Open Letters…
Betraying the middle class
Are the Liberals really saviors of the middle class or just selling them out one more time?
During the recent election NDP leader Tom Mulcair stated if he was elected prime minister he would tear up the TPP. This comment got only passing notice from the media and the issue never got the attention it deserved. It should have been a major issue but when elections are held in a neoliberal vassal state issues have to be diligently censored and circumscribed. Truths must be avoided, expediencies and deceptions reign supreme.
Esteemed pundits claimed the Liberals outflanked Mulcair on the left but this is a dubious notion when Mulcair was the one who was so bold as to advocate even modest increases in corporate taxes and to attack the TPP. Mulcair was actually so bold as to challenge the neoliberal dominance of our economy, its privatization of government and its claimed immunity from taxation!
The Liberals have indicated they are going to pass the TPP, just like the Conservatives. These two parties are chumps for every free trade deal that comes along that in fact have little to do with free trade and everything to do with captive trade and selling out the public interest.
PM Trudeau has already made positive moves indicating he wants to the break with the degeneracy of the last government. The moves he has made are to be commended. They are though ancillary to the changes, the structural changes that really matter and the ones that constitute “ Real Change.” This, of course, was the theme of his winning campaign. To deal with the TPP is a major policy decision. It is in the realm of economics. Its proponents are powerful, already have an ominous control over our economy and our governments; federal, provincial and municipal. The TPP is just one more chapter in consolidating their monopoly control over our economy and the further denigration of government and its sovereign right to govern.
Michael Hudson prominent US economist and consultant to governments around the world says of the TPP:
What is at stake is something that has been under international law for over 350 years. And that’s the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 established the principle that nations are in charge of their own policy. The fast-track legislation for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the European partnership, is so radical that it takes economic policy out of the hands of government and puts it in the hands of unelected lobbyists for the corporate interests.
Hudson also states:
So the attempt–there’s a belief among most Americans{and Canadians} who read the paper that somehow if you sign this agreement it’s just about freer trade, and all of our existing laws would remain on the books, both for us and for Malaysia and Japan and other countries. But that’s not the case. They don’t realize that the agreement is to essentially pass, nullify any law on the book that doesn’t benefit corporations or protects labor.
From the outset of his leadership PM Trudeau has expressed concern for the plight of the beleaguered middle class. His election campaign was designed to appeal to the middle class but his offerings were paltry and he won votes with bargain basement offerings that to do not really help the middle class nor address its ongoing decline.
A few decades ago government worked in concert with business and bankers as a triad, planning and coordinating the country’s priorities. This was a proven model of success for many modern industrial states. Now, with the emergence of neoliberalism, and the so-called free market economy all that is gone. Business and bankers have merged, usurped the role of government and done a very thorough job of denigrating and vilifying government. Government, for its part, has been all too willing to make a massive retreat from governance and hand over its powers. The hand over comes in the form of agreements like the NAFTA and the pending TPP and CETA . What we are seeing is the incremental abdication of governments at home and abroad. In so many countries this change over is not so incremental but by edicts from the money lenders or open warfare.
What the middle class is really suffering is the deep wounds of betray. Under the triad government was the guardian of the middle class . It maintained programs and priorities to insure the right to make a decent living, reasonable access to Medicare and education, the right to unionize , fair labor practices, reasonable social welfare, freedom from debt bondage, usury and much more. All of these to one degree or another are in decline, being suppressed or no longer existent. Where government was the mediator of the public interest it continues to abandon that role as it panders to the neoliberal agenda of deregulation and privatization.
As Hudson suggests, the average person reading the newspaper will get a favorable view of the TPP, but this is because the Mainstream Media is corporate owned and is there to advance corporate interests.
In this regard it is interesting to note that since 1993 ownership of the media in the US has gone from fifty down to just five very powerful media conglomerates, and needless to say, all singing from the same song book; where profits come before people.
Where government retreats neoliberalism takes over. Its only concern is its bottom line. For neoliberals, the middle class is nothing more than one more resource to be exploited and commodified. It is no coincidence that the middle class has a hard time paying its bills- it is by design.
Robert Billyard
Mission BC
One of the quickest ways to communicate with sitting members is to go to :
http://www.parl.gc.ca//en/members
Their emails, phone, and fax numbers are listed here. Mail to MPs is postage free and should be sent to: Parliament of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A9
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