Quotulatiousness

March 10, 2013

Do they have to destroy the Republican Party to save it?

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

The defeat of the Republicans in the last US federal election has a lot of them starting to consider radical changes to the party in order to attract new voters. Some of these proposed changes are so radical that it’s hard to believe they wouldn’t rupture the party and drive away nearly as many as they hope to bring in. The farcical notion of a “conservative welfare state“, for example, would likely jettison any last vestiges of reducing the size of government:

[Matthew] Continetti is not the first conservative to argue — falsely as I note in an upcoming piece for Reason magazine — that courting new constituencies such as Hispanics, Asian Americans and other minorities will require the party to give up even its pretense of limited government. Still, Continetti’s basic point that the GOP does not have a coherent ideology that will allow it to court new constituencies while hanging on to its old ones is well taken. After all, how does the party appeal to the “millennial generation” that includes gays, young foodies and indie-music listening hipsters without losing the meat-and-potato social conservatives in, say, Charleston, South Carolina?

Continetti’s answer, dusted off from a 1975 essay by Irving Kristol, is that what the GOP needs is an authentically conservative version of the liberal welfare state. To fashion such a state, Continetti argues, would require:

    Republicans to revisit some of the assumptions they have held since the end of the Cold War. Maybe the foremost concern of most Americans is not the top marginal income tax rate. Maybe you can’t seriously lower health care costs without radically overhauling the way we pay for health care. Maybe a political party can’t address adequately such middle-class concerns as school quality and transportation without using the power of government. Maybe the globalization of capital and products and labor hasn’t been an unimpeachable good.

I am all for rethinking post-Cold War assumptions, but do we have to throw globalization and trade liberalization under the bus in the process? After all, hostility to trade has become passé even among Third World anti-trade activists such as Vandana Shiva — the last ones holding their finger in the dyke to stop globalization. This is in no small part due to the debunking done by economists such as Jagdish Bhagwati who have shown that even the immediate losers of trade liberalization win in the long run. So what is the point of reviving this animus especially since Continetti offers no new (or even old) evidence of trade’s downside?

[. . .]

In short, the ideal conservative welfare state would be a libertarian dystopia of even bigger proportions than the liberal welfare state. There is less welfare and more state in it.

But what is deeply ironic is that a magazine that accuses libertarians of isolationism because they oppose American military interventionism has no qualms about recommending a restrictionist immigration policy to keep foreigners out and a protectionist trade policy to keep foreign goods out. If I had to pick a term for this foreign policy, I’d call it neo-isolationism. And maybe I lack imagination, but it is hard to see how a party that wants to engage the world through its “fearsome military” — rather than through voluntary exchange and mutual cooperation — could gain enough moral high ground to craft a winning political message, especially in a war-weary country.

February 2, 2013

Romania responds to British anti-immigration talk

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:01

Romania’s Gandul has a bit of fun at Britain’s expense:

Gandul - Why don't you come over

Public fears in the UK over mass immigration by Eastern Europeans has prompted a peculiar response from Romania: One newspaper published a series of ads playing on British cultural stereotypes, and saying why people should move to Romania instead.

­“Our draft beer is less expensive than your bottled water,” one of the ads proudly states, hinting at the high costs of living in the UK. Another ad made fun of British cuisine: “We serve more food groups than pies, sausage, fish and chips.”

Other ads touched upon politics, weather and even women: “Half of our women look like Kate. The other half, like her sister.”

The ‘Why don`t you come over?’ ad campaign was designed by the online Romanian newspaper Gandul and GMP Advertising firm in response to numerous reports in the British media about a possible government initiative to launch a negative ad campaign discouraging Romanians and Bulgarians from coming to work in Britain.

Update, 13 September: The campaign just won a Gold Award at AdStars.

January 30, 2013

There’s a big, unstated reason for illegal immigration in the United States

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:07

The illegal immigration problem won’t improve until the American government addresses the difficulties of legal immigration:

Reason, October 2008 - What Part of Legal Immigration Don't You Understand?!?!?

