Saturday Afternoon Links

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- While the Star-Phoenix editorial board is still looking for corporate tax cuts at the first available opportunity, it's at least recognized the striking contrast in treatment between corporations being handed massive amounts of money now, and the targeted and/or delayed-reaction benefits being offered to anybody else by the Harper Cons:

As Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been telling Canadians, his party's promise to cut their tax by allowing income splitting and with a fitness tax credit will only be delivered when the budget is balanced, possibly in 2014-15. Couldn't the same principle apply to the corporate tax cuts, especially when the current rates demonstrably haven't proven onerous?

And if the government thinks targeted tax cuts, such as the fitness credit, work for ordinary Canadians, could not the same incentive work for corporate behaviour when it comes to investing more in plant and equipment, job creation, and innovation instead of providing a general tax reduction?

Yes, it's all very complicated, but sometimes it has to be asked, whose interests are being served.

- Meanwhile, Erin brings a Star Trek theme to his latest evisceration of corporatist talking points. And Canada Uncut takes on the tax evasion techniques of Canadian banks.

- What thwap said:

(F)or genuine progressives, honesty is the best policy. (NOT, mind you, the Liberal Party hacks on "Progressive Bloggers" who are willing to return harper to power if it means they can steal enough votes from incumbent NDPr's and strong NDP challenges to harper. That sort of scum studies up on progressive issues only so that they can get jobs explaining why their party's latest betrayals of them are necessary and good.) By "honesty is the best policy" I mean that we must honestly and fearlessly express our views. We should not be afraid of "alienating" clueless people. How is the country supposed to turn away from right-wing economic nonsense, support for NATO or Israeli imperialism, worship the rich/bury the poor social policies, or police-state values, if there's nobody out there trashing such garbage?

And people are never going to move towards democratic socialism unless we sing its praises loud and proud. If you believe in something, and the majority doesn't, you have to ask why that is so. Given the serial failures of right-wing hegemony, I'd say that we're more than justified in our belief that we are right and the majority is wrong.

Last word, ... honesty ALSO means acknowledging when your opponents are right. This doesn't mean that you have to take the time to read everything from shit-heads like Ezra Levant or Jonah Goldberg. Some people have already discredited themselves with their consistent errors and stupidities. I just mean that if you come across an opposing view that effectively challenges you worldview, engage with it honestly, ... don't run from it.

- And finally, NDP MP Peter Julian is the latest to point out why Stephen Harper doesn't want Canadians to vote or otherwise participate in politics:

(H)ow do we get Canada’s prosperity and equality back? All of us, as activists and concerned citizens, must re-engage in the political system. We must stop the take-over of our public policy and public decisions in the interests of the few at the expense of the many. That means exposing the lie that all politicians and all political parties are the same. They’re not. No political party is perfect. But the Canada’s New Democrats are made up of strong activists for social justice, economic equality, and sound environmental stewardship.

As a proud New Democrat, I ask you to surprise Stephen Harper by doing what he doesn’t want you to do: vote. Canada will be the better for it.

Friday Morning Links

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- In case there's any doubt whether public-sector alternatives are a must to avoid getting taken to the cleaners by the private sector, the answer is an unequivocal "yes". And the fact that corporate mouthpieces are actually objecting to more efficient public service should leave no doubt that the public interest is the further thing from their minds.

- Dimitri Pantazopoulos provides what may well be the worst advice I've ever heard for a political party:

Mr. Pantazopoulos, who is leaving Ottawa next month to work for Christy Clark’s government in British Columbia, says the NDP should broaden its focus and show how it can propel its working-class base to an upper-class position. “Rather than engaging in class warfare, the NDP should emphasize what every member of the working class wants – to rise out of the working class.”

Even leaving aside the logical impossibility of a call for everybody to be upper-class, does anybody really see "The NDP: Those Working Stiffs Can Eat Your Dust" as the message to appeal to the base and swing voters alike?

- Having been invited to unveil the federal government's open data pilot project, David Eaves points out where there's loads of room for improvement.

