Friday, July 10, 2015

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- PressProgress makes the case that we can't afford to risk another term of government neglect by the Harper Cons. Jeremy Nuttall discusses how the Cons' fixed election date and anti-social economic policies each figure to cause direct damage to Canada's economy in the course of a downturn. And Michael Harris discusses the utter implausibility of the Cons' spin on the economic and security alike.

- Meanwhile, Sophia Harris tells the stories of a few of the Canadians already suffering the consequences of an anti-worker government. And Roderick Benns interviews Toni Pickard about the complementary roles a fair minimum wage and a basic income could play in improving matters.

- Christian Salmon offers a glimpse into the blackmail of Greece by European creditors - which makes it all the more bewildering and disheartening that the Syriza government seems to be repudiating its anti-austerity mandate after all.

- David Climenhaga wonders how much further the Cons and the Senate will go in seeking to have religious vetted by the federal government.

- Finally, Helaine Olen writes that the cult of self-help is the most dangerous religious movement shaping North American culture. And Bernadette Rabuy and Daniel Kopf make the seemingly obvious connection between poverty and subsequent incarceration:
Our society has, in the name of being tough on crime, made a series of policy choices that have fueled a cycle of poverty and incarceration. We send large numbers of people with low levels of education and low skills to prison, and then when they leave just as penniless as they were when they went in, we expect them to bear the burden of legally-acceptable employment discrimination.

Acknowledging, as this report makes possible, that the people in prison were, before they went to prison, some of the poorest people in this country makes it even more important that we make policy choices that can break the cycle of poverty and incarceration.

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