An election that was supposed to mutate his collection of truncated troglodytes into a majority government has turned out to be a death watch for the esteemed government of Stephen Harper in more ways than one.
He claims the central issue is the economy and it certainly is-but not as intended-it has come crashing down with a resounding and very ominous thud. It has done so because of the deregulation of the markets that started with the Reagan presidency. The corporate welfare state has now been socialized to the everlasting shame of every conservative and neo-conservative who so foolishly condoned the unfettered free market economy. Even greater shame falls on the shoulders of the politicians (charged with protecting the public good) who trusted these Wall Street pirates to be self-regulating and put self-imposed limits on their outrageous greed.
Harper was no doubt hoping to gain a majority government before the shit hit the fan, but that comfy sweater of his now has a putrid odor that won’t wash out. This election is now turning into a political death watch for his party. It now appears that the best he will do is form another minority and even more likely(assuming a modicum of political integrity) he will have to resign and leave the Governor General to invite the second place finisher to form government.
This election has turned into a self-inflicted death watch for Harper’s conservatives. In another way its governance was also a death watch.
This “re-introduction” came about through the indiscriminate use of the taser. Even though the taser has been implicated in an alarming number of deaths and is considered a form of torture by the UN and Amnesty International Harper’s government did nothing! Where it should have, at very least, slapped a temporary moratorium on taser use it was inexcusably indifferent to public safety.
The listeriosis outbreak is Harper’s “Walkerton.”
When former
Years later, Harris’s ideological impudence becomes a blueprint for Harper’s irresponsibility on the listeriosis outbreak- downsizing and deregulation have cost more Canadian lives due to tainted meat.
It is an interesting historical footnote Harris chose not to run for the leadership of the newly minted Conservative Party of Canada for a number of reasons; one of which was the Walkerton scandal. Harper became leader by default because no “star” candidate could be recruited-quite probably because of this new party’s dubious pedigree.
In the last federal election Canadians granted the Harper conservatives the most grudging of minority governments. At a time when Liberal fortunes were at an all time low he should have easily achieved a majority government. Obviously, Canadians had serious misgivings concerning this newly minted party. If there was ever a time to “water his wine” this was the time to do it. His probationary government had to win the confidence of Canadians if he ever hoped to win a majority. Instead, Harper has given alarming indicators where he would take the country if granted a majority and proven unable to quell his vindictive partisanship even as prime minister. During this campaign he advised Canadians that granted a majority he would water his wine. Not likely! He got it exactly backwards.
The Wall Street crash came about because of deregulation. Harper’s conservatives are devotees to this corrupted and ruinous form of conservatism. Their wanton indifference to the taser issue and allowing the listeriosis outbreak are other manifestations of this laissez-faire abdication of governance and deliberate denigration of peace, order and good government.
Yet they have the gall to ask Canadians grant them a majority government!
Harper’s conservatives as acolytes to the American Empire and neo-conservatives values have taken a fatal hit. Like the American political elites who condoned market deregulation their integrity and moral authority isn’t worth the powder to blow it to Hell.
Stumble It!
The swamp we are now in has been coming on for the last 25-30 years of course, since the rise of the "neo-liberal" view of capitalist economics out of the ruling class, fronted by the neocon political arm first manifested by Reagan in Amerika and Thatcher in Britain. And this was done by dismantling the old post WW2 State Capitalism that had regulated capitalism, and set boundaries around it, that had grown up in reaction to the Great Depression of the 1930s and the war. (Though make no mistake, then as now, within State Capitalism even, risk was as it is, "socialized" through state corporate welfare policies of grants and subsidies, while profit was at is "privately" accrued. This is as it has ever been, one of the indispensable characteristics of what constitutes Capitalism.)
Once this was all dismantled, this historical State Capitalism legacy of the last Great Depression, what was returned to replace it was the old unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism that had, in fact, created the "bubble" conditions of the 1920s for the market collapse that, while not the cause itself, marked the 1930s Great Depression arrival. Essentially what is the same process, repeating the history of speculative bubble followed by collapse that is currently setting the stage for what yet prove to be the New Great Depression of our time.
But let's be clear about the real causes that underpin it, and separate that out from what but merely "appears" to set the stage for it or manifests it. The real problem is not the mortgage crisis in the US per se, for example, but the great transfer of wealth that goes on within laissez faire capitalism, that effectively, through taxation and State corporate welfare policy, and rising prices alongside the declining wage packet that is the outcome of anti-labour policy, robs working class purchasing power share and ability to pay for their mortgages, or to continue to allow for the expansion of working class "consumer credit" for the purchase of automobiles etc.. As examples.
It is not rocket science. There is a very simple kitchen table logic to it all, in fact. You continually rob Peter to enrich Paul, by whatever method, be it directly with a gun or through economic and political policies that achieve the same essential result, and Peter, as the process continues, sooner or later does not have the monies to pay for a roof over his/her head, secure transport to a job, or put food on his/her table. Nor eventually, does he/she have the monies for you to continue to rob.
What has been since the late 70s to early 80s, with the rise of what came to be called "neo-liberal" economics within former State Capitalism, or what was also often called "socialized capitalism" or even "socialism" by social democrats, is but a latest globalized version of laissez faire capitalism as organized and legitimized theft. The principles are the same, just the scale differs. (Mind you, even within the former "State Capitalism" model of the postwar Prosperity Capitalism Period, what seemed like "prosperity" to the working class anyway, after the Great Depression of the 1930s, everything being relative, or what passed for "socialism", the theft of working class share went on as well, make no mistake. It was merely controlled so as not to become overly cannibalistic is all. Gross economic and political inequalities are inherent to The Beast, and still existed.)
The plan now is, of course, if "the system" has its way, to return back to this safer ground of former State Capitalism or, if you will, what passed for "Socialism" or "Socialized Capitalism", in order that the excesses may hopefully be worked out, and the same process of theft of working class share and "Bubble Creation Capitalism" can be set in motion once more, all over again-, ever bringing us, the working-class, back to this same place every 50-60 years (the Kondratieff Cycle): collapse, loss of jobs and income, poverty and yet another,endemic to capitalism, Great Economic Depression.
Everything continues to await a great social and working class awakening to end it all, and bring about another advance attempt into a more egalitarian and truly democratic future.