Reason, October 2008 – What Part of Legal Immigration Don’t You Understand?!?!?

Click the image to see the larger version.

January 3, 2013

Comic book capers of expatriate Americans

Filed under: Media, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:17

Wendy McElroy on Superman’s renunciation of American citizenship:

How do you know when the content of a nation’s character is bankrupt? One way is to examine the dynamic symbols that embody its character and which shift in reaction to circumstance. These symbols are often found within literature and other cultural expressions.

In last year’s Action Comic #900, Superman declared an intention to renounce his US citizenship. The Man of Steel explained, “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of US policy. ‘Truth, justice, and the American Way’ – it’s not enough any more.” Many readers were outraged because, despite being an illegal alien in the most literal sense, Superman epitomized the American Way.

[. . .]

As it happened, Action Comic #900 was issued only days before the killing of Osama bin Laden. Afterward, there was a surge of general patriotism and of sharp criticism directed at Superman. The comic book publishers retreated faster than a speeding bullet. The mainstream media and elites were once again able to settle comfortably into the notion that only villains, cynics, and the irredeemably selfish would abandon US citizenship for a global identity.

And, yet, people on the street then and now sensed that something else was going on. When Forbes ran an expat article, an obviously knowledgeable commentator wrote that leaving America was not […] fundamentally about taxes for most people. “[T]he larger issue is the complete betrayal by one’s country in an attempt to gouge for money to make up for the horrific [US] debt…It is high time…Americans learn that the country they grew up in, no longer exists. The ‘American exceptionalism’ that we were taught to believe in, needs to be seen for what it has become, an excuse for the government to do whatever it wants with no concern for the consequences. ALL Americans lose in this process.” The United States has become what it used to denounce – a fascist police state. To love America (the ideal), you must now leave America (the reality) — either physically or spiritually.

It is wise to do so quietly because the very hint of ‘going expat’ can drive some people into fury. In his article “Citizenship is a problem to be solved,” Phil Hodgen addressed the ‘furious’. He admonished them, “Put down your pitchforks. The point of…an article like this is not to answer with ‘You’re right!’ or ‘You’re wrong!’ The point of the article…is to explore the ideas. There are some important concepts here that transcend taxation…

December 24, 2012

What is the French for “voting with your feet”?

Filed under: Europe, Government, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:03

Put your tax rates up too high and people start to look at alternative living and working arrangements:

Actor Gérard Depardieu’s decision to flee France for Belgium to avoid a 75 percent marginal tax rate on incomes above $1.3 million sends a message we here in America should heed: Those who are singled out for tax increases are not stationary targets. The means of avoiding and evading the taxman are legion.

U.S. government agencies routinely issue estimates of how changes in the tax code will affect the flow of revenues to the treasury. President Obama says the tax changes he has been seeking will bring in $1.6 trillion over a decade. But such estimates assume taxpayers are something other than human beings who engage in purposive action. People like to keep the money they make — why shouldn’t they? — and they typically avail themselves of every legal (and not-so-legal) strategy to do so. Change the tax environment by raising rates or adversely modifying the rules, and taxpayers, especially those in the upper echelons of earners, can be counted on to modify their conduct accordingly; there’s no reason to think their wish to hold on to their money has diminished just because the tax code has changed.

Economists as far back at J. B. Say and Gustave de Molinari in the 19th century understood this. As Molinari wrote in his 1899 book, The Society of To-morrow, “The laws of fiscal equilibrium set a strict limit to the degree within which it is possible to impose new taxes, or to increase the rates of those already in force. The relative productivity of taxes soon shows when this point has been overstepped, for then returns not only cease to rise, but immediately begin to fall.”

