. But over $830,000 came in via cryptocurrency.

Davis says, “it's super useful for money laundering, and it's super useful for other forms of illicit financing, and it's somewhat useful for terrorist financing. And I would say it's somewhat useful for other forms, like financing criminal mischief, as we saw in the convoy.”

Really, the simplest throughline to Poilievre’s bit is that if your goal is to hammer freedom to an audience that found wearing masks was an imposition, that vaccines were a conspiracy rather than a collective victory, and that are angry or confused by what’s happening with the world, then Bitcoin is just another aspirational buzzword that signifies the world doesn’t have to work the way you’re told it does. Poilievre has been pumping conspiratorial theories about gatekeepers for much of the pandemic; He’s still doing it. He’ll say just about anything, and that opens the door to all kinds of conspiracies, all kinds of anger, all kinds of extremism. 

Such is the sad state of politics today, powered by people who gleefully exploit and exacerbate societal divisions to feed their own power-seeking venality.

Definitely not the Canada I grew up in, and not the Canada I want to exist after I am gone.

 P.S. For a primer on the real nature and risks of crytocurrencies, click here.

 

Some People Never Learn

 

A Distorted Reality

I will readily admit to holding a long-time smugness about Canada and its citizens; a deep feeling of superiority seemed inevitable when comparing us with the United States, a country that has been unravelling before our eyes for a long, long time.

Unfortunately, some Canadians' response to the pandemic, and the truck convoy's illegal occupation of Ottawa, went a long way toward humbling my hubris. We are not as special as I thought we were.

That fact was much on full display last week when the aspirants for the Conservative Party's leadership had their first debate. Bruce Arthur writes about how the participants spoke of the convoy:

The truckers were heroes. The truckers were misrepresented. The CBC is Pravda, or worse.

 And perhaps worst of all, there was a brief competition over who was more loyal to the convoy. It was like watching two fans of the same band argue over who went to the earliest concerts and bought the first albums, before the band made it big. First, former Ontario MPP Roman Baber seemed to argue that public health restrictions were an attack on democracy and freedom, which taken to its logical policy conclusion would have meant a lot of Canadians dying in hospital parking lots. Then came the squabble.

The squabble was over who showed the most fealty to the insurrectionists' notion of freedom:

“Well, I did stand up for freedom during the pandemic from the very beginning,” said MP and leadership favourite Pierre Poilievre.

“That’s not true. You were not one of the loudest voices, Mr. Poilievre,” said MP Leslyn Lewis, who later took a reference from fellow leadership candidate Scott Aitchison about conspiracy theories to be a statement about her. “You did not even speak up until it was convenient for you. You did not even go to the trucker protests, you actually went and you took a picture in your neighbourhood at a local stop.”

“That’s not true,” said Poilievre. “I was there at the trucker protests. I was on the street. I was supporting those who are fighting for their freedoms.”

The implications of such stout defences are chilling.

And despite their previous support of the movement, even before it hit Ottawa, it was striking to see that the Conservative party could consider support of a lawless insurrection a purity test of sorts. Yes, Jean Charest called the convoy an illegal occupation — and was booed, as part of a rough ride — and the absent Patrick Brown has previously stated he didn’t support it. And Aitchison, too, appears to be an actual adult.

We all know, as Bruce Arthur writes, that the convoy consisted of an array of unsavoury elements, ranging from racists to homophobes to conspiracy theorists and anarchists, all fueled by 'dark money,' a Trumpian dream writ large.

And even if you remove all that and examine the ostensible motivations for the convoy as Poilievre describes them, it is a fundamental rejection of public health measures by a man who also rejected the very idea of government-delivered financial supports. 

 This is where the Conservative party appears to be going, unless someone can derail Poilievre. There was no talk of the nearly 40,000 Canadians who have died of COVID, which is just short of how many Canadians died in the Second World War. There was barely talk of the human toll of the virus at all. There was just a party whose dominant wing traffics in right-wing buzzwords and reflexive rejection of public health as a measure of partisan affiliation.

I am old enough to remember a time when there was no stigma attached to being a supporter of the Progressive Conservative Party. Those days are long gone, and that party, of course, no longer exists, either in name or spirit. 

