Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Bill Kerry discusses the role of inequality in causing a global financial meltdown

Leaving aside the greed and stupidity of so many of the world's financial institutions and, particularly, their leaders, it is easy to see why poor Americans jumped at what they saw as their chance of the American Dream and why under pressure sales forces, with targets to meet and commissions to earn, pushed unsuitable products on to them. The US is the most unequal, major, developed world economy and, as a result, it is racked with status anxiety from top to bottom. Inequality forces people to compete with each other to try and scramble up the greasy pole, or at least stay where they are in the pecking order. Buying your own house rather than renting is a massive step up the social ladder as is being a success in business, even if that business is saddling poor people with crushing debt that they can never hope to repay. But inequality helps out here too. Great inequality encourages us to think of poorer people as somehow having failed anyway, so maybe it matters less what is done to them. Out of sight, out of mind.

In a wider sense the 2007 crash was the result of deep-seated changes in the world economy, not least the massive expansion of private debt that had built up in the system over recent decades. But again, inequality and status anxiety had key roles here. Real wages have not allowed us or our families to live the lives we want, the lives that advertisers sell us every day. So in order to get these lives and to preserve our status and sense of self-worth in the world around us, we borrowed to bridge the gap. A massive bubble was created and this burst in 2007, all it took was the big American sub-prime needle to do it.

- And Sahil Dutta and Paul Gilbert point out that a meaningful left response to trickle-down economics needs to address management, not only ownership.

- Jake Johnson examines how U.S. corporations already avoid most of their nominal tax obligations - and how they (assisted by the Trump administration) are pushing to contribute even less. And David Dayen and Ryan Grim report on extra fees which have been added to consumers' monthly mortgage payments through opt-out junk mail.

- Michael Coren highlights the hypocrisy of executives who never hesitate to extract every possible nickel from businesses for themselves, but cry poor over any talk of a living wage for employees. And Daniel Gross calls out employers who are complaining about a lack of workers for refusing to offer wages which would make it worth working for them.

- Finally, the Ontario NDP has unveiled a new plan for worker-friendly labour and employment law reform. And Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon reports on Jennifer McKenzie's ascent to the leadership of the New Brunswick NDP - and the expectation that it will join other provincial wings in leading the way toward progressive policy choices.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- James Meek writes about the UK's privatization scam, and how it's resulted in citizens paying far more for the basic services which are better provided by a government which actually has the public interest within its mandate:

Privatisation failed to demonstrate the case made by the privatisers that private companies are always more competent than state-owned ones – that private bosses, chasing the carrot of bonuses and dodging the stick of bankruptcy, will always do better than their state-employed counterparts. Through euphemisms such as "wealth creation" and "enjoying the rewards of success" Thatcher and her allies have promoted the notion that greed on the part of a private executive elite is the chief and sufficient engine of prosperity for all. The result has been 35 years of denigration of the concept of duty and public service, as well as a squalid ideal of all work as something that shouldn't be cared about for its own sake, but only for the money it brings. The magic dust of the market was of little use to the bosses of the newly privatised Railtrack in the mid-1990s. They thought they could sack people with impunity – not just signalling and maintenance staff but expert engineers and researchers – and carry out a massive line-upgrade cheaply with the most advanced new technology. Unfortunately the people who could have told them that the new technology didn't exist were the people they had sacked. As a result, the company went bust in 2002, and had to be renationalised.

Privatisation failed to make firms compete or give customers more choice – said to be the canonical virtues of privatisation. Pretty hard, you would think, to privatise water companies, when they are all monopolies, with nobody to compete with, and can't offer customers a choice – neither the choice of which supplier to use nor the choice of whether to take a service or not. And yet the English water companies were privatised, and in such a way that customers have been overcharged ever since. The privatisers loved competition, but the actual privatised competitors hate it. The competitive vision of those who designed Britain's electricity privatisation – a rumbustious, referee-supervised free-for-all between sellers and makers of electricity old and new, large and small – has degenerated into an opaque oligopoly of a handful of giant players.
...
A tax is generally thought of as something that only a government can levy, but this is a semantic distortion that favours the free market belief system. If a payment to an authority, public or private, is compulsory, it's a tax. We can't do without electricity; the electricity bill is an electricity tax. We can't do without water; the water bill is a water tax. Some people can get by without railways, and some can't; they pay the rail tax. Students pay the university tax. The meta-privatisation is the privatisation of the tax system itself; even, it could be said, the privatisation of us, the former citizens of Britain. By packaging British citizens up and selling them, sector by sector, to investors, the government makes it possible to keep traditional taxes low or even cut them. By moving from a system where public services are supported by progressive general taxation to a system where they are supported exclusively by the flat fees people pay to use them, they move from a system where the rich are obliged to help the poor to a system where the less well-off enable services that the rich get for what is, to them, a trifling sum. The commodity that makes water and power cables and airports valuable to an investor, foreign or otherwise, is the people who have no choice but to use them. We have no choice but to pay the price the toll-keepers charge. We are a human revenue stream; we are being made tenants in our own land, defined by the string of private fees we pay to exist here.

