Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Stephanie Bouchoucha et al. offer a reminder that Australia (like other jurisdictions) needs to do far better in reducing the harm caused by an ongoing pandemic. And researchers presenting to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine have found widespread long COVID among people who were infected while pregnant. 

- Meanwhile, Crawford Kilian warns that the anti-social, anti-science cranks empowered by crass corporate operators wanting to avoid COVID restrictions are stoking a resurgence of measles (as well as increased threats from other diseases). 

- Clyde Hughes reports on a new study showing that 83 million U.S. residents are exposed to unhealthy air every year due to the climate breakdown. And Jennifer Francis discusses the "weather whiplash" which is becoming increasingly common and destructive due to climate change. 

- But Jefim Vogel and Jason Hickel find (PDF) that even the countries who are claiming to have decoupled growth from carbon pollution are still spewing more than we can afford. 

- Andy Stirling reviews Tim Schwab's The Bill Gates Problem as an important exposition as to how billionaire-controlled "charity" results in warped and self-interested priorities.  

- Finally, Shauna MacKinnon writes that there's no excuse for governments deferring to the whims of private-sector developers when the need for housing can only be met by public social investment. 

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Archie Mitchell and Adam Forrest report on the revelation from the UK's COVID inquiry that now-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was entirely eager to let people die, and considered it more important to control scientists than COVID-19 itself. And Luke LeBrun highlights how the Poilievre Cons are recruiting anti-public-health cranks into their candidate pool, while Janet French reports on Preston Manning's use of his supposedly non-partisan, multi-million dollar inquiry into a partisan tool. 

- Damian Carrington reports on the UN Environment Programme's warning that we're currently on course for 3 degrees of global warming. And Andrew King writes about the significance of yet another set of temperature peaks and spikes, while David Dodwell discusses the "doom loop" resulting from the combination of hotter weather, drier vegetation and increased storm activity. 

- Meanwhile, Bill McKibben calls out Canada and other petrostates for refusing to take responsibility for carbon pollution they're actively promoting and subsidizing. Seth Klein discusses how yet another round of posturing over consumer carbon prices is causing us to miss the bigger picture of a climate breakdown in progress. And Carrington and Jonathan Watts each examine how wealthier people contribute disproportionately to greenhouse gas emissions. 

- Finally, Rebecca Solnit discusses how the combination of immense power and utter detachment from the reality of most of humanity makes billionaires dangerous to everybody else. Eric Burdon points out how the uber-wealthy pitch self-help hokum in order to distract people from the systemic burdens they impose on the working class. Jason Linkins discusses how billionaire philanthropy is a scam. And Adam King reports on the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us in Canada. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Crawford Kilian reviews two new books on the effects of an overheating planet. Damian Carrington reports on the science tracing unprecedented heat waves to climate change. And Jag Bhalla warns about the dangers of undue optimism about the state of our living environment - with the people with the least predictably standing to suffer the most.  

- Meanwhile, Elizabeth Rush describes the experience of arriving at a large glacier just in time to see it collapse. 

- Ari Pottens and Scott Seymour discuss the harm unmonitored methane releases are doing in exacerbating the climate breakdown. And David Thurton reports on the double-counting and general trickery behind the Libs' self-congratulation over tree-planting.  

- Pete Evans reports on yet another hike in profits for Loblaws, while the Canadian Press reports on the same as Metro even as it withholds reasonable wages from employees. 

- Finally, Jeff Ernsthausen exposes how the ultra-wealthy use "charitable" foundations to claim massive tax credits and avoid paying their fair share for a functional society. 

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- John Launer offers his thoughts on how public health messaging around COVID-19 could have encouraged people to address risk management at both the personal and social level. And Clark Russell, Nazir Lone and J. Kenneth Baillie study the current evidence showing the dangers of combining COVID with co-morbidities. 

- Miranda Bryant and Jon Ungoed-Thomas report on a new study showing UK food bank use is at a record high. Mathew Silver interviews Jim Stanford about the direct responsibility Galen Weston and other grocery tycoons hold for soaring food prices (which are mirrored in record profits). And Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the dubious employment practices of Fiera Foods as it seeks to benefit from people's work while refusing to take responsibility for their livelihood or safety.

- Thom Hartmann discusses how the U.S. Supreme Court has undermined any prospect of democratic governance by treating political corruption as free speech. Tim Adams talks to Bernie Sanders about the oligopoly which has seized control of public policy debates as a result. And Bela Devaan writes that rich people's philanthropic whims can't be seen as an acceptable substitute for a paying a fair share of their excess wealth in taxes.

- Giorgios Gouzoulis points out the connection between escalating personal debt and a decline in labour's willingness to protect workers' interests through strike action. And Gleb Tsipursky writes that management edicts to return to office work by default correlate with a decrease in productivity.

