- PCS is trying to project the royalties it would pay at far higher prices and production levels to avoid the talk of a royalty review. (I wonder when the province may have gotten in trouble buying into potash producers' spin rather than thinking for itself...) But Erin offers the right response:
(I)f PotashCorp sells twice as much potash at nearly double the price, it will pay substantial royalties and taxes. I hope so.- Murray Dobbin raises the question of what we've come to accept as normal under the Harper Cons:
I am by no means pessimistic about the potash industry’s future. But given that PotashCorp has kept prices high by limiting supply, projections based on doubling both prices and supply should be taken with a grain of salt (or some other salt-like mineral.)
Harper wants us all depressed, disengaged and running, screaming, from politics. He is counting on the denigration of the political culture to secure a majority in the next (ugh) election. Harper -- whether by design or just the serendipitous result of his malignant narcissism -- has made politics so profoundly offensive and almost unbearable, that perhaps the only people who really want to get involved are the pre-pubescent junk yard dogs he has hired throughout his government to bully and insult and attack anything that moves. I wonder, sometimes, if they aren't ordered to inject themselves with speed every morning -- like the U.S.-sponsored Contras in Nicaragua used to do (it made them even more nuts than they already were -- and willing to do anything).- From the "so what else is new?" department: the Sask Party's choice to prioritize privatization over effectiveness in the health sector is falling well short of the promised results. At least, for those who actually thought the point was to reduce wait times rather than to find a way to create profit motives in more of the health care system.
Have people adjusted to this new normal in Canadian national politics to the extent that they don't even recognize the newest outrage? Do they -- and I realize that most Canadians still do reject this government and its mean little dictator -- simply ratchet down their expectations of what kind of behaviour is to be expected of politicians? Is there a limit to bad political news beyond which people experience a numbing effect -- like soldiers and other experience during war time? I know friends of mine who were political junkies now avoid the news and political conversations.
One of the successes of the political right over the past 25 years has been its lowering of people's expectations of what is possible -- that is, what is possible from government. Campaigns focused on the deficit in the early 1990s, huge cuts to social spending by Paul Martin as finance minister, the relentless propaganda that we can't afford anything any more (despite the fact that we are twice as wealthy per capital today as when Medicare was established) and the general demonization of government and government employees, has had a terrible impact on people's trust in government. And of course when you cut funding to services they do inevitably deteriorate and further convince people that government just can't do it any more.
It's only a matter of time that those lowered expectations begin to erode participation in elections -- the process that creates government. If you believe that government won't deliver the goods no matter who you vote for it could get harder and harder to convince yourself that it's worth voting. Then add in Harper's importation of the hateful political tactics of the U.S. Republican Party and you have what may be, for many people, the last straw.
- Finally, it's easy enough to see the potential appeal of a "Layton Liberal" strategy on the part of the federal NDP. But I'll be curious to see whether that results in any functional difference from the 2008 strategy, as it doesn't sound like focusing on Layton in contrast to a Lib leader who doesn't connect well with Canadians will make for much of a change from last time out.
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