Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Richard Seymour comments on more and more draconian anti-protest laws which are being applied to attack public activism:

To understand why this is happening, it is necessary to grasp the relationship between neoliberal austerity and popular democracy.

In a previous era, when neoliberal austerity was first being prepared in tandem with a racist, authoritarian crackdown, Greek political sociologist Nicos Poulantzas spoke of the "redeployment of legal-police networks" as a constitutive element in a new "authoritarian statism". In this regime, formal parliamentary apparatuses would be retained even while substantive democracy was eroded. Stuart Hall, writing a few years later, remarked of Thatcherite neoliberalism that "under this regime, the market is to be free; the people are to be disciplined".

Why this authoritarianism? Why, in freeing "the market", was it necessary to discipline the people? If the focus is limited to austerity – neoliberalism in its "shock doctrine" form – then the problem can be interpreted simply as one of crisis management. The state assumes measures for enhanced popular control at just the moment when it is trying to manage an unpopular reorganisation of public services, welfare and capital-labour relations. But in fact, this is merely a conjunctural form of a wider problem.
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Just as the definition of crime is inherently ideological, so the decision as to what constitutes an "official" protest or an "extremist" outrage is in part ideological and normative, deriving from the legal and political culture of policing in a given state and bureaucratic categories deployed by local and national forces. Necessarily, then, this is an inherently politicised form of policing. It is not merely demonstrative, showing by example what styles of protest are tolerated (ineffectual ones, largely), but practical in the sense that it drastically foreshortens democratic possibilities.

The reorganisation of states today in an authoritarian direction is part of a longer-term project to contain democracy while retaining a minimum of democratic legitimacy. That is what the anti-protest laws are about.

- Meanwhile, Robyn Benson contrasts the Cons' constant efforts to dismiss environmentalists, First Nations and other concerned citizen groups as "special interests" against their eagerness to serve as the puppets of the oil industry at every turn. And George Monbiot exposes the Cons' UK cousins as using public money to lobby for the destruction of sustainable oceans and fisheries.

- Alice Funke, Paul Wells and Chantal Hebert each weigh in on last night's by-elections - which saw the NDP hold onto its 2011 position in Toronto Centre and Bourassa, but fall short of adding substantially to its previous high-water mark.

- Finally, Brent Rathgeber and David Sachs both recognize Stephen Harper's direct responsibility for the bribery scandal engineered by his chief of staff and his Senate cronies. And Andrew Coyne notes that Harper's latest spin doesn't stand up to even a sliver of reality:

[Harper's story] requires nothing more than that you believe that, even after the revelation of Wright’s treachery, the prime minister was kept in the dark about the full extent of the operation, and of the others’ role in it; that, knowing the truth of their own involvement, they nevertheless allowed the prime minister to tell Parliament, falsely and repeatedly, that Wright acted alone; and that, when at length the full dimensions of the cover-up were uncovered, the prime minister, though he had at last been persuaded to accept Wright’s resignation, demanded no similar price be paid by the others who had betrayed him, such as Gerstein.

It asks us to believe a prime minister famous for his controlling ways took almost no interest in what his subordinates were up to; that finding his almost childlike trust betrayed, he reacted with Christ-like forgiveness; and that, notwithstanding his own utter blamelessness, he has refused for months to answer the simplest questions about what he knew, admitting only as much as the belated emergence of facts demands.

It requires that we accept that a prime minister who says he would never have agreed to any piece of the plot — the payoff, the audit tampering, the Senate whitewash — somehow found himself surrounded by people who, on the evidence, tackled the lot without hesitation.

Where could they have got the idea that this was acceptable? How could he have been so wrong about them? Why, it’s almost unbelievable.

New column day

Here, on the difference between genuine accountability and the rather more barbaric version on offer from the Cons and the Sask Party.

While there are too many examples of the latter to list, I'll point out a few of the most recent ones - including the federal Cons' false denials and subsequent finger-pointing over their push-poll robocalls, Con MP Brent Rathgeber's declaration that he doesn't want the public having access to PBO research which doesn't serve a requesting MP's purposes, and the Sask Party's concerted attack on Saskatchewan's provincial auditor

On predetermination

Shorter Brent Rathgeber:

What government backbencher would dare consider asking the Parliamentary Budget Officer for information if he can't suppress any inconvenient findings? I'd rather stay ignorant, thank you very much.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Stephen Maher follows up on this week's Supreme Court ruling on Etobicoke Centre by pointing out where we should be most worried about our electoral system:

Fraudulent voting is far from the biggest problem facing our democracy. Disengagement is.