- Finally, Susan Delacourt writes that one of the most important outputs from the Public Order Emergency Commission was its recognition that "freedom" shouldn't be defined in the terms of people looking to violently impose their prejudices on society at large. And Caroline Orr points out how Russian proxy sites played a major role in boosting the most destructive messages of the #FluTruxKlan (which remain staples of Pierre Poilievre's Con rhetoric to this day).

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- David Macdonald discusses the opportunity to transition from the temporary CERB to a permanently-improved income support system for Canadians - along with the danger that people relying on modest relief now will be left to drown if the old EI rules are applied. Tammy Schirle and Mikal Skuterud note that contrary to the usual anti-social spin, there's no evidence at all that the availability of an improved safety net has led to less searching for work. And Kate Hayman and Jesse McLaren comment on the need for paid sick leave to ensure workers can keep their families and workplaces healthy.

- Lori Johb rightly argues that Saskatchewan can and should aim higher than to value austerity over investment in care for people. And Michael Pina points out the movement for group economics which has received some unexpected attention thanks to the uniform choices of three NBA players.

- Meanwhile, Adam Saifer points out how the coronavirus has highlighted the insufficiency of charity to deal with collective needs.

- Luke Savage notes that COVID-19 has exposed the cruelty underlying the U.S. economy. And Brett Christopher discusses how the UK's handing of a massive PPE contract to an entirely unqualified political friend of the government reflects the rise of rentier capitalism.

- Finally, Justin Mikulka notes that the much-vaunted Bakken fracking boom has busted, while operators haven't bothered to clean up their mess.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Iglika Ivanova examines who has lost jobs to COVID-19, and who needs public support to be able to return to the workforce. Tara Deschamps reports on an RBC study showing women's participation in the workforce has been set back three decades by the coronavirus pandemic and the male-focused policy response. And the Economist makes the case that school reopening is at the top of the priority list in determining what interactions should be allowed and funded.

- Kathryn Blaze Baum reports on the Libs' failure to enforce rules which would have protected migrant workers from COVID-19.

- Larry Summers and Anna Stansbury write about the importance of empowering workers to bargain collectively for better than they can force employers to offer by themselves. William Harris discusses the value of building working-class cultural institutions beyond labour and tenants' unions. And David Frayne argues that the disruption to an already-problematic status quo should lead us to rethink the insistence that only people with traditional paid employment be treated as worthy of public support.

- John Ibbitson discusses how the Trudeau Libs resolutely refuse to learn any lessons from scandals borne out of an overarching sense of entitlement. And Yves Engler notes that the real problem with the WE scandal is the development of tourist volunteerism intended to bolster the status quo as a substitute for grassroots organizing to actually pursue change.

- Finally, Gil McGowan discusses the growing authoritarian tendencies of right-wing politicians - and need for citizens to force a reversal of that pattern both at the ballot box and in their communities.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Aditya Chakrabortty writes about the dangers of accepting gross inequality based on the hope that billionaires will make up in charity what they fail to contribute in tax revenue:

For the super-rich, giving is really taking. Taking power, that is, from the rest of society. The billionaires will get exclusive access to the “vision” for the reconstruction of a national landmark and they can veto those plans, because if they don’t like them they can withhold their cash. Money is always the most powerful casting vote, and they have it. Never mind that much of this cash actually comes from the public, as French law grants a whopping 66% tax relief on any donation – the power is entirely private. The annual cap on such contributions doubtless constitutes a prudent reason for the big donors to stagger their generosity.

Whether in France or Britain or the US, the rich give money to the grand institutions at the heart of our cultures to secure their social status in plaques and photo opportunities. In much the same way, they fund our political parties, then enjoy the kickbacks when they form a government. As Julia Cagé, an economist at Paris’s SciencesPo, points out, some of the same people pledging donations to Notre Dame were also among those who funded Macron’s rise to the presidency. In her recent award-winning book, to be published in English next year as The Price of Democracy, Cagé calculates that 600 wealthy people in France gave between €3m and €4.5m to Macron’s election campaign. In other words, 2% of all donors made up between 40 % and 60% of all En Marche funding. Within a few months, the new president cut taxes on the wealthy, giving his richest donors “a return of nearly 60,000% on their investment”. Just as with Notre Dame – a tiny deposit, a lot of influence and one hell of a payout.

- And Stephanie Bailey's observations as to how wealthier people can play a large part in mitigating our climate crisis are noteworthy primarily for the lack of any apparent action.

- In turn, the consequences of the failure to rein in greenhouse gas emissions caused primarily by the wealthiest have included record temperatures around the globe, along with unprecedented heat and wildfires in the Arctic region. 

