Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Shield reports on the development of a new COVID-19 variant which is becoming dominant in Saskatchewan, while Zak Vescera highlights how public health experts are refuting the Moe government's spin about not being provided reasonable options to limit the catastrophic fourth wave. And Shannon Proudfoot discusses how the pandemic (and the decision to treat it as over for the purposes of people without real family responsibilities) has been breaking parents left to navigate it on their own. 

- Bruce Arthur writes that booster shots will help the effort to contain COVID, but won't represent a panacea any more than the first round of vaccinations. And Vidya Krishnan reminds us of the need to stop prioritizing big pharma's profits over global access to vaccines if we want to get the pandemic under control. 

- Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt write that climate activists have been waiting politely and playing nice far too long while rapacious fossil fuel barons and their political lackeys set our planet on fire. Kate Aronoff responds to Barack Obama as he tries to put the onus for climate action on the activists he ignored - or even implicitly treated as his adversaries - while in power. Yanis Varoufakis argues that the Glasgow climate summit has failed due to a focus on distant and empty "net zero" targets. 

- Karl Nerenberg reports on Oxfam's push to tax the rich in the interest of both economic and environmental justice. 

- Armine Yalnizyan, Laurell Ritchie, Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Pat Armstrong discuss the work that needs to be done at the federal level to build a functional and effective care economy. And the CCPA's alternative federal budget reminds us again how the federal government could develop a just and equitable society if it wanted to make the effort. 

- Finally, Anastasia French, Craig Pickthorne and Christine Saulnier write that a living wage is an essential element of any genuine economic recovery. 

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Jason Warick reports on Steven Lewis' blunt conclusion that Scott Moe and his government have been "really stupid" in taking "half-assed" steps in response to the fall wave of COVID-19. And Adam Hunter contrasts Moe's refusal to consider any meaningful steps to control the spread of COVID-19 in the name of the economy against the recognition by actual economists that nobody benefits from uncontrolled outbreaks.

- Patricia Treble points out the consequences of Alberta's failure to accept the advice of doctors that the province needed a "circuit breaker" to avert what's now the worst outbreak in Canada. Susan Wright takes note of Jason Kenney's choice to hide as case loads explode under his failed leadership. And Taylor Lambert discusses why Kenney is fixated on a provincial contact tracing app which has produced virtually no results at a cost of a million dollars and counting, rather than the federal one which is fully functional and free for his province to use. 

- Michael Laxer writes that while Doug Ford is using the language of a "lockdown" to try to claim credit for action, he's actually doing little more than allowing big business to keep operating while shutting down anything smaller and locally owned. And PressProgress documents Brian Pallister's apparent belief that the media should do his job in developing a pandemic plan.

- And with conservative premiers showing their utter inability to deal with problems which require effective government action, Tom Parkin makes the case for the federal government to step into the breach.

- Finally, Ian Welsh discusses the crucial difference between enemies and friends in the political sphere. And that distinction maps closely onto Luke Savage's warning that the Biden administration can't repeat Barack Obama's errors in primarily serving and appeasing the corporate class, rather than fighting for the people whose interests have long been neglected in the halls of power.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Peter Whoriskey examines how inequality is becoming increasingly pronounced among U.S. seniors. And Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson discuss how inequality contributes to entrenching social divisions:

The toll which inequality exacts from the vast majority of society is one of the most important limitations on the quality of life – particularly in developed countries.  It damages the quality of social relations essential to life satisfaction and happiness. Numerous studies have shown that community life is stronger in more equal societies.  People are more likely to be involved in local groups and voluntary organisations.  They are more likely to feel they can trust each other, and a recent study has shown that they are also more willing to help each other – to help the elderly or disabled.  But as inequality increases, trust, reciprocity and involvement in community life all atrophy.  In their place – as numerous studies have shown – comes a rise in violence, usually measured by homicide rates.  In short, inequality makes societies less affiliative and more antisocial. 