December 5, 2012

Finland’s excellent education system can’t be exported

Filed under: Asia, Education, Europe — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:46

Finland frequently comes in at or near the top of the rankings for quality of education, and some countries are tempted to replicate the Finnish model to improve their own domestic school systems. Unfortunately, as Eero Iloniemi points out, the model is actually more cultural than educational:

One such similarity is orthography. Both languages are written almost exactly as they are pronounced. Therefore, a child who can spell one word will be able to spell every word, even when they hear it for the first time. An eight-year-old Finn will have no trouble identifying every letter when he hears the word ‘kertakäyttösyömäpuikkoteollisuus’. So while native English speakers practise spelling well into their teens, Finnish and Korean kids are busy brushing up on other subjects.

Another thing Finland and Korea share is a fairly homogeneous culture. Ethnic minority groups are small and immigration to both countries is conspicuously low. As Horst Entof and Nicole Miniou of Darmstadt University of Technology noted in their 2004 study, PISA results are higher in countries which have strict and/or highly selective immigration policies than they are in countries with more liberal immigration policies. The name of the study says it all: PISA Results: What a Difference Immigration Law Makes.

This point is underlined by the fact that Finland performs significantly better in PISA studies than neighbouring Sweden. Why? Sweden has an immigrant population that is 10 times bigger. When these socially and economically similar countries are compared, omitting first and second generation immigrant children from sample groups, the results become almost identical.

Update: Oh, and it’s also a myth that the Finns pay their teachers at the same level they pay their doctors.

December 4, 2012

An American view of Canada’s immigration policies

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:11

Shikha Dalmia says that the US could learn useful lessons on immigration policy from Canada:

… Canada’s provincial-nominee program is a model of economic enlightenment. Under this system, 13 provincial entities sponsor a total of 75,000 worker-based permanent residencies a year, and the federal government in Ottawa offers 55,000. Each province can pick whomever it wants for whatever reason—in effect, to use its quota, which is based on population, to write its own immigration policy.

Provinces may pick applicants left over from the federal program. They can also solicit their own applicants from anywhere in the world. In a direct attempt to poach talent from the U.S., some provinces are sponsoring H1-B holders stuck in the American labyrinth.

The government in Ottawa can’t question either the provinces’ criteria or their methods of recruitment. Its role is limited to conducting a security, criminal and health check on foreigners picked by the provinces, which has cut processing time for permanent residency to one or two years—compared with a decade or more in the U.S.

Richard Kurland, a lawyer who is considered Canada’s top immigration expert, notes that provinces use the program for diverse goals such as enhancing existing cultural or ethnic ties with other countries. Not surprisingly, the most popular reason is economic: to augment the local labor market.

The program gives British Columbia the same flexibility to sponsor, say, bricklayers as it gives Ontario to sponsor computer programmers. It doesn’t treat the entire Canadian economy as monolithic and pretend that distant federal bureaucrats can effectively cater to local job markets. (Canada’s federal program is a different story altogether.)

November 19, 2012

Rethinking US immigration policies

Filed under: Americas, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:21

Steve Chapman on the need of both the Democrats and the Republicans to come up with more realistic approaches to solving the illegal immigration problem:

Both sides also agree that a balanced, two-part approach is in order: stricter enforcement and improved border security on one hand and a pathway to legalization on the other. It’s an excellent plan — except for that first part.

To say we need more enforcement to seal the border is like saying we should re-invade Iraq. In the first place, we’ve already ramped up enforcement in every way imaginable. In the second place, it hasn’t solved the problem — and in fact has largely backfired.

[. . .]

G.K. Chesterton wrote that “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” Enforcement enthusiasts think the same is true of their preferred option. From them, you would think every migrant sneaking across the Arizona border only had to get by an unarmed attendant sitting in a folding chair and playing Angry Birds on an iPhone.

In fact, the southern border increasingly resembles the Berlin Wall. Border security has become the poster child of big government programs that conservatives typically abhor. It never succeeds, and every failure becomes the rationale for additional funding.

November 15, 2012

Human trafficking in the US

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:20

At the Foundation for Economic Education, Lewis Andrews explains how immigration reform will also help to combat the scourge of human trafficking:

Restrictive immigration policies have long been associated with a variety of economic problems including the diminished availability of foreign business and scientific talent, the inability to fill low-skilled agricultural and service jobs typically scorned by legal residents, and reduced access to the kind of entrepreneurial enthusiasm characteristic of those willing to risk their futures in another country.