- Rick Paulas makes the case to stop directing public resources toward restricting access to transit, and instead ensure that basic transit is freely available.

- And finally, Emily Guendelsberger discusses how an increasing number of jobs are calculated to cause "chronic mild stress" which inevitably results in employee burnout (but avoids the possibility that workers will have access to any social supports).

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Aditya Chakrabortty discusses the belated recognition among the world's most privileged few that they can't but their way out of the fundamental issues facing humankind. And Branko Milanovic highlights the Davos set's lip service to combating inequality as long as it does nothing to affect the imbalances in their favour.

- The London School of Economics points out Jonathan Mijs' work on the connection between social divisions and relative popular acceptance of inequality. And Polly Toynbee writes about the right's exploitation of that link:

Both rich and poor delude themselves that they are ordinary. But telling people the facts doesn’t change their attitudes: increasingly they cling to a moral belief that people rise by merit, sinking for lack of it. Spend time talking to people using food banks or in Citizens Advice offices knocked down by benefit sanctions, and too often you hear people absorbing the blame. “I should have tried harder at school,” is a frequent refrain, as if no other forces were at play. Talk to the mega-rich – I once conducted focus groups of earners up to £10m – and they are wilfully ignorant about their super-privilege, unshakable in believing their superior merit.

The right captured the story, the emotions, the moral framing: social democrats need to seize it back with a narrative of immorality that is more compelling. The British Social Attitudes survey suggests a swing back towards empathy with the swelling numbers of poor people – including more than 4 million children. But still inheritance tax remains the most reviled of all taxes. The right forever tries to prove poor people are more stupid by nature than the rich, but Professor Steve Jones, a celebrated geneticist, when asked about the heritability of intelligence, replies deftly that the most important heritable trait, by miles, is wealth.

- David Sirota interviews Anand Giridharadas about the pitfalls of relying on elite philanthropy rather than democratic decision-making.

- The Australia Institute examines how tax giveaways to businesses accomplish nothing. And the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy discusses how a wealth tax can and should work south of the border.

- Finally, Sammy Hudes reports on a report prepared for Calgary's city council showing how the privatization of public services creates massive new risks to the public while only benefiting the corporations who are able to extract profits.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jim Stanford discusses the decline (PDF) of Australia's enterprise bargaining system (and associated lack of wage growth).

- Patrick Butler reports on the tens of thousands of people who will be homeless for the holidays in the UK due in large part to the Conservatives' austerity. And Jennifer Quesnel reports on the likelihood that Saskatchewan families will face the same fate due to the Moe government's slashing of support programs. 

- Chuck Collins and Helen Flannery discuss the dangers of relying on philanthropy rather than sustainable public systems to meet vital needs. And Marianne Bertrand, Matilde Bombardini, Raymond Fisman, Bradley Hackinen and Francesco Trebbi study how charitable donations are used to increase corporate influence over government decision-making.

- Gary Yohe and Michael Mann points out that the U.S. is already facing thousands of avoidable deaths due to climate change, with far more looming in the future if we don't change course quickly. And Cory Coleman reports on the Saskatchewan Environmental Society's blueprint (PDF) for a provincial plan which would actually lead to a sustainable, low-carbon economy.

- Finally, the Globe and Mail's editorial board notes that Doug Ford's arbitrary and evidence-free politics raise just as many concerns for businesses as for citizens. And Fatima Syed reports on retroactive cuts to the Ontario College of Midwives as yet another prime example.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Alex Himelfarb warns about the dangers of participating in Donald Trump's race to the bottom for public revenues - and the importance of highlighting the value of collective funding for social priorities:

Sure, our tax revenues as a share of the overall economy are lower than they’ve been in over five decades. Yes, government expenditures are lower than they have been since the days before we had public pensions, medicare and mass education. But more tax cuts are still offered up as the best—or even the only—option.

The failure of decades of tax-cutting to yield the promised increases in innovation and productivity has not constrained the willingness of some political parties and governments to treat ever-deeper cuts, especially for businesses and the rich, as indisputably good economic policy. If past cuts didn’t have quite the effect they were meant to, they say, perhaps the cuts just weren’t deep enough. Failed economic ideas don’t die easily.

Clearly, Canadian politicians cannot ignore the implications of tax cuts or other major economic policy changes in the United States. But they would be wise to ask what our neighbour may be giving up with these latest cuts, and where our comparative advantage might really lie. We oughtn’t to assume the benefits of tax cuts or to ignore their costs.
...
Tax cuts never pay for themselves. Invariably, they have real costs: public services are squeezed and opportunities to improve government programs lost, with the consequences falling most heavily on the most disadvantaged and vulnerable, and on future generations who of course don’t get to vote.

