Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Thomas Frank interviews Barry Lynn about the U.S.' alarming concentration of wealth and power. Henry Blodget thoroughly rebuts the myth that "rich people create jobs". And David Atkins goes a step further in discussing how hoarded wealth hurts the economy in general - with a particularly apt observation about how inequality erodes our social connections:

It is not an accident that trust in major institutions has declined on a linear track with rising inequality. Study after study has shown that trust in our fellow citizens and in institutions at large are dependent on the level of inequality and corruption in society. This stands to reason: people know when they're getting the short end of the stick, even if they can't agree on why. Conservatives wrongly blame government spending and regulation. Liberals rightly blame disproportionate rewards going to the very wealthy. Not surprisingly, then, high levels of inequality also create strong partisanship within society as politicians and pundits alike ratchet up the rhetoric of blame. As both secular and religious institutions seem equally powerless to address increasing economic and social insecurity, the social fabric begins to fray and people tend to self-segregate in many ways, including politically. Economic tension and social tension tend to go hand in hand.

- And David Sirota writes about the effect of corruption on policy-making - with some all-too-familiar priorities looking like the more sure sign that political decisions are being made based on cronyism rather than the public interest:

One analysis comes from researchers at Indiana University and University of Hong Kong. They compared data from 25,000 convictions in public corruption cases with state spending data. As Governing magazine reports, the researchers document that the most corrupt states like Tennessee “tended to spend money on construction, highways, and police protection programs, which provide more opportunity for corrupt officials to use public money for their own gain.” Governing adds that those “states spend less on health, education, and welfare, which provide less opportunity for officials to collect bribes.”

- Meanwhile, Eric Bombicino wonders whether we're letting our public sector get slashed precisely because it does its job effectively:

(A)pathy, like happiness or love or suicide, is a complex thing with many sources, but based on my highly scientific process of talking to people at parties and coffee shops over the last two weeks, I’ve noticed a particular sort of apathy emerge:

 

I call it, “things are working” apathy.

 

“Look man, democracy is working for me, my garbage gets picked up, roads are in decent repair, and I can walk into a hospital and get an operation in a relatively short period of time: things are working.” Fair point, and an interesting one: the success of democracy has afforded some the luxury of apathy.

...

Over the weekend, an old high school buddy, after notifying me of his apathy because “things are working,” took me through a lengthy diatribe on the one political viewpoint he does hold: how much his small business pays in taxes. After this riveting session on payroll taxes and deductibles explained in mind-numbingly unnecessary detail, I asked him what level of taxation he would find fair. 

 

He repeated his earlier point: it needs to be lower, the government “takes” (read: confiscates) too much of his money. I then pointed out that since he wanted lower taxation across the board, he would want less government and government services. A perfectly defensible position…if you want less government.

 

He said he loves those things the Canadian government provides: healthcare, education, infrastructure, the social safety net. (In fact, they all play a role in the foundation of his apathy: that “things are working.”) 

 

We then stared at each other for a long time. He took a sip of his drink. And then repeated he was paying too much in taxes.

 

I found this fascinating. He didn’t want less government; he didn’t see small government as equaling a bigger economy. He simply wanted lower taxes. Full stop. No belief system or ideology is at play here; just a void of ignorance.

 

The irony here is plainly cruel. This void of ignorance created by his contentment with how “things are working” motivates him to want to destroy those very things.

- But Stephen Pimpare notes that upwards of a third of U.S. households have faced poverty in just a three-year span from 2009 to 2011, meaning that there isn't much distance between a large number of people and the worst effects of corporatist policy. Which makes it all the more inexplicable that policy based on hatred of the poor still seems to be the norm - as Kim Redigan points out in response to Detroit's mass disconnections of people from their municipal water source.

- Finally, Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob rightly lambaste the Harper Cons for their nonsensical crime and justice policies. And Hannah Spray's story on Trevor Machiskinic offers a compelling example where mandatory punishments and inflexible precedents lead to an obviously flawed result based on the background to an offence.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Jason Warick reports on how the Cons' decison to gut federal environmental assessments will have a particularly acute effect on Saskatchewan:

The federal government has cancelled nearly 700 environmental assessments in Saskatchewan for oil wells and pipelines, sewage lagoons, hydro projects, a major uranium tailings facility and other operations.

