The Globe and Mail - 13.11.2019

WEDNESDAY,NOVEMBER13,2019 | THE GLOBE AND MAILO A

OPINION

T

he billionaire class in the
United States is in a state of
agitation and well it should
be. The ultrawealthy are coming
under scrutiny like rarely before.
Their free ride is coming to a
close.
The campaign by liberal pop-
ulists to dramatically reduce and
redistribute billionaires’ gargan-
tuan fortunes through a stiff
wealth tax is gaining traction.
Polls show even a majority of Re-
publicans support the move.
The rich are trying to fight
back. More than a dozen of them
have spoken out against the rad-
ical tax plans. Billionaire hedge
fund manager Leon Cooperman,
as if staring into the abyss, got all
teary-eyed in a recent television
interview, castigating the tax
grabbers for “vilifying” the rich.
But sympathy for the money
moguls is in short supply. That
their treasure chests could be re-
duced to a couple of billion hard-

ly leaves the American multi-

tudes furrowing their brows in

wonderment as to how the poor

fellows will make ends meet.

Leading the anti-billionaire

crusade are the two tenacious

leftist senators, the shrill Eliza-

beth Warren and the shriller Ber-

nie Sanders. They occupy two of

the leading three spots in the

Democratic race for the presi-

dential nomination.

Their prospects may just have

been given a nice boost by the

signal from billionaire Michael

Bloomberg that he is about to

enter the race. Mr. Bloomberg is

a moderate. Analysts say he is ve-

ry likely to siphon off support

from the centrist best placed to

beat the radical candidates, Joe

Biden.

Whatever the outcome, the

Democratic campaign is raising

the level of public consciousness

as to how warped income distri-

bution is in the country. With the

richest 400 Americans controll-

ing more wealth than the bot-

tom 60 per cent, it’s the worst

since the 1920s.

Some billionaires give back so

much that criticism of them is

unjustified. Over all however,

statistics show that poor and

middle-class Americans give a

higher percentage of their in-

come to charity than the ultra-

rich do.

While the overconcentration

of political power has been much

debated, the power of the eco-

nomic behemoths has not.

Big tech giants such as Ama-

zon and Facebook and Google

are now targets. The U.S. gained

19 new tech billionaires just last

year.

Defenders say the rich have

played by the rules of the free-

market system fair and square

and have legitimately profited.

But critics such as Robert

Reich, who was labour secretary

in the Clinton administration,

contend that this is so much hog-

wash.

He notes how Jamie Dimon,

CEO of JPMorgan Chase, would

not be worth the US$1.6-billion

he is today were it not for the

2008 government bailout of

JPMorgan and other major Wall

Street banks because they were

considered “too big to fail.”

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, he adds,

would be worth far less if the

government enforced anti-mo-

nopoly laws and didn’t grant

Amazon such broad patents.

Koch Industries is flush in part

because it has benefited from a

corrupted system that makes it

so easy to secure favours from

politicians. The Kochs did so

with oodles in donation monies

and millions in lobbying efforts

to get the Trump tax cut. It saves

the company more than US$1-

billion a year.

Then there are the lax tax laws

such as the minimal estate tax.

Economist Thomas Piketty esti-

mates that 60 per cent of all the

wealth in America today is inher-

ited.

Mr. Sanders says billionaires

should not even exist. But by

lumping them all together, he

misfires. Billionaires such as Bill

Gates and Michael Bloomberg

are generally lauded for their ge-

nerosity and contributions to so-

ciety. Mr. Gates pays billions in

taxes, gives vast amounts to

charity, has distributed US$36-

billion to reduce the impact of

polio, HIV and malaria.

Making a heavily punitive

wealth tax work will be a chal-

lenge. The record in Europe is

negative. For various reasons,

wealth taxes have been scrapped

in France, Germany and Sweden.

In some cases, the taxes led to

flights of capital, a problem

which Ms. Warren says she will

counter through a huge exit tax

on anyone renouncing U.S. citi-

zenship.

She is a relentless force who

could well capture the zeitgeist.

The absurdity of having such a

mass of the country’s wealth

concentrated in a minuscule

number of hands has never been

so blatantly evident.

Attempts at limiting the con-

centration of wealth have been

around since the days of trust-

buster Teddy Roosevelt. Rarely

has the opportunity for remedy

been better than now.