Ironically, as we weaken government and undermine public services, as wait times go up while access goes down and out-of-pocket costs rise, we increasingly question just what our taxes are buying. Austerity is self-perpetuating.
...
 Decades of austerity, during which we have been asked to view ourselves as primarily taxpayers and consumers rather than as citizens pursuing some common good, have no doubt reshaped our collective view of taxes. So long as taxes are viewed as a burden, or worse, a punishment, rather than as how we operationalize the common good, austerity will continue to blunt the political imagination and limit our sense of what’s possible.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who died just over a year ago, spent the latter part of his career documenting the decline of the collective, the loss of trust in one another and in our governments, the loss of confidence that we can together shape the future. He worried that our collective action problems—those things we can solve only together—have never been more challenging, but that our collective toolkit has been severely weakened by decades of austerity. Rethinking taxes, which are, after all, how we pay for those things we do together because we could never do them at all or as well on our own, will be essential to rebuilding the collective.

We cannot hope even to begin to achieve a just transition to a green economy, or to provide a measure of economic security in an increasingly precarious world, or to reverse growing inequality and persistent poverty if we don’t reconnect taxes to the common good.

- Frances Coppola challenges the mindset that would sacrifice human well-being in the pursuit of balanced government budgets. And Mathew Snow writes about the problems with reliance on the charity of the obscenely wealthy rather than a fair system of social revenue.

- Sophie Hardach examines Thomas Piketty's latest work on the reversal in political orientation based on education. And Branko Milanovic discusses the ongoing (and indeed increasing) relevance of Karl Marx' analysis of capitalism.

- Andrew Nikiforuk observes that government revenues from fossil fuels and other natural resources have been drying up over a period of decades. Stephen Leahy estimates the climate costs of a Trans Mountain expansion at $8.7 billion - without factoring in the added emissions from the end use of any fuel shipped through the pipeline. And Tom Rand notes that the Trans Mountain debate is highlighting the need for everybody to contribute to emission reductions, rather than demanding special dispensations based on the ongoing choice to prioritize oil over other economic options.

- Finally, Edgardo Sepulveda studies the public costs of decades of privatization and politicization of Ontario's power system.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Matt Bruenig highlights Norway's high level of social ownership, with 76% of non-home wealth in public hands in an extremely prosperous country. And Patrick Collinson reports on the latest World Happiness Survey, showing Norway within a group of relatively equal Nordic countries at the very top.

- Christo Aivalis discusses the elements of economic democracy, as well as the need for the NDP to offer voters a clear option of social ownership:

(H)owever important things like Medicare, education, and social security were, they did not constitute the outer boundaries of the social-democratic project. Put another way, what fundamentally distinguished social democracy from liberalism was a conviction of who should control the economy, with liberals saying it should be within largely private control, and social democrats claiming that, through various means, the economy should be controlled publicly.

Canadian social democrats, simply put, need to re-embrace the value in challenging private property’s dominance over the state. This isn’t to say the party is without existing ideas on this front. Andrea Horwath’s Ontario NDP is pledging to re-nationalize Hydro Ontario, and is calling for a reversal of many contracted out public services. Similarly, Niki Ashton’s federal leadership campaign made public ownership a central plank, while Charlie Angus had specific policies that would encourage worker and community-owned enterprises. Still, much more must be done on this front, and as we’ve seen, specific lessons are found within the party’s own recent history.

Jagmeet Singh’s NDP has already made impacts on issues like overhauling our tax system with a view towards a more equitable society. But if the party wants to offer a unambiguous distinction between itself and the ostensibly progressive Trudeau Liberals, a platform predicated on democratizing workplaces and the wider economy is a fantastic start, especially when aligned with provincial NDP sections willing to promote the same objectives in those jurisdictions where they have the most power.

- Richard Poplak points out the outsized (and unaccountable) role played by Export Development Canada in financing questionable corporate activity.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the difficulty injured workers have securing compensation in the face of abusive practices by Ontario employers. Tim Berners-Lee warns against allowing a small number of massive tech firms to dictate access to content online. And Crawford Kilian argues that a public-sector drug manufacturer is a needed cure for the problems with corporate incentives to encourage overprescription.

- Finally, Bob Ramsay writes that Canada's most privileged people are getting more antisocial with time and increased wealth, as charitable contributions as a share of income plummet among those with the most to give.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Ben Tarnoff discusses the two winners - and the many losers - created by the spread of neoliberalism:

Neoliberalism can mean many things, including an economic program, a political project, and a phase of capitalism dating from the 1970s. At its root, however, neoliberalism is the idea that everything should be run as a business – that market metaphors, metrics, and practices should permeate all fields of human life.