All of us are the poorer for it.

 

 

 

 

Paltry Offerings - Part 3

As the Ontario election campaign continues on with inane promises, I continue to rely on the cartoonists to present the real picture.

One of Doug Ford's early friends:

Willful And Egregious Ignorance

                                       
I suppose that all political campaigns, to one extent or another, require some willful ignorance or selective memory. If they didn't, how could so many voters support so many obviously unsuitable candidates?

I started thinking about this topic recently as I read about the rise of J.D. Vance, who wrote Hillbilly Elegy, a book I very much enjoyed and whose author I respected for both his depiction of his family and culture and his triumph over his humble beginnings through hard work and education.

That respect, I see now, was gravely misplaced.

The winner of the recent Ohio Republican primary, Vance displayed such a depth of moral vacuity and abdication of integrity that even I, a seasoned cynic, found breathtaking. And it was all in the service of getting the nod from disgraced former president Donald Trump, a man Vance once repudiated. even comparing him to Hitler, but now embraces.

Edward Keenan writes:

In 2016, Vance rose to fame on the strength of his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which detailed the troubles of his family and, through them, those of Red State rural America. At the time, he was unequivocal, saying Trump was selling snake oil to people desperate for solutions to real problems.

“Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it,” Vance wrote in The Atlantic shortly after his book’s publication.

Well, if you can’t beat him, join him: in this race, Vance was the most enthusiastic peddler of what appeared to be exactly the same snake oil. He said the nation needed a “de-woke-ification program,” suggested Trump should defy Supreme Court rulings, and tweeted, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” He accused President Joe Biden of flooding the “heartland” with fentanyl to “kill a bunch of MAGA voters,” and ran ads saying if the media calls you racist and says you hate Mexicans, Vance was your guy. He drew endorsements from the QAnon-leaning wing of Republicans in Congress, and campaigned with Donald Trump Jr. at his side. He talked up the Trump border wall — a concept he once explicitly mocked — as a cure for what ailed Ohio. (If you don’t have a map handy, Ohio lies on the northern U.S. border, more than 2,100 kilometres from where that Trump wall was being built.)

Vance doubled down on his newfound allegiance by surrounding himself with other Trump sycophants, as Lloyd Green writes:

In the run-up to the primary, Vance hung out with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. Pressed on Greene’s recent attendance at a white nationalist conference, Vance offered his full-throated support. She is “my friend and did nothing wrong”, he declared. Being “in” with the Republican party’s extremes helps more than it hurts.

We are judged by the company we keep, and in addition to the aforementioned Gaetz and Taylor Greene, he is bankrolled by Paypal founder and Trump fawner Peter Thiel.

Thiel donated at least $13.5m to a Super Pac that had Vance’s back. Thiel also served as a conduit to Trump world.

In 2009, the German-born Thiel questioned the wisdom of expanding the right to vote to women and minorities. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron,” he wrote.

I started this post by wondering about voter behaviour and their capacity to embrace willful ignorance. It would be simple enough to explain Vance's support by attributing it to the fanaticism that seems to follow Trump like a bad odour. But is that a sufficient explanation for supporting a candidate who displays none of the qualities we would hope for in a high-office aspirant? To endorse someone whose venal grasping for office should be obvious to all, whose ultimate allegiance is only to power and its acquisition, surely requires not only ignorance but massive forgetfulness.

Of course, I could be wrong. The older I get, the more I realize how little I really understand about our species.

 

Paltry Offerings - Part 2

 Continuing with yesterday's theme:

H/t Theo Moudakis

Paltry Offerings

 

I can't remember a time when I have been less inspired about an election. Here in Ontario, where we go to the polls on June 2, we have Conservative Doug Ford leading in the polls, counting on a credulous and forgetful electorate. Then we have the seatless Liberal leader, Lex Luther lookalike David Del Duca, promising a buck-a-ride, inexplicably unembarrassed by how it recalls Doug's preposterous buck-a-beer promise in the last election. Such policy vacuity, he assumes, will go unnoticed by the electorate. Then there is Andrea Horwath, so heedless as to how her NDP leadership hubris has hobbled the party for too long now. 

