Jack's Newswatch

America’s Tea Party movement — the populist conservative cause that has risen up in response to the big-government policies of Barack Obama — has seized the spotlight. Its first national conference, held over the weekend in Nashville, featured a number of prominent speakers and was capped by a nationally televised speech by Sarah Palin.

But the Tea Partiers face the same challenge faced by all populist protest movements: Crafting policies is far harder than simply venting against the status quo. Once they have driven the subject of their discontent from office, or forced him to retreat (say, from health-care reform), they typically descend into petty in-fighting or are co-opted by an established political party.

As their Tennessee convention showed, once one gets passed the Tea Partiers’ common interest in spoiling “Obamacare” and stopping the expansion of the U.S. federal government, the movement is not exactly brimming with sophisticated policy ideas. Its rank-and-file is a colourful but quarrelsome hodgepodge of fundamentalist Christians, antitax activists, anti-immigration cranks, protectionists, mixed in with more mainstream conservative Republicans.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

With the prospects for their transformative health-care bill looking dimmer by the day, Democrats have retreated to familiar ground: Stimulus! The $787 billion stimulus passed last winter is working, Democrats contend, but not fast enough. We need another $100 billion or so to spend our way out of this recession. If this is the first you’re hearing of this new stimulus bill, don’t be alarmed. The word “stimulus” has disappeared from the Democrats’ vocabulary, perhaps because a large majority of Americans correctly believe most of the money in the first stimulus bill was wasted. They’re calling the new package a “jobs bill,” as if renaming the same policies will yield different results.

Our arguments against these policies have not changed. What has changed is the amount of empirical evidence that has accumulated in favor of our position. Both this stimulus bill and the last one can be divided into roughly four parts: unemployment relief, aid to state governments, public-works projects, and tax gimmicks. None of these has contributed significantly to the recovery, and the enormous deficits required to pay for them put future growth in jeopardy.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Turn it on, she said. She meant my iPod. There was nothing mean in the way she said it, but she spoke with the firm voice of authority. She was in charge and both of us knew it.

She was the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) screener who examined my luggage, clothes, books and skin at Pearson Airport last week, before my flight to the United States.

She gave a one-woman demonstration of the effects of the Christmas Day crotch-bomber. With a single bungled attempt at mass murder, he added to the inconvenience in millions of lives. Overnight, he made air travel even more vexatious and further undermined our trust in government.

My recent pre-boarding examination took about twice as long as the equivalent check-in before a flight to Washington last year. And mine was not a random check. All around me, others were handled with the same relentless thoroughness.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Stephen Harper’s government has been in power for more than four years now, without having disturbed any of the social issues that Liberals warned would be high on its (secret) agenda. Gay marriage remains legal. Mr. Harper has kept social conservatives within his caucus on a tight leash. Canada’s lack of a national policy dealing with abortion has remained unaddressed.

But Michael Ignatieff isn’t one to let reality get in the way. This week, the one-time Ivy League intellectual trolled for votes by dragging out the abortion issue, apropos of … nothing. Bizarrely, he declared that the right to abortion is too sacred to become a political football–even though the only one suited up for the gridiron is Mr. Ignatieff himself.

His remarks, delivered to a roomful of Liberal supporters, MPs, human rights representatives and humanitarian organizations, seem to have been cribbed from a yellowing Paul Martin-era briefing book. Yet even Mr. Martin never exhibited so much creepy enthusiasm for spreading the Liberals’ abortion gospel to foreign shores.

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Updates:

2:34 pm EST, February 6th, 2010 — Ignatieff’s abortion plan ‘pathetic’: bishop

Popularity: 6% [?]

For the better part of 30 years, equity has been at the heart of Canadian election law. The goal has been to create a “level playing field” among parties and candidates, to make sure that money and influence play little role in the outcome of national campaigns.

But while we may have convinced ourselves that candidates who can dramatically outspend their rivals have an unfair advantage at election time, there is little empirical evidence that this is true.

The most recent proof of this is the recent special Massachusetts senate election in which Democratic Martha Coakley lost to Republican Scott Brown despite handily outspending him by an estimated margin of two to one.

