Run Rabbit, Run Rabbit:
Harper & Campbell – Culling for Capital
by Tim Pheotist

Many  readers will recognize this little ditty – albeit your angry economist has taken liberties with the villain.

Actually I’m not the first to adjust this lyric. It was used in WW11 to satirize Adolph Hitler and became a very effective jab at that era’s particular political monster.  In your writer’s mind Premier Campbell’s budgetary guns have replaced the original unfriendly farmer’s blunderbuss, featured in the original lyric. Full credits are noted at the end of this piece.
 
So what’s with the rabbits?  Not an obvious econometric model animal you might observe.

But, at least for sleepy Victoria, and perhaps for Mr. Campbell’s vision of British Columbia, rabbits make rather bitter economic stew for many, at the moment.

The culling of the rabbit population on the UVic campus – now rather old news – featured images of heartless administrators devising ways of dooming the burrowing bunnies to certain death.

A rabbit holocaust, no less, and all for the sake of a tidier balance sheet.

Harking back to the WW11 version of the song for a moment, many have found a certain bossiness pervades university administrations these days, which would not be out of place with fabled German methodical efficiencies – but that’s a stew for another day.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I don’t seek to trivialize the atrocities that necessitated the allied responses to Hitler’s madness or to unfairly impugn modern day Germany.

But, unfortunately and increasingly in the developed world, modern day parallels can be drawn, and usually in the name of economic purity. Can we call it Economic Cleansing?

Just as David Turpin, UVic president, looks to efficiently cull his rabbit population, so we see the same instinct to cull in the administration of Premier Gordon Campbell – and let’s not leave out Prime Minister Stephen Harper – economist extraordinaire.

The difference is that the policies of Campbell and Harper are intended to cull people – not rabbits.

The cuts in social and medical services will surely kill Canadian citizens.

The cuts in educational services and increased costs of higher education will certainly deny much of our intellectual talent the opportunity to contribute to Canada’s future. The loss of this talent will cost future lives.

The promotion and support for unelected private medical P3 entities provide private profit a longterm license to kill Canadians.

If this economic culling doesn’t kill people the exercise in cost saving will have failed.

In short the plans of Harper and Campbell are designed to kill significant segments of the population.

Deficit reduction requires population reduction. It’s that simple. When you read that services must be cut to reduce deficit spending, understand that ‘services’ must be read for many as ‘life sustaining necessities’.

The individual citizen, now, must have a viable and positive economic value or must be regarded as nothing more than a ‘cost’.  Many of the population are ‘costs’. That’s a fact of life that has always been with us and always will be. What to do? Harper/Campbell like the ‘culling’ solution. Do you?

Any business person can tell you that it’s easy to polish up the balance sheet if debt and costs are eliminated. But business doesn’t work that way.

In the Harper/Campbell world things are different.

Debt and costs are identified as ‘services’ utilized by the population. Thus much of the ‘cost’ of government can be reduced by ensuring a reduction in the population.

This isn’t a new trick. Wartime economies rely on generational culling. Post war economies rely on selective reduction of services to costly segments of the population. If the budgetary knife is used as a scalpel the theory is that selective, quality regeneration will once again afford positive economic growth. This strategy has never worked and will never work. It leads to societal breakdown and inevitable mass destruction.

Look at the disturbances in today’s world – all born of economic inequality.

The Harper/Campbell campaign theme, emblazoned on their election banners must be – ‘CULLING FOR CAPITAL’

These economic models are inhumane and the time has come to dump them in favour of policies that serve and protect the population in its entirety.

We must stop governing to serve the interests of private profit. We must revalue human labour and reduce capital control.

Back to the rabbits, then. Your angry economist believes there is a better way of living with rabbits – or other wild-life for that matter – than killing and culling.

Certainly our human population should never again be a target of economic culling – and that is exactly what our current Canadian governments have in mind for many of us.

So, think rabbits and understand that the farmer’s got a gun and is looking to put you in his pie.

What are you going to do? Fight back or run?
*From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Run Rabbit Run is a song written by Noel Gay and Ralph Butler. The music was by Noel Gay and the song was originally sung by Flanagan and Allen.

This song was written for Noel Gay's show 'The Little Dog Laughed' which opened on 11 October 1939, at a time when most of the major London theatres were closed. It was a popular song during World War II, especially after Flanagan and Allen changed the lyrics to poke fun at the Germans (eg. Run Adolf, Run Adolf, Run, Run, Run...)