- Meanwhile, Paul Watson compares Norway's well-planned savings and use of oil resources for public benefit to Canada's increasingly reckless rush to give away every resource a multinational corporation can rip out of the ground:

They’re succeeding because Norway holds an unshakable principle, one that has survived political shifts to the right and left since huge offshore oil reserves were discovered in 1969.

The canon was set four decades earlier in a national debate over ownership of hydro-electric projects, and it bridged a generation, from waterfalls to oil wells: Norway’s natural resources belong to the people.

“International companies resisted the model very much, but they had no choice. They had to accept it,” says Terje Hagen, an economist at the University of Oslo. “I think the agreement in parliament was quite broad.”

Norway’s current Conservative-led coalition government justifies one of the world’s highest tax rates on oil company profits this way: petroleum and natural gas are finite resources that generate higher profits than other enterprises and therefore command higher taxes.
...
Norway’s government takes 78 per cent of oil company profits in tax, which quickly runs to billions of dollars a year. The fund multiplies through investments in stocks, bonds and property holdings.

It is quickly closing in on $1 trillion, just 18 years after Norway made an initial investment of around $345 million in 1996.

The government spends a portion of the profits each year on improving people’s lives while staying true to the earlier generation who decided it would be wrong to splurge on themselves.

By Norwegian standards, Canada has squandered a lot of its resource riches instead of locking up the royalties and taxes oil companies pay into long-term investments and enjoying the benefits of steadily growing profits.

A small but growing group of policy analysts think Canadians should overcome their history of provinces often jealously guarding resource revenues and do more sharing for the long-term, national good.

- The Vancouver Sun reports on BMO's study into the cycle of debt and stress facing younger Canadians.

- And speaking of gratuitous stress on workers, Don Pittis recognizes the fundamental unfairness of allowing Quebec's government to wriggle out from under agreed pension benefits at the expense of employees who have counted on what they've been promised, while Honour Our Deal has an update on the similar attack on Regina civic pensions. But the CP reports that the New Brunswick NDP is taking a stand to protect needed retirement income from other parties who would gleefully legislate it out of existence.

- Finally, James Surowiecki discusses the economics behind the development of prescription drugs - and how the lack of incentive to develop effective new antibiotics may prove just as deadly for us in the future as the similar neglect in combating Ebola is in the developing world today.

New column day

Here, contrasting the NDP's hard-fought Regina nomination elections against the stories of Paul Manly, Chris Rendell, and the apparent trend of federal and provincial NDP candidates being disqualified from seeking nominations for entirely insufficient reasons.

For further reading...
- The Leader-Post reported on the nomination victories by Erin Weir in Regina-Lewvan and Nial Kuyek in Regina-Qu'Appelle here. And for a couple of examples of Weir in particular making important points which don't entirely match the NDP's party line both provincially and federally, see his challenge to the cult of small business and his disclaimer-laden Commonwealth commentary on resource royalties and employment in Saskatchewan.
- Manly told his story here, while his past comments seeking the safe return of his father and challenging the NDP to do more in the effort are available here and here. [Update: And there's some response from party officials in Susana Mas' report, though the question of whether the NDP has rejected some candidates in the past on stronger grounds has little to do with whether it was justified in doing so with Manly.]
- Finally, CBC reports on Rendell's rejection alongside the recruitment of Bev Harrison here.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday.

