Wheat from the Chaff

Olympic Fever?

With less than two months before the 2010 Olympics, I find it curious that only one person I know has Olympic tickets. Indeed, in my Fraser Valley community, there seems to be a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the Games.

Many people have mentioned the high price of tickets, or the need to divulge sensitive financial information without any guarantee of tickets. But the majority have pointed to one dominant concern: there seems to be no way to travel to Vancouver, let alone Whistler. Currently, the only efficient way to reach Vancouver from the Fraser Valley is to drive and park. Yet all we hear from VANOC and the media is that driving and parking in Vancouver will be difficult, if not impossible. Perhaps we could drive 2/3 of the way and take the Skytrain from the Scott Rd. Park and Ride. But that is full at the best of times, so I can’t imagine what it will be like during the Olympics. Or we could drive to Mission and catch the West Coast Express, but its prohibitive cost for families and limited return times makes the WCE a less than useful option. Of course, we would like to use the Fraser Valley Regional Transit System… but no such thing exists.

So I guess we will stay at home and watch the Games from the comfort of our living room. We might as well be watching from Norway!

My letter on multiculturalism is used by the Globe and Mail

On Aug. 25th, a short letter I wrote to writer Daniel Stoffman was used at the beginning of his Globe and Mail question and answer session on multiculturalism. In response to his earlier article, I made the simple point that multiculturalism is not as central to the Canadian fabric as some people believe because there are other, more fundamental values at play.

Stoffman's basic thesis is that Canada is not truly multicultural, even if it appears to be a commonly held perspective of politicians and journalists. Stoffman hedges his bets when it comes evaluating his own conclusions, though he does imply that it's probably best for Canada to accept diversity rather than true multiculturalism - which he regards as a rather radical policy if taken to its logical conclusion. I'm not sure I share his rather extreme conception of multiculturalism, but I do agree that we overestimate its importance - however it is conceived - in our political culture.

Leaving out certain details

The trouble with truth and journalism is not that the media regularly publishes falsities. It's that it usually omits important information or emphasizes certain facts over others.

Here's an example: On August 17, 2009, the Vancouver Sun publishes an article with the headline, "Liberals funded by business, NDP by unions". On the face of it, it would appear there is equivalence: business and unions support their respective parties to the same degree. But, of course, that's not really true. The sub-heading provides a bit more detail when it reads, "Businesses donated 70 per cent of Liberal funds for 2009 election; unions gave 40 per cent of NDP revenue". At least here we begin to see that there is no equivalence; Gordon Campbell's Liberals are more beholden to corporations than the NDP are beholden to unions. Too bad the headlines and sub-headings aren't switched.

Much more problematic is what is left out completely. The other way of understanding things would be to compare the absolute amount that the business sector gave to the Liberals, as compared to the absolute amount the unions gave to the NDP (in this case, between Jan. 1 and the May election). However, for some strange reason, those important numbers aren't in the news story. By my calculations - using all of the raw data provided by the article - the NDP received $2.16 million from the unions, while the Liberals received $6.65 million from the corporations. That means the Liberal Party received over 3 times more money from corporate BC as the NDP received from the unions. Such an omission might appear subtle, but it certainly works to reduce the significant differences that the headline ignores. And so much for equivalence.

My goodness! Canwest is suddenly interested in private energy production!

Though I avoid Canwest newspapers like the plague, I occasionally read The Province and The Sun when time permits. Today's issue of The Province is a travesty. After largely ignoring run-of-the-river hydro projects during the recent election (when I did follow the two Vancouver dailies), the newspaper has finally decided to run a series of articles on the subject. Now. After the election. Thanks for contributing to the public sphere, guys. As Rafe Mair opined in his electoral post mortem, "the news media of B.C. utterly failed in its duty to inform the voters about critical environmental issues." The rather belated interest in these issues from The Province, especially IPP's (independent power producers), can't help but make one cynical.

In typical fashion for The Province, it underdelivers on its reportage. In the main article, the serious issues of environmental damage are alluded to, but no specifics are given, and the high contract costs being shouldered by BC Hydro are only mentioned briefly at the end (where few readers venture). The second article, the one about "party lines" and IPP's, is very short and vague, and it only paraphrases the (apparent) NDP position. No quotes from NDP leaders are given. Things get more interesting in the third article, which lists many of the Liberal and BC Hydro insiders who have jumped to IPP corporate positions, though the denial of conflict of interest from BC minister of energy Blair Lekstrom goes unchallenged.