No industry has played a larger role in evangelizing the neoliberal faith than Silicon Valley. Its entrepreneurs are constantly coming up with new ways to make more of our lives into markets. A couple of decades ago, staying in touch with friends wasn’t a source of economic value – now it’s the basis for a $350bn company. Our photo albums, dating preferences, porn habits, and most random and banal thoughts have all become profitable data sets, mined for advertising revenue. We are encouraged to see ourselves as pieces of human capital that must ceaselessly enhance our value – optimizing our feeds and profiles, hustling for follows and likes and swipes.
...
Yet if Trump personifies neoliberal ideas, his victory also reflects a revolt against neoliberal policies. The uncaged capitalism fostered by neoliberalism has produced an era of spiraling inequality, stagnant wages, declining life expectancy, and an increasingly post-democratic political system that is more or less openly oligarchic. These things make people angry, and Trump used that anger to get himself elected.

The irony is that Trump will only intensify the crisis that put him in power. His cure for the social catastrophe of neoliberalism is a stronger strain of neoliberalism. Trump is like a lunatic doctor who, after a treatment has nearly killed his patient, decides to double the dose in the hopes of a better result.

Whether we survive depends on the political struggle ahead: not only in the streets and statehouses, but at the level of ideas. Defeating neoliberalism will require not just the creation of a movement, but the creation of a new common sense. At its heart must be the belief that democracy is a better way to organize society than markets – that some things are not for sale.

- Alex Tabarrok points out a new study showing the rapidly-diminishing returns on research within industries. And it's worth noting what that discovery means for our overall economic organization: first, we can expect better returns directing our efforts toward new fields rather than trying to prop up existing ones; and second, to the extent we've already harvested the low-hanging fruit in most current industries, we may need to focus our economic discussion more on distribution than growth.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Campion-Smith reports on PIPSC's success in negotiating a right for federally-employed scientists to share their research.

- Sherri Borden Colley reports on the difficulty social assistance recipients in Nova Scotia have making ends meet on insufficient benefits. And Iglika Ivanova writes that we should rely far less on private charity to meet basic needs, and instead use the collective power of government to ensure nobody is forced to live in poverty.

- Finally, John Whyte offers some suggestions to build a stronger participatory democracy in Saskatchewan.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Thomas Frank writes that a progressive party can only expect to succeed if it places principles of equality and workers' interests at the core of everything it does - rather than serving mostly as the voice of a wealthy professional class:

Somewhere in a sunny corner of the country, either right now or very shortly, a group of tech tycoons or well-meaning private equity investors will meet to discuss what went wrong in this election cycle. They will consider many things: the sexism and racism of Trump voters, the fundamental foreignness of the flyover, the problems one encounters when dealing with evangelicals. They will celebrate some activist they learned about from NPR, they will enjoy some certified artisanal cuisine, they will hand out prizes to the same people that got prizes at the last event they attended, and they will go back to their comfortable rooms at the resort and sleep ever so soundly.

These people think they know what liberalism includes and what it doesn’t include. And in the latter category fall the concerns that made up the heart and soul of liberal politics a few decades ago: labor and work and exploitation and economic equality.

To dedicate your life to concerns like these today is to sign up for obscurity and frustration. It’s to enter a world without foundation grants, without appearances on MSNBC, and without much job security. Nothing about this sphere of liberal activism is fashionable or attractive. Books on its subjects go unreviewed and unread. Strikes drag on for weeks before they are noticed by the national media. Labor organizers are some of the hardest-working but least-thanked people I know. Labor reporters are just about extinct. Promises to labor unions are voided almost as soon as they leave a politician’s lips.

- Meanwhile, Tom Parkin discusses how the NDP - and Jagmeet Singh in particular - may serve as Canada's antidote to the Trump brand of politics.

- Chuck Collins, Helen Flannery and Josh Hoxie examine the toxic effects of relying on gilded giving from a small number of extremely wealthy individuals to support services, rather than being able to build a base of broader funding (whether public or charitable). And Cathy Crowe makes the case for a push toward building affordable housing.

- Daniel Leblanc reports on the CRA's long-awaited progress in cracking down on offshore tax havens.

- Kevin Metcalf discusses how the new surveillance state established by C-51 is only criminalizing and isolating youth while offering no real security benefit. And Justin Ling notes that the RCMP's response to the repeated rejection of "lawful access" legislation is to push for the same powers under a different name - with Ralph Goodale and the Libs only enabling them in the cause.

- Finally, John Doyle writes about the blatant elitism behind Kellie Leitch's drive to destroy Canada's only major media outlet which isn't ultimately answerable to corporate interests.

Scrooged

Shorter Assorted Conservative Hacks with Too Much Time On Their Hands:

In keeping with the conservative movement's holiday spirit, we pose this most humanitarian of questions: why are there no workhouses?