Voting rates are declining steadily, particularly among young people, which means politicians see little point in discussing youth issues.

MPs are going to be looking at changes to the Elections Act after this fiasco, and they ought to tighten up the process. But I hope they won't require mandatory picture identification, as the Republicans are doing in the United States, because it discourages voting.

Our real problem is not with the tiny number of cheaters, but with all the people who stay home.

- And unfortunately, it looks like the Cons are taking advantage of exactly the opportunity I'd worried about in commenting on the case - seeking to capitalize on misplaced outrage at procedural snags to restrict real voting rights.

- Susan Delacourt wonders whether the failure of the Charlottetown Accord represented the point at which Canada's political class and citizenry parted ways. But I'd respond by noting that the constitutional wranglings of the '80s and '90s (which turned off the citizenry as reflecting elite concerns detached from voters' everyday lives) largely gave way to governments who have been similarly obsessed with negotiating elite-rooted trade deals inside and outside the country. And it's entirely natural for citizens to feel disconnected from governments who are more focused on limiting their own ability to act in response to popular concerns than actually improving the condition of Canadian lives.

- Janyce McGregor and the Huffington Post both review some of the contents of the Cons' latest attempt to run over democracy with an omnibus bill.

- Finally, I'll agree with Murray Mandryk that the most noteworthy development in the "Cons going off message" department is Brent Rathgeber's remarkably reasonable take on his party's union-bashing:

The proponents of C-377 argue that the tax deductibility of union dues somehow creates a public interest in what the collector of those dues does with them.  According to the theory, tax deductibility equals forgone revenue to the treasury, which makes it akin to public money and thereby creating a public right to know how the forgone tax dollars are spent.

...(I)f tax deductibility truly created a public interest, it would have to be more consistently applied.  As a lawyer, my law society fees are tax deductible.  Does that mean that the public has a right to know what the Law Society pays its staff??  I would argue no and certainly there is no existing obligation for the Law Society to disclose.  As a member of the club, I believe I have a right to know but do not see a similar right for non-members of the club.

Moreover, if I take a client out for lunch, 50% of that is written off as a business expense.  Should the restaurant have to disclose how much it pays the server and the cooks simply because of the tax deductibility of the meal??

I have obvious and I believe logical concerns regarding Bill C-377.  Although I unequivocally support the principle that union members have an interest in knowing how the union leadership spends its money, I am less convinced that non-members have a similar interest.  I eagerly await the Finance Committee’s deliberations; if there are no amendments considerably limiting the breadth and the scope of the Bill, I will be unable to support Bill C-377.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- pogge offers up the definitive response to the Cons' attempt to encourage a sell-off of First Nations reserve land:

When you look past the paternalistic argument that the only way First Nations communities can possibly thrive is to be more like us, this is what's left:

...businesses that want to unlock the economic potential of reserves, from real estate development to forestry and mining, need the legal certainty that a property regime makes possible.

In this context, "unlock the economic potential" looks very much like a euphemism for "streamline the regulatory and tax regime to make it as easy as possible for us to suck all the wealth out." We've been unlocking our own economic potential since around the time Reagan was elected president south of the border. We've unlocked so much economic potential that we now live in the Age of Austerity because all the money is stashed in offshore accounts. If the First Nations have any sense, they'll tell us to get stuffed.

- Meanwhile, FSIN notes that the Cons are slashing funding for First Nations housing.

- If we haven't yet turned every public service into a Con crony's profit stream, it isn't for a lack of trying - with the administration of public benefits programs looming as the next area to be handed over to the corporate sector. But there are some pieces of the Cons' work that are too dirty for even the most anti-social corporation to take on.

