Category: American Politics

No Amigos Here!

by Peter Lowry

You heard that prime minister Justin Trudeau will be in Washington this week? He is having a visit with American President Joe Biden along with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. And let’s hope that Trudeau doesn’t get into playing poker with those guys. He would be lucky to come back with his pants. With those old politicos, Trudeau is out of his league.

Sure, Biden will lay on the No. 1 state dinner for the visitors but behind the scenes, he will lay it on the line. He has his own problems. His visitors can whine all they like about the North American Free Trade Agreement and Canada’s Auto Pact but reality is that Biden could be crushed by next year’s mid-term elections. He is not about to jeopardize his final two years in office facing both a Republican Senate and House of Representatives.

The hard facts are that a loss of both houses of Congress for Biden will open the door to a return of Donald Trump—or worse, the ghost of Donald Trump. There are some better funded, younger, smarter, more vicious Republican comers who could out-Trump Trump. And then Obrador and Trudeau (or their successors) will learn how nasty a neighbour the United States really can be.

We should all remember that the original Donald Trump was an amateur. It took him a long time to find all the rooms in the White House. He lacked the time in office to really screw things up.

It also pays to keep in mind that while Americans think of Canadians as ‘nice,’ they do not really respect us. They will take us home to mother only because we use deodorants and know which fork to use. And they will give us a roll in the hay, provided we go home afterwards. They do like our money as long as we spend it on what they want to sell us and it helps their bottom line.

But ‘The Three Amigos’ was just a mediocre Hollywood grinder that was just another insult to Mexicans. And the Americans have been insulting Mexicans for so long, they think it is the thing to do. Let’s not encourage them to try some of those insults on us.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Big Tent, Little Tent Tories?

by Peter Lowry

You often hear the conservative and liberal parties referred to as big-tent parties. We would therefore assume, in contrast, that the greens, new democrats and peoples’ party are just little tents. And that would leave the united conservatives of Alberta and the cranky bloc Québécois as pup-tents. Whatever size, we know that these tents are quite flexible and all parties like to think of their tent as being of the marquee class.

In our latest federal election, it was obvious that, conservative leader Erin O’Toole thought his conservative tent was ready to expand as he invited Canadians to step into his party. He had started through the leadership contest that was held for his party to tell everybody that he was a “true blue” conservative. This was taken to mean that he would accommodate everybody from the social conservatives to the progressive conservatives and even the united conservatives of Alberta. He assured these diverse conservatives that he would rid them of carbon taxes, gun control and abortions.

But, to our surprise, come the election, Mr. O’Toole sought to further enlarge the conservative tent. He really wanted everybody to be able to crowd in. He proudly pointed out to his fellow conservatives that he was from the greater Toronto Area (GTA) and he knew how to win there.

The O’Toole solution was simple. To win in the GTA, all you had to do is support carbon taxes, agree with gun control and go soft on abortions. And Mr. O’Toole was sure the conservatives who hated carbon taxes, hated gun control and probably hated abortions would understand if he made slightly different promises to voters in the GTA and in Montreal and in Vancouver.

To Mr. O’Toole’s surprise conservative voters were not all pleased with his solution. Some were so surprised at his changing promises that they decided to vote for Mr. Bernier’s peoples’ party and some did not even vote.

And to make matters worse for Mr. O’Toole, the conservative knives are out for him. If he thought ‘Chuckles’ Scheer got the bum’s rush as leader, he should not wait to test the party’s venom.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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At War with Michigan.

by Peter Lowry

The ongoing war with the State of Michigan is heating up. Canada’s federal government has now invoked a 1977 treaty that supposedly says that Canada can destroy the fresh water viability of the Great Lakes if it is in aid of ensuring self-sufficiency in oil to both countries. What we really need to do is resolve this matter before American tanks start rumbling across the Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, Ontario.

And the entire imbroglio is regarding the status of Enbridge’s Line 5 from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario. The general on the American side is Michigan governor, Gretchen Witmer. The Canadian contingent is led by Calgary’s Enbridge pipeline people.

It started when the Michigan governor realized that the same material that caused a major catastrophe on tributaries of the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan was being piped under Lake Michigan at the Straits of Mackinac. This is a particularly sensitive area where Lake Michigan flows into Lake Huron and down through the Great Lakes.