Only recently has it become clear how restrictive immigration laws also produce harmful social consequences, particularly when it comes to the age-old scourge of human trafficking — the use of force and fraud to supply cheap labor and sexual services.

To understand these consequences, it is important to appreciate just how lucrative a branch of organized crime the modern slave trade has become. Efficient transportation, technological advances in both farming and factory work, and advances in communication have all combined to make the use of forced labor very cheap by historical measures.

Free the Slaves, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, has calculated the return on the cost of an enslaved field worker in 1850s Alabama at just 5 percent, whereas today a trafficked farmhand can yield the owner anywhere from double digits to 800 percent. Similarly, an imprisoned prostitute shuttled around the boroughs of New York City in a van by a driver scheduling appointments on his cell phone can service as many as 40 customers in a single shift. As one researcher coldly but accurately put it, “People are a good commodity as they do not easily perish, but they can be transported over long distances and can be re-used and re-sold.”

The result, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, is that 2.5 million victims, approximately 80 percent female and 50 percent under the age of 18, are being trafficked around the world at any given time. In 2005 the International Labor Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, estimated the annual revenues from this “industry” at $32 billion, or $13,000 per victim.

November 8, 2012

The Swiss children of Malthus

Filed under: Environment, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:59

In sp!ked, Patrick Hayes points out the odd way that Malthusians and xenophobic far-right political groups converge:

For greens, the ends will always justify the means when it comes to saving the planet. In the UK, they have opportunistically latched themselves on to left-wing movements to try to gain purchase with a broader public. But, as Swiss campaign group Ecology and Population (EcoPop) has demonstrated, in an attempt to pursue their Malthusian goals, greens can be equally happy tapping into the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the far right.

In a stunt last week, members of EcoPop carried dozens of cardboard boxes into the Swiss chancellery which contained 120,700 certified signatures calling for immigration into Switzerland to be capped at 0.2 per cent of the resident population. Under Swiss law, this means that a referendum will now be held on the proposal. Such a move trumps even the efforts of the far-right Swiss People’s Party, which has long lobbied for greater immigration controls.

But these greens aren’t mobilising for an immigration clampdown with banners claiming ‘keep the darkies out’ as right-wing groups have done in the past. Nor are they using dodgy, discredited scientific arguments to justify racial superiority, wielding books like Madison Grant’s The Passing of The Great Race for evidence.

No, instead EcoPop delivers its demands for immigration curbs carrying a banner asking: ‘How many people can the Earth tolerate?’ The group’s members use the (equally dodgy and discredited) Malthusian science of population growth and babble on about our ‘finite planet’. And they have reportedly been strongly influenced by the theories of US Malthusian Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb.

EcoPop bends over backwards to claim that it is not singling out particular races when advocating its policies. According to the BBC, it claims to be ‘opposed to all forms of xenophobia and racism’. But, the group says, ‘Switzerland must limit immigration to avoid urbanisation and to preserve agricultural land’.

You could almost believe that EcoPop is just a bunch of backward-thinking NIMBYish Luddites wanting to stop a flood of immigrants from destroying what it sees as a rural idyll — until you see what the group has tacked on to its proposed referendum for immigration caps. EcoPop slipped an additional clause into the referendum calling for a tenth of all foreign aid to be used ‘for birth-control measures abroad’. (It’s highly questionable how many people would have signed a petition for that alone.)

So it’s not enough to keep foreigners out of Switzerland, then, it’s also necessary to keep them from breeding too much in their own countries as well. And the fact that most of the aid will go towards stopping poor black and brown families from breeding too much suggests that if they’re not intentionally being racist, then EcoPop’s members should really think very hard about how they come across.

July 30, 2012

Federal government cracking down on Old Age Security applicants

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:55

An interesting story in the Toronto Star:

After 40 years as a registered nurse, Yvonne Gardner never thought she’d have to beg to get her federal pension benefits.

