Liberal Democracy Cannot Survive Undefended.

Since the advent of the neoliberal era, the reign of Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney, liberal democracy has been left to its own devices. The warning sign, the red flag, was the extinction of any meaningful vestige of progressivism from the body politic.

The last defender of liberal democracy we knew in Canada was Pierre Trudeau who bequeathed to us the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that, coupled with a courageous Supreme Court, thwarted the worst undemocratic instincts of subsequent prime ministers notably Stephen Harper and even Justin Trudeau.

The decline of neoliberalism was marked by the evolution of a corporate media cartel, a wholesale shift in the balance between labour and capital, and the development of the corporate state whose leaders preferred to operate in the boardrooms rather than the livingrooms of the nation.

Harper may have dragged Canada's political centre far to the right but both the Liberals and the New Democrats followed complacently in his wake. The Liberals became 'conservative-lite' while the New Dems positioned themselves as 'latter-day liberals.' What Harper had wrought they chose not to undo. In the process the Liberal Party of Ignatieff and Justin Trudeau became untethered from the party of Laurier, St. Laurent, Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. The New Democrats of Layton and Mulcair strayed from the party of Douglas, Lewis and Broadbent. In so doing all three parties pulled the rug out from under liberal democracy.

Across the political spectrum, liberal democracy flourishes in a smallish band located at the centre, neither hard right nor hard left. Picture in your mind a circle. At the very top you have totalitarianism. At the very bottom you have liberal democracy. As you move from the bottom, whether to the right or left, liberal democracy is gradually displaced by authoritarianism of the sort we're seeing in today's emerging nationalist/populist movements. Today we're heading mainly to the right, a path that sees democracy steadily displaced by plutocracy and then oligarchy. Beyond that, well, we'll just have to wait and see.

Andrew Sullivan recently wrote of this movement in Europe and the United States. The article was titled, "Is the World Done with Liberal Democracy?" He makes the case that it is.

At the risk of inviting howls of scorn and derision, I mention today's column in The Globe by John Ibbitson, "Ontario has lost its political centre."

The political centre is collapsing in Ontario, polarizing between social democrats and populist conservatives. We thought it couldn’t happen here. It’s happening here. And it poses a grave threat to the Liberal Party, both provincially and federally.

No party has plans to balance the provincial budget, align new spending with available resources, seek practical, incremental change. For both parties, the centre is the enemy. 

Such a polarization between well-to-the-left and populist right challenges the electoral base of the federal Liberals. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may be able to work with an NDP government, the PC’s plans to eliminate the carbon tax flies in the face of a core federal commitment to fight climate change.

Maybe a year and a half of Doug Ford would make Mr. Trudeau look good to Ontario voters. Or maybe things would become so toxic that polarization infects federal politics as well. 

Is the social democratic/populist conservative schism in Ontario permanent? That’s impossible to say. Had the PCs chosen a more conventional conservative as leader, had Ms. Wynne stepped aside when there was still a chance for the Liberals to renew the party, we might not be talking about schisms.

It seems odd to read Ibbitson lamenting developments that he and his kind have done so much to nurture and empower.

Here’s the big question: Would a Ford government enable the haters, even though he espouses no such hatred himself? Would the alt-right interpret a Premier Ford as carte blanche to demand an end to immigration, to target visible minorities, to proclaim that Ontario is Christian and white?

We’ll find out the answer if Mr. Ford wins. Ms. Horwath is determined to stop him. All we know for sure is that, at least in Ontario, at least for now, the centre no longer holds.

Ibbitson is beginning to sound much like the NYT's David Brooks' day-late laments about Donald Trump soiling of the Republican Party. A pox on them both.

Yet more disturbing is the notion of Justin Trudeau as the essential gatekeeper of liberal democracy in Canada. There's a huge difference between setting out to destroy liberal democracy and doing anything meaningful to defend it. Trudeau is no Stephen Harper but that doesn't mean that liberal democracy is safe in his hands.