I refuse to lump Green leader Mike Shriner into this morass; his policies may be sound, but his party has no chance of  making a difference.

One anticipates a post-election reckoning by those who care about their parties' futures.

Meanwhile, since I have nothing but my contempt to offer, I am posting some editorial cartoons that bespeak the sad state of affairs in this province.

H/t De Adder

H/t Moudakis

H/t Graeme MacKay

H/t MacKay

A Transparent Document

 I won't waste too many words commenting on the release of the Ford government's campaign document budget yesterday. A transparent and cynical document that attests to the Tory belief that there are many stupid people who cast ballots, it has something for everyone except the poor and the dispossessed (after all, they don't vote, do they?).

One doesn't have to be particularly politically astute to understand that the 'budget' is simply a massive election bribe, but those who seek further proof need look no further than Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy's own response to reporters' questions:

Bethlenfalvy, whose budget will not pass the house before the writ period begins Wednesday, repeatedly refused to say whether the Tories would reintroduce the same fiscal blueprint if re-elected.

“The people of Ontario will vote on this budget and it will be up to them if they want to pass this,” he said, declining to answer simple yes-or-no questions from reporters about tabling it again in the summer.

Perhaps the Ford government's perfidy is best reflected in this, from Theo Moudakis:

 

Let the games begin.

Election Augeries

The ancients, when they wanted to know the future, often examined the entrails of birds. It was believed such dissections could augur both good and bad fortune. In a famous scene in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, for example, the priests advised against their master going to the Capitol on the Ides of March because the bird that was sacrificed appeared to be without a heart, never a good sign. The rest, as they say, is history (and literature).

We have long abandoned such arcane and primitive rites, only to replace them with polls. As the date for Ontario's election draws near, expect renewed interest in polls to divine the political future of the contending parties. Indeed, today's Star bruits its election tracker called The Signal, from Vox Pop Labs. Without going into the details, which you can read about by clicking on the link, it claims to be more accurate than most, and has thus far done some early polling, each, of course, a snapshot of what people were thinking on any particular day.

If you are a supporter of Doug Ford and his Conservatives, you will be happy. If you are an Andrea Horvath or Steven Del Duca enthusiast, not so much. Were the election to be held today, the poll shows the Conservatives picking up 71 seats, the Liberals 28, and the NDP a mere 24, down from the 40 elected last time.

If the results turn out to be in any way accurate, one hopes that Andrea Horwath, who the party should have jettisoned a long time ago, sees the writing (or the picture) on the wall.

H/t Theo Moudakis

Theatre Of The Absurd

I'm feeling too burnt out these days to put thoughts to words, my ever-constant cynicism about people and politics reaching new levels. Therefore, allow me to post some editorial cartoons that help to capture the absurdity of what we call politics and life.

H/t Michael de Adder

H/t Graeme MacKay

H/t Patrick Corrigan

H/t Theo Moudakis

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Apologies for appropriating the title of one of Carl Jung's works, but it just seems an appropriate label for this post.

I had a dream recently in which my daughter was just a young girl again going to elementary school. She was involved in some kind of basketball tournament, and my wife dispatched me there to find out what time it was likely to be over.

While sitting in the stands, I noticed a person behind me looking at his phone and getting quite agitated. A woman checked in on him, and she too became visibly upset. I asked what the problem was, and he said the venue was under a terrorist attack and the kids were being evacuated.

It turned out they were indeed evacuated, but there was no such attack. The aforementioned man had seen some kind of video simulating a terrorist operation and had taken it for real. I tried to reason with the other parents at the tournament, all in quite a state. I asked them if they had checked legitimate sources for verification, and if it was real, where were the police? 

They were unreceptive to what I had to say, so I angrily asked them, "Have you people no critical-thinking skills at all?"

The genesis of that dream was no mystery to me. Critical-thinking skills, or more precisely, the lack thereof, is a subject that has been weighing on me for quite some time. The fact that the June 2 Ontario election is fast-approaching has lately made that weight more acute.

