See This? Journalist Chrystia Freeland Revolves Into Canadian Parliament Seat

November 26th, 2013 11:09 AM

Former Reuters editor and American TV pundit Chrystia Freeland has been elected to the Canadian Parliament -- Liberal Party, of course. Freeland's last Reuters blog was in mid-July, and Time reported her surprise campaign at the end of that month. She grew up in Alberta, and carpet-bagged to Toronto for a special election. Her latest book came out in September and was gushed over by Bill Moyers. It  was titled "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else."

"The results tonight in Toronto Centre and across the country show that the Liberal party is the alternative to the Conservative party," she said following her victory speech late Monday.

CTV News reported Freeland defeated New Democratic Party rival Linda McQuaig, with Freeland winning with 49.1 percent of the votes to McQuaig's 36.4 percent, with Conservative candidate Geoff Pollock trailing far behind at 8.7 percent.

"Income inequality has been a big theme in the race, with both Freeland and McQuaig having tackled the topic in their writings," they added.

Freeland sounded those notes a few years ago on Bill Maher's HBO show:

First, she denounced Ron Paul’s economics: "There is this very extremist economic view, they call it the Austrian School – ‘these companies got in trouble, we should be absolutist free marketeers.’ But would you like to live in a country where economic activity ground to a halt? I think it’s too risky an operation to try."

That’s not to say Freeland wasn’t for a radical solution, but she wanted it to be socialist. "We have an insufficiently radical economic policy, particularly vis a vis the banking sector," as she wished for nationalization.

Then, after she praised the president for talking in dark terms about the economy, she followed with this stunning journalistic admission: "It’s important to prepare the ground for radical government action. It’s a radical problem....It’s really time for the government to come in and radically clean things up, and that’s what people were expecting Obama to do."