Merry Marxists and salivating socialists are obsessed with ?new deals?. In any major speech, platform appearance or budget proposal, the happy class warriors usually revert back to type and propose ?new deals? to ensure equality, love, compassion, and to protect the values of [insert nation state, region or city here], or communal ?justice?. The ?new deal? is of course an old fantasy. New deal proposals are a sure sign that the person introducing the concept is another power-mongering, classless class-warrior, intent on expanding government and unaccountable powers. The term ?new deal? is just a nice moniker to hide the grasping claw of left wing mismanagement.



The constant recycling of the ?new deal? idea never seems to wear thin with the general public. This is due to educational and media disinformation. Left wing revisionist historians and academics still implausibly maintain that FDR's ?new deal? in the 1930s stimulated the US economy, and relieved unemployment, spurring the US out of the recession. From this anti-historical rewriting springs the ?new deal? ethos.

Sounds good except FDR's old socialist ?new deal? was a disaster. Unemployment in 1938 was the same as it was in 1930 and GDP had shrunk by 10 %. By investing huge government resources, blindly supporting welfare and workfare programs, increasing markedly all rates of taxation and erecting huge bureaucracies to regulate, staff and monitor all supply and demand activity, FDRs government combined with bad macro-economic policy ensured that the US economy remained in a recession. The same failed initiatives drove LBJs ?Great Society Programs? and Canada's own welfare revolution during the 60s and 70s. These ?new deals? were nothing more than just old failed experiments in Marxist cultural and political ideology.

But every year, some politician, somewhere has a got a ?new deal?. This ?new deal? fever afflicts populists at all levels from Hillary Clinton, to Stephanie [or Stephane] Dion, to local and regional politicians all angling for the ?I love you? vote.

Toronto as the socialist mecca of a divided and left wing nation is of course no exception. Every year David Miller Toronto's Harvard trained Marxist Mayor [what is with the Ivy League and dimwit production?], outlines his ?new deal?. In the words of the cultural Marxist mayor himself, ?We're better off (than last year) ... the New Deal funding is helping?? Miller is referring to an ever rising budget [now over $8 billion]; funded by escalating taxation, fees and transfers from residents of other cities to Toronto. Some new deal. Seems like a raw deal to the average voter, especially those living outside the city.

What does Miller's ?new deal[s]? consist of?

-City spending has increased by about $975 million since 2001

-$625 million of the increased spend has come thanks to one-time bailouts from the Province

-$350 million of the increased spend is due to increased property taxes

In 2007 Toronto's debt which stands at over $2.6 Billion, will go up by $491 million within 2 years. More taxes and fees will surely follow to pay off the increased interest on this debt.

So what is new in Toronto's socialist ?new deal?? Not much. As with all new-dealers the old and tired socialist council in Toronto can't find any fat in the budget to glibly slice off and dispense with. Apparently no efficiencies, programs, bureaucrats or subsidies can be cut. Toronto has hired 8.000 more un-civil servants in the past 4 years ? from the burgeoning immigration population ? and now has over 60.000 bureaucrats in its city hall to manage 2.5 million people. The city of Pittsburgh has on a per capita basis by comparison, ? of this amount. Downtown Pittsburgh is for the record a lot cleaner and safer than downtown Toronto.

An increase in government size does not mean a wealthier, safer and better city. Crime is up in Toronto and the city possesses a total crime rate 2x above the US average for US major cities [though homicides are lower]. The city is dirty, littered with homeless, garbage and drenched in urine [no public toilets exist]. The entire eastern section of downtown, which should be a thriving residential and business center, is riven with drugs, prostitution and homeless institutions crammed together, sometimes side by side [which breaks municipal law]. The police call a major street running near to the downtown core ?drug alley?. It is a cesspool of subsidized housing, government created ghettos and rundown buildings.

The homeless industry which now consumes $200 million in each year's budget is too large to attack. Too many individuals, groups and businesses make money off of the homeless charade and budget parade, ensuring that the city will do nothing to solve the problem and will continue to shovel more money into providing housing, blankets, wine and cigarettes for those on the streets. The impact on local businesses and residents is of course unimportant.

Unions dominate the city's workforce, and political campaigns, making any effort at business re-engineering or efficiency management impossible. Very few local politicians are elected without union support and money. Services that should be contracted-out will never be privatized thanks to union contracts and political guarantees. This ensures that no budget relief for key services such as garbage collection and infrastructure management will ever be realized. The taxpayer pays for this privilege through higher taxes and inefficient services ? including a ridiculously impoverished infrastructure and metro system.

The media is uniformly [with one exception], behind the notion of the caring mommy-state routinely supporting local politicians who conform to socialist Canada's definition of civilization. For the Toronto media anything outside of their narrow minded socialist world is to be rejected. Reforms of any stripe ? school vouchers, tax reductions, budget cuts, privatization, more transparency in government, referenda etc. ? are hysterically portrayed as ?American?. Considering that the American state is too large and pervasive and largely inefficient, it is hard to understand this hyperbolic and demonized accusation.

And here is the great lie behind Toronto's constant and insecure chattering about its ?greatness?. Toronto is only great if your point of reference is Niagara Falls or Thunder Bay. By world standards Toronto is a middling midget. In reality it is a service center for the US market competing with far larger and in some cases, far better organized regional city-states like Calgary, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Columbus, Memphis and even regional centers as far away as Dallas. In other words Toronto needs to compete not just with its suburban area, but with other regional centers which act as entrepots to service markets in North America ? irregardless of borders.

By disavowing market friendly policies; raising taxation; being soft on crime and pandering to unions, Toronto is sowing the seeds of massive competitive disadvantage. Its latent strengths ? skilled labor, a deep financial and capital pool, lots of entrepreneurs, access to the US market ? need to be enhanced, not dulled. What the happy new-dealers in Toronto and beyond never comprehend is that to enhance societal welfare means limited government, market solutions and low taxes. It is hard to see how these policies will infiltrate the socialist mentality ? narrow minded and cheap as it is ? that governs Canada's most important city-state.

Pity. In the meantime the productive continue to leave with 10.000 jobs lost each year to the hinterland or other more competitive regional centers. This exodus will only accelerate as the doers of society move on to friendlier climes. Yes sometimes Atlas does shrug.