If you look at some of the most unequal societies such as South Africa or Mexico, it is clear from the way that houses are barricaded, with bars on windows and doors and fences and razor wire round gardens, that people are frightened of each other.  That is dramatically confirmed by a quite different indication of exactly the same process: studies have shown that in more unequal societies a higher proportion of a society’s labour force is employed in what is classified as ‘guard labour’ – that is security staff, police, prisons officers etc.. Essentially, these are the occupations people use to protect themselves from each other.  
...
Important to understanding the effects of inequality is the way it affects mental health.  An international study has shown that more unequal societies have higher levels of status anxiety – not just among the poor, but at all income levels, including the richest decile.  Living in societies where some people seem extremely important and others are regarded as almost worthless does indeed make us all more worried about how we are seen and judged.  There are two very different ways people can respond to these worries.  They may respond by feeling overcome by a lack of confidence, self-doubt and low self-esteem, so that social gatherings feel too stressful and are seen as ordeals to be avoided and people retreat into depression.  Alternatively, and yet usually still a response to the same insecurities, people may go in for a process of self-enhancement or self-advertisement, trying to big themselves up in other’s eyes.  Instead of being modest about their achievements and abilities, they flaunt them, finding ways of bringing references into conversation of almost anything which helps them present themselves as capable and successful. 
...

But the real tragedy of this is not simply the costs of so much additional security or the human costs in terms of increasing violence.  It is, as research makes very clear, that social involvement and the quality of social relations, friendship and involvement in community life, are powerful determinants of both health and happiness.  Inequality strikes at the foundations of the quality of life.  Status insecurity and competition makes social life more stressful: we worry increasingly about self-presentation and how we are judged. Instead of the relationships of friendship and reciprocity which add so much to health and happiness, inequality means we prop ourselves up with narcissistic purchases or withdraw from social life.  Though this suits business and sales, it is not a sound basis for learning to live within the planetary boundaries.  

-  Dr. Dawg, the Star's editorial board and Sadiya Ansari each criticize the Quebec Libs' bigoted attack on women who wear niqabs. And Emmett Macfarlane highlights why Bill 62's deliberate discrimination isn't likely to survive a challenge in court.

- Danyaal Raza offers some lessons for the U.S. from his experience working in Canada's health care system. And Gillian Steward writes that Donald Trump's actions to strip health insurance from Americans shows how important it is that Canada didn't settle for anything less than universality.

- Meanwhile, Ian Welsh argues that Barack Obama missed an important opportunity to reshape the U.S.' economy through both stimulus legislation and executive action.

- Finally, Susan Scutti reports on new research showing that exposure to air pollution in the womb has life-long consequences for a person's health. And Bob Weber reports on new research showing that methane releases from Alberta's oil industry may be far worse than previously assumed.

New column day

Here, on the need for progressive leaders and activists alike to build connections beyond borders and party lines to combat a reactionary movement which spans the globe.

For further reading...
- Sam Kriss discusses how the systematic stifling of the left has given rise to the toxic politics of the right.
- Demi Lee points out why the environmental movement has every reason to fear the new pipeline alliance of Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump.
- Rowena Mason and Peter Walker report on Barack Obama's potshots at Jeremy Corbyn, together with Corbyn's response.
- Andrew Prokop examines the contest between Keith Ellison and Tom Perez for chair of the Democratic National Committee - and notes that it largely stands to exacerbate the divide between primary supporters of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
- Julia Rampen highlights some of the connections between Trump, Nigel Farage and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber spanning both sides of the Atlantic.
- Finally, in pointing out the importance of working collectively toward common goals, I'll also note the danger of letting outside voices create splits where none exist - and Gillian Steward's attempt to paint disagreement on a single policy as an irreparable faultline within the NDP fits into that category. 

Surprise, surprise

Brad Wall's publicly-funded lobbying to sell Alberta oil in the U.S. (while ignoring the needs of the province which he actually leads) has proven to be as successful as it was well-thought-out. This should come as a shock to precisely nobody.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Following up on this post, it was Terry Glavin who broke the story about refugee children dying after being refused admission into Canada. And the Guardian recognizes that the tragic image of Aylin Kurdi represents only a reminder of a a long-running human tragedy.

