- I'd like to think I haven't missed too many Con outrages over the past few years. But Emily Dee's list includes a few which had largely flown under my radar, as well as plenty of greatest hits which deserve another look.
- The CCPA makes its predictions for 2011 - though it's well worth noting how many of them are understandably based on what's all too obvious from what we've seen on the political scene in the past few years.
- Am Johal presents a prescription for the NDP in the course of deconstructing how the Harper Cons took power:
The right has rather effectively used the mantra of simplified messages like 'we'll put more money in your pocket, they'll support the bureaucracy.' When the center-left should have been pushing for democratization and local control, they were left defending bureaucracy. It was the very unionized working class members that voted NDP that were now voting for Preston Manning. The NDP became the conservatives and the Reform Party became the radicals in the early 90's. The Reform Party's biggest gains in the 1993 election were not just from Progressive Conservatives, but also from the NDP. They stole populism from the CCF'ers and gave it a distorted, anti-government storyline.- And finally, the Real News features an interview with Michael Hudson on the history of the U.S.' income tax:
If the center-left wants to recapture the political imagination, it needs to have a critique of government as its beginning point and a defense of the Commons as its follow up. It also needs to synthesize its policy narrative down to three or four big ideas. The government isn't Santa Claus -- it can't do everything.
The NDP needs a simplified message. Re-energizing the populist base of the NDP while genuinely joining with emerging political and social movements should be the new blueprint for the NDP. At the federal level, social democrats don't need to be the majority government or even the official opposition to set the progressive agenda in the country. They do need to be winning between 50-75 seats at election time to have sufficient leverage to influence the policymaking sphere of the country. The NDP doesn't just need to move either to the left or the right in order to grow as a party or be more relevant -- they actually need to do both simultaneously to reach that level of support so it's a rather silly, cyclical debate to be having. The need to reignite their base to show up to the polls and they need to reassure a broader public universe that they can be effective, but principled managers of the economy.
But I do wonder whether there's another lesson beyond those drawn by Hudson: might the fact that the U.S. made a conscious choice to favour taxing private owners (who obviously kept a strong interest in reducing those taxes in order to bolster their own wealth) have made for a more unstable system than one which actually put more of its economy in public hands directly?
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