- Finally, while the book itself looks to be an absolute must-read, even Joan Baxter's review of Nicholas Shaxson's Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World goes a long way in tracing the reasons why we're perpetually told to expect less and less from our public institutions:

Benjamin Franklin once wrote that nothing is certain in this world except death and taxes. That was in 1789. Mr. Franklin might be surprised to learn that today his axiom no longer holds, at least not for the rich and powerful among us. Truth be told -- as it is in British investigative journalist and author Nicholas Shaxson's meticulously researched and riveting book, Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World -- taxation is only certain for the ordinary law-abiding citizen, the non-rich. The wealthy and the ultra-wealthy can quite easily get by paying little or even no tax, thanks to the shadowy spider webs of tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions that span the globe.

Shaxson's aims in the book, he says, are to challenge the common idea that it is acceptable for a place to get rich by undermining the laws of other places and to offer a lens through which to view the history of the modern world. "Offshore business," he writes, "is, at heart, about artificially manipulating paper trails of money across borders." It is not a "colourful outgrowth of the global economy, but instead lies right at its centre." It's not about efficiency or any genuine production or real economic growth -- it's about people and corporations making vast amounts of money through tax evasion.
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Way back in 1961, President John F. Kennedy asked Congress to drive the tax havens "out of existence" and more recently Barack Obama co-sponsored the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act in 2008, before he came to power.

Shaxson writes that crucial reforms such as these are always blocked by lobbying from the rich and powerful. So the problem has only been getting worse, as globalization allows more and more shifting of wealth around the world in seconds from one secret place to another, out of sight of the public eye and out of reach of tax authorities. Hedge funds and private equity funds flourish in the secrecy afforded by the offshore, where tax authorities have few and sometimes no rights to tread. While the offshore financial industry didn't cause the financial crisis of 2007, Shaxson finds, it certainly enabled it.
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Shaxson ends the book with a list of potential solutions and on a note of hope. "The veil of silence and ignorance can be lifted and the message spread," he writes. " If we all work together to "contain and control financial secrecy," we can avert a future in which "A tiny few will have their boots washed in champagne while the rest of us struggle for our lives in conditions of steepening inequality." This is one of those extremely rare books that doesn't just change the reader, but could also change the world -- for the better.

Sunday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- It remains to be seen whether Canadians Against 41 in 41 will get noticed by many who aren't already fully engaged in Canada's political system. But I'll fully endorse its reasons why Canadians should make the effort to vote, particularly this one:

Reason to vote #3: You deserve to be represented. If you don't cast a ballot, your values and beliefs will not be heard. The best way to make sure the things you care about are actually reflected in society is by actually supporting those things at the polling station. If you don't vote for what you believe in, no one else will do it for you.

- Darwin makes a great point as to how the Cons' refusal to follow Parliament's orders may have resulted in a precedent which will strengthen the hand of MPs in dealing with recalcitrant executives in the future (emphasis added):

Because constitutional conventions is the source of both cabinet confidentially and Parliament’s right to demand documents it wasn’t clear to me which would take precedence. I suspected that the Speaker would rule that Parliament could not demand documents that where subject to cabinet confidentiality but these documents could be demanded because cabinet confidentially does not extend to supporting documents for a decisions that had already been made. Because the cabinet had decided to move forward with these crime bills the supporting documentation, like the cost estimates, where no longer confidential.

Instead in his ruling he seemed to suggest that there is no limit to what Parliament can demand, not even cabinet confidentiality. He quoted House of Commons Procedure and Practice:

The Standing Orders do not delimit the power to order the production of papers and records. The result is a broad, absolute power that on the surface appears to be without restriction. There is no limit on the type of papers likely to be requested, the only prerequisite is that the papers exist—in hard copy or electronic format—and that they are located in Canada….

No statute or practice diminishes the fullness of the power rooted in the House privileges unless there is an explicit legal provision to that effect, or unless the House adopts a specific resolution limiting the power. The House has never set a limit on its power to order the production of papers and records.

Cabinet Confidentiality isn’t completely dead. It has been just lowered in status to the level of other documents that are not publicly available by access to information requests, like military secrets and personal information, but is available to parliament if requested.

- Meanwhile, Stephen notes that the Uncut movement is starting to develop in Canada - even if you may never know it if your news intake is limited to mainstream sources.

- And finally, Rachel Maddow points out yet another U.S. state facing an all-out Republican assault on less-connected people, as Michigan's governor has launched attacks on both the financial and democratic fronts:



But Maddow's initial riff is particularly striking given that two of Canada's largest provinces have just gone through a similar shift in their tax systems to privilege corporate activity at the expense of mere citizens, even while exacerbating the deficits that are supposedly the impetus for change.

[Update: fixed link.]