- Which is why Canada's treatment of newcomers was already emerging as a significant issue - with Harsha Walia rightly slamming the Cons' policy of jailing refugees and favouring temporary immigration. And Jason Kenney's response was to offer spin which was readily debunked by his government's own numbers.

- Zi-Ann Lum reports on another international embarrassment for Canada, as Barack Obama and John Kerry are calling out the Cons for refusing to take climate change seriously.

- Jeremy Nuttall examines how a recession and continued economic stagnation will affect different segments of Canadian society. And Trish Hennessy offers ten reasons why nobody should be taking Stephen Harper's economic advice, while Andrew Jackson makes the case for more investment as the best way to move us back toward real development.

- Finally, Frances Russell repurposes the Cons' "Stand Up for Canada" slogan as a compelling reason to vote Harper and company out of office.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Amy Goodman discusses Barack Obama's call to reverse the spread of inequality in the U.S. And Seumas Milne writes that the effort will inevitably challenge the world oligarchs have built up to further their own wealth and power at everybody else's expense:

In most of the world, labour’s share of national income has fallen continuously and wages have stagnated under this regime of privatisation, deregulation and low taxes on the rich. At the same time finance has sucked wealth from the public realm into the hands of a small minority, even as it has laid waste the rest of the economy. Now the evidence has piled up that not only is such appropriation of wealth a moral and social outrage, but it is fuelling social and climate conflict, wars, mass migration and political corruption, stunting health and life chances, increasing poverty, and widening gender and ethnic divides.

Escalating inequality has also been a crucial factor in the economic crisis of the past seven years, squeezing demand and fuelling the credit boom. We don’t just know that from the research of the French economist Thomas Piketty or the British authors of the social study The Spirit Level. After years of promoting Washington orthodoxy, even the western-dominated OECD and IMF argue that the widening income and wealth gap has been key to the slow growth of the past two neoliberal decades. The British economy would have been almost 10% larger if inequality hadn’t mushroomed. Now the richest are using austerity to help themselves to an even larger share of the cake.
...
Perhaps a section of the worried elite might be prepared to pay a bit more tax. What they won’t accept is any change in the balance of social power – which is why, in one country after another, they resist any attempt to strengthen trade unions, even though weaker unions have been a crucial factor in the rise of inequality in the industrialised world.

It’s only through a challenge to the entrenched interests that have dined off a dysfunctional economic order that the tide of inequality will be reversed. The anti-austerity Syriza party, favourite to win the Greek elections this weekend, is attempting to do just that – as the Latin American left has succeeded in doing over the past decade and a half. Even to get to that point demands stronger social and political movements to break down or bypass the blockage in a colonised political mainstream. Crocodile tears about inequality are a symptom of a fearful elite. But change will only come from unrelenting social pressure and political challenge.

- Meanwhile, Helena Smith sees the public revolt against ill-advised austerity in Greece as the first step in pushing back.

- Lisa McKenzie discusses the vilification of the working class in the UK. And Carol Goar notes that Canada's workers of all classes see little hope of improving their lives with time and effort:

It is true that the 52 per cent of Canadians who describe themselves as middle class are concerned about their jobs, their ability to pay their bills, their lack of retirement savings and their children’s prospects. The Liberal leader has put his finger on a real problem.

But it is bigger than he thinks. A substantial chunk of the adult population — 45 per cent — is trapped below the middle class. They think they’re stuck there for life, no matter how hard they work.

“The key finding (of the poll) is that Canadians have very low confidence in their social mobility,” Worden said. “They don’t think they can move up.”

- Finally, Delavene Diaz examines some of the economic costs of climate change. And Alison shines a spotlight on the National Energy Board members recruited by the Harper Cons to impose as many of those costs as possible on Canada in the name of oil extraction, while Andy Blatchford reports on what our federal and provincial governments are losing in their bets on fossil fuels.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Bill Maher offers some simple math and important observations about inequality:



- And Gary Engler proposes ten ways to build a better economic system.