With Doug Ford and his Conservatives currently leading in the polls, there is much to be concerned about. Egregiously evident are warning signs that a re-elected Tory majority will not be good for those who care more about the environmental, social and economic health of the province than they do about licence-sticker bribes and the like.

The following are two example of where we are head under Doug's 'stewardship.'

First there is the premier's insistence that the much-disputed Highway 413 go ahead. A boon to his developer friends, it bodes ecological disaster, especially vile given that viable alternatives exist, including better use of the tolled Highway 407. 

A Star editorial captures the essence of the incursion nicely:

It’s hard to believe the Ford government could find a way to make its proposal to build a 400-series highway across the northern part of the GTA, destroying farmland and parts of the Greenbelt along the way, any worse than it already is.

But it seems it’s managed to do exactly that.

Internal Ministry of Transportation documents reveal that at one of the most environmentally sensitive sections of the proposed Highway 413, the province ignored the advice of its own consultants.

It chose a route that avoids a planned subdivision development near Kleinburg. Instead, it chose a path that would cause what the consultants described as “maximum incursion” into the Greenbelt and destroy hundreds of hectares of conservation land.

By the way, this unnecessary road will cost between $6 and $10 billion.

The second example, as reported by the CBC, is the matter of adding up the cost of Ford's pre-election promises, with more likely to come in the late-April budget.  

With the start of Ontario's election campaign still two weeks away, Premier Doug Ford's government has announced more than $10 billion in spending, fee rebates and tax cuts since early March and could unveil even more in next week's provincial budget.

Ford and his ministers have rolled out the promises in a flurry of campaign-style announcements, many of them in ridings that are crucial to his Progressive Conservative Party's chances of winning a second straight majority in the June 2 election.

The promises total at least $10.9 billion, according to figures compiled by CBC News, based on information provided by the government in news releases and emails (The full list of financial commitments is in the chart at the end of this story.)

I won't include any further details here, as they are readily available by clicking on the above link. What especially bothers me here is that, to my knowledge, no one in the media is asking Ford how these promises will be paid for.

For those who believe that responsible citizenship is informed citizenship, the picture of what lies ahead is very troubling. For those who rely on social media for their information or make no effort to read at all, they are likely resting easy and having pleasant dreams.

To slightly paraphrase what I said at the beginning of this post, "Do people not have any critical-thinking skills at all?"

 

A Sign Of The Times

People in Ontario will recognize this as one of Doug Ford's election bribes and an acknowledgement of his good friends, the developers.

H/t Theo Moudakis

A Master Class

 

If you have been reading my blog lately, you will see that I have posted a few times about the ongoing bribery by Doug Ford in his efforts to secure a second majority come this June's election. Indeed, for the student of politics, Ford's government is a master class in political sleaze. 

Whether or not he finds success in buying people's votes, it is at least a bit comforting to know that others are not so easily swayed by his all-too-transparent efforts. The following letters attest to that fact: 

Doug Ford’s obvious desperation for victory is troubling | The Star

 With the volume of economic announcements being made by the Doug Ford provincial government, one gets the impression Premier Ford is desperate to win the next election.

The incumbent leaders can wield a lot of persuasive power to grease the rails for a victory. But winning at all costs is not in the democratic handbook.

We all know Donald Trump wanted to win too badly and was prepared to do so at all costs, such as doing so illegally and trashing his own reputation in the process. But here in Ontario, I have never seen a government in power deliver so many pre-election perks. For instance, the most foolish of all was the refund for past years’ licence sticker payments. Waiving future fees would have been enough.

The question is: does Doug Ford want to win the election too much? And why? He hasn’t shown any natural ability for the job of premier.

Greg Prince, Toronto

 Ontario vehicle owners will get rebates for licence plate renewal fees, Doug Ford says, Feb. 22

I can’t tell you how disgusted I was when I opened my letter from Service Ontario and it was a cheque for my licence rebate.

I’m sure there are people in Ontario who could use that money. But is this what we have been reduced to? Like a sheriff walking into a saloon and buying drinks for anyone who will vote for him. (Oh, that was last time with buck-a-beer.)

I hope Ontario voters are smarter than that. Vote for someone who will really help those who need it.

William McCulloch, Toronto