Monday Morning Links

I'm pretty sure the tabs are multiplying on their own...

- Erin rightly slams Michael Ignatieff's complete reversal on EI - from threatening an election over it just last year, to voting with the Cons to keep the status quo this fall:

(A) modest decline in the unemployment rate reflects an increase in employment, rather than any decrease in unemployment. In both September 2009 and August 2010, 1.5 million Canadians were officially unemployed. By this measure, Ignatieff is flat wrong to claim that “the situation has changed.”

The Liberals had championed lowering the entrance requirement to 360 hours to make EI benefits more accessible. For that proposal, the issue is not total unemployment, but the number of unemployed workers who cannot access benefits.

In September 2009, there were 818,000 EI recipients among 1,549,700 unemployed workers, leaving 731,700 without benefits. In July 2010 (the last month of EI data), there were 672,200 EI recipients out of 1,493,100 unemployed workers, leaving 820,900 without benefits.

So, the problem that the Liberals said they wanted to address has actually gotten worse. Ignatieff’s claim that EI improvements “are no longer required” lacks credibility.

For more from Erin, you can check out his personal blog at Beer with Weir.

- Alison rightly criticizes the Cons and Libs for pushing a free trade agreement with Panama. But while I fully agree with her critiques, let's note that one of them isn't one that the Cons are the least bit concerned with: far from being concerned whether any of our trading partners are seen as tax havens, the Cons want Canada to be branded as one as well.

- Predictably, the Cons' dumb-on-crime measures are doing particularly significant damage to poor and Aboriginal communities. One can practically hear "Yes! Two for two!" echoing from the closed-door meetings.

- And similarly, pogge's criticism of Jason Kenney misses the genius of the Cons' combination of a constant PR campaign about Kenney's busy schedule of political appearances, and an overburdened immigration department which is forcing requests to go through MPs' offices instead. What better way to both keep one's political opponents busy, and set up an argument for junking large swaths of the civil service as ineffective while claiming to personally be doing everything possible?

- Finally, Dan Leger nicely criticizes right-wing parties and politicians in general for offering nothing but simplistic non-solutions to complex problems:

Beyond the anger and cynicism, perhaps the most troubling trend is a growing belief in simple solutions to our confounding problems. Ban the immigrants. Cut taxes. Lower power rates. Dumb down government. Round ‘em up and hang ‘em high. Build more jails. Cut everything except my personal entitlements.

But we should be leery when politicians promise simple solutions to the complex problems of our communities and our country. Complicated matters are rarely sorted out by simple solutions. Yet it’s an undeniable trait of the political right to claim simple solutions for just about everything.

Problem: the long-form census is annoying. Simple solution? Kill it and label anyone who disagrees an elitist. Problem: the long-gun registry is intrusive. Solution? Kill that, too.

Crime on the streets? Build more jails. Not really more crime on the streets? Build the jails anyway. Planet heating up? Close your eyes and it will just go away.

We have all these real-life problems. Do we really think they’re going to be fixed by simplistic solutions, accompanied by lots of screaming?

Sadly, you don’t get rid of a deficit by cutting taxes. You can’t tackle economic stagnation by creating phoney crises over guns and census forms. Any adult can tell you that yelling won’t pay any bills or solve any problems.