The culprit in this case is diluted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands. From where Line 5 crosses Lake Michigan, it delivers the diluted bitumen to Detroit as well as Canadian refineries. It was close to a million gallons of Albertan diluted bitumen that destroyed the fishing on the Kalamazoo River for years to come. After spending close to a billion US dollars in the clean-up attempt, there is still bitumen polluting the Kalamazoo River.

And nobody needs to be a scientist to guess what would happen if there was a major spill in the Straits of Mackinac. It is not just the fisheries on the lower Great Lakes but the fresh water for millions of Americans and Canadians that would be at risk.

The fact that Enbridge has already acknowledged the danger is made clear in its current construction of a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac to eliminate concerns for any spills. They really need a compromise by ensuring that no bitumen be allowed to flow through the current pipeline. And it might just end the war.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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In the land of the laissez-faire.

by Peter Lowry

When Milton and Rose Friedman published Free to Choose in 1980, laissez-faire economics was at a peak. Reaganomics was all the rage in the United States and Thatcherism was tearing up the buffers of social justice in the United Kingdom. Canada was left struggling in the economic storm. The Friedman’s basked in the rhapsody of millionaire sponsors.

Keynesian economics and liberalism were left out in the cold, to supposedly die a slow, struggling death.

It was not until the market crisis of 2007 and 2008 that people began to understand that deregulation was wrong, small government could not be trusted and not all of us can fend for ourselves. We were leaving too many of our people on the streets to die. The rich are stealing from us and their henchmen are our politicians.

Canada never had sub-prime mortgages to collapse. We suffered anyway. We found that Paul Martin was just a conservative in a liberal suit and tie.

Canadians would not settle for a pale copy and went for the real thing. Enter, Stephen Harper, chortling. There were dark days ahead for Canada.

America had to struggle through the Bush years. George the father was not bad compared to George W. Bush, the younger. George W. was dumb as a post and he lied to Americans and the world about weapons of mass destruction.

And Canadians foolishly loaned our armed forces to the Americans for their Mid-East and Afghan wars. The Americans were defeated and our Canadian forces were dishonoured.

In the United States, Barack Obama stepped into the presidency. Not all Americans joined the celebration of an articulate, black, smart, and liberal president. The sides for coming conflict were being better defined.

In the land of the laissez-faire, you cannot have just a president to care. We saw the hardening of positions as Obama tried to fight Medicare through the House and Senate. We saw a failing democracy.

And it opened the door to the debacle of the Trump presidency. And few have the confidence that President Biden can win for more than a term against the cause of laissez-faire.

We are watching the struggle of good and evil on a world-wide scale.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Defining Danger.

by Peter Lowry

For all the arguments we have seen and heard about the danger of Enbridge’s Line Five at the Straits of Mackinac, nobody bothers to specify the danger. The arguments rage between Michigan, in the person of the state governor, Gretchen Witmer, and Enbridge, the Canadian pipeline company. Washington has also become involved in support of the Michigan governor. And the unlikely alliance of Ontario premier Doug Ford and Ottawa’s Trudeau government are supporting Enbridge.

You can hardly blame Michigan governor Gretchen Witmer for her stance. Her one experience with an Enbridge pipeline spill is the event in 2010 when Enbridge Line 6B spilled close to a million U.S. Gallons of diluted bitumen into Talmadge Creek near Marshall, Michigan. That is before Talmadge Creek flows into the Kalamazoo River. That was a catastrophic spill.

More than 10 years later and the spending of a billion U.S. dollars on the clean-up, there are still 40 kilometres of rivers in South Michigan with compromised ecosystems. A similar spill of diluted bitumen at the Straits of Mackinac would also be catastrophic. It would impact life in five states bordering on the Great Lakes as well as the Province of Ontario on the Canadian side.

The expenditure of a US billion dollars would not start to clean up a bitumen spill in the range of a million US gallons in the Great Lakes. The millions of people living downstream from the spill would have their drinking water compromised, their fisheries gone, their beaches and tourist businesses destroyed. Imagine the destruction of Niagara Falls with the pollution of oily bitumen.

And that is what the Michigan governor wants to prevent.