For 14 months, the Toronto retiree has been struggling to prove to Service Canada that she’s eligible for the $500 monthly Old Age Security (OAS) pension.

In the latest twist, she was asked for copies of plane tickets for all of her travels in and out of Canada since moving here from England in 1975 — a mission impossible — as proof she has lived here the minimum 10 years required to qualify.

Deprived of the pension she was counting on, Gardner, a native of Suffolk, England, is 10 months behind in rent on her one-bedroom downtown apartment and faces eviction.

If this woman’s issue is typical, then I will probably also have problems claiming OAS, as my family came to Canada in 1967 and I know for certain that we did not retain any of our travel documents from that far distant time.

However, the story is in the Toronto Star, which certainly has been willing to creatively tell stories that make the government look bad in the past. Here’s a comment on the story that has to be a joke:

I have no idea why this person thinks the story has anything to do with Capitalism, but he or she is certain that the answer is Socialism. Doesn’t much matter what the question is, I guess.

July 24, 2012

The racist history of gun control

Filed under: History, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:55

Brendan O’Neill wonders how gun control — traditionally a racist and xenophobic attempt to disarm blacks and foreigners — became a left-wing policy:

One of the great mysteries of modern politics is how gun control came to be seen as a natural Left-wing cause. Following the horrific shootings in Aurora, Denver, the usual lineup of Left-liberal activists and commentators have pleaded, for the ten thousandth time, for America to get rid of its stupid constitutional guarantee of the right to bear arms and to clamp down on gun ownership. This is the default setting of virtually every observer who considers himself of the Left, particularly those outside of America, who love nothing more than to look down their long noses at the Wild West-style, gun-wielding, blood-spattered mess they believe modern America to be.

Which is all a bit weird, because for years — for two centuries, in fact — gun control was a largely Right-wing, reactionary campaign issue, not a Left-wing one. The fact that it has now been adopted by Leftists is very revealing indeed.

[. . .]

In the modern period, too, there was a hugely reactionary bent to gun-control campaigns. In the early 20th century new laws, such as the 1911 Sullivan Law in New York City, were passed to prevent the huge influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe from getting their hands on guns. As Gary Kleck puts it in his book Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, gun control was anything but a liberal cause: “In the 19th and early 20th century, gun-control laws were often targeted at blacks in the south and the foreign-born in the north.”

The Gun Control Act of 1968 was ostensibly passed in response to assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King, but its real targets were inner-city black communities where there had been violent riots for three summers running and where some black activists were beginning to arm themselves. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton, recognising that his liberal supporters were converting en masse to the cause of gun control, started to talk about the “evil” of assault rifles. Who tended to own assault rifles? “Drug dealers, street gang members and other violent criminals”, the Clinton adminstration said — long-recognised polite political codewords for blacks and Latinos.

Update: Dan Baum on the reduction in gun crime across the US by nearly half over the last two decades.

Among the many ways America differs from other countries when it comes to guns is that when a mass shooting happens in the United States, it’s a gun story. How an obviously sick man could buy a gun; how terrible it is that guns are abundant; how we must ban particular types of guns that are especially dangerous. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence responded to the news with a gun-control petition. Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times has weighed in with an online column saying that “Politicians are far too cowardly to address gun violence . . . which keeps us from taking practical measures to avoid senseless shootings.”

Compare that to the coverage and conversation after Anders Behring Breivik murdered sixty-nine people on the island of Utøya in Norway, a year ago next Sunday. Nobody focused on the gun. I had a hard time learning from the news reports what type of gun he used. Nobody asked, “How did he get a gun?” That seemed strange, because it’s much harder to get a gun in Europe than it is here. But everybody, even the American media, seemed to understand that the heart of the Utøya massacre story was a tragically deranged man, not the rifle he fired. Instead of wringing their hands over the gun Breivik used, Norwegians saw the tragedy as the opening to a conversation about the rise of right-wing extremism in their country.