Bradley Smith, a former chairman of the U.S. Federal Elections Commission, a law professor at Capital University and one of the world’s leading experts on election law and campaign finance, has determined that in no Western democracy have spending limits made election outcomes more “fair.” In less than 40% of the campaigns Prof. Smith has studied in which one candidate or party outspent rivals by 20% or more has the free spender won.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

When Michael Ignatieff said this week he wanted to “lay down a marker” for Tory initiatives to improve maternal health, ensuring they ranked access to abortion as a priority, he may have been attempting to resurrect the specter of a Tory “hidden agenda.” But the Liberal leader also delivered what some observers say may be the most audacious stance in favour of the practice of abortion ever to come from a Liberal leader.

Mr. Ignatieff held a news conference on Tuesday to explain that while his party generally supported Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s plan to focus G8 efforts on improving maternal and infant health worldwide, his support would be contingent on ensuring that facilitating access to abortion, as well as birth control, in the developing world was a priority. “Women are entitled to the full gamut of reproductive health services and that includes termination of pregnancy and contraception,” he said.

Tory MP Rod Bruinooge, chairman of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, called the comments a distinct departure from Mr. Ignatieff’s predecessors who tended to hold more ambivalent views about abortion. “Perhaps he and his advisors … have come to the conclusion that they’re prepared to take a far more aggressive position in relation to abortion than previous Liberal leaders.”

Former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin said he believed “women should have the right to choose” abortion, but refrained from expressing directly whether he believed that choice was the right one. Before becoming Liberal leader he had said he was “personally against abortion on demand.” His predecessor, Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien, while supporting abortion rights, remained similarly reserved about the propriety of abortion.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff pledged that he would spend the days before Parliament resumes announcing Liberal policies and making clear where the party stands on the issues of the day. That much is welcome: It’s never too late to start laying down your policy platform, even if Mr. Ignatieff has waited a curiously long time since taking over the leadership a year ago.

On Monday, Mr. Ignatieff dropped a heavy plank, declaring that a national child-care system would be the No. 1 social item on the agenda of a Liberal government — though he doesn’t quite know how he’ll pay for it. “We will find the money, because it seems to me an excellent investment,” Ignatieff pledged. “I am not going to allow the deficit discussion to shut down discussion in this country about social justice.

“It’s also the best anti-poverty program. I want every single child in Canada to have the opportunity to get a square meal when they come to daycare; to get loving care and tender care,” Mr. Ignatieff added. “A lot of children in our country, we don’t like to admit it, start in a very turbulent difficult environment at home. The great thing about these programs is they give kids an equal start.”

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Popularity: 5% [?]

Last year, after Michael Ignatieff unwisely declared that Stephen Harper’s time was up, the Prime Minister alleged that the opposition parties were planning to repeat their attempted “coup” (as the Economist magazine called it) after the election.

Not so, Mr. Ignatieff’s team whispered – their man was the last MP to sign the caucus letter. And, far from having reneged on his signature, he never supported the coalition.

For his part, Mr. Ignatieff stated that, if that were his intention, he could have already been prime minister. Which did not exactly shut the door. Nor was it quite true.

In December, 2008, Mr. Ignatieff’s goal was to replace Stéphane Dion. Once that was accomplished, he had to face a hard reality. In contrast to Jack Layton and Bob Rae, Mr. Ignatieff understood all along that the Governor-General was not bound to transfer power to the coalition without an election – an election the Liberals would likely have lost, thereby returning him to Cambridge, Mass.

After examining the proposal Mr. Ignatieff put forward last week to limit prime ministerial power in proroguing Parliament, there can now be no doubt about his true intentions. He is trying to prevent Her Excellency from blocking an election he might lose, while still winning enough seats to replace Mr. Harper in a coalition government.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

The following is a transcript of Rex Murphy’s Point of View commentary from the Jan. 27 broadcast of The National on CBC Television. Readers can watch Mr. Murphy’s commentary at cbc.ca/thenational

The storm over prorogation– Mr. Harper’s decision to shut down Parliament — reveals a curious dynamic.

