Yahoo! Canada won the race to cut taxes for the rich

Tell that to the thousands trying to pay the mortgage and keep food on the table

The Straight Goods Cyber Forum
with Larry Solway

Commentary:

  Call me a romantic, dotty old fool. Call me a softhearted humanitarian. Go ahead - call me a bleeding heart, or as one writer to SG said, a man so old that his grandson could play Snakes and Ladders on the lines on his face.
  Elderly I may be. A dinosaur I am not. I have ideas, but with neo-Lib and neo-Con governments in power, no one will listen.
  Mr. Bush and Mr. Chretien: listen up. History says Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism. By creating thousands of jobs, the New Deal shut down what could have been a grass-roots revolution. FDR did not offer the panacea of tax cuts. He may have been an aristocrat, but he knew that when times are bad you spend.
  Paul Martin and Jean Chretien crow about how Canadians got tax cuts while Washington was still dithering. Congratulations. Tell that to the thousands whose Employment Insurance benefits won't pay the mortgage or whose benefits may run out. Tell it to the poor devils on Cape Breton where the coal mines shut down.
  We need government-sponsored capital projects.

Corporations simply don't want to - and shouldn't be asked to - spend their tax windfalls on anything but debt reduction. When times are tough the tough go into hiding.

  More than ever, we need money for transit; urban subways and high-speed intercity rail travel. The Bush government says it will build a high-speed rail link between Detroit and Cincinnati. But it won't say when, nor will it commit any money. Talk is cheap.
  America is in the midst of a struggle over tax cuts. Fortunately, the defection of one senator gave the Democrats control of the Senate. Tom Daschle is leading the fight against tax cuts for the wealthy. The Bush guys are fighting back: N.Y. Times, Saturday January 5: " ...in the debate over tax cuts which benefit the wealthy, the White House brought out one of Mr. Bush's most influential advisers, Karen P. Hughes, to respond. A chorus of high-ranking Republicans in Congress also shot back, with a barrage of accusations that Mr. Daschle wanted to raise taxes by repealing tax cuts."
  Bush, like Martin, simply will not give an inch. Martin pretends not to be a right-wing ideologue who believes the marketplace can solve all our problems (see Enron, the new saviour for power distribution - SG, Sunday December 16th). Bush makes no such claims. Either way, both believe in tax cuts, and neither believes in government participation in massive job creation.
  I am certain that through normal economic evolution (and we have to ignore the dislocation and impoverishment of hundreds of thousands of families) this country and the U.S. will be prosperous again.

There will be wreckage of course, but the survivors will be bigger and tougher and meaner than ever

  What Bush should do (and so should Martin) is become the Roosevelt of the 21st century. He could (but won't) stop cutting tax revenues in the vain hope that the wealthy will spend them. Instead, Bush should use those revenues for massive job-creating public works.
  What would be more fitting, in the wake of September 11th and other airline disasters, than to invest billions in the creation of a high-speed national rail network? What would do more to relieve highway gridlock than the creation of an intermodal system to put semi-trailers on railway flat cars?
  In Canada, CN wants assistance for intermodal transport to get more trucks off the road. Martin prefers tax cuts. Urban transit systems are wasting away for lack of capital funding. Martin still prefers tax cuts. Provincial governments spend on highways, which increase gridlock and are far too capital intensive. Every transportation expert knows that railroad building is far more labour intensive, and is the real answer to highway congestion and safety hazards.
  There is no better time than now to build that high-speed link to Ottawa from Toronto and Montreal… if Martin hasn't already squandered the money on recession fighting (??!!) tax cuts instead of investing in the country.
  Imagine a high-speed link that would take an entirely new route from Toronto to Ottawa then across to Montreal and back along a new southern route to Toronto. It would cost billions. Unfortunately, the neo-Liberal, neo-Con revolution has made us all believe that taxes are ruining us. Taxes could save us.

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