- Vanessa Brcic points out that corporatized medicine is as unethical as it is inefficient. And Garry Patterson laments the premiers' weak response to the Harper Cons' attacks on health care.

- Dean Beeby reports that the CRA's investigation of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is focused squarely on the question of whether the CCPA is adequately complying with the Cons' definition of rightthink, while Dr. Dawg is duly appalled. And I'll also point out that the CCPA example surely answers Matt Gurney's rhetorical questions about CRA bias: surely it can't be anything but a gross abuse of power if Canada's tax authority is conducting investigations which respond solely to the concerns of Stephen Harper's former staffers (who may themselves have had inside knowledge that such complaints would be met with new money).

- Meanwhile, Shelina Ali discusses how anti-SLAPP legislation can help to ensure a genuine exchange of ideas despite corporate attempts to silence criticism.

- Finally, the Star writes about Barack Obama's push for global action against climate change - and how that focus may finally drag Canada along for the ride despite Stephen Harper's determination to value oil profits ahead of human welfare.

On bad-faith negotiations

I've written before about the Cons' blatant strategy of saying just enough about regulating greenhouse gas emissions from the oil industry to confuse voters about the issue while blocking the way toward any action. And so the real news in their offer to let the U.S. write the regulations they've been promising "next year" for seven years and counting is the prospect that it might actually result in some policy coming into effect.

That is, assuming one thinks the same prime minister who's gleefully played Lucy-with-the-football with the Canadian public on this exact issue will voluntarily follow through after the Obama administration provides any go-ahead to TransCanada. And it's especially noteworthy that the only force which seems capable of motivating Harper to even feign interest in climate change is a profit opportunity for a pipeline operator - signalling that the now more than ever, the Cons are transparently placing the interests of the oil sector above those of the general public.

All of which is to say that Obama should be careful to get the exact details of any "joint action" in writing and in law before even hinting at approving KXL - because there isn't much evidence the Cons are otherwise about to deviate from their track record of breaking every promise they make on climate change.

(The Mound of Sound and BigCityLib have more.)

On key decisions

I'll generally concur with Paul Wells' take on Barack Obama's reference to Keystone XL yesterday. But it's worth taking a slightly closer look at both the broad issue framed by Obama, and the Cons' narrow means of avoiding it.

The point of greatest significance in Obama's speech was indeed the mention that as a general rule, any project which exacerbates climate change isn't in the U.S.' national interest. But it's hard to see how that standard could be applied to Keystone XL and not to a wide range of regulatory and trade arrangements - meaning that a single pipeline approval process shouldn't be the only area where Harper faces significant pressure to actually do something about climate change generally.

That said, Harper still looks to be grasping at any opportunity to claim interest in addressing climate change without laying a finger on an industry whose emissions are projected to more than double over a ten-year period and lay wreck to Canada's nominal emission targets.

Which means that the short-term play to get Keystone XL approved figures to look far more like the actual response from Joe Oliver and TransCanada than Wells' mooted one: the Cons will assume for the purposes of a "net emissions" comparison  that every possible tar sands project will go ahead whether or not the pipeline is finished, and threaten that if Keystone XL isn't available to supply U.S. refineries, the resulting diluted bitumen will instead be sent to Bangladesh by ox cart to be used to set fire to collapsed factories, livestock and orphans.

The resulting comparison might well make the net effect of Keystone XL alone look like a slam dunk. But it would also serve as a glaring signal that Harper's Cons don't take the larger issue of climate change seriously. And the greatest hope for Wells' alternate proposal (that the Keystone approval process might trigger actual emission regulations for the tar sands) likely lies in the possibly that Obama might decide his country's national interest requires that he avoid encouraging Harper's typical irresponsibility.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has unveiled its alternative federal budget - which highlights the choice between the Cons' needless austerity, and the 200,000-300,000 extra jobs which could be created alongside important social improvements which could be brought about through well-placed public action.

