Sunday Morning Links

Content goes here.

- No wonder the Cons have fought so hard to suppress their Statement of Operational Requirements for F-35 fighter jets. After all, who would want to have to justify leaving out the part about engines?

- For more on the passing of Allan Blakeney, you'll find Malcolm's take here.

- Memo to Jessica Earle and anybody else buying the spin that a cap-and-trade system is political poison in Quebec: you'll want to check whether your sources said the same about the Cons' promise of the exact same thing in 2008. And if not, then you're peddling partisan spin rather than meaningful analysis.

[Update: See Kate Heartfield for an example of how it's done. Though the words "blatant lie" might be necessary for a truly descriptive story.]

- Finally, Armine Yalnizyan rightly criticizes the cult of zero when it comes to corporate taxes:

Corporations benefit from public policy, public institutions and public services, without which profits would be far, far lower.

If the argument is that corporations should pay nothing for these privileges and benefits, it’s like saying they have rights but no responsibilities. And that flies against every principle of justice society holds dear.

A revolutionary war was fought and a nation was formed on the principle of “no taxation without representation”.

You can try, but any theory that suggests it is in the public interest for the most powerful entities in society to have representation without taxation is unlikely to pass the sniff test of democracy.

But while it's worth pointing out the extremes being demanding by the tax-slashing brigade, I'd think it's even more important to highlight the need for a real alternative.

After all, the main argument for perpetual corporate tax cuts is apparently that higher corporate tax rates in one jurisdiction might lead big businesses to shift their profits elsewhere to avoid it. But that does indeed lead to perpetually diminishing returns for every single jurisdiction competing for businesses.

That makes for a classic prisoner's dilemma which can only be solved through collective trust and action. So let's start pushing back with a call for to establish uniform corporate tax rates among the world's developed economies which eliminate the incentive to shift paper money around - lest the cult of zero otherwise make that the default rate.

[Edit: fixed wording.]