Rosenthal is wrong, by the way, that politicians haven’t addressed gun violence. They have done so brilliantly, in a million different ways, which helps explain why the rate of violent crime is about half what it was twenty years ago. They simply haven’t used gun control to do it. Gun laws are far looser than they were twenty years ago, even while crime is plunging — a galling juxtaposition for those who place their faith in tougher gun laws. The drop in violence is one of our few unalloyed public-policy success stories, though perhaps not for those who bemoan an “epidemic of gun violence” that doesn’t exist anymore in order to make a political point.

June 16, 2012

Peter Oborne on Enoch Powell, a “monster” with integrity

Filed under: Britain, Europe, History, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:36

In the Telegraph, Peter Oborne outlines the career of British parliamentarian Enoch Powell:

For years, Enoch Powell has been a monstrous figure in British politics. Even the mention of his name has been enough to invite damnation by association. Before the last election, David Cameron forced Nigel Hastilow to stand down as Conservative candidate for Halesowen after he praised Powell for being “right” about immigration.

[. . .]

With not one word changed, Powell’s speeches on Lords reform, some delivered half a century ago, could be delivered today. This is because his analysis was not dependent on day-to-day events and a transient national mood. His approach was based on first principles, extraordinary learning and a rigorous understanding of the British constitution.

It was this intellectual clarity which caused him to oppose British entry to what was then known as the Common Market. At the start of 1971, during the final stage of negotiations, Powell took himself round Europe speaking in Turin (in Italian), Frankfurt (in German) and Lyon (in French). As he remarked: “There is no more ignorant vulgarity than to treat language as an impediment to intercourse, which education, habit, travel, trade, abolish and then remove.” He used these speeches to warn his French, Italian and German audiences that the British tradition of national sovereignty and parliamentary democracy was incompatible with European economic and political union.

[. . .]

But now we must come to Enoch Powell’s notorious speeches on immigration, which have defined his posthumous reputation and established his pariah status. He challenged the culture of denial that surrounded the subject even then, predicting that the immigrant community would rise much faster than official statistics suggested. His claims were denounced as alarmist and irresponsible, even by The Daily Telegraph. As Tom Bower shows in a well-researched and fair-minded essay, Powell’s projections turned out to be much nearer the truth than the official ones.

[. . .]

The case for the defence goes like this: at the time immigration was surrounded by a culture of silence, and Powell was doing no more than bravely voicing the concerns (and using the language) of his constituents. He was no racist, as even opponents like Michael Foot acknowledged, and as his stance over the Hola Camp suggests. And let’s not forget that Powell, who had a brilliant war, risked his life for five years in the fight against fascism. But I am certain that the Conservative Party was right to drive him out for his remarks, which had the malign effect that no mainstream politician dared raise the issue of immigration for a generation.

For some, this single episode has been enough to damn his memory, and that can be understood. But Enoch Powell was a man of extraordinary integrity. He walked alone. To quote the late Daily Telegraph commentator TE Utley, doing his best to stand up for Powell in the wake of the notorious “rivers of blood” speech of April 1968: “He does not believe that politics is a hand-to-mouth affair, a succession of expedients to meet unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstances.”

Update, 19 June: In the Telegraph, Brendan O’Neill points out that modern anti-racists actually have more in common with Powell than they may realize:

What was the key prejudice in Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 speech, which everyone is talking about again following Powell’s 100th birthday? It wasn’t actually hatred of immigrants, whom Powell believed to be ambitious, ferociously so. Rather it was fear of native Britons. It was fear of what white Brits, or what Powell referred to as the “ordinary working man”, might do if more and more foreigners turned up in their towns.

Indeed, Powell explicitly argued that “the sense of alarm and resentment lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come”. It was these people, he said, these “ordinary Englishmen”, who posed a threat to the social order, since their anti-immigrant anger had become so intense that to introduce more immigrants would be to “risk throwing a match in to gunpowder”. In short, “ordinary working men” were a powder-keg of unpredictable emotions whom the state should try its best not to antagonise. Or as Powell put it, “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils”, including the evil of “ordinary working men” having their “alarm and resentment” further stirred up.