My father planted in his young son's mind the reality that we didn't have a right or freedom that hadn't been paid for, often more than once, in blood. Over the years I came to understand that every right and freedom we hold has a greater value to those who might deprive us of it than we ever perceive it to be worth. Here we are.

About that "Of the People, By the People, For the People" Business? Forget About It.

Proof positive that America is a corporatist state saddled with a "bought and paid for" Congress.

The big US banks have given the Democrats an ultimatum - silence progressives like Elizabeth Warren or we'll cut off our funding.  Salon.com calls it "Wall Street's political shakedown."

If ever you doubted that our obscene campaign finance regime constitutes a form of legalized bribery, consider this: Reuters reports today that officials at top Wall Street banks recently convened to discuss how they could convince Democrats “to soften their party’s tone” toward the financial industry, and among the options now under consideration is halting campaign donations to Senate Democrats unless they rein in progressive populists like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

The banks represented at the Washington meeting included Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, according to the report, and though the idea of withholding campaign contributions did not arise at that gathering, it has since been floated in conversations among representatives from the banks.

There are two salient points to be made here: First, while only the most naive mind could consider it surprising, that Democrats are clutching their pearls over a possible drought of Wall Street funds underscores how poisoned our campaign finance system has become, and it speaks volumes about the plutocratic capture of American politics. Moreover, the report further puts the lie to Chief Justice John Roberts’ apparently straight-faced assertion, writing his opinion in the Citizens United case, that campaign contributions are not intended to influence lawmakers’ official duties.

...Yet here we have an industry that may well cut off a political party if it does not jettison proposals like breaking up “Too Big To Fail” institutions, reinstating the Glass-Steagall law separating commercial and investment banking, and reining in unscrupulous speculation. These proposals have galvanized the Warren wing of the Democratic Party, which may be emboldened but is far from dominant. Look no further than Wall Street’s affinity for the party’s likely presidential nominee, or the identity of the Democrats’ potential next leader in the Senate, a top recipient of financial industry contributions.

For Democratic neoliberals who have proven all too eager to forge an unholy alliance with the malefactors of great wealth, this Wall Street shakedown will only redouble their commitment to keep the financial powers-that-be placated.

Capitalism Off the Rails

Those at the very top of today's neoliberal, free-market capitalist, global economy see the writing on the wall - capitalism has just about run its course.

It's hard to get your head around the idea, isn't it?  It sure is for me.  Imagine, the economic model around which our society has been structured is bogus.  It is the product of 18th century economics, 19th century industrialism and 20th century geo-politics.  It worked for a couple of hundred years, perhaps right up until the early 70s, but it's now dawning on us that it doesn't work any more.  It's lost its utility.  It's once vaunted strengths have morphed into dangerous liabilities.

Der Spiegel has an interesting piece, "The Zombie System: How Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails."

A new buzzword is circulating in the world's convention centers and auditoriums. It can be heard at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund. Bankers sprinkle it into the presentations; politicians use it leave an impression on discussion panels.

The buzzword is "inclusion" and it refers to a trait that Western industrialized nations seem to be on the verge of losing: the ability to allow as many layers of society as possible to benefit from economic advancement and participate in political life.

The term is now even being used at meetings of a more exclusive character, as was the case in London in May. Some 250 wealthy and extremely wealthy individuals, from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt to Unilever CEO Paul Polman, gathered in a venerable castle on the Thames River to lament the fact that in today's capitalism, there is too little left over for the lower income classes. Former US President Bill Clinton found fault with the "uneven distribution of opportunity," while IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde was critical of the numerous financial scandals. The hostess of the meeting, investor and bank heir Lynn Forester de Rothschild, said she was concerned about social cohesion, noting that citizens had "lost confidence in their governments."

You, yes you.  You're getting screwed over.

