Wednesday, August 04, 2010

The reviews are in

The Star-Phoenix editorial board notes that Brad Wall has joined Stephen Harper among the main voices encouraging the type of right-wing dogma that's all too likely to torpedo any economic recovery:
As the premiers gather in Manitoba this week, their top task will be to decide who is correct about the world's economies -- their Saskatchewan colleague Brad Wall, or Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman and Washinton Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

In his weekend column in the New York Time, Mr. Krugman worried that politicians are so focused on narrow views of government deficits that they're throwing the poor and unemployed to the wolves rather than continuing the stimulus spending programs he believes are key to staving off another serious economic slump.

And Mr. Dionne noted that "incorrigibly stupid" politics that placed tax cuts for the rich above the need to support vital government appropriations threatens the largest superpower.

Mr. Wall, however, is going into the premiers' meeting with the warning that, "Much of the problems of the world right now, economically, are related to budgets that just got out of control." He suggests salvation lies in "debt reduction and lower taxes."
...
(Stimulus) projects that aren't completed by the end of fiscal 2010-11 will not get support from Ottawa. This deadline, by the way, is particularly awkward for Saskatchewan, where record rainfall through June and July have delayed work on projects worth millions of dollars.

This, however, doesn't seem to concern Premier Wall, who is heading to Manitoba to urge his colleagues to turn off the fiscal taps. Saskatchewan, he will point out, already has stopped the flow by cutting programs across the board and slashing the civil service.
...
Mr. Wall also has (sic) worry about the request for more recovery time by premiers who believe their provinces haven't yet exited the recession.

Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter, for example, is hoping to squeeze in a question on "whether or not there is more to be done" on the stimulus package.

But if it makes Mr. Wall more comfortable to be off-side with economists, newspaper columnists and his colleagues, his stance seems a perfect copy of the words and deeds of the PM Harper.

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