- Meanwhile, Murray Dobbin worries that the use of interest rates alone as an economic growth strategy is feeding an unsustainable housing bubble - offering anpther indication as to why we should work on expanding socially productive activities rather than hoping that unfettered (and indeed exacerbated) market forces will somehow serve the greater good.

- Vincent Gogolek points out that the Cons are going out of their way to make it more difficult for Canadians to find accurate information about their government online.

- Craig McInnes expands on the B.C. Libs' attempt to erase any remaining line between governing and campaigning:

Citizens have a right to expect that governments separate activities that are rightfully supported by political parties and govern in the name of all the people. The Liberals acknowledge that line was crossed in the ethnic outreach memo.

But they don’t see any problem with using tax dollars to promote the interests of the government at a time when they are insisting that the Opposition has a duty to behave as though we are in an election.
...
As a journalist who often feeds off dysfunction, I’m happy to see a government that already has its full attention on election day. As a citizen and taxpayer, I think if the government wants to hear from the Opposition, it should shut down the legislature, stop using tax dollars to pay for ads and get on with a real campaign, funded by Liberals.

- Finally, Rob Bluey comments on the importance of effective data collection and analysis in Barack Obama's successful re-election campaign - and the lesson is one which Canadian progressives would do well to keep in mind.

Selling the lie

Shorter Brad Wall:

Of course neither Stephen Harper nor any of his provincial mini-petro-states has any interest in actually dealing with climate change. But as long as we rev up our PR machine to claim otherwise, surely Barack Obama will be none the wiser.

New column day

Here, on Brad Wall's off-key lobbying against action on climate change - and why we should see the bright side of having the Obama administration push us toward more sound environmental policy when far too many Canadian leaders have failed in their responsibilities.

For further reading...
- Wall's simultaneous lobbying for automatic pipeline approval and against any further Canadian action on climate change can be found here (see in particular the video clip to the right) and here.
- Jeffrey Simpson and Tzeporah Berman have made similar points about the value of the U.S.' message linking Canadian climate change policy to approvals for new pipelines.
- And on the subject of inaction at home, here's the Ministry of the Environment's climate change page - proudly left without updates since February 16, 2011. Here's the Ministry's list of press releases - with this announcement of an "equivalency agreement" presented as the only mention of climate change since the 2011 election.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Shawn McCarthy discusses the Cons' latest plan to sell Keystone XL to the U.S. - which involves hoping that the best-resourced government on the planet will be suckered into accepting a transparently false pretense that the Cons have the slightest interest in addressing climate change. And Harper cabinet appointee Monte Solberg offers a window into the Cons' environmental mindset, trying to make a case against "thinking globally" on the basis that there are easier votes to be won by focusing on small vacation areas while shredding the rest of the planet.

- The Cons' latest Senate abuses have provoked plenty of discussion as to how in the world we can justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an unaccountable set of patronage appointees. Among those calling for (or at least musing about) abolition are Diane Francis, Paul Sullivan and Geoffrey Stevens. Kai Nagata recognizes that we should see Patrick Brazeau as entirely emblematic of the Cons - rather than accepting their spin that it's just bad luck that he's following in so many disgraced footsteps. Murray Dobbin compares Brazeau's abuse of privilege to the genuine movement for change behind Idle No More. Stephen Kimber contrasts Mike Duffy's one-time journalist persona against his current diminished state, while Dan Leger wonders whether Duffy has officially joined Brazeau in being cut loose by the Cons.

But the definitive word goes to Sixth Estate in discussing Duffy:

(W)e’re no longer talking about an issue of merely failing to uphold a few technical rules. We’re talking about fraud here.

The only question is: fraud against whom? Against Ontario taxpayers, for using an Ontario health card when he is really a primary resident of PEI, or against federal taxpayers, for collecting expense fees for his PEI cottage when he is really a primary resident of Ontario?

Either way, I guess we now know why right-wingers are so paranoid that lazy, self-interested gits are ripping off the welfare system. That’s what they think is going on, because it’s exactly what they do when given the opportunity.