However, if there is any doubt about the IPP's in the minds of readers, Michael Smyth, The Province's main columnist, comes to the rescue. His column follows the two page spread, and it attempts to attack the NDP and their apparent "hypocrisy" over the issue.

Smyth's column is a laugher, one in a long line of snide, one-sided collections of bumper-sticker arguments.

He starts with a defence of the run-of-the-river project that will finally give clean energy to the In-SHUCK-ch First Nation on Harrison Lake. He contends the following: "But the critics won't care. Comfortably ensconced in their own air-conditioned condos, watching their power-sucking big-screen TVs, they will condemn the First Nation and the private company it has partnered with." Really? Will they? Exactly who has condemned this? When? Smyth provides no evidence for his prediction. Having lived near Harrison Lake for years, I have never heard such criticism of the In-SHUCK-ch project. [Ok... a week after I first published this I read some negative words from certain environmental groups... but nothing from the NDP.] Indeed, if there ever was an IPP project that the NDP would support, this would be the one. Moreover, the In-SHUCK-ch First Nation should have been hooked up to the power lines years ago - that is, to the power lines that are already there. The IPP that's being proposed is not primarily for the aboriginals; it's coming because power line infrastructure is easily accessed. It's interesting that Smyth totally ignores the very controversial Bute Inlet project proposed by Plutonic Power. That company is rife with BC Liberal insiders and faces serious opposition from locals and environmentalists alike.

Smyth also says the "New Democratic Party now wants to shut these same projects down." A typical exaggeration. A "moratorium" means that the whole IPP process will be temporarily halted and reviewed, and the stringent environmental processes that have hitherto been lacking (but which even Smyth acknowledges are important) will be put into place. Smyth surely knows what a moratorium means and what the NDP have said about the issue. To say that they will kill the whole thing is a blatant lie.

I suppose Smyth's role is to mitigate any negativity from the other stories (making Dennis Skulsky and Gordon Campbell very happy), even though the other articles are pretty mild.

With Canwest columnists like Smyth, no wonder I usually read the The Globe and Mail, The Tyee and The Georgia Straight for my BC news.

Debts and deficits lead to higher taxes as night follows day

Jeffrey Simpson is one of those typical right-wing columnists who ensures The Globe and Mail's firm commitment to the I'm-all-right-Jack philosophy that pervades Canada's corporate media. Nevertheless, he is sometimes capable of refreshingly honest and atypical commentary. Here he talks about the inevitability of higher taxes that must follow a period of high debt. What is irritating - yet so predictable - is the lack of responsibility that he and his fellow corporate columnists take for the "twilight zone of veracity" that he decries below. Why can't politicians talk about raising taxes? What has happened to our "political culture" that makes paying for our expenditures (or exhorbinantly high interest rates, like in the 1980's) so poisonous? Given the concerted campaign from the CD Howe and Fraser Institutes (among others) for lower taxes, and the willing championing of this cause by the media arms of Hollinger, Canwest, Bell, etc, isn't the corporate media part of this problem? If one is skeptical, compare the number of articles in any given month that discuss the benefit of taxes with those articles that assume we must lower taxes. Anyone who consumes a lot of the corporate media in North America already knows the result. In any case, no answers are given by Simpson. All we see is his acknowledgement of the problem. And I guess that's better than nothing.

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Debts and deficits lead to higher taxes as night follows day

By Jeffrey Simpson
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

April 24, 2009

Lesson one for Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff: Don't answer hypothetical questions in a sound-bite era. Lesson two: Don't even hint at the truth.

Last week, in answer to a question about what he might do if the federal deficit reached $80-billion, Mr. Ignatieff said he couldn't take any policy options "off the table," including raising taxes. Boom, the media pack went into action, and the Conservative yapping brigade hit him for espousing higher taxes. Such is political life.

Mr. Ignatieff did not call for higher taxes; indeed, he stressed that "no one in their right mind wants to shut off the recovery by raising taxes in any capacity." But in ruminating about the hypothetical, Mr. Ignatieff danced around a certain truth: Taxes will eventually go up to pay for the deficit and increasing debt brought on by the recession and government responses to it.

The Harper government has forecast $64-billion deficits in the next two years. Forget about it. They will be higher, because the economic circumstances are gloomier than anticipated. The Western world is awash in debt, led by the United States, whose projected deficits are astronomical, whose financial-sector debts are gigantic, whose personal indebtedness is enormous but whose political culture still refuses to acknowledge that, at some point, the piper must be paid.