Saskatchewan is by far the province most affected by the cancellation of nearly 3,000 assessments nationwide.

“It’s extremely significant,” said Bram Noble, a University of Saskatchewan geography professor who has years of experience teaching and conducting national environmental assessments.

“It’s a lot to be concerned about. It’s the only tool we have.”

Noble called the decision to scrap the assessments “unprecedented” and “a step backward.”

- Meanwhile, Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob duly call out the Cons for a dumb-on-crime mindset that's focused solely on marketing rather than public safety or crime reduction. 

- In the wake of Neil Armstrong's passing this weekend, David Atkins contrasts the mindset behind the moon landing against today's utter lack of a sense of greater common purpose:

His walk on the moon was the result of thousands of individuals working tirelessly to bring the impossible to fruition, and the result of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars (in today's money) to make one of humanity's oldest dreams come true. For that reason, we can all share in Neil's accomplishment even if only by proxy. Or at least, those of us who were alive at the time can do so. Of my generation I'm not so certain, though I would state emphatically the blame does not lie with us.

Neil's was an accomplishment undertaken at a time when we still believed we were capable of great things. A time when the common good and furtherance of the human spirit were more important than personal greed. A time when a President could utter the phrase "Ask not what your Country can do for you, but what you can do for your Country" and not be mocked for his optimism.

It was a time before Reagan. Before "Greed is Good." It was a time when a President could truly declare a "War on Poverty" without ridicule. Before the drabness of "Welfare Reform" became the sort of meager and churlish thing the press would hail as forward-thinking and bold.

It was a time when the health and wealth of the nation was seen as bound up in the heights to which our science, learning, and social justice could aspire. It was a time before we allowed our collective health and wealth to be measured by as meaningless, lackluster and empty a symbol as the the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

...
My generational cohorts and I know nothing but this. This all too petty, all too drab, all too villainous smallness of being. It is time for moral and spiritual rebirth.

So rest in peace, Neil Armstrong. And may my generation begin the process of rebuilding the greatness that took you to such exalted heights, and repairing the damage wrought by the Reagan Devolution. 

- Finally, Ta-Nehisi Coates' commentary on the state of race relations in the U.S. is well worth the (relatively lengthy) read.

Those pesky facts

Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob take the Cons and their apologists to task for ignoring and/or misrepresenting the reality of decreasing crime levels in Canada:

Everyone wants to reduce crime and use resources effectively. But the Conservative government’s “tough on crime” agenda would have you believe that crime is increasing and can only be reduced by using tougher penalties. This assertion is wrong, as is a study by an Ottawa-based think tank that reviewed the 2009 Statistics Canada report on crime.

The study, by former Alberta Crown attorney Scott Newark for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, suggests that violent crime is increasing, contrary to the Statscan report and all reasoned examinations of existing data. Mr. Newark’s study is filled with problems: It compares figures that can’t be compared. It presents figures that are inaccurate. And it ignores evidence supporting the conclusion that crime is, in fact, decreasing.
...
It’s easy to make crime look as though it’s going up if one provides numbers that are wrong or misleading. Mr. Newark offers what he calls “youth violent crime” for three years and shows “rates per 100,000” for these years: 956 (for 2001), 1,498 (for 2004) and 1,887 (for 2008). He then concludes there’s been a 100-per-cent increase in youth violent crime.

The data from the Statscan report he’s critiquing are in Column 3. Mr. Newark’s starting point (2001) is clearly wrong; he says in his table that the number is 956 (rather than 1,957, the true number), thereby supporting his erroneous conclusion that there’s been a large increase in youth violent crime. Had he reproduced the correct figures for these years in his table, one couldn’t conclude that the youth violent crime rate had gone up.
...
It appears that for people such as Mr. Newark, Statistics Canada is never wrong as long as it reports that crime rates are increasing. If it says crime is decreasing, then it’s never right. The fact of the matter is that crime rates have nothing to do with tougher laws or harsher sentencing. The fact is that crime rates go up and down. In recent years, they’ve gone down.