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Anna Leventhal warns against the danger that even the best-intentioned of charity drives might be seen as replacing the need for social supports:

Now campaigns are ubiquitous, and range from book tours to pet surgeries to basic subsistence for marginalized people in crisis. But with crowdfunding increasingly called on to plug the holes left by funding cuts (consider that in 2014 Canadians pledged over $27 million to Kickstarter alone, and that from 2013 to 2014 the amount crowdfunded globally jumped from US$6.1 billion to US$16.2 billion), the stakes are getting higher and the trouble with putting this support to the free market is becoming clear.

Do we back campaigns based on the perceived worthiness or importance of the project? The neediness of the asker? How well we know the asker and how bad we're likely to feel if their project can't be realized? Is it OK that we're being given the right, and the responsibility, to make these kinds of calls? Should the artist with the most Facebook friends win? Should the person to get support for a disability be the one with the best Twitter game? Letting the invisible hand guide these decisions seems not only flawed but dangerous.
...
Frustrated citizens who care about the community's well-being can skip the arduous process of engaging with the federal government and trying to convince it that First Nations communities are worth caring about, and just give directly to the cause. Such a move seems part resourceful community-mindedness and part Band-Aid-over-metastasized-cancer. As Chief Edwin Resky is quoted as saying on the campaign's page, “While we appreciate your intentions, at the same time we wonder what kind of country Canada is when safe access to essential services, when our right to clean drinking water, when access to basic economic opportunity, must depend on the kindness of strangers?”

- Meanwhile, Ryan Meili reminds us of the dangers posed by a growing income gap. PressProgress exposes a few of the most appalling right-wing excuses for the continued underpayment of women in the workplace, while Tom Boggioni tells the story of how Laura Browder's attempt to find work as a single mother (in the absence of reasonable social supports and child care options) led to her arrest.

- Steve Barnes discusses the Wellesley Institute's latest study on the connection between insufficient incomes and a lack of access to prescription drugs. 

- Mychalo Prystupa reports that First Nations are rightly concerned that Nexen's recent oil spill is just a small part of a larger pattern of environmental degradation. And Gemma Karstens-Smith notes that long after the English Bay oil spill was proclaimed to have been fully contained, evidence is surfacing of contamination in areas up to 12 kilometres from the site of the spill.

- Finally, Bruce Johnstone asks what comes next now that Canada is facing a recession. And Konrad Yakabuski writes that the response to the latest downturn represents a rare point of contrast between Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott - as even the Cons' Australian cousins aren't so blinkered as to push through more cuts as the economy falters.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Maude Barlow and Sujata Dey point out that the job promises linked to CETA and other new trade agreements are no more plausible than the false ones made in previous rounds of corporate rights giveaways. And the Canadian Labour Congress discusses the secrecy surrounding the new set of deals including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

- Meanwhile, the International Labour Organization documents the connection between collective bargaining rights and greater equality. And lest anybody think there's a tradeoff to be made between equality based on labour rights and growth based on corporate control, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research finds that "flexible" labour markets do nothing to improve productivity or output. (Which, if course, isn't to say that the Cons plan to do anything but stomp on workers for the sake of stomping on workers.)

- Peter Fleming comments on the eroding relationship between productivity, social utility and pay for workers. And in a particularly stark example of how the system is rigged against workers, Chris Thompson reports on the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario's findings about an employer who used the leverage provided by the temporary foreign worker program to sexually abuse employees.

- Stephen Kimber writes that corporate charity ultimately serves only the purposes of the businesses who get to dictate terms to recipients - meaning that we should refuse to eliminate public supports in favour of private handouts.

- And finally, on that front, Duncan Cameron makes the case for a more fair tax system which both reduces inequality and ensures we have the revenue to take care of everybody:

Today, accepting that the rich should pay a fair share of taxes would constitute progress. Through tax cuts, money is being returned to corporations and the wealthy. Personal tax cuts enacted by the Chrétien Liberals in the 2000 budget put one-third of the benefits in the pockets of the richest five per cent of taxpayers.

Economists can be found arguing that taxing the rich reduces incentives to create wealth. True-believing right-wingers argue that the rich are entitled to whatever money they have, regardless of how that money is used or how it was obtained. Cynics simply observe that through provincial sales taxes and the GST, it is possible to soak the poor, always more numerous than the rich.

With greed being presented as a virtue, even the idea that all individuals benefit from redistributing resources through taxation to provide education, health care, recreation, and access to cultural activities for the entire population can seem counterintuitive. Yet the principle that each should contribute to society according to ability to pay retains its power.

Whoever knows financial success already reaps more material benefits than others, and should be called upon to contribute accordingly. Wealth and high income confer rewards; such resources provide the fortunate a greater responsibility for collective endeavours. 