- Heather Mallick nicely sums up much of the philosophy behind the Cons' train wreck of a pension proposal:

Flaherty seems to regard the CPP as communism. It isn’t. It’s brilliant in a sensible Canadian sort of way. Hard-right governments — American, British and Canadian — are always droning out about “financial literacy.” CAW economist Jim Stanford, who is a director of the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education, points out that this drive, while helpful, also places a greater burden of blame on consumers whose investments tanked recently. It wasn’t the stock market being run like a casino, it was the fault of the dopey investor. Don’t expect the government to help, Flaherty is saying. You’re on your own. (The American Republican phrase is “no government interference.” The British call it “the Big Society.”)

But of course, it's worth keeping in mind the flip side that the financial sector can always count on a giveaway.

- Meanwhile, Michael Shapcott points out reason for concern that a business-first mindset is having a toxic effect on charities which are forced to move outside their intended purposes in the hope of chasing down funding.

- After an election that saw about as solid a showing as was possible without winning a seat, the New Brunswick NDP has a leadership race on its hands. And it'll be particularly interesting to see how the candidates can do in building on the party's positive profile from this year's election campaign.

- And finally, it's certainly progress that the first charges have been laid related to police actions at the G20. But we'll have to wait and see whether the charges against Constable Babak Andalib-Goortani prove to be anything more than an attempt to charge somebody to avoid a more thorough examination of responsibility for the trampling of civil rights in Canada's largest city.

On resource imbalances

There's some sad news coming out of New Brunswick, as Roger Duguay has resigned as leader of that province's NDP even after an election that saw the party post its second-best share of the vote ever. And the NDP will surely appreciate Duguay's contribution as leader - even if it has to be disappointed to see him leave after accomplishing nearly everything imaginable short of winning a seat.

But without knowing exactly why Duguay chose to step down, it's also worth noting how New Brunswick's political financing system may have influenced his decision - and considering how the same effect might play out elsewhere in Canadian politics.

New Brunswick actually does have some public financing for political parties, with the following amounts paid out based on the previous election's results:

The Grits won 47.3 per cent of votes in the 2006 election and receive $312,180 from the province each year, based on the allocation formula.

The Tories won 47.6 per cent of votes in the last election and receive $314,160 a year, slightly more than the Liberals.

The NDP won 5.1 per cent of votes and receives $33,660 a year.

The Green Party did not win enough votes to receive a proportion of the annual allowance payments, which total $660,000 for the province, plus audit fees.

Presumably the NDP's funding would have roughly doubled like its share of the popular vote. But that still seems to have left some question as to whether it can afford to pay its leader a salary, particularly when one considers how the annual funding compares to the amount of money flowing into parties' hands through other means:

The Liberal dinner held Saturday in Moncton raked in about $400,000 after expenses, about double the $200,000 that was raised by the Conservatives on Friday night in Fredericton.

The cash will be added to the parties' war chests and spent during the 30 days of election campaigning on expenses such as advertising, office space, travel, wages, meetings and rallies, up to the $925,000 limit set by Elections New Brunswick.
...
As of last June, the New Brunswick Liberal Association had $1.845 million in the bank and no debt.

The Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick had $288,915 in cash but also a debt of $409,000, mostly related to the purchase of a building in Fredericton, which houses the party's headquarters.

Meanwhile, the New Democratic Party had $19,531 and the Green Party had $253.

So all indications are that for the Cons and Libs, a single dinner can bring in as much money as a year's worth of annual allowance. And indeed the Graham Libs - despite being unpopular enough to lose the election - were nonetheless able to have enough retained cash on hand to run two elections if they needed to. And that's in addition to the salaries, pensions, research funding, and other resources available to the two parties represented in the Legislature.

On the other hand, the NDP's funding over four years amounted to...an eighth of the amount needed to run a full election campaign, assuming no expenses in the meantime. And even after approaching its highest share of the vote ever, the NDP still looks to have limited resources for next time out barring some significant change in the meantime.

And it's worth asking whether such a change might well be needed.

So far, led by the Cons' attack on per-vote financing, most discussion of public funding for the political process nationally has attacked exactly the amounts that serve to reflect actual voter preferences, while leaving untouched the larger payouts allocated based on the vagaries of single-seat results.

But New Brunswick seems to offer an ideal example of how the gap between funding based on winning seats and funding based on winning votes can serve to severely limit the choices available to voters. And if we can't expect to change the voting system in the near future, the next best thing may be to highlight the comparison between direct party funding and the funding that goes to political offices through other means, and demand a system that better supports the operations of parties with enough public support to justify it.

