CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER POLITICIAN

There is a delicious irony in Finance Minister Flaherty’s assertion that stimulus programs must continue, regardless of how much they expand the deficit. What he used to say has to be coming back to haunt him.

For years I sat on the journalistic sidelines throwing stones at politicians. Not that they didn’t deserve it, but it is always easier to judge from the outside. All it requires is arrogance,

I decided at last, that I wanted to be part of it. I ran provincially for the N.D.P., believing then that they were our best hope for fairness and social justice. I was then, and still am, idealistic. Some of that idealism has since become tarnished with age.

I ran in a riding against the sitting member: journalist Isabel Bassett and up-and-comer for the Liberals: Michael Bryant. He won. But so did I. I won something I had not had before: the freedom to pursue a path that made sense, a path that was pragmatic and not ideological. It was the realization that if you want to get anything done, you can’t be guided by rigid political dogma, but with judgment based on reality, e.g. pragmatism. I was quite tired, even bored, with the party’s political straightjacket. I quit the party.

I did however believe, and still do, that Bob Rae knew that the only way out of recession was to spend money, even if it meant deficit.



I ran at a time when the “Common Sense” Conservatives were running roughshod over everything in their mindless quest for fiscal responsibility, but only fiscal enough not to harm their buddies with the money, but enough to shut down the silly people who believed government had a part to play in making things better for people.
So were endured years of teacher-bashing and welfare wacking and a cabinet minister who advised welfare people to shop more carefully, like buying cans of tuna that were dented, a government that shut down Toronto’s subway expansion program, even filling in one subway that had been started.
The irony is that the most outspoken supporter of the Harris program was the Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. It was he who led the battle cry: you can’t spend your way out of recession. It the most important part of the skinflint and cruel financial program from the Harris government, it is what won them the election. It was how they defeated the idealism of Bob Rae, even though during the Rae government, more public housing was built, and more money spent on public works. I remember a Toronto construction worker saying: “If it weren’t for Bob Rae spending money there would be no work for construction workers.” (And even then there was little of it.)

I am not trying to re-argue the Rae government’s approach during a serious recession. I am only more that a little amused at the irony of it. Because the irony derives from the horrible fact that when you trot out ideology and call it politics, you abandon hope of getting anything done. It gets you votes.

So what got Bob Rae hammered was the very thing that his arch-enemy Jim Flaherty now endorses as the best medicine for recession.

Go figure.

GREAT CONSPIRACY

The Globe and Mail today (Dec 1) ran a double page spread on renewable energy: gasoline additives and biofuels to replace diesel. There was something missing. It is missing because there may be a conspiracy to keep it missing.

Conspiracy theorists abound. There are still people who believe there has never been a moon landing and that everything was filmed on earth at someplace like the wasted moon-like fields near Coniston, Ontario. And of course there are those who ardently propound the theory that President Obama was not born in America.

Closer to reality are the conspiracy theorists who suggest that the auto and tire makers were behind the dismantling of southern California’s rail and transit systems in the 40s leading to the building of freeways and the birth of the car-based shopping mall. At the fringe of this one are all those stories of people who developed carburetors that would give an ordinary car 100 m.p.g. but they were bought out and shelves by the big car makers. There was even supposed to have been a guy who developed a car that would run on water!

Not all are nitwits. My old friend, the late and very lamented Richard Thomas proved that he could run his car on alcohol distilled from a plant that grew on third class farmland.

Which brings me to the “missing” element in the Globe’s big spread on alternative energy: jatropha seed. I first came across it reading how in Mali, which is plagued with millions of hectares of arid land that is practically un-farmable. Except that they are able to grow jatropha. Jatropha will (according to Wickipedia) yield four times a much oil per hectare as soybeans. One acre will yield 1,892 litres of biofuel.

There are already serious barriers to the development of new biofuels. We all know that America levies a punitive tax on ethanol from Brazil, in order to protect corn growers in the U.S. We know that ethanol production from sugar, which Brazil has plenty of, is eight times more efficient than production from corn.

In our case, the Globe article made a case for the use of Canola. But canola oil uses prime farmland. According to supporters of the Ghea theory, we will cause starvation by using arable land for industrial products when it should be used to feed people.

Which brings me back to jatropa. If it can be grown easily in semi-desert, where it can also benefit poverty-stricken, famine-prone countries like Mali, why does it seem to be kept secret? Are we seeing yet another conspiracy by interests whose profits are vested in present commercial farming assets? Are we to be denied a solution to protect someone’s investment in second rate technology? Who is behind all this? Are governments complicit – as they are in America with their huge import tax on Brazilian sugar-based ethanol?

I am not a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, but I believe that business will serve its self-interest before they service the interests of the general public.

Can you imagine what could be done with millions of semi-arid hectares in the Australian Outback? Boggles the mind.