Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- John Hood discusses how the privilege of the political class makes it difficult for elected representatives to understand, let alone address, the problems of the precariat. And Lawrence Mishel and Will Kimball document the continued connection between the erosion of unions and income inequality.

- Lizzie Dearden reports on one proposal to rein in corporate abuses, as Ed Miliband intends to crack down on tax cheats and the jurisdictions which harbor them. And Carol Linnitt suggests that Canada's public corporations should be required to disclose their political expenditures.

- But unfortunately, the Harper Cons remain stubborn in their insistence on instead using the power of the state solely to attack social justice advocates.

- Lana Payne calls out the Harper Cons for trying to change the subject from real economic failures to imagined security threats. Jeffrey Simpson worries about the treatment of terror as a partisan issue, while Susan Delacourt is particularly concerned about the risks of gross intrusions into civil rights by a government which long since eradicated any trace of independent thought or oversight from its ranks. And after trying to wrongfully lump the opposition parties together before, Thomas Walkom tears into the Libs for their cowardice when it comes to human rights:

Justin Trudeau’s decision to back controversial new anti-terror laws says much about him and his Liberal party.

It says first that the Liberals don’t want to be on the wrong side of what they believe to be public opinion, that they are determined not to be caught flatfooted if Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes national security an election issue.

That is the crassly political element of Trudeau’s acquiescence.

But the party’s decision to vote for Harper’s Bill C-51 shows something else as well.

It shows that the Liberals agree with the Conservatives that civil rights aren’t that important.

- Finally, Doug Saunders connects vaccinations and the census as examples of areas where we should expect to accept minor inconveniences due to the broad social results at stake. Tavia Grant reports that businesses are no less frustrated than policymakers at the self-inflicted lack of accurate data resulting from the shredding of the long-form census. And Adam Radwanski points out how political parties are collecting and crunching more data than ever in trying to reach voters.