ThefreerideforU.S.billionairesisover–andit’sabouttime

LAWRENCE
MARTIN

OPINION

WASHINGTON

Makingaheavily

punitivewealthtax

workwillbea

challenge.Therecordin

Europeisnegative.For

variousreasons,wealth

taxeshavebeen

scrappedinFrance,

GermanyandSweden.

Insomecases,thetaxes

ledtoflightsofcapital.

I

watched Coach’s Corner. I
watched it religiously. I’d put
up my hands and get the room
to stop.
“Grapes!”
Those were good times: Satur-
days pressed against the TV
watching Don’s reels of hitting,
fighting, warring, scoring. This
wasn’t 1988. This was 2008. After
a time, I took to defending his in-
nate, and once razor-sharp, hock-
ey mind in spite of increasingly
uncomfortable screeds that of-
fended friends and communities.
I openly lobbied for more
broadcasters like him in the
pressed-trouser world of telegen-
ic sports punditry, rallying for
someone to be heard who sound-
ed like your uncle, your neigh-
bour, the guy who sits at the rink.
But we’ve learned a lot about our
uncles and a lot about ourselves.
Hopefully, we’ve learned some-
thing about the game, too.
The hockey fan – the Don
Cherry fan; fans like me – have to
ask: Why did it take this long for
us to see that which we’d con-
vinced ourselves we’d missed?
Why did some of us – thousands
of us – pfffft away the gay paro-
dies and lisps when Don spoke
about players playing lightly, ele-
gantly, or wearing their hair a
certain style? Why did we grin
through it when he talked about
women “yapping” all the time,

justifying this kind of sexism by

explaining away his support of

women’s hockey (which, let’s

hope, isn’t an intermission casu-

alty along with Mr. Cherry’s fir-

ing)?

And why, after decades of

mass-marketed video tapes of

sporting blood, violence and the

occasionally terrible techno

soundtrack, did wewave it away

as simply part of the game’s nat-

ural terrain, whom those seeking

something better were forced to

share?

Mr. Cherry was this domain’s

sultan who toggled between di-

nosauric roars of loyalty above

all even when it meant risking

brain injury – another maxim

that, for years, many of us

chalked up as being part of the

game.

But if his employer, Rogers

Sportsnet, deemed the act too of-

fensive for broadcast, what does

it say about fans that it only took

until now to protest?

Because we live every day with

the kinds of opinions expressed

by Mr. Cherry before his demise –

opinions about the rights of im-

migrants and their tax on society

• some have suggested that we’re
  immune to mean frothing rants.
  But that doesn’t explain why it
  was able to exist for decades. No
  matter how twisted the world
  has become through the centre-

presence of Donald Trump,

mainstream white supremacists

and the alt-right, it all comes

back to the game.

Growing up, a lot of the best

kids on my house-league teams

were racialized teenagers. They

scored, won Player of the Week,

and then disappeared. There was

no path for them to continue be-

yond this level because there

were no role models and no sup-

port, and that’s still largely true:

in the media, in the dressing

rooms and in the marketing

realm.

When has a hockey equip-

ment manufacturer ever promot-

ed to the underserved or margin-

alized?

When’s the last time a major

daily hired a racialized person to

cover the home team? Can any-

one remember any former play-

ers standing up for those in the

small margins of the world in-

stead of those who possess the

promise of stardom?

There are always good people

doing great work – Reggie Leach

and Joey Juneau and Bryan Trot-

tier, for instance, have worked

tirelessly to promote hockey in

Indigenous communities. And

there are others – but for a long

time, hockey has suffered from

extreme whiteface.

Don Cherry may have visited

your family member in the hos-

pital and supported your drive to

build a local rink – his energies

for this kind of work were legion,

and admirable. But Don drove a

bus that kept the troubling status

quo on the road, and we rode

shotgun. In the end, it didn’t get

us very far.

WhydidI–andsomanyhockeyfans–defendDonCherryforsolong?

DAVEBIDINI

OPINION

MemberofRheostaticsandauthor
ofTheBestGameYouCanName

DonCherry,seeninTorontoin2014,hasatrackrecordofmakingcontroversialcomments.Whatdoesitsay

aboutfansthatitonlytookuntilnowtoprotest?CHRISYOUNG/THECANADIANPRESS

A

s it is with fashion, it can be
with politics, too: What’s
old is sometimes new
again.
Take the panel Alberta Premier
Jason Kenney just named to ex-
plore ways in which the province
can get a fairer deal in Confeder-
ation. Effectively, Mr. Kenney
would like to see Alberta carve
out almost the same level of inde-
pendence that Quebec has. An-
other distinct jurisdiction within
the federation.
Consequently, the panel will
explore the idea of Alberta taking
control of revenue collection, and
having its own pension plan and
provincial police force – all things
the province can do without
opening the Constitution. These
matters would be in addition to

the long list of demands the Pre-

mier has already made to Ottawa

to quell discord in the province

and talk of separatism.