- Digby compares the "donor class" of Americans who fund political parties to the wider citizenry - and finds that the U.S. government (like its UK equivalent) is paying far more attention to the frivolous deficit obsession of the former than the job and income security concerns of the latter.

- pogge rightly highlights the Cons' strict party control over private members' bills. But I'll add that the vetting of what's supposed to be the prerogative of individual MPs is far from new, as Garth Turner raised exactly the same concern after he was booted out of the Cons' caucus.

- Finally, CBC reports on the Cons' willingness to fund an anti-gay organization to work in Uganda (home of some of the most obvious homophobic policies on the planet). And Dennis Gruending compares the treatment of Crossroads Christian Communications to that of other groups such as KAIROS and Development and Peace who were de-funded for failing to share the Cons' values.

New column day

Here, updating the respective effects of smart investment and needless austerity in the economic laboratory provided by the 2008 financial meltdown - and noting we have all the more reason to be suspicious of our own austerity buffs at home.

For further background, see...
- Jason Kirby's 2011 proposal to compare the U.S. and U.K. as test cases.
- Philip Aldrick on the disastrous effects of austerity in the U.K.
- The U.S. Treasury's comparison (PDF) of growth among different countries up to early 2012.
- Reuters on Japan's sudden surge since its stimulus program was announced just a month ago.
- Bloomberg on Iceland's remarkable recovery - driven by a determination to prioritize citizens' interests over the lobbying of the financial sector.
- And finally, Paul Krugman passim - but especially his commentary on the IMF's recognition that governments thoroughly underestimated the value of stimulus.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Haroon Siddiqui highlights the similarities between the Harper Cons and the U.S. Republicans - who lost last week's election, and are even less popular outside their country's own borders (including in Canada):

(W)hat Americans have rejected, Canadians are stuck with at least until the next election.

Americans did so with 51 per cent of the votes cast. Canadians did it with 60 per cent in the last election, Harper having formed the government with 40 per cent. That’s our parliamentary democracy. Still, it’s useful to remind ourselves of his policies that are not in sync with majority Canadian opinion but mesh with those of Romney and the Republicans.

He and they advocate smaller government and lower taxes, deficits and debts. But they believe in pork barrelling, milking government dry for their favoured projects. They also spend big on the military. That leads to bigger deficits and debts, as under George W. Bush and Harper (forcing the prime minister to now start cutting back on defence).

The Harper Conservatives and Romney Republicans don’t like gun controls or environmental regulations. They are oblivious to growing inequality. They treat adversaries as enemies — if you’re not with Harper, you are to be demonized, ideally destroyed.

 - Meanwhile, Ezra Klein notes that the Republicans actually lost the popular vote in all three national votes last week - holding the House of Representatives only through gerrymandering. Matthew Yglesias points out why the Republicans have no leverage at all to insist on extending the upper-class-only tax cuts rejected by voters. And Time discusses the data-driven campaign that helped to re-elect Barack Obama.

- Kev laments the sad state of all too many backbench MPs in Canada (even as some want to silence them even more). But then, the regina mom observes that plenty of constituents aren't missing much based on the caliber of Con MP they're stuck with.

- Finally, CBC reports that Mennonites are the latest group under attack by the federal government for daring to speak out for their values.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Rick Salutin offers an important take on the U.S. election by pointing out that the Occupy movement and its focus on inequality laid the groundwork for Barack Obama's re-election:

The aftermath to the bailouts was the real revelation: the bailed-out were graceless and unrepentant. They resisted any similar help for the majority. Obama played along. His stimulus program was mild, like his aid to stressed homeowners. Books such as The Spirit Level (2010) pointed to the swelling damage but it was just a book. Then came Occupy Wall Street in the fall of 2011, with its slogan about the 1 per cent versus the 99 per cent. It resonated because it jibed with what people saw and experienced. It entered mass awareness. Occupy didn’t discover the gap, but they put it out where it could get political traction.