- The Victoria Times Colonist and Graham Thomson are duly skeptical about Stephen Harper's claim to be the slightest bit interested in science in determining whether or not to force the Gateway pipeline on B.C. And if we needed another reminder of how distant science is from the Cons' spin on the environment, Marc Lee highlights a few of the more glaring holes in the Cons' latest report on greenhouse gas emissions:

The report creates an alternative “do nothing” scenario that leads to surging emissions of 850 Mt in 2020, then subtracts estimates of federal and provincial actions taken to date, which gets us to 720 Mt. That is a lot of spin on the numbers, perhaps hoping few people will bother to read the actual report and just report the government’s line.

But even the 720 Mt number is suspect for a variety of reasons. First, the economic downturn lowers the baseline, with 2010 emissions coming in lower than previously expected. Next, the feds have included land use changes in the calculations for the first time. The decline in forestry activity means more carbon will remain sequestered in Canada’s forests, and this will lower emissions by 26 Mt. Take these out and the 2020 target jumps back to 745 Mt, slightly more than 2005 levels. Then report also arbitrarily lowers emissions from BC’s natural gas sector, relative to National Energy Board projections. And it assumes that proposed regulations yet to be ratified contribute to decreased transportation emissions. And that Saskatchewan implements carbon capture and storage for four new coal-fired power plants.

The other matter is to what extent the feds can take credit for any reductions in various sectors of the Canadian economy. Much of the heavy lifting appears to have been done at the provincial level, including BC’s carbon tax, Quebec’s cap-and-trade regime and Ontario’s phase-out of coal-fired electricity. In transportation, new vehicle regulations are touted but these just copy the new regulations established by the United States. The report makes repeated reference to new regulations being developed for the oil and gas sector, too, but these have been promised for a long time and no draft regulations have yet seen the light of day.

- Finally, Brent Rathgeber makes the case for sitting MPs to stay out of the boundary revision process. Needless to say, his Saskatchewan caucus-mates don't seem interested in listening.

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Murray Dobbin rightly notes that the main effect of the NDP's surge looks to be to bring our political system more in line with the values of Canadians:

If the NDP surge is real, it may represent the breaking of an historic contradiction in Canadian politics. One of the largely unspoken features of Canadian political culture is the gap between the majority's stated social and community values and their voting patterns. The CBC's fatally flawed Vote Compass notwithstanding (it's virtually impossible to get a result suggesting your values line up with the NDP), years of polling and focus groups suggest that if there was a direct line between voting and values, the NDP would win every election, hands down.

Even though the NDP is skittish when it comes to talking about tax increases (rightfully anticipating a firestorm of media attacks), the fact is Canadians say they would support tax increases if they could be assured the money would be spent on things they want. And the things they want are, of course, essentially the list of things the NDP has always run on: Medicare, affordable post-secondary education, generous social assistance, human rights, genuine EI, eliminating poverty. You know the list -- if you are part of the 70 per cent majority, it is your list, too.

- Meanwhile, Ian Capstick has some simple suggestions to make sure the NDP wave keeps rising until election day.

- I suppose it shouldn't come as much surprise that the closest anybody has come to criticizing the NDP's answers to questions on its platform is to suggest that it would somehow be better off pretending that it doesn't matter whether policy proposals are affordable. But Boris points out that the NDP's stance really amounts to nothing more than treating Canadian voters like responsible adults - which makes for a particularly nice contrast after the Cons' 2008 "never a recession! never a deficit" nonsense.

- Finally, David Climenhaga notes that the CBC ranks near the top of the list of Canadian institutions which figure to be on the chopping block - and that at least one Con backbencher who reliably sticks to the party line is making that explicit on the campaign trail.

Good faith at work

Of course there isn't much reason to expect an actual answer as to why the Cons are leaving glaring flaws in their parole legislation to make sure that they can portray the opposition parties as "soft on crime" in voting it down. But it's always worth pointing out just how determined they are to avoid accidentally getting something done when they can instead set up a talking point:

None of the government amendments deal with the most controversial aspect — a new rule that would make anyone convicted of more than three offences ineligible for life from applying for a record suspension.

Conservative committee member Brent Rathgeber said that even Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has acknowledged there may be a problem with the general three-strike rule, but it was not part of the government amendments tabled this week.

Deep thought

It's never been much secret that the Cons are best served if people aren't politically informed and involved. But I didn't know they were quite this brazen about telling people it's futile to bother.