For students of history, the ini-

tiatives Alberta plans to examine

likely sound familiar. They

should, because they are not new.

They were first contained in a

2001 open letter to then-Alberta

premier Ralph Klein penned by a

group of prominent, Alberta-

based conservatives after Jean

Chrétien’s Liberals defeated

Stockwell Day’s Canadian Reform

Conservative Alliance in the 2000

federal election.

Among others, the letter was

signed by Stephen Harper, who

was then president of the Nation-

al Citizens’ Coalition. The same

Mr. Harper who later became

prime minister and the boss of Ja-

son Kenney, during his days as a

federal cabinet minister. Mr. Har-

per remains a confidante of Mr.

Kenney.

Although Mr. Klein mostly ig-

nored the overture, the dream ex-

pressed in the document – which

became known as the “firewall

letter” because it imagined Alber-

ta building protections from un-

wanted intrusions from Ottawa –

never died among conservatives

there.

And so here we are today, with

conservatives in the province

once again upset about the out-

come of a federal election, once

again stoking division because

they don’t have a government in

Ottawa that reflects their ideolog-

ical leanings.

So what to do?

Make life as miserable as pos-

sible for the Liberal Prime Minis-

ter, who won the election fair and

square and as such has the au-

thority to run the country as best

he can in a minority-government

scenario.

All of which is to say, had An-

drew Scheer and the Conserva-

tive Party prevailed, you wouldn’t

be seeing this reprisal of the “fire-

wall” demands. This is a purely

partisan play by a conservative

premier upset he didn’t get his

way federally and so he’s going to

do something about it – in this

case, take advantage of the fury in

his province and milk it for all its

worth. (Prominent economists

have suggested the powers Alber-

ta is demanding will not neces-

sarily improve the province’s bot-

tom line but will require a huge

build-up of the bureaucracy to

administer it all.)

At this point, the whole debate

about what’s upsetting people in

Alberta has become so tedious to

the point of being irrelevant.

They want a pipeline. One is be-

ing built as we speak, and yet the

Premier keeps talking as though

it’s never going to happen.

They’re upset about Bill C-48,

even though the federal Liberals

campaigned on it in 2015 and won

a massive majority.

They’re upset about Bill C-69,

even though there are many who

believe it is not the death knell for

pipelines Mr. Kenney and others

are making it out to be.

They’re upset that there aren’t

plans to build multiple pipelines,

even though more than 60 per

cent of the country just voted for

parties with serious climate-

change agendas that commit the

country to meeting emissions-re-

duction targets set out in the Pa-

ris agreement.

There is absolutely zero talk

coming from the Kenney govern-

ment about how we can build all

the new pipelines Alberta de-

mands and still meet those reduc-

tion goals.

That, it seems, is someone

else’s problem. That is the rest of

Canada’s problem.

Mr. Kenney knows reconciling

his energy needs with the coun-

try’s climate-change prerogatives

is a complex, if not impossible,

task. Maybe that’s why he wants

no part of that discussion. It’s eas-

ier to foment dissent.

To lead what Alberta NDP

Leader Rachel Notley has called a

“dangerous” conversation. “He is

intentionally stoking the fires of

Western alienation in order to ad-

vance his own political objec-

tives,” the former Alberta pre-

mier said over the weekend.

And it’s hard not to see it in

that light.

It’s worth noting that former

Reform Party leader Preston Man-

ning has been asked to head the

“fair deal” panel that Mr. Kenney

has set up to explore the “fire-

wall” initiatives.

This is the same Preston Man-

ning who recently told a confer-

ence that independence, seces-

sion from Canada, has to be on

the table and part of Mr. Kenney’s

negotiating strategy with Ottawa.

Conservatives upset about an

election result. What’s old is new

again.

JasonKenney’sdangerouspowerplay

AlbertaPremier

isstokingdissent

anddivision,andhe’s

playingadangerous

politicalgame

GARY
MASON

OPINION

Forstudentsofhistory,

theinitiativesAlberta

planstoexaminelikely

soundfamiliar.They

should,becausethey

arenotnew.

NEWS |