Obama’s “strategists” noticed. They were worried with an election coming and no serious recovery for anyone but the rich. Rising inequality began appearing in his speeches. Even Republicans noticed. They went from calling Occupy a mob, to saying they too fretted over “income disparity.” Obama’s own renditions of the theme were, I’d say, unenthusiastic, culminating in his listless performance at the first debate. Then, ironically, his competitiveness kicked in, he picked up his game, and went on to Tuesday’s victory.

But none of it would have worked, had Republicans not nominated the embodiment of Mr. One Per Cent, Mitt Romney. He likes firing people. He thinks 47 per cent of Americans are irresponsible takers. He parks his money abroad and won’t release his tax returns. All he lacks is a top hat and he surely has one in one of his homes. But the attacks, in turn, wouldn’t have taken, had Occupy not already poured the mould for Romney with its “1 per cent” trope.

- Paul Krugman makes the case as to why Obama shouldn't get bullied into letting the Republicans dictate the terms of a budget deal after winning a second mandate. [Update: See also Scott Lemieux' concise take.]

- Bob Hepburn points out that Mitt Romney's campaign strategy featured plenty of anti-democratic tricks which the Harper Cons might seek to emulate. But given that all the employer intimidation, false robocalls and vote suppression couldn't actually tilt the election Romney's way, I'd think there's reason for even the most craven Con to be skeptical that the Republicans' model is really worth following.

- Meanwhile, the Cons already have to answer for plenty of campaign deception. And Saskboy draws some important links between the latest word from Robocon fall-guy Michael Sona and the evidence that's already public as to the connection between the Cons' CIMS database and the calls placed into multiple ridings.

- Finally, pogge wonders why former Con cabinet minister Chuck Strahl is being handed another patronage appointment when the public record shows him having done nothing in what should be an important role with the Security Intelligence Review Committee.

On lemmings

No, we shouldn't be surprised that Jim Flaherty is lending the weight of Canada's federal government to a concerted effort to attack U.S. social programs. But for those who may have missed it, the supposed "fiscal cliff" being used as an excuse to push a lame-duck Congress to cut long-term benefits is rather less urgent than advertised.

Here's Matt Yglesias on why the "cliff" metaphor is utterly misplaced:

A salient fact about non-metaphorical cliffs is that falling over them is generally irreversible. If the cliff is high enough that falling off of it would kill you, then if you fall off you're going to die and that's the end of it. The "fiscal cliff" by contrast isn't like that at all.

Rather, it's a set of policy changes—mostly tax hikes plus some steep spending cuts—that if they were all locked into place would constitute a significant drag on economic growth over the course of a year. But if the Bush tax cuts fully expire on a Tuesday morning it's not as if some catastrophe strikes on Wednesday where suddenly middle class families have no money. It's true that if the new higher rates were to be locked in, then the medium-term drag on middle class take home pay would delay the deleveraging cycle and damage the recovery. But to resolve that, all you need to do is introduce a new package of middle class tax cuts on Wednesday afternoon, have congress pass it on Thursday, and then the president signs it on Friday. The fact that taxes were higher for three days—or even three weeks—is simply not that consequential.

Obviously to the extent that higher middle class taxes is bad, one day of them is worse than zero days and three days is worse than one day. But it's a deeply banal situation. There's no particularly large virtue to "averting" the fiscal cliff on Day N-3 versus "going over the fiscal cliff" and then fixing it in retrospect on Day N+3. If "going over the cliff" gives the White House leverage to lock a better medium-term fiscal policy in place, then going over the cliff is a no brainer. Because there is no cliff.

And likewise, Suzy Khimm points out that the primary significance of the January deadline is that it will temporarily withdraw some stimulus from the U.S. economy - meaning that there's no reason whatsoever to allow Republicans to hold long-term social spending hostage or insist that wealthy Americans pay disproportionately low taxes as the price of agreement.

