Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jim Stanford thoroughly debunks the tired claim that corporate tax cuts will magically lead to increased investment and economic growth by looking at the actual results of decades of cuts in Canada.

- Meanwhile, it's enough of a plus that we've seen more discussion lately on the need to promote equality rather than accepting growth (concentrated among the wealthy) as the only economic goal worth pursuing. But Toby Sanger points to an IMF study showing that even those who want to focus on growth are best off working to fight inequality.

- It's tough to disagree with Andrew Coyne's take on Tuesday's English debate, particularly as to the strategic box the Libs are now stuck in. But I'll note once again that they could have given themselves a far more coherent position by actively and publicly seeking a place at the head of a coalition, rather than twisting themselves into pretzels trying to pitch a need for cooperation by others but not by themselves in order to work for change.

- Maxwell Cameron challenges Tom Flanagan's attempt to equate politics with war:

(T)he great evolutionary advantage enjoyed by humans arises from our capacity for co-operation, not competition. Great civilizations have never been built on competition alone. The human capacity for empathy, for social problem-solving, and for moral judgment are the foundation of human progress. Without our ability to imitate, collaborate, learn, and understand one another, we would have developed neither language nor tools, neither art nor, indeed, war.

Yet over and again, our public discourse emphasizes conflict and competition over empathy and co-operation. Tom Flanagan’s claim in a recent commentary in The Globe and Mail that “an election is war by other means” is a good example of this bias. Since all is fair in love and war, why should we worry when politicians attack each other, bend or misrepresent the truth, and present themselves, not their ideas, before the electorate? To think otherwise is high-mindedness, says Flanagan.
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When we treat politics like war, our adversaries become enemies. They are no longer collaborators as well as competitors in a struggle to serve the common good, but nuisances or worse. They must be crushed or eliminated. This is indeed a step toward war.

Campaigns are not only about selecting leaders. Our deliberative institutions are weakened when we obsessively focus on the horse race among leaders and ignore the platforms they propose to implement. There is nothing particularly high-minded about the expectation that substantive debate occur around an election. We want to know not only who is going to govern us but also how they are going to govern us.

One of the reasons we are in this election campaign is precisely because of the contempt for Parliament exhibited by a government that does not accept that truth in politics matters and that ministerial responsibility is an inherent and indispensable part of our system of government – a government that thinks it is OK to bully top civil servants into submission, punish whistleblowers, and hide from accountability.

- Finally, Scott Feschuk offers the definitive take on Canada's Ethnic Costume Party government.

- Update: No, the brilliant return of Points of Information hasn't gone unnoticed.