Quotulatiousness

March 22, 2011

Starting election watch now

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:55

With the opposition parties unified in their denunciations of the federal budget tabled today by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, we’re now looking at the strong possibility of a May general election:

The minority Conservative government tabled a 2011 budget Tuesday that was quickly rejected by its political opponents for falling short in helping the middle class, setting the stage for an election campaign that could begin any day.

The leaders of the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and NDP said they could not support the budget as presently written — even though Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tried to appease the left-wing party through a series of modest, symbolic initiatives.

“We’re forced to reject the budget and we are also forced to reject a government that shows so little respect for parliamentary democracy and our democratic institutions,” said Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Leader.

Gilles Duceppe, Bloc Quebecois Leader, said his party “can’t support what has been offered here.”

And Jack Layton, head of the NDP and viewed as the person most likely to lend the government support, said the budget fell short of NDP expectations.

I have to admit that I’m surprised that the NDP and the Liberals appear to be ready to force an election at this moment: neither party has had much of a “bounce” in recent polls from government scandals (both real and imaginary). Perhaps they’ve got something held in reserve to release during the campaign that they think will cause voters to turn away from the Tories.

Rick Mercer: The Budget Lockup

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

QotD: The modern welfare state

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:26

In past ages, the desire of kings and emperors to control the lives of their people was no less than it is now, but they simply lacked the means to substantially affect the average serf or peasant’s daily life. A tax collector or company of soldiers might come by occasionally, but it was the church and not the state that formed the polestar around which most lives revolved. But beginning in the late 19th century, technology allowed the governments of the industrialized nations to reach down into each city, town, and hamlet, and “adjust” things directly. In totalitarian regimes the impulse was malign, but in western nations the intentions were mainly good: to provide subsistence and aid for those in need of it.

But one thing has become clear in the western nations since the welfare-state started in earnest after World War II: it spreads like kudzu, it encompasses and infantilizes ever-larger percentages of the population, and it beggars even the richest and most powerful countries. Leave aside questions of morality and efficacy for the moment — it is dreadfully clear that the main problem with the welfare-state is that we can’t afford it. No one can, no matter how rich or powerful.

This is the paradox of the welfare state: it will surely ruin us if left to run unchecked, yet so many people now depend upon it that we can’t stop.

[. . .]

We have so successfully turned Americans into wards of the state that any significant change will (I fear) have to be imposed by fiat or by circumstance, because I don’t think it will ever take place at the political level. There is simply no way to get from here to there without making the kinds of wrenching changes that no democratic/republican form of government is good at. (If you doubt me, look at the protests in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. Even when the writing is on the wall, the population does their best to ignore it.)

Monty, “She Walks in DOOM! Like the Night…”, Ace of Spades HQ, 2011-03-22

Explaining why President Obama didn’t consult congress over Libya

Filed under: Africa, France, Media, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:46

I think Gabriel Malor has the gist of it right here:

People are overthinking the whole question of whether the President should have gone to Congress to authorize the Libya war. They’re especially overthinking why he chose not to.

It’s quite simple. The President didn’t go to Congress because he never thought he’d need to go to Congress. Obama spent three weeks dithering and then almost a full week telegraphing his intent not to intervene. But when the time came to announce his decision, he flinched and made a last-second gut decision to go to war.

The decision to commit the United States to war wasn’t out of any sudden change of heart about the value of Libyan lives. Nor did the President suddenly discover U.S. national interests in North Africa. He did it because he was getting internationally embarrassed by the French and by Secretary Clinton. He did it because he was looking bad and after three and a half weeks of polling his numbers were looking worse.

So, having failed to make any effort at all to reach out to Congress on the issue because he never expected that he would have to and with his Brazil vacation imminent, there simply wasn’t any time left to get Congressional authorization. Yes, he could have gotten it, in the sense that I’m absolutely sure the votes are there. But it would have taken a few more days and not even the MBM could pretend that he was “leading” on the Libya issue at that point.

The thought that the French would start referring to Americans as “burger-eating surrender monkeys” may have clinched it.