As Yglesias notes, some sort of deal will eventually be needed to avoid having longer-term effects take hold. (And there may well be more reason for optimism now than in the last couple of Republican efforts at crisis-making, as at least nobody can point to limiting Barack Obama's time in office as a basis for courting disaster.)

But we should be highly skeptical of Flaherty and anybody else focusing primarily on an immediate deal rather than a reasonable one - lest we otherwise encourage the Republicans to herd the U.S. toward real dangers.

[Edit: Fixed formatting.]

On image reinforcement

I won't disagree with those who have criticized Barack Obama's debate performance last night as listless. But did nobody else notice that the candidate who's rightly been criticized for his glee in firing workers and shipping jobs overseas had this to say as one of his supposed "zingers"?

The second topic, which is you said you get a deduction for taking a plant overseas. Look, I've been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you're talking about. I maybe need to get a new accountant.

That's right: Mitt Romney's first response to talk of tax rewards for job cuts...was to ask, "how can I get a piece of that action for myself?" Which looks to me to be far more telling than, say, a mere $10,000 bet offer as evidence of Romney's out-of-touch, exploitative mindset - even if he spent the rest of the debate repudiating every anti-social policy he and his party promote when there's no opponent on stage to rebut them.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Michael Lewis writes a fascinating piece on Barack Obama's life as president. And I'd think it's particularly noteworthy to consider Obama's self-discipline both as a model for self-improvement in theory, and as a risk factor in opening up a perception gap between a leader and his citizens:

“I want to play that game again,” I said. “Assume that in 30 minutes you will stop being president. I will take your place. Prepare me. Teach me how to be president.”

This was the third time I’d put the question to him, in one form or another. The first time, a month earlier in this same cabin, he’d had a lot of trouble getting his mind around the idea that I, not he, was president. He’d started by saying something he knew to be dull and expected but that—he insisted—was nevertheless perfectly true. “Here is what I would tell you,” he’d said. “I would say that your first and principal task is to think about the hopes and dreams the American people invested in you. Everything you are doing has to be viewed through this prism. And I tell you what every president … I actually think every president understands this responsibility. I don’t know George Bush well. I know Bill Clinton better. But I think they both approached the job in that spirit.” Then he added that the world thinks he spends a lot more time worrying about political angles than he actually does.

This time he covered a lot more ground and was willing to talk about the mundane details of presidential existence. “You have to exercise,” he said, for instance. “Or at some point you’ll just break down.” You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

- I very much hope I'm right in suspecting that Ezra Levant's attempts to foment hatred against Roma Canadians will fall flat based on their sheer absurdity. But Karl Nerenberg and Dr. Dawg are right to make sure Levant's attacks don't go unanswered.

- Meanwhile, Bob Hepburn notes the sad irony in a Prime Minister winning an award for "democracy, freedom and human rights" while fighting each of those principles tooth and nail at home and abroad.

- And Laurel Sutherlin points out how the Trans-Pacific Partnership being pushed by Harper among others looks to leave a gaping hole in the democratic department:

The TPP is called a ‘trade agreement,’ but in actuality it is a long-dreamed-of template for implementing a binding system of global corporate governance as bold as anything the world’s wealthiest elite has attempted before. Of the 26 chapters under negotiation, only a few have to do directly with trade. The other chapters enshrine new rights and privileges for major corporations while weakening the power of nation states to oppose them. The TPP essentially proposes to establish a parallel system of justice where companies can sue countries in a tribunal of judges composed of unaccountable international trade lawyers with little to no process for appeal.

This wild bastardization of the concept of justice endangers everything from affordable medicines, internet freedoms and intellectual property rights to democratically enacted labor laws and environmental protections. And that’s not to mention the massive outsourcing of middle class jobs from the US to countries like Vietnam and Brunei.

This isn’t just a bad trade agreement, it’s a wish list of the 1%—a worldwide corporate power grab of enormous proportions. 

 - Finally, Andrew Jackson rightly challenges the theory that handouts to the corporate sector pay for themselves - at least for anybody who doesn't see increases in untaxed corporate income with no associated social benefits as an unbridled good.