The Gravy Train Ain't Comin'

Sooner or later we all reach a point when we realize our best days are behind us. The kids stop calling. The wife treats you like crap. Ninety percent of your junk mail is from funeral homes. Then you go into work and you realize there's nothing left for you to do. Nobody expects anything from you. Everything's done. You may try to fight it at first, but eventually you realize you might as well just run down the clock until the pension kicks in.

That's the bind Mike Harris is in. The "Common Sense Revolution" is over. He won. Congratulations, Mike, there are thousands of high school students who can't get a liver, or spell liver, and it's all thanks to you. The problem is he did such a good job destroying social programs and harassing teachers in his first mandate that since the last election he's just been biding his time 'til his party puts him out to pasture. He's just like the old man, wandering around the office, complaining about how cold it is, bitching about those goddamn computers. But Mikey wasn't gonna go quietly, so he did what every politician does when they get attention starved: he declared war.

Who did he declare war on? The favourite enemy of conservative governments since time immemorial: public servants. Harris says it's time for public servants to tighten their belts, 'cause the economy could go down the crapper any minute and he wants to be ready. The Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, pointed to a Toronto school board contract that gave public school teachers an 8% raise over two years, calling such an increase excessive and suggesting a settlement closer to inflation, somewhere around 4%, would be more reasonable. I know the guy's new but you think he might have picked up the art of multiplication somewhere along the way. Okay, Jimmy, here goes: according to your own ministry, the annual inflation rate in January was 3.6%. Over two years that's 7.2%. Now I'm no math whiz, but I think 7.2 is a hell of a lot closer to eight than it is to four.

So what gives? Are they hoping they've screwed up the education system so badly that everyone in the province has lost the ability to multiply? Oh, and by the way, they're still planning to bring in another 4.5 billion dollars in tax cuts in the next budget. That's a little more than double what those "excessive" raises would cost. Meanwhile the government is planning to hire twelve thousand nurses in the next month. For a guy who claimed to know what he was doing while he sliced and diced social programs, he doesn't seem to grasp much about capitalism. People go where the money is, Mikey, as a weasel, that should be your motto. And I know you were hoping I wasn't going to bring this up, but didn't your office staff get a handsome 30% raise recently? And what about that 42% hike you wanted to give MPPs? But I guess you're right, MPPs are far more important than public servants. In fact, next time I accidentally saw my arm off, I'm gonna get Marcel Beaubien to rush over with a sewing needle and some fishing line. I know you're thinking that's a dumb idea Mikey. It's just common sense. What happened to yours?