Signs of division — and life — in liberal thinking?

Within the last week, retired Ontario Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan and retiring liberal champion and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg openly abandoned hard liberal pieties on the political power of public sector unions and the wisdom of public ownership of giant public utilities.

Alongside the fine-grain speculation over the feelings of mad men on the right, is it not also interesting that liberals are starting to question the validity of core liberal policy in Canada and the United States?

It’s holiday season and we’re all worn down by scandal. Still, something big is happening: after years of dining out on conservative extremism, intelligent liberals are now questioning their loftiest sound bites. Bloomberg’s concerns about “a labor-electoral complex” may not, immediately, contaminate Hillary Clinton’s meticulous campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. However, Dwight Duncan’s twitter below may seriously complicate Premier Kathleen Wynne’s plans — and prospects — in an Ontario election within the next 6 months:

“OPG [Ontario Power Generation] should be privatized. Market discipline will be much more effective at addressing the problems than political oversight.”

Brutes and nihilists are expected to complain about crown corporations. It’s news, however, when a leading liberal acknowledges aloud that these institutions will not always serve liberal ends.

Ontarians want to be interesting but never consciously vote for radicals. So, Liberals have told Ontarians for over decade that Ontario conservatives are radicals. You see: some 15 years ago, they actually tried to organize a competitive, private electricity industry. They ran out of luck — and nerve. But their intention at that time has been used to demonize them ever since.

It frays that liberal accusation — to say the least — to read that the former Liberal government’s illustrious minister of both Energy and Finance believes that OPG, one of the largest electricity generation companies in North America, should now operate and sell its power as a private company.

Move on liberals: the number 99 died in Wisconsin

The Wisconsin recall election of Governor Scott Walker was concocted by liberal Democrats and was to be a liberal’s dream come true.

There wasn’t a charismatic politician on the right, a personal or religious scandal to cloud the issue. Months of debate were conducted about union rights and the management of the state’s financial affairs. Each side had plenty enough money, campaign professionals, and neighborhood volunteers to get their message out, and repeat their message over and over.

Nothing is airtight in politics. Some voters didn’t think a recall election was justified in the first place. However, a strong majority voted to keep Walker as governor and, according to CNN exit polls, a good half of those voting openly supported his legislation to restrain the public payroll and the power of public sector unions.

Walker didn’t just complain about greedy unions. He severely reduced their rights and their financial capacity to advance their interests in the future. Liberals asked voters to side with the unions—to stand as 99 per centers. They declined.

Walker, of course, didn’t settle the issue for all time, for Wisconsin, or for America. However, his re-election does demonstrate that middle-class America is not of one mind on bread-and-butter issues and will not automatically unite with liberals, even when conservatives aren’t messing up their heads with religious and patriotic gimmicks.

Liberal Dean Bakolpoulos in Salon isn’t yet ready to learn anything from what happened:

“If Barack Obama plans to win in November, he needs to unite two factions of the Rust Belt population: The middle-class of public workers and union members and teachers, and the other middle-class, which ranges from self-made entrepreneurs to struggling service industry workers. How does he do it? With an honest message that points to the real villain: An increasingly greedy corporate culture that stops at nothing in its quest to consolidate power and wealth.

“There is, in fact, a 99 percent in this country. But right now, a big chunk of it votes in the interest of the 1 percent.”

Click on: www.salon.com/2012/06/06/whats_the_matter_with_wisconsin/singleton/

Barack Obama has had the good sense to reject this advice. He hasn’t singled out the 1 percent as villains—or their wealth as the salvation of all America’s problems.

To redress the federal government’s structural deficit, he has frozen federal salaries, endorsed in principle the Bowles-Simpson recommendations, and he has offered a “grand bargain” that would accept as much as three times more in federal spending cuts as in new taxes.

Obama and fellow Democrat pragmatists in state governments today didn’t create all the unfunded liabilities of federal and state governments. They needn’t defend past excesses. Liberals in office, like popes, make mistakes and needn’t treat what they have inherited as infallible.

America without strong unions would become an even tougher place to live. However, the middle class will not buy the argument that the ambitions of public unions and their ambitions are always the same.

If pro-union policies by public employers were invariably in the best interests of the middle class and the less so, states like Illinois, for instance, wouldn’t have an unfunded liability of $83-billion in public employee pensions.

Click on: www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/wisconsin-recall-vote-shows-its-about-math-not-politics/article4237376/

Keynes wasn’t a Keynesian every time he saw a tough problem. He would have collected necessary taxes to pay for all operating expenses, including salaries and benefits—and accounted for how future liabilities would be met.

When the interests of the middle class and positive government are aligned, they will vote for “tax and spend” liberals. When liberals believe in what they’re doing in government, they should ask for the money.