Politicians and business leaders everywhere are now calling for new growth initiatives, but the governments' arsenals are empty. The billions spent on economic stimulus packages following the financial crisis have created mountains of debt in most industrialized countries and they now lack funds for new spending programs.

Central banks are also running out of ammunition. They have pushed interest rates close to zero and have spent hundreds of billions to buy government bonds. Yet the vast amounts of money they are pumping into the financial sector isn't making its way into the economy.

Be it in Japan, Europe or the United States, companies are hardly investing in new machinery or factories anymore. Instead, prices are exploding on the global stock, real estate and bond markets, a dangerous boom driven by cheap money, not by sustainable growth. Experts with the Bank for International Settlements have already identified "worrisome signs" of an impending crash in many areas. In addition to creating new risks, the West's crisis policy is also exacerbating conflicts in the industrialized nations themselves. While workers' wages are stagnating and traditional savings accounts are yielding almost nothing, the wealthier classes -- those that derive most of their income by allowing their money to work for them -- are profiting handsomely.

The data expose a dangerous malfunction in capitalism's engine room. Banks, mutual funds and investment firms used to ensure that citizens' savings were transformed into technical advances, growth and new jobs. Today they organize the redistribution of social wealth from the bottom to the top. 

...the crisis of capitalism has turned into a crisis of democracy. Many feel that their countries are no longer being governed by parliaments and legislatures, but by bank lobbyists, which apply the logic of suicide bombers to secure their privileges: Either they are rescued or they drag the entire sector to its death.

The article includes an interview with Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, the man who hyped the "trickle down" justification for massive tax cuts.

The conservative is furious over his country's transformation into a debt republic of the sort the Western world has never before seen in times of peace. A republic in which going to college is paid for with borrowed funds, as is the next military campaign. A country which hasn't actually dismantled its gigantic pile of debt since the crisis -- $60 trillion -- but has merely redistributed it. While the banks were allowed to pass on a large share of their bad loans to taxpayers, the government is in more debt than ever before.

...In the past, part of the promise of the American dream was that anyone who worked hard enough could eventually improve his or her situation. Today the wealthy enjoy most of the fruits of US capitalism and the most salient feature of the system is the fear of fear. No one knows what might happen if the Fed raises interest rates next year as planned. Will pressure from rising costs cause the government deficit to explode? Will the stock market bubble burst and will financial institutions collapse? Will the economy crash?

Only one thing is certain: In the seventh year of the financial crisis, the US economy is still addicted to debt and cheap money. Worst of all, the withdrawal phase hasn't even begun.

"There is no possibility of a soft landing (with the) markets as completely distorted and disabled as they are today," Stockman says in parting. "There will be some great conflagration. It's just the question of when."

And then a few comments from the Prophet of Inclusion, Daron Acemoglu:

He became famous two years ago when he and colleague James Robinson published a deeply researched study on the rise of Western industrial societies. Their central thesis was that the key to their success was not climate or religion, but the development of social institutions that included as many citizens as possible: a market economy that encourages progress and entrepreneurship, and a parliamentary democracy that serves to balance interests.

The only problem is that such institutions do not arise automatically. They have to be promoted and defended, especially against those social classes and interest groups that use power to seal themselves off from competitors, secure their own benefits and seek to influence lawmakers accordingly.

Extremely well read, Acemoglu can cite dozens of such cases. One is 14th century Venice, where a small patrician caste monopolized maritime trade. Another is Egypt under former President Hosni Mubarak, whose officer friends divided up key economic posts among themselves but were complete failures as businessmen. These are what Acemoglu calls "extractive processes," which lead to economic and social decline.

...The necessary economic reforms are not Acemoglu's primary focus, even if the relevant proposals have existed for a long time: a fiscal policy that doesn't just benefit the rich; a monetary policy that knows its limits; a reform of the financial and banking industry that separates the traditional savings and lending business from risky investment banking.