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Elizabeth Renzetti makes clear that we can't count on one-time crowdsourcing to perform the same function as a social safety net:

This is the problem with the wildly popular new online world of what you might call misery fundraising: It semi-solves one small problem while leaving the system in ruins. Crowdfunding someone’s personal tragedy is the equivalent of fixing a broken arm, but closing the hospital.

It used to be that crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter were wonderful places to raise money for cultural projects – movies, plays, even the occasional potato-salad recipe. When the Morgentaler clinic in Fredericton was forced to close, it was able to raise enough money to reopen thanks to an online fundraising campaign. But lately, as the social safety net frays, the needy and desperate have turned to websites such as HandUp, GoFundMe and YouCaring to meet their basic needs. Needs that would have been met, even a couple of decades ago, by community or government services.

Take a look at some of the tales of woe on these sites, each one more miserable than the last: People who can’t afford rent, or shoes, or medical care. People who need bus money to get to work, or wheelchair vans, or help with tuition. Sometimes they’re looking to build memorials to lost children. These are not people looking for a week in Tahiti. And while it’s lovely to see the great generosity of donors, it’s also enraging to think that there are a vast number of people who have had to resort, in essence, to online begging. What should be the work of society is fobbed off onto goodhearted individuals with tablets.

- And Duncan Cameron writes about the social and infrastructure deficits which are being ignored in the name of austerity economics.

- Reuters reports on the Bank for International Settlements' conclusion that oil prices have far more to do with financial maneuverings than supply and demand - making it doubly dangerous to rely on oil revenue as part of a standard budgeting process. And Ralph Surette writes that any forward-thinking government should be moving toward more stable and affordable renewable options.

- Geoffrey Stevens points out Stephen Harper's attempt to erode trust in any safeguards against unfettered executive power. And Michael Harris reminds us what happens when trust breaks down between the public and the people and institutions who are supposed to pursue our interests.

- Finally, Dan Leger discusses the Cons' plan to turn the federal election into a non-stop fear campaign. And John Baglow writes that the Cons have given us plenty of reason to be afraid of fear itself.

New column day

Here, on the need to turn the holiday spirit of charity into lasting improvements in the lives of the people who need help the most.

For further reading...
- Joe Gunn and Iglika Ivanova also discuss the limitations of charity compared to structural change.
- Jordon Cooper discusses Saskatchewan's bad habit of accepting food banks as a substitute for food and income security. And again, there's reason for doubt (PDF, see Harpauer's dissembling about child poverty rates at p. 6085) that the current government plans to take poverty seriously.
- Finally, the provincial government's announcement of the Advisory Group on Poverty Reduction is here. And as noted in the column, it will be worth keeping an eye on both the group itself (as we'll have to wonder whether a large contingent of current provincial higher-ups will be willing to criticize the government), and whether the Sask Party intends to turn ideas into action.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- The Star points out what the Cons have destroyed - including public assets and program spending - in order to chip away at the federal deficit caused in the first place by their reckless tax slashing. And Thomas Walkom discusses how their latest "job" scheme does nothing but handing free money to businesses, while Angella MacEwen notes that Canada as a whole is hundreds of thousands of jobs short of reaching its pre-recession employment rate.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Cheadle writes that the Cons' attempt to build an economy solely around resource exploitation has proven to be an utter flop for everybody but their corporate backers.

- Joseph Stiglitz looks at new data on the U.S.' age of vulnerability and downward mobility. And Danielle Kurtzleben observes that people who recognize that risk have become increasingly willing to help others - while the detached rich are only becoming more selfish:

Even during the downturn and recovery, the poorest Americans upped their charitable giving. Meanwhile, the highest-income people gave less and less, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported this week.
 

The rich also give to charity differently than the poor: compared to lower-income Americans, the rich's charitable giving places a far lower emphasis on helping their disadvantaged peers. When the poor and rich are (figuratively and literally) moving farther apart, an empathy gap naturally opens up between the upper and lower classes — after all, if I can't see you, I'm less likely to help you.

Taken together, the trends paint a disturbing picture for the future of both the American economy and philanthropy: as the rich get richer and more removed from the daily lives of the poor, the bulk of charitable giving is also likely to become further removed from the needs of the poor.

- L. Hunter Lovins reminds us that we shouldn't confuse possessions with prosperity, while noting that a shift toward a sharing economy can drastically improve the latter while limiting how much effort we put into pursuing the former. And Ben Chu argues that a mansion tax makes for both a fair and efficient means of increasing public revenues.