New Brunswick Goes to the Polls

We've finally reached election day in New Brunswick, with plenty of potential for some highly interesting results as little seems to have been decided so far. Most of the projections have the NDP at 1 or 2 seats, with the main question being whether the party is able to build on its momentum from this year's campaign or whether a past trend of losing support late in the campaign continues. But nbpolitico has a full list of ridings which are particularly worth watching from the NDP's perspective:

The NDP is in play in somewhere between 2 and 4 ridings (Tracadie-Sheila, Nepisiguit, Bathurst and Tantramar) according to my analysis. They may also be in play in Saint John Harbour, Saint John East and Fredericton-Silverwood, though my analysis says no.

Note that nbpolitico has also modeled a series of "surge scenarios", leading to a fascinating set of possible outcomes.

Of course, there's still a day's worth of GOTV efforts to determine who will win out in the end. And we'll look forward to finding out whether voters are frustrated enough with a campaign of wilful self-delusion from the Graham Libs and Alward Cons to give the NDP an unprecedented presence in New Brunswick's legislature.

(Edit: updated link.)

Thursday Morning Links

Assorted content for your perusal...

- Dr. Dawg picks up on a stunningly evasive answer from Gérard Latulippe of Rights and Democracy about the "forensic audit" which was supposed to have been made public six months ago. But I'm not sure that I agree with his description of the answer as "bafflegab": isn't it more of a flat-out declaration that he refuses to talk about the main issue facing his organization?

- Donald Savoie continues to be thoroughly unimpressed with the empty promises coming from Cons and Libs alike in New Brunswick's ongoing election. But while I can understand his not wanting to be seen taking any party's side, wouldn't it be worthwhile to mention the alternative which is actually talking honestly about the province's fiscal mess?

- Meanwhile, the federal NDP's push to make the Cons look completely out of touch with rural Canada seems to be proceeding nicely thanks to a concerted focus on issues that matter more than the long gun registry. Though as I noted yesterday, the especially fun part will come when the Cons get to stand up to try to defend keeping the registry as it stands as the NDP works to improve it.

- Finally, the Cons' distrust of evidence-based government has taken its most extreme form yet: apparently it's too intrusive to bother keeping track of how many health inspectors are actually monitoring livestock transportation.

Sunday Night Links

This and that to start your week...

- It's worth noting that Jim Prentice's reaction to fish deformities resulting from the tar sands is somewhat out of character for the Cons, consisting more of respectful acknowledgment than of immediate dismissal. But I still won't be holding my breath waiting for the Cons to do anything but stonewall any meaningful study or action.

- Alex Himelfarb comments on the insidious effect of social traps on the course of policy development:

(T)here is a good deal of room to disagree about which priorities merit our tax dollars and which criteria to use to assess what works. This is what politics is all about. But even among those who value a particular program, say public education or medicare, or agree on the value of particular public investments, say greening the economy, there will be tax reluctance if there is no trust. That’s the perfect social trap. We know what is in our shared interest but we do not have sufficient trust to do what is needed. For example, a recent Canadian study demonstrates how much money could be saved through a national pharmacare program, not to mention the benefits to health, productivity and social justice. Some Canadians will of course react with immediate horror at the very idea but, putting this aside for the moment, would those who do embrace the idea be willing to pay more taxes for it? Some will say, yes to the idea but ask, why me for more taxes, why not those who can most afford it or who derive most benefit from the advantages of Canada’s opportunities or who do most damage for example through pollution. Some will say that too many people will exploit the system, overuse it or worse, and I am not going to pay for that. And some will say government simply cannot deliver the goods. No trust. No taxes. Trapped.

And sadly, Colby Cosh is working on ensnaring us all the more thoroughly.

- Michael Geist rightly skewers some "shockingly misleading" copyright propaganda. But aren't we past being shocked by now?

- Rick Salutin's column tracing the Straussian roots of Stephen Harper's political strategy doesn't cover a lot of new ground. But his theory that Canada's political scene might have offered an ideal target is worth some further discussion:

One can see the appeal of Canada to Straussians. The U.S. always had so much fevered religiosity, hypernationalism and paranoid individualism, you hardly needed to seed them there by stealth. Here, though, we still have liberals, Liberals, even social democrats. We may be Straussianism’s happy hunting ground.

