Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Andrew Coyne's proposal for a Truth in Politics Act offers an interesting way of trying to hold politicians to their promises. But surely our current federal political scene offers the most obvious lesson as to why it would likely be ineffective.

After all, the Harper Cons have responded to every allegation of wrongdoing - however well-founded - by attacking the messenger and claiming that any attempt to hold them to account is politically motivated. And is there much doubt that anybody looking to enforce a campaign promise would immediately face exactly the same type of abuse, dragging the entire system into the same hyperpartisan political ground where the Cons so love to operate?

- Roy Romanow contrasts the pursuit of limitless resource exploitation with the choice to encourage sustainable well-being:

On Thursday, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing releases a report tracking trends in Canada’s environmental performance from 1994 to 2009. My hope is that it will empower Canadians to say, “For God’s sake, put the brakes on and turn the wheel” because we can no longer accept — in this country or any other — the degradation stemming from our seemingly endless and unsustainable appetite for fossil fuels, water, metals and energy. The notion of limitless growth is no longer a viable economic paradigm.
...
Fortunately, we Canadians are not caught up in some form of predetermined drift, rushing headlong toward an inescapable future. We have the collective capacity to shape our future, to decide which values we will embrace, which visions we will pursue and which policy decisions we will enact.

But preserving our natural resources and improving our environment for future generations will require more far-sighted policies and enforcement by government, better stewardship by industry and lifestyle changes by individuals.

- Kevin Milligan's analysis of the cost of the Cons' plan to hand yet more money to those who need it least is well worth a read. But Milligan's analysis does fall into the trap of focusing needlessly on the over/under line rather than the distribution of benefits on the income scale - and just as an increase in the number of people below the income-tax cutoff does absolutely nothing for those already there, so too does the line at which a household could put all of its assets into a TFSA a look rather insignificant to Canadians without plenty of capital assets to move into a plan in the first place.

[Update: I should have known Armine Yalnizyan would already be on the case.]

- I'll temper Dan Gardner's latest by noting that at least some repetition for effect and clarity isn't necessarily a bad thing: indeed, the principle of "say what you're going to say, say it, then say what you've said" is well-established in plenty of arenas beyond the political one without any implication that the audience is being held in contempt. But he's right to note the absurd lengths to which the concept has been applied, particularly on the faux populist right.

- Finally, James Laxer nicely summarizes the limited group of voters who the Cons want to see at the polls - and why we can't afford to let them succeed in driving others away:

Here’s the profile of those they’d like to see at the polls: white men over fifty, especially those who don’t spend much time in city centres; Christian fundamentalists; those in “ethnic” communities who have been vetted by Jason Kenney (a leaked memo exposed the Conservative plan to harvest votes from those they depict as “ethnics”); gun owners; youngish neo-cons who want to grow up to be like David Frum (not a large demographic); and, of course the rich, as well as those who think they will be rich. Women are generally unreliable; and the young are a downright menace. If you’re under twenty-five, Harper almost certainly wants you to pass on voting. Look what happened to the nineteen year old woman who was muscled out of a Harper rally because Conservative spooks found a picture of her on Facebook side by side with Michael Ignatieff.
...
Lower voter turnout is not just a lucky break for the Conservatives. Right-wing political parties have been assiduously working to lower voter turnout in Canada, the U.S. and Europe for several decades. While running for office, the leaders of these parties denigrate government, those who work for governments and the benefits to society that flow from government programs. They promote the idea that politicians are cynics who are “all the same”, “in it for themselves” and “not to be trusted.” (The rich, who DO vote, know that whatever the ethical merits of those who hold leadership positions of right-wing parties, they can always be counted on to back business against labour and to spend billions bailing out the banks when that is required.)

Negative advertising, it has long been known, has the effect of driving down voter turnout in the electorate at large.

No, Stephen Harper does not want YOU to vote. His plan is to tranquilize the majority of Canadians into a state of torpor while he takes complete control of the instruments of the Canadian state.