 - Finally, Jeremy Brecher, Joe Uehlein and Ron Blackwell argue that now is the time for the labour movement to unite behind a strong plan to fight climate change:

(C)riticizing the weaknesses in mainstream climate policy proposals is not a strategy for combating climate change. Labor needs to propose a climate protection strategy of its own—one that realistically protects the livelihood and well-being of working people and helps reverse America’s trend toward greater inequality while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the speed scientists say is necessary to reduce climate catastrophe. A strategy designed to provide full employment and rising living standards by putting millions of people to work on the transition to a climate-safe economy could transform the politics of climate by shattering the “jobs versus the environment” frame. And it could provide a common platform around which climate protection advocates at every level of the labor movement could rally.
...
There are three main approaches to GHG reduction. The first, which has dominated climate legislation and treaty negotiation, consists of “putting a price on carbon emissions” to discourage GHGs through taxation, fees, cap-and-trade systems with markets for emission quotas, or similar means. The second, which is widely discussed and frequently implemented on a small scale, consists of local, often community-based initiatives designed to produce renewable energy and reduce energy consumption on a decentralized basis. The third, perhaps less often delineated by proponents than excoriated by opponents, consists of a government-led approach based on economic planning, public investment, resource mobilization, and direct government intervention in economic decisions. Although rapid reduction of GHG emissions will undoubtedly require all three, labor should lead the breakout from neoliberalism and propose a government-led plan—drawing on the example of mobilization during World War II—to put our people to work converting to a climate-safe economy.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Linda McQuaig discusses how a burgeoning wealth gap is particularly obvious when it comes to retirement security:

Quaint as it now seems, not long ago this was considered a good basic plan: Work hard all your life and then retire with a comfortable pension.

In recent times, a new plan has replaced it: Work hard all your life and then all bets are off.

The notion of retirement security in exchange for a lifetime of hard work — a central element in the implicit social contract between capital and labour in the postwar years — has been effectively tossed aside, as corporations have become more insatiable in their demands and governments have increasingly abandoned workers.
...
In what amounts to a radical overhaul, [the Con government] announced last April that it intends to change long-standing legislation governing workplace pensions in ways that would allow employers (private sector and Crown corporations) to walk away from pension commitments they made to employees, even after those employees have paid into the plans throughout their working years.
...
Workplace pensions were always expected to be a key part of that retirement security. Unlike many European countries, where public pensions were generous enough to serve as the centerpiece of a retiree’s income, the Canadian government kept public pension benefits low and encouraged workers to rely on workplace pensions.

That worked fine for those who were able to negotiate workplace pensions with an employer — generally those who had a union to represent them. In such cases, both the employer and the employees typically contributed to the plan, under terms that specified what benefits would be paid out to employees in their retirement.

Employers now want to be able to fundamentally rewrite the terms of those workplace pension deals so that, if the market plunges and the pension fund declines, the pay-outs will be less — in effect, shifting the risk from the company to the retiree.
...
It’s striking, however, that a bold embrace of risk is only expected of those in the lower echelons of the corporate world. At the top, executives cling to old-world notions — like securing comfortable retirements.

- And Regina civic workers are taking action to make sure the city keeps its pension promises - rather than either demanding concessions now, or changing the rules so it can unilaterally slash benefits later.

- Brian Iler suggests that the Cons' charity crackdown could have been avoided if Canada adopted a definition of charity work which included promoting public debate on political issues. But while that change might have given current charities more confidence as to the result of the current round of government-directed audits, it wouldn't have done much to avoid the needless expense of going through the audit process in the first place.

- Meanwhile, Kaylie Tiessen is hopeful that Ontario is ready for a serious conversation about the need for more revenue to fund public services.

- Kayle Hatt studies the federal government's cuts to summer student programs. And CBC reports that Calgary's decision to outsource park maintenance work has led to temporary foreign workers taking the place of students who would otherwise be able to use a summer income to fund their education.

- Finally, the Ottawa Citizen identifies one of the surest signs of an ethically bankrupt government - while noting that the Harper Cons and Alberta's PCs are just two of the governing parties who seem to be treating that lack of ethics as a goal to be pursued:

There seems to be an epidemic in Canada of rogue staffers doing unethical things their political bosses would never, ever sanction.

The most famous is Nigel Wright, the former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who wrote a large cheque to a sitting senator. Then there’s the OPP search-warrant document alleging that David Livingston, the chief of staff for former Premier Dalton McGuinty, hired someone to purge emails during the transition to Kathleen Wynne’s premiership. There is the ongoing mystery about the voter-suppression phone calls in several federal ridings in 2011 “by a person or persons currently unknown to this court,” in the words of Federal Court Judge Richard G. Mosley.

Now there is a leaked, draft auditor’s report about former Alberta Premier Alison Redford, suggesting her staff manipulated airplane bookings so that she could treat the planes as personal limos.
...
An ethical organization does not build plausible deniability into its hierarchies and relationships; it does not have any reason to. The fact that it seems to be built in to Canadian political culture, in more than one party, in more than one province, is sickening.