Even Powell’s most notorious line — “like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood” — was a prediction not of immigrant behaviour but of native British violence against immigrants. Powell said native Brits, “for reasons which they could not comprehend” (presumably because they were a bit dim), were feeling dangerously like “strangers in their own country”.

May 26, 2012

Andrew Coyne on Harper’s real “hidden agenda”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:32

We’ve been hearing about Stephen Harper’s “hidden agenda” for nearly a decade and it’s about time for some of it to finally come to light — what’s the point of having a hidden agenda if you never actually implement any of it? Andrew Coyne thinks he’s detected the real thing:

It is becoming more difficult to accuse this government of having a hidden agenda. Not because it hasn’t tried, mind you. But while it remains as obtuse as ever about its intentions, the signs of an agenda are by now unmistakable. Where before it had attitudes, or at best stances, it is beginning to sprout what look remarkably like policies.

To be sure, they are modest, even piecemeal. They are often poorly communicated, where the Conservatives deign to communicate them at all. More often they are simply dropped on the unsuspecting public without consultation, or jammed through Parliament with little debate or scrutiny, quite apart from monstrosities like the omnibus bill.

But put them together and they have all the markings of an agenda:

  • Reform of Old Age Security, not only raising the age of eligibility by two years (starting in 2023, and phased in over six years) but offering higher benefits to those willing to keep working past the standard retirement age.
  • Free trade agreements, now being negotiated with virtually everything that moves: Europe, India, Japan, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the ASEAN group.
  • Reform of immigration policy, across every category: skilled immigrants, refugees, investors, entrepreneurs, with an emphasis on recruiting immigrants with demonstrable economic prospects.
  • Reform of employment insurance, announced this week, to give repeat users, in particular, fewer excuses to refuse available work.
  • Moreover, the government is at last beginning to implement the Red Wilson report on productivity, four years after it was delivered, with recent reforms opening the door to foreign takeovers in the telecommunications sector (for companies with less than 10% of the market), and raising the threshold asset value for automatic review of foreign takeovers to $1-billion.

April 14, 2012

The fall of the House of Bossi?

Filed under: Europe, Italy, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:59

BBC News has a profile of Umberto Bossi, who recently had to resign as head of the political party he founded, Italy’s Northern League:

… Mr Bossi made one of his charismatic, raucous and fiery speeches, declaring in essence that northern Italians were no longer going to kow-tow to Rome’s greedy politicians and to pay their taxes to enable lazy southern Italians to live on public welfare.

One of his famous phrases was “Roma ladrona” meaning “Thieving Romans!”

It was all pretty provocative stuff, and had strongly racist undertones.

The League mocks the accents and the origins of Southerners whom they derisively call “terroni”. I suppose “ignorant peasant” would be the nearest English translation.

[. . .]

Sixteen years later it turns out that Umberto Bossi has apparently been dipping into the public trough, even more deeply than the Roman politicians he was so critical of when he founded his separatist party, and set up the phantom north Italian state he dubbed “Padania” – meaning the country of the river Po.

In 2004 Mr Bossi suffered a stroke which left him with impaired speech, but failed to quench his political ambitions or his vulgar public manners.

He frequently uses swear words in public to smear anyone he does not like and often gives the finger in front of TV cameras to make his message even more clear.

[. . .]

According to court documents, Mr Bossi’s wife bought no fewer than 11 houses and apartments with Northern League party funds.

Mr Bossi himself had his own house done up with public money and his son Renzo — nicknamed by his father the Trout, who in fact does have a somewhat fish-like expression — also had access to apparently unlimited cash to indulge in his taste for fast cars.

The party even paid for the Trout’s speeding tickets, not to mention medical expenses. The 23-year-old has now been forced to resign from his sinecure as a regional government official, which brought him 12,000 euros (£10,000, $16,000) a month.

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