And might one add that a relatively civil scene on all sides prior to Harper's ascension made us ripe for manipulation?

- Finally, while the two-party dynamic has once again made it difficult to get traction, the New Brunswick NDP seems to be getting a well-deserved positive reception for its economic plans. And this CBC piece presenting the party's job tax credit is well worth a look - particularly Tony Myatt's closing line:

New Brunswick election reading

As the New Brunswick provincial election campaign enters its home stretch, here's a quick survey of a few sources worth reading to get a handle on the campaign.

Let's start with Alice's customary detailed look at the state of party nominations at the the Pundits' Guide's New Brunswick page - with links to all candidates' websites serving as a particularly useful resource for those looking to track down information in a hurry.

For those looking for a quantitative analysis of the state of the campaign, the place to go is once again Three Hundred Eight, whose multi-poll projections figure to be particularly useful in a tight campaign where single polls can be found to support almost any possible outcome. (ThreeHundredEight's NDP projection has slipped from two seats to one based on a campaign-period drop from the teens to lower double digits.)

Meanwhile, if you're looking more for a subjective riding-level analysis and projection, NBPolitico makes up for relatively infrequent posts by serving up plenty of material at every turn. NBPolitico now projects two seats as "lean NDP" (leader Roger Duguay's riding of Tracadie-Sheila as well as another northern riding in Nepisiguit) - but based on my own limited contribution to the race, I'm particularly interested to note that Saint John East has been downgraded from "safe Liberal" to "lean Liberal", signalling that it's looking to be more in play as the campaign progresses.

As for media outlets, newspapers to check out include the Telegraph-Journal, Daily Gleaner and Times & Transcript, while CBC New Brunswick also has regular updates and analysis.

If I've missed any sources worth including, please feel free to point them out in comments - as the campaign looks to be well worth following closely from here on in.

Beyond the echo chamber

It remains to be seen how the rest of New Brunswick's election campaign will play out - and particularly whether either the Libs or the Cons will try (however implausibly) to adopt a theme of responsible management for themselves. But for now, it's hard to imagine the NDP's chosen message fitting more perfectly into the broader campaign.

So far, even the national media is dumbstruck at the Graham/Alward bidding war for votes in a province whose fiscal mismanagement already looks to raise some serious long-term issues. But rather than following suit with its own package of baubles, the NDP is not only promising to hold the line on taxes but even highlighting practical ways to save hundreds of millions of dollars without affecting program delivery.

Which means that New Brunswick's citizens have an obvious choice other than to keep voting for the same old empty promises and irresponsible government. And if enough voters learn that they do have that option, then what already looks to be a potentially historical breakthrough for the NDP may get even bigger.

Update: The Chronicle Herald seems to agree.

More and Better New Democrats: Sandy Harding for Saint John East

Next month's provincial election in New Brunswick promises to be a watershed moment for that province's NDP. While the party has generally been able to get its leader elected (with a few exceptions including the 2006 election), it has yet to win a second seat in a general election. But that stands to change very soon: Eric at Three Hundred Eight is already projecting a second seat for the NDP, and that's using an extremely conservative popular vote projection that leaves the NDP with a lower share of the vote than it's taken in any of the province's polls since 2008.

What's more, the NDP's influence may go far beyond merely electing additional members, as a razor-thin margin between the Libs and Cons raises the possibility that the NDP could hold the balance of power by this time next month.

With that in mind, this month's More and Better New Democrats feature focuses on one of the candidates with a great chance to join leader Roger Duguay in the Legislature.

The Candidate

The New Brunswick NDP is understandably putting an emphasis on fiscal responsibility in a province which has given the business lobby everything it can think to ask for - and seen that result in massive deficits for the foreseeable future. But it's worth ensuring there are some MLAs pointing out why it matters for the government to get itself back on track.

And Sandy Harding stands out among the party's top candidates in that respect. In addition to extensive involvement in CUPE (both through her local and provincially), her resume features work on child care, pay equity and wage fairness. That in turn meshes nicely with her professional experience in the education sector, giving her ample knowledge as to how to work within public systems to get results. Which means that Harding should make for an ideal choice as the leading voice for the social issues that have far too often been neglected under Libs and Cons alike.

In addition, it only helps matters that in a province where women have been grossly underrepresented in the Legislature, Harding is sending a strong message that she intends to change that.

