Sunday Night Links

This and that to start your week...

- It's worth noting that Jim Prentice's reaction to fish deformities resulting from the tar sands is somewhat out of character for the Cons, consisting more of respectful acknowledgment than of immediate dismissal. But I still won't be holding my breath waiting for the Cons to do anything but stonewall any meaningful study or action.

- Alex Himelfarb comments on the insidious effect of social traps on the course of policy development:

(T)here is a good deal of room to disagree about which priorities merit our tax dollars and which criteria to use to assess what works. This is what politics is all about. But even among those who value a particular program, say public education or medicare, or agree on the value of particular public investments, say greening the economy, there will be tax reluctance if there is no trust. That’s the perfect social trap. We know what is in our shared interest but we do not have sufficient trust to do what is needed. For example, a recent Canadian study demonstrates how much money could be saved through a national pharmacare program, not to mention the benefits to health, productivity and social justice. Some Canadians will of course react with immediate horror at the very idea but, putting this aside for the moment, would those who do embrace the idea be willing to pay more taxes for it? Some will say, yes to the idea but ask, why me for more taxes, why not those who can most afford it or who derive most benefit from the advantages of Canada’s opportunities or who do most damage for example through pollution. Some will say that too many people will exploit the system, overuse it or worse, and I am not going to pay for that. And some will say government simply cannot deliver the goods. No trust. No taxes. Trapped.

And sadly, Colby Cosh is working on ensnaring us all the more thoroughly.

- Michael Geist rightly skewers some "shockingly misleading" copyright propaganda. But aren't we past being shocked by now?

- Rick Salutin's column tracing the Straussian roots of Stephen Harper's political strategy doesn't cover a lot of new ground. But his theory that Canada's political scene might have offered an ideal target is worth some further discussion:

One can see the appeal of Canada to Straussians. The U.S. always had so much fevered religiosity, hypernationalism and paranoid individualism, you hardly needed to seed them there by stealth. Here, though, we still have liberals, Liberals, even social democrats. We may be Straussianism’s happy hunting ground.

And might one add that a relatively civil scene on all sides prior to Harper's ascension made us ripe for manipulation?

- Finally, while the two-party dynamic has once again made it difficult to get traction, the New Brunswick NDP seems to be getting a well-deserved positive reception for its economic plans. And this CBC piece presenting the party's job tax credit is well worth a look - particularly Tony Myatt's closing line: