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I saw the first half-hour of today's anti-election fraud protests on Parliament Hill, EMI-labelled vans in front of the Chateau Laurier, a piano played outdoors at the ByWard Market Building (both of which are connected to the Juno Awards now playing out in Ottawa this year), and a guy in a Roman toga.

I tell you this: Ottawa becomes ever more surreal as I get older.

And now that we've got that out of the way, here's me blogging as I eat lunch and celebrate the 6th anniversary of ByMUG's founding as well as Apple's corporate birthday:

Rick Salutin wrapped up his current run as a columnist for the Toronto Star this week, and he made a few points that I would very much like to hang onto as a major political/emotional lifeline for the next three years. Especially now, in the wake of the unveiling of the latest federal budget.

Here's how it begins:

At what point does something that was once new, turn into old, and make way for something newer? 20 years? 30? 40? I ask in light of the CBC’s Terry Milewski’s question to NDP Leader Tom Mulcair at his first news conference. How do you expect to appeal to voters, he prodded, with a program so “antiquated”?

But hold on. If you’re 30 years old, 35, even 40 (born in 1972), the only economic wisdom you’ve ever known is the nostrums of neo-liberalism, which began in the Reagan-Thatcher 1980s and continues into the current round of austerity budgets everywhere. You’ve lived entirely in a pro-business context of deregulation and “reining in” public spending. It’s ancient, as old as you are. (And includes the era of those zealous neoLiberals, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.)


It does seem as if the insistence upon blaming "failure to believe" - as Mr. Salutin notes later in the essay - has taken firm hold of the ranks of what he calls the "neo-liberalism" crowd. (I call it "neo-conservatism", but won't quibble with him at the moment.)

Whether or not they're finally tiring out after 40+ years of effectively running the political tables of multiple nations, though, is cause for no small debate.

I do think that labour unions are due for a serious comeback in terms of respectability and political clout. A lot of us around the world are going to need that clout to save our bacon as individuals and in large groups.

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On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

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