Why nobody takes conservative promises too seriously

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:37

Today is budget day, when federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will be introducing the Conservative budget for 2011. Unless something has suddenly changed in the government’s philosophy, don’t expect anything daring:

First and foremost, the budget should contain a plan for reducing federal spending in real terms over the next four or five years. Mr. Flaherty’s 2010 budget outlined how the federal government intended to restore balance to the federal books by 2015 by holding the line on spending increases to just over 1% a year while praying for a return to robust annual revenue increases. In fact, merely planning to hold the line on spending is never going to be enough. For one thing, the Conservatives have never proven themselves capable of pulling it off. Despite coming to power in 2006 on a message of fiscal restraint, the Tories raised federal program spending by an average of 6% in each of their first three budgets before the worldwide finance crisis of 2008. Since then, they have added $100-billion to the national debt, in large part thanks to stimulus spending of dubious worth.

According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, as of last Friday, Canada’s debt stood at nearly $563-billion. This means the debt repayments made over the 11 years before the recession began have been wiped out, and that the federal treasury is back to where it was before the Liberals’ then-finance minister Paul Martin brought down his austerity budget in 1995.

Since the Tories took power five years ago, program spending has expanded by nearly 40% and the federal civil service has grown by nearly 20%. We’re sorry, but we just don’t trust a government with a track record like the Tories’ to be able to regain budget balance simply by holding the line on new spending.

They can promise all sorts of things, but what they seem best at doing is pretending not to be “conservative” at all.

The government may fall, as the opposition are calling for even higher spending on “universities, home care, daycare, unemployment, seniors and Quebec”. This may work to the Conservatives’ advantage as they’re (temporarily) riding high in the opinion polls, so they might be able to win a majority if an election is forced on them over this budget. Of course, the opposition can read the polls too, so they may not be as eager to throw Stephen Harper an opportunity to win an easy victory.

Update: Well, the budget was tabled in the House, the opposition parties all rejected it “as it stands”, and the prime minister has stated they will not accept any amendments. For Thursday’s performance in the Ottawa Little Theatre, the budget will get first reading, which means the first opportunity for the government to be defeated . . . which means a May general election.

“He is kind of like a rock star, a nerdy professor, and your crazy uncle rolled into one”

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Andrew Foy tries to place Ron Paul in the context of the modern Republican Party:

In his recent editorial “The Fighters vs. the Fixers,” appearing on National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg discussed what I suspect is his crop of contenders for the upcoming election: Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee. Considering that Paul smoked all of these candidates in the 2011 CPAC straw poll, where he garnered 30% of the vote, it was an odd choice to leave him out, and even more so when you account for the fact that Goldberg’s recently edited book Proud to be Right: Voices of the Next Conservative Generation featured several essays in which the authors expressed strong libertarian points of view.

Ah, but that CPAC straw poll was explained away as “Paultards” packing the event, which no other candidate would ever do, so the poll result was therefore invalid. Oh, and lots of chatter that Paul supporters would not be welcome to the next CPAC.

. . . Paul is an outspoken advocate of Austrian economics. Without being an economist myself, I would say that this economic school of thought argues against econometric models, state planning, bailouts, economic stimulus, and the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. One of the hallmarks of Austrian economics, for which Hayek won a Nobel Prize, is the view that central banks create asset bubbles and hence the business cycle. Austrian economics predicted the recent housing collapse and economic recession when the mainstream economists and politicians, to whom we’re still wedded, were telling us that everything was “A-okay.”

In a 2007 address to the American Economic Association, Bernanke proclaimed, “The greatest external benefits of the Fed’s supervisory activities are those related to the institution’s role in preventing and managing financial crises. In other words, the Fed can prevent most crises and manage the ones that do occur.” A year later, we were mired in the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. While the great majority of politicians today (Democrats and Republicans) are happy to heed the advice and inflationary policies of the Fed, such as QE2, Paul is a lone voice in the wilderness crying foul. Conservatives should welcome his dissent.

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