Many different materials are sent through Enbridge’s Line Five. It is twinned pipelines that carry raw and refined products either way. It delivers propane to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and refined products for gas stations and industry throughout the mid west. A spill of most of these materials can be quickly contained and cleaned up. Enbridge is prepared for that, if it ever happens. The most dangerous spill would be of diluted bitumen—usually on its way to the Koch-owned refinery in Detroit. This bitumen is from the Athabasca and Cold Lake deposits, mainly in Alberta. It is the one material that floats for a while and then, as the diluent is washed off, starts to sink. You could never contain or completely clean up a large diluted bitumen spill in the Great Lakes.

If Enbridge could just contain its greed and arrange for diluted bitumen to be shipped by truck or train until the new Enbridge pipeline tunnel is finished being built under the Straits of Mackinac, we could ease up on the arguments between the two friendly countries. We both have too much invested in the Great Lakes to want to see any parts of them destroyed.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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‘Cousin’ Kyle is leaving us.

by Peter Lowry

It is hard to imagine anyone willingly wanting to go to Florida at this time. Not that I pay much attention to basketball. It was only when the Toronto Raptors won the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship that the wife and I noticed them. Sure, we had attended a game, once. The tickets were a gift from an old friend—directly behind the Raptors bench. That was when we, laughingly, started to refer to Raptor Kyle Lowry as ‘cousin’ Kyle.

We not only share the same last name but we were really impressed with Kyle’s skill and determination. The guy lacks the height of many basketball players but he sure makes up for it. He is a classy player.

But there is more than the ‘Heat’ going on in Miami these days. From Sunny Florida to the Land of the Pariahs, the state has fallen into a state of disgrace. That governor, Ron DeSantis, comes across as a republican idiot. He and his pal Donald Trump are giving the state a bad rap.

The current COVID stats in the state are staggering. Donald Trump did not understand the pandemic and so, he ignored it as much as possible. For DeSantis to follow in the steps of his mentor, Trump, is a disgrace. Now that the vaccines are available to vaccinate the entire population of the state, it is setting astonishing new records in infections and deaths.

But there will be no coronavirus inconveniences for Governor DeSantis. While the state’s hospitals are overwhelmed by the number of cases of the Delta variance of COVID-19, he is busy deregulating state employment and business regulations. He is a true republican and if his hero Donald Trump does not run for president again in 2024, DeSantis is ready to step into the breech and run for the republican team.

All I know is that ‘cousin’ Kyle is never going to feel so welcome and appreciated in Miami as he has been by all those Canadians in Toronto. He will be missed.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Red is Dead and Blue is True!

by Peter Lowry

It is possible to get confused between the political colors of Canada and the U.S.A. The problem is that the liberal red in Canada is the color red of the Republicans in the United States. And then, of course, the Democrats in the U.S.A. are stuck with being blue.

But if that was the only difference between the two countries, we would consider it very minor. What is serious is the bitterness that has developed between red and blue, Republican and Democrat. The relationship today is caustic. And it is all based on lies.

Credit former president Donald Trump for most of the lies. That man never gave a political speech that was not a constant series of one-liner lies. And most members of the Republican party appear to be buying into those lies. Any sensible person should recognize a lie when they heard it. For example: If you believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, then, logically, Al Gore won the year 2000 election and Hillary Clinton won the election in 2016. You can hardly accept one set of figures without believing the figures for the other party. Or does the party involved matter more than the figures?

And yet, some Republican politicians went out in the heat of the noon-day sun of Washington the other day to complain that 548 people have been arrested so far for rioting and trespass and violence on the American Capitol on January 6 this year. The Republicans obviously felt that these people might be Republican voters and they were being harassed and were suffering unjustly. They complained that this supposed abuse of human rights was going on while ‘violent’ Black Lives Matter groups are left free. This sounds like bigotry but we can leave that for another time.

You have to recognize this situation as very dangerous. I would say that Donald Trump pushed those poor people to the limit when he spoke to them on the morning of January 6. He told them to invade the Capitol. He incited them to violence. He was as guilty as any of them. He should be on trial. This is not a political matter. It needs judges and juries.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Biden is a Baby Bonus Booster.

by Peter Lowry

Did Canada’s prime minister give American president Joe Biden the tip? It’s a political axiom in Canada: If you don’t know what to do in politics, increase the baby bonus. Where else would Biden get the idea? The Baby Bonus is a tradition in Canada that the conservatives hate. It was the backbone of liberal party policy—along with Medicare—for the last half of the 20th century. It was resurrected by Jean Chrétien’s liberals after they came to power in 1993. What started after the Second World War as a $5 to $8 per month subsidy, can now be over $500 per month for a child under 6, depending on the parents’ income and is slightly less through to age 18. Some Canadian provinces provide additional Baby Bonus amounts.