As long as the United States refuses to face this fact, it will struggle to recapitalize itself. And as long as that recapitalization is delayed, the country's long-term economic future will be cloudy and the relative decline in which it now finds itself will continue.

High debts and ongoing deficits lead to higher taxes as night follows day. Canadians should know this truth. That was the Canadian experience once federal deficits began in the mid-1970s. The Mulroney Conservatives and, in their early years, the Chrétien Liberals raised taxes (and cut services) because there was no other realistic way to fight the Siamese twins of ongoing deficits and higher debts.

There was plenty of nonsense in those years about solving the problem with industrial strategies, pro-growth measures, eliminating "waste" in government spending, laying off civil servants. Everyone who wanted to avoid hard truths had a formula, just as so many do today. Eventually, the truth hit home, as it will after this recession. That Canada is heading toward more debt will merely increase the subsequent tax load. But, of course, politicians live in the twilight zone of veracity, suspended between what they know privately to be right and what their instincts and handlers tell them the political culture will allow.

So neither Mr. Ignatieff nor Prime Minister Stephen Harper will tell the whole truth about what lies ahead, in part because the truth will play itself out long after the next election. And since the country's economic literacy is so low, there is no point allowing your political opponent to embark on a scare campaign.

Deficits are dangerous for liberals, but especially hard for conservatives, to talk about sensibly. A mantra of conservative parties is that deficits are bad, but the way they govern invariably produces deficits, or at least weakens the fiscal position of the government.

This observation is heretical to conservatives and counterintuitive to others, but the evidence in Canada and the United States bears it out.

In opposition, then in office, conservatives promise lower taxes, and try to deliver them, as the Harper Conservatives did with their two-point cut to the GST that cost the treasury about $12-billion.

Having eroded the government's fiscal capacity, conservatives then promise to eliminate "wasteful" spending. When that effort produces meagre results, as it always does, the government either cuts programs (but never enough to make up for the tax reductions) or lets spending proceed apace, as the Harper crowd has done.

Twenty years of Republican administrations under three presidents followed this formula: a political campaign based on lower taxes and an attack on "wasteful" spending, followed by lower taxes but higher spending, with resulting chronic deficits.

Deficits of the kind conservative parties left in Saskatchewan, Ontario and Ottawa (Alberta was the exception because of energy royalties) also suggest that deficits and conservatives go together, rhetoric notwithstanding.

A Lapse of Truth in the Gaza War

The recent Israeli campaign in Gaza officially began on December 27, 2008. It started with many days of aerial bombardment of the Gaza territory, and then intensified on January 3, 2009, when the Israeli army invaded. 13 Israelis and over 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the fighting, which finally ended on January 21, 2009, when Israel withdrew its forces from the Palestinan territory. For a summary of the war, see the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_conflict

One of the really fascinating aspects of the war was who the western media portrays as the aggressor; not surprisingly, they blame the rocket-firing militants of the Hamas. There's a problem with this claim. It isn't true. The first side to break the June 2008 ceasefire was Israel. On Nov. 4, 2008, the Israeli military crossed into Gaza and destroyed what they claimed was a Hamas tunnel. The Israelis killed 6 Hamas militants in the raid.

Of course, something else was going on on November 4th: the American election. So, while the New York Times did report the raid, it was clearly a day when that piece of news would be forgotten by the euphoria of the election. Indeed, the news item is so generic that it hardly emphasizes the raid as the first major violation of the June ceasefire.

Moreover, it didn't stop major new organizations in the West from blaming Hamas when the Israelis started their invasion 7 weeks later. Even though most of the rocket attacks occurred after November 4, 2008, these attacks were the prime reason for laying the blame on Hamas. On Dec. 29, 2009, the New York Times argued that "Israel must defend itself. And Hamas must bear responsibility for ending a six-month cease-fire this month with a barrage of rocket attacks into Israeli territory." The vast majority of other major western newspapers concurred, and since then most of the focus has been on Hamas' culpability.

A significant contrarian view came from the official UN Report, but of course Israel, the US and the western media condemned it:

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/48e5e2be2.html

Though the twisting of this story has been noticed by many people in the alternative press, I first heard about the inconsistency via, of all places, CNN (though CNN has since ignored the issue, and even in this report one of the commentators tried his weaselly-best to mitigate the impact of Israel's responsibility):