That won't be enough, Acemoglu believes. What is needed, he argues, is a new political alliance that takes a stand against the power of the financial industry and its lobby. He sees the anti-trust movement from the beginning of the last century in the United States as a model. It was a broad coalition from the center of society and finally achieved its great victory after decades of struggle: the breakup of major corporations like Standard Oil.

These warnings are beginning to come in fast and furious.  It's beyond doubt that the rich and powerful are becoming deeply worried about what they themselves have unleashed.  The collaborative, neoliberal governments that have done their bidding now stand to be their undoing.

Acemoglu warns that solutions won't come from Davos or in our unfaithful legislatures either.  Renewal, he says, must come from below.  It has to come from us - you and me.  We haven't got the time it'll take to get anything meaningful from the Clown Princes of Parliament.




 

Monbiot - You Can't Win on Climate Change Without First Vanquishing Plutocracy

Guardian enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, took the arrival of a record, 400 ppm concentration of atmospheric CO2 to deliver a few thoughts on our losing battle against climate change and what really stands in the way of our hope for progress.

"The data go back 800,000 years: that's the age of the oldest fossil air bubbles extracted from Dome C, an ice-bound summit in the high Antarctic. And throughout that time there has been nothing like this. At no point in the preindustrial record have concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air risen above 300 parts per million (ppm). 400ppm is a figure that belongs to a different era.

"The only way forward now is back: to retrace our steps and seek to return atmospheric concentrations to around 350ppm, as the 350.org campaign demands. That requires, above all, that we leave the majority of the fossil fuels which have already been identified in the ground. There is not a government or an energy company which has yet agreed to do so."

"Practical measures to prevent the growth of global emissions are, by comparison to the scale of the challenge, almost nonexistent.

"The problem is simply stated: the power of the fossil fuel companies is too great. Among those who seek and obtain high office are people characterised by a complete absence of empathy or scruples, who will take money or instructions from any corporation or billionaire who offers them, and then defend those interests against the current and future prospects of humanity.

"This new climate milestone reflects a profound failure of politics, in which democracy has quietly been supplanted by plutocracy.   Without a widespread reform of campaign finance, lobbying and influence-peddling and the systematic corruption they promote, our chances of preventing climate breakdown are close to zero."

They Are Not Of Us

An interesting essay from George Monbiot today on the grooming of oligarchs and why, even though they govern in our name, they don't rule on our behalf.   They rule as they were born and raised to rule.   An excerpt.

In the Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explains that the nobles of pre-revolutionary France "did not regard themselves as representative of the nation, but as a separate ruling caste which might have much more in common with a foreign people of the same society and condition than with its compatriots".

Last year the former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren wrote something very similar about the dominant classes of the US: "the rich elites of this country have far more in common with their counterparts in London, Paris, and Tokyo than with their fellow American citizens … the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it."

Secession from the concerns and norms of the rest of society characterises any well established elite. Our own ruling caste, schooled separately, brought up to believe in justifying fairytales, lives in a world of its own, from which it can project power without understanding or even noticing the consequences. A removal from the life of the rest of the nation is no barrier to the desire to dominate it. In fact, it appears to be associated with a powerful sense of entitlement.

So if you have wondered how the current government can blithely engage in the wholesale transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, how its frontbench can rock with laughter as it truncates the livelihoods of the poorest people of this country, why it commits troops to ever more pointless post-colonial wars, here, I think, is part of the answer. Many of those who govern us do not in their hearts belong here. They belong to a different culture, a different world, which knows as little of its own acts as it knows of those who suffer them.

Ignatieff was clearly of this ruling caste.   He never demonstrated a real grasp of the country or our people.   Harper, despite his more middle-class upbringing and his fondness of hockey and cats, may not be a member by birth of the ruling caste but certainly shows himself its eager water-carrier and thereby may hope to earn his rightful place among them.   Such are the aspirations of those who govern a petro-state.