I can’t recall a period when the importance and dignity of Parliament has had quite so many defenders and advocates, and very cheering it is to see. Which leads to the thought that the House of Commons is never quite so popular … as when it’s closed. The great balladeer pundit Joni Mitchell was before me on this point when she hymned to the flower children so many years ago that (in her words) “don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone?”

There’s not an adult in the country who doesn’t know why Stephen Harper shut the shop down — for partisan convenience. But I’m a little less welcoming to the thought that the opposition are genuinely outraged by this “offence” to Parliament, or that Harper, in this, is acting the “despot” or throttling democracy as we know it in Canada.

All politicians would make an infinitely stronger case about their “respect for Parliament” if they showed a little of it when Parliament was actually in session; if, for example, Question Period wasn’t — as it almost always is — a zoo for catcalls and jeers, a heckling contest for the loudest and the rudest — and utterly organized, on both sides of the House, to squeeze the maximum partisan advantage on any issue out of every single minute of the daily free for all.

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Popularity: 8% [?]

The next time I run into Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, I will address him as “Braveheart” and paint his face green.

Just like Mel Gibson in his movie of the same name, except Gibson used blue.

Because I don’t want to be accused of terrorism, I give the premier fair warning of my intention.

Further, I assure his bodyguards they will not need to shoot me, because, unlike PETA, I will first ask Premier Braveheart if he wants his face painted green, and, if he says “no” I won’t.

But I will insist on calling him “Braveheart” which, is not a crime in Ontario … yet.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “Lorrie, other than being off your meds, why do you want to call McGuinty ‘Braveheart’ and paint his face green?”

I’ll tell you why. Because Braveheart is the name McGuinty clearly wants us to call him in the wake of his $7-billion deal with South Korean industrial giant Samsung Group, to manufacture and sell wind and solar power in Ontario.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Stephen Harper’s concept of “enlightened sovereignty,” presented in his speech on Thursday to the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland, is a useful one for international economic policy, and offers a middle way between nationalistic self-interest and supranational regulation.

The phrase is built on the idea of enlightened self-interest, drawn from Alexis de Tocqueville’s discussion of “enlightened egoism” in his book Democracy in America, which he also called “the doctrine of interest well understood.”

On the one hand, Mr. Harper advocated the adoption around the world of “similar regulatory practices” for financial institutions, with what he called international peer review. And he spoke approvingly of the G20’s agreement to “chart the same course toward calmer waters.”

On the other, this would not mean identical financial-sector regulation in all countries, though Mr. Harper did offer the successful Canadian model as a guide for the future (while tossing in a good word in favour of the not yet existing national Canadian securities commission). And he opposed excessive, micromanaging, arbitrary or punitive regulation, while not trying to minimize state supervision either. On the contrary, he argued that if financial regulation remains inadequate, the next crisis will be worse than the one in 2008 and 2009; inaction would be a clear message that banks and other financial institutions would again be rescued from their own recklessness; the moral hazard would be greater than ever.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Once, early in my journalistic career, I interviewed a U.S. historian about the causes of the American Revolution. At the time, Quebec separatism was hot, and I was trying to construct a story showing that Quebecers had little to complain about in Confederation, at least financially.

Quebec’s government, despite being the richest of the have-not governments for most of the past half century, is the recipient of half of all equalization payments. Quebec comes ahead by $8-billion to $10-billion per year in terms of what its taxpayers pay into the federal treasury versus what its citizens and governments receive in return.

The American colonists, by comparison, felt they were groaning under a crippling tax burden. Many of their staples, they felt, were onerously taxed while they received little from England in return and had no say in how large the levies against them would be.

My point was: Quebec, a net beneficiary of Confederation, was chomping at the bit to break up Canada, while, compared to the 13 colonies, they had little to complain about.

So out of curiosity, I asked the historian what the level of taxation was in 1776 that caused the U.S. to declare its independence.

I will always recall his answer: “the equivalent today of about 5% to 7% of their income.”

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Popularity: 5% [?]