What president Biden has done is launch a $300 per month per child subsidy this month for American families. The money can go directly to their bank accounts. It is planned to happen monthly to the end of 2021. He is now proposing to Congress that it continue and is defying the Republicans to take back the effort that hopes to end child poverty in the United States.

This is all in aid of Joe Biden being able to prove to Americans that government can have a part in improving their lives. He wants to drive holes in the Republican argument that small government is better. This philosophy has been fed to America since the Regan administration. The attacks on government led to the extremes of the Trump administration because even the poorest and jobless Americans were buying into the proposition that big government is bad.

Addressing Congress earlier this year, Biden is reported to have said he wanted Congress to help him prove that democracy still works and that the American government still works and can deliver for its people.

Biden has to make his point conclusively before the mid-term elections in 2022 or likely face a Republican dominated Congress for the rest of his term in office. He is already facing formidable opposition in the Republican controlled states and in the well-funded conservative news media. We wish him well.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Fueling the Fourth.

by Peter Lowry

The fourth of July is Independence Day in the U.S.A. It is a day for patriotic parades, barbeques, family gatherings and fireworks. And it has something else to celebrate this year: the beginning of the overdue take down of the aspirations of former president, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump did a disservice to America and it is important there be a day of reckoning. He besmirched the reputation of his country around the world. He made friends of America’s enemies and enemies of its friends. And he lied to Americans. The Trump trademark was lies. He let Americans die in a pandemic. He lied about the outcome of the 2020 election. All you had to do was ask a question and he will tell you a lie.

He bases his campaigning on lies that can only fool the ignorant and the jingoist. He lies about his wealth. He lies to the tax people. And not even Al Capone got away with that!

The Donald Trump presidency was a period of embarrassment for America. And the time has come for an accounting.

The New York prosecutors have Mr. Trump in their sights. They know he was party to a tax fraud to which he has not yet been charged. Instead, they have charged the Trump organization’s chief financial officer. The man is 73 years old and he could spend the rest of his life in prison. His only hope for some pity is if he dimes out Mr. Trump’s involvement in the tax avoidance.

As it is, Donald Trump’s signature is on enough of the cheques to show that he is involved in the schemes to hide executive perquisites and income, file false taxes and accept fraudulent tax refunds. Trump relatives and others were involved. It was always a secret, known to too many people.

Trump’s rejoinder is pure Trump. He claims that it is a political witch hunt by what he calls “the radical left democrats.”

It looks like those radical left democrats are going to settle some scores with Donald Trump. Happy Fourth, America.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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“If I can make it there…”

by Peter Lowry

“I can make it anywhere, New York, New York.” You can almost hear Frank Sinatra singing ‘New York, New York’ in the background. It is a last chance for ranked voting. New York City and its five boroughs are choosing the democratic party candidate for mayor. The only problem is that it could take more than a week to figure out who has won.

Nobody seemed to understand the consequences when the democrats opted, in 2019, for ranking up to five choices for mayor in their primaries. And they had no idea of the massive number of absentee ballots would be caused by the pandemic. It could take until after the July 4 holiday to determine the winner in a tight race.

And obviously nobody told the democrats that ranked balloting has its own special problems. It is a system that drills down in the counting to produce a win for the least contentious candidate.

In ranked balloting, every candidate wants to be every voter’s second choice. In counting the ballots, if nobody has a majority, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is dropped out of the count and the second choices for that losing candidate are tabulated for the survivors. In effect, the losers pick the ultimate winner.

And in New York, the democrats are all a-giggle that they might have chosen the first women Democratic candidate, the first Asian-American candidate or the second black candidate for mayor.

What might cause the most trouble in the election is that the party officials are going to announce the “maybe” winner before adding in the absentee ballots. That announcement, without including the absentee ballots, at that time, is just begging for trouble and even lawsuits. At least, with all ballots counted, there will be no ‘ifs,’ ‘ands’ or ‘buts.’

But why settle for the least contentious, when you can have a candidate who is interesting?

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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