The Riding

But why target Saint John East? At first glance based on the party's 2006 results it wouldn't seem like an obvious choice, as Maureen Michaud's 7% of the vote wasn't much higher than the party's baseline level of support. But there are a few reasons to be particularly optimistic about the riding.

For one, Saint John East (in its form a couple of distributions ago) is actually the lone constituency that the New Brunswick NDP has won in the past with a non-leader candidate. That took place when Peter Trites won a 1984 by-election only to jump to the Libs in time for Frank McKenna's 1987 sweep. So the NDP has obviously been able to mobilize a winning effort in the area before.

Meanwhile, Saint John East is also adjacent to the riding occupied by what may be the NDP's highest-profile candidate aside from Duguay: Saint John Harbour's Wayne Dryer, who seems to be putting on a strong push himself to take back the seat held by former leader Elizabeth Weir. So rather than simply aiming for a lone beachhead in a community where the NDP lacks a strong presence, Harding should enjoy a highly favourable local climate.

The Opponents

What's more, the lack of an incumbent means that the riding is very much up for grabs. Longtime Lib MLA Roly MacIntyre stepped down from the seat in April, meaning that the competition to win the seat will come from two other rookie candidates in Lib Kevin McCarville and PC Glen Tait. And with Saint John East having been held by all three parties in the past 25 years, there's plenty of reason to think that vote splits could work out in Harding's favour.

The Plan

So what can you do to help? Harding looks to be running a fairly traditional campaign, focusing on lawn signs and volunteers to go with what looks to have been an effective fund-raising effort and Facebook organization. With that in mind, I'll recommend joining her Facebook page and looking for opportunities to help from there - while donating to the provincial party in the absence of a direct donation system.

(Edit: fixed wording.)

On reinforcement

The latest reporting on New Brunswick's election this fall includes an interesting parallel between Roger Duguay's message and that of some disaffected federal Cons - as both are rightly pointing out the problems with funnelling public money toward corporate interests. Here's Duguay:

NDP Leader Roger Duguay said his priority would be to stabilize deficits and stop "wasteful government spending," adding that he would eliminate grants and forgivable loans to companies for the next five years.

"Most of the time it's not the best place to put our money," he said.

Needless to say, the proposal to shut off the taps to the corporate sector makes for a rather useful explanation as to what the NDP would do differently than its competitors to ensure that New Brunswick's provincial budget is managed responsibly.

And it only helps that Duguay's message is nicely paralleled by someone who's not normally an NDP ally, as Tasha Kheiridden has picked an opportune time to level criticism at federal Libs and Cons alike for wasting federal money to subsidize the likes of J.D. Irving:

(The Harper) government is all too happy to dole out regional cash, whether through Canada’s Economic Action Plan or outright make-work projects (witness last week’s announcement of a payroll centre in Miramichi, N.B., to replace jobs lost there if the gun registry goes belly-up).

So where does this leave Canadian taxpayers? Playing angel investor to businesses that don’t pay back money, while...the government turns a blind eye.

Of course, it remains to be seen how well the theme will resonate at both levels of government. But the reinforcement of Duguay's message in the national press has to help matters as the New Brunswick NDP looks to win over voters who may not have considered the party as an option before. And the more citizens ask the question of whether governments should be looking out for corporate interests at their expense, the easier it will be to persuade them that it's worth voting for a party who won't.

On strong openings

Kevin Bissett's CP overview of this fall's New Brunswick election seems to confirm what I'd suspected: the NDP has managed to generate the most enduring message of the summer with its pension pitch, earning top billing over anything the province's two historical governing parties have had to say.

But Bissett is right to note that the other parties seem to have followed up the NDP's cheeky presentation without linking their attacks to anything of substance, raising the question of whether voters will hear much about what can be done in the face of the province's budget crunch:

(Donald) Wright said he hopes the parties will focus on the important issues, but doesn't expect that to happen until the final weeks of the campaign.

"No party seems to be able to come to terms with the fiscal crisis coming down the pipe," he said. "As a result they're trying to deflect, they're scrounging, they're desperate, trying to find a target on their opponent without much success."

Of course, the NDP has already started laying the groundwork to talk about the party's history of responsible management as a contrast to how the province has historically been governed. But the question now is whether the NDP can grab just as much attention in sending that message as it's been in criticizing the other parties' supersized benefits - and the answer will likely determine whether the NDP can turn its strong initial position into enduring change on New Brunswick's political scene.

