Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- LOLGOP discusses the important role unions play in ensuring widespread freedom and prosperity - and why they're thus target number one for corporatists seeking to hoard more wealth at the top:

When Scott Walker promises to bring his anti-union policies that have help lead Wisconsin to the largest decline in the Middle Class of any state nationally, he’s revealing what’s long been the subtext of the conservative movement. Their goal has always been to trick the middle class to vote itself out of existence, and this requires turning workers against backbone that gives them the ability to stand up to corporate power — unions.
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(H)ow we talk about unions matters. Making workers resentful and jealous of the few of their peers who still have pensions and other elements of job security is key to undermining the most important role unions play as the only advocate of working people who can stare down the corporate America, which has largely copied labor’s organizational efforts with greater resources and results than workers could have ever mustered.
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Embracing labor and greater workplace representation as central to reversing the wealth gap that threatens our economy and stability is the “one thing” that can save as, as labor attorney Thomas Geoghegan argues in his great new book.

This starts by changing how we talk about unions. George Lakoff reminds us to always put their necessity in terms of the value that matters most to Americans: “Unions are about freedom, freedom from corporate servitude and wage slavery, freedom from unsafe working conditions, and the freedom in later life that comes from fair pensions, which are delayed payments for work done earlier in life.”

Studies show this isn’t just good framing. It’s good economics.

- Joseph Brean reports on the alliance forming between organized labour and the environmental movement to develop a sustainable economy. And Marc Lee observes that British Columbia's carbon tax isn't all it's cracked up to be in terms of either economic development or environmental progress.

- Matthew Yglesias points out one more way in which the finance sector is too big for the good of the community, as bank mergers and associated branch closures tend to result in less lending to small businesses.

- Meanwhile, Dylan Matthews discusses Kansas' scheme to ensure that supposed social benefits are in fact converted into bank fees. And Vineeth Sekharan looks at the costs of criminalizing homelessness.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom comments on the role terror figures to play in the Cons' election campaign. And Amanda Connolly reports on the lack of resources needed to provide any oversight for CSIS, whether under C-51 or otherwise.