Frank Touby: Tories: Aristocrats, Wannabes or Butlers

Some of you are going to be very offended by this and for that, I’m sorry and I apologize in advance. Because if you’re offended, it’s likely that you’re not among the people I’m going to describe, despite your political label. In some cases you’re just following in the footsteps of your family who might be loyal to the party label out of family tradition.

The villains are Tories, in the main, and a lot also go by the Liberal moniker. In the States they’re called Republicans. But some Democrats also are fellow travelers.

What they have in common is they’ve appropriated the term “conservative” and distorted it to fit their own greedy and arrogant plots. Sir Adam Beck, whom Bruce Bell writes about this month, is the founder of Ontario Hydro—a Tory—who consolidated under public ownership various private electric utilities that were restricting growth of the industry and depriving the public of a cheap and clean source of energy. That would be unheard of in today’s Tory—and Liberal—circles where selling off public assets to their private friends is more the paradigm.

For example, look at President and oilman Steve Harper’s Tories preparing to hand over the Internet to Bell, Telus, Rogers, Shaw and other monopolists so they can reap huger profits out of thin air by creating a 2-tier Internet for Canadians on which they can charge tolls. Pure evil. It’s shades of Mike Harris’ gift of Highway 407 to biz types.

Harper is even ready to hand over Canada to the Americans and Mexicans, as we see from his latest in-secret gabfest about a North America open zone with those two parties in late February.

Tories, with many exceptions, of course, come in three tasteless flavours: The Aristocracy, Wannabe Aristocracy, Butlers.

Aristocrats are easy to determine. They’re rich or even super rich, have a sense of entitlement and tout a firm belief that the less restriction government places on their economic activities and desires, the better it is for everyone. Their spending will trickle down. They favour oligopoly or monopoly big business and amongst themselves social ties trump rule of law. It’s all done under the shelter of corporations, their tools of conquest and domination.

Wannabes come in two shades: those under the nurturing umbrella of an Aristocrat, and the vast majority of poor suckers who’ve bought into the Horatio Alger myth and think they have good odds of becoming Aristocrats if they play along, work hard and are deserving.

Butlers are those who serve the Aristocracy in various ways and whose fortunes ride the waves they help Aristocrats to make. It’s rare that a Butler becomes an Aristocrat, but there are some very rich Butlers.

Butlers serve in positions such as lobbyists, public relations flacks, motivators, organizers, pollsters and politicians. Lots of them are lawyers and, of course, CEOs.

In the so-called Liberal Party, Jean Chretien is a Tory Butler. His successor, Tory Paul Martin is an Aristocrat. Reformer Stephen Harper is a Wannabe and perhaps a Liberarian, which is a strange, Green-party-like rightwing hybrid, akin to his dumber soulmate Mike Harris.

What they share are the same knee-jerk reactions that ballooned inside Harris’ pea brain and made him and his handlers the Asses of Evil in Ontario. One of those villains, Jim Flaherty, is a key Butler to Wannabe Harper. Others sit in the hinterlands with John Tory, an Aristocrat.

Out there in the boonies he tosses turd-bombs at another Tory-like character, Dalton McGuinty. While Dalton has done a few good things, like the City of Toronto Act, and has put a few good people in his Cabinet, he has kept the major evils the Harrisites cursed Toronto with, and refuses to give up a single penny of the provincial sales tax to the city that pays the lion’s share of it. He punishes the poor by refusing to raise the minimum wage to a barely livable $10 an hour.

What fuels Aristocrats is cheap labour for their corporations. That’s why they happily import PhDs to drive cabs and flip burgers. You don’t have to be a PhD, though, they’ll take you if you’ve got nothing to offer but a back, a pair of hands and desperation that drives you to accept minimum wage, no benefits and poor working conditions. Just be cheap and be labour.

Though he has created a green belt, McGuinty keeps his developer buddies’ pockets full through his Ontario Municipal Board. Through his lies and contradictions McG has made himself a target that could enable the prince of evil to take command.

That puts Ontario voters in a real mess. Unless McGuinty gives up and lets a real liberal take his place in the Liberal Party—or the Liberals give him up—John Tory could be the next premier of the province.

Forget the NDP. They don’t have an Ontario leader most voters can even name offhand, despite his being leader for years and years. Ed Broadbent? No. That’s not it. Somebody, though. Jack Layton could do it, but he’s clinging by his fingernails in Ottawa.

Tory is a man of big business. What’s good for big business is no good for us. Never can be. What’s good for big business is to maximize profit and minimize costs. To save labour is good for big business. People are an expense. That’s why nobody answers telephones any more in the big business offices. That’s what voicemail hell is all about.

That’s why the monopoly banks (okay, technically an oligopoly) have so many ABMs. (The B is for banking.) Does that acronym sound strange to you? It should. The bankers prefer it over the real one we use: Automated Teller Machines. They are big people savers for the banks. People cost money every day. Machines don’t.

The big business ideal of a bank (or any operation) is to have one part-time person sitting at home pushing one button one minute a day. The rest would be automated.

What’s good for big business is a vast poverty pool always available to do the work cheap and a wealthy consumer sector to buy the products. What isn’t necessary is a middle class.

We don’t seem to have any decent conservatives in power. They would favour a middle class. They would rein in the corporations. They might even take care of the poor at home before sending aid to other countries.