Thursday Morning Links

- If there's anything surprising about the latest federal fund-raising numbers, it's how little has changed over the past few years. While the Cons are hopefully seeing a drop in their receipts over the past couple of months, there seems to be little indication that any party's fund-raising capacity has changed meaningfully since the Cons took power - which is particularly telling for a Lib party which perpetually seems to be almost ready to adapt to a grassroots-based fund-raising model.

- The New Brunswick NDP looks to be doing an excellent job focusing public attention on both the Libs and Cons in that province for a stunningly slimy move to pass an increase to MLA salaries and pensions (among a pile of other legislation) at a time when a flood prevented any recording of the goings-on in the legislature.

But if I have any criticism of the NDP's strategy, it's that the party's sights are set so low in what may be its most visible issue campaign. After all, while it's true that it would only have taken one NDP MLA to keep bills from being forced through, surely it's for the best to elect many more MLAs who won't be inclined to play along with such abuse of democratic procedure - and with the NDP's polling numbers in the mid to high teens, there would seem to be a strong chance of doing just that.

- David Eaves' takedown of Stephen Taylor and other Con spokesflacks is well worth a read:

(F)or Conservatives the whole reason for getting rid of the census was that it was supposed to curtail big government. Stephen Taylor - Conservative blogger and cheerleader - says as much in his National Post Column. The beginning of the end of the Canadian welfare state. What was his line? "If it can’t be measured, future governments can’t pander." It took about 9 days to disprove that thesis. A $5.1-billion dollar a year increase to create prison capacity for a falling crime rate is the case in point. Turns out even if you can't measure it you can still do something about it. Just badly.

This isn't the end of big government. It isn't even the end of pandering governments. It's just the beginning of blind government.

- Meanwhile, QMI is predictably carrying the Cons' water on the census issue like to many others, push polling about how respondents would treat "questions that you considered to be very personal and embarrassing" without pointing to any evidence that such questions exist. So let's make it clear: if there were any questions on the long form whose embarrassment factor could possibly jeopardize the results, the Cons wouldn't have had to fabricate them.

- Finally, PostMedia reports that while the Cons' vandalism in government isn't the kind that can be prosecuted, their electoral book-cooking may yet result in charges.

On responsible government

With New Brunswick headed to the polls this fall, it's bound to be interesting to see what effect the election of the first NDP government in Nova Scotia might have on the party's fortunes elsewhere in Atlantic Canada. And the Telegraph-Journal notes that the New Brunswick NDP is making a strong push for popular support as the party of fiscal responsibility:

Roger Duguay is knocking on doors in his hometown of Tracadie-Sheila with a message: The New Democratic Party of New Brunswick will rein in the runaway spending of successive Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments.
...
Observers say the new focus could pay off as taxpayers look for a party to slay the province's growing deficits and debt load.

"I'm going door to door, talking with people about our position, and I'm finding more and more supporters," said Duguay, who has been credited with bringing new supporters under the NDP banner, including francophones and northern New Brunswickers.
...
Although the NDP's focus on balancing the books might seem out of character, Rob Moir said it's a return to the party's roots.

The UNB Saint John economics professor and a two-time federal NDP candidate said the focus on fiscal responsibility is true to the tradition of Tommy Douglas, former Baptist minister, premier of Saskatchewan, federal NDP leader, and father of universal public health care in Canada.

"Tommy Douglas (was) the first premier to stop deficit financing," Moir said. "From an economics point of view he knew that in order to bring in good jobs you need an educated workforce. If you want people to be at work and productive then they have to be healthy.

"These are investments we make as a society in part because they are the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, but also because it's just darn good economics," he said. "Taxpayers want a party that spends wisely and that's what the NDP represents."

Of course, it's worth adding in a reminder that the NDP's track record of fiscal responsibility has also been better than that of any other party in recent years - so the shift in New Brunswick is merely toward emphasizing that aspect of the party's hard-earned brand.

But in a province that's far too often served as a petri dish for corporatist policies that have never lived up to their billing, a strong emphasis on living within the province's means would seem to be a needed contrast. And with any luck, enough voters will agree to radically change the look of the province's politics this fall.

Update: And lest I forget, stop by the party's site to lend a hand.