Sunday Morning LInks

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- James Cairns discusses why socialism is seeing a resurgence in popularity, particularly among younger citizens who see little reason for hope in politics as usual:

Occupy Wall Street popularized the language of the 99 per cent and the 1 per cent as a way of explaining class inequality. The 2012 Quebec student strike declared that "Education is a Right" while beating back a 75 per cent tuition hike. Bernie Sanders is campaigning for a "political revolution" that would end the power of corporate interests over public policy. Allied movements, such as Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, and Extinction Rebellion, while not explicitly socialist, fuel shifts in politics-as-usual.

These activist groups are doing socialist education on a mass scale. By their words and deeds, movements are giving people concrete reasons to believe in jobs with fair wages, cities built on affordable housing, the end of student debt, clean air and water for everyone.

Filmmaker and author Astra Taylor describes the despair of so many young people facing precarious employment, insecure housing, and crushing debt. She says the reason so many of these people are organizing for socialism is that "socialism would feel like having a future."

- But in case there was any doubt how many obstacles stand in the way of a fairer future, Shawn Gude interviews Matthew Lacombe about the stealth political control exercised by a few billionaires. And Peter Pomerantsev writes about the massive piles of disinformation being used to confuse and confound voters. 

- Paul Krugman offers a reminder that how corporate tax giveaways ultimately end up transferring massive amounts of wealth to foreign investors.

- The Economist writes that the environment currently looks to be the key ballot box issue for Canadian voters. David Suzuki discusses the dangers of recklessly producing and disposing of fossil fuel-basded plastics. And Sharon Riley offers some needed background on the Teck Frontier tar sands mine which has been recommended for approval despite the certainty that it will cause massive environmental damage even beyond its contribution to climate breakdown.

- Finally, Colby Cosh highlights why the latest bleatings about Alberta separatism don't deserve to be taken seriously.

On search results

Colby Cosh's latest on the role of the "human search engine" in tracking down information about candidates and elected officials is worth a read. But it's worth keeping in mind that the search results only matter to the extent they're put to use.

On that front, having commended Notley for her initial response to issues raised about Deborah Drever, I'll note that there's reason for concern about Drever's subsequent suspension.

I'm always leery about personal controversies being used as an excuse to disqualify people from participation in public life. And the high bar for excluding people from running seems like it should be raised even further when the party's vetting and nomination processes and a general election have resulted in an individual having been elected under the NDP banner.

Moreover, the effects of Notley's decision won't be limited to Drever herself. Instead, Notley's willingness to cut people out of the NDP caucus before they've even participated in it will only encourage more focus on MLAs' photographic history rather than their work in the legislature.

That said, the good news is that Notley has left room for Drever to redeem herself, imposing a temporary suspension rather than the under-the-bus sentence so familiar among other parties. And hopefully the future obsessions of the right's human search engine won't be to redirect Alberta politics from building a new culture of inclusion.

Failures of imagination and arithmetic

Colby Cosh's latest includes this explanation as to why he wants to write off the party which holds a strong lead in Alberta's polls:

The province-wide NDP numbers, whichever set you prefer, are conceptually hard to translate into large numbers of seats outside Edmonton. Former Calgary alderman Joe Ceci, running for the NDP, is thought to be strong in his old stomping ground of Calgary-Fort, as is Shannon Phillips in university-influenced Lethbridge West. There is bound to be a third name on this list—a name no one knows yet. Some shrewd, hard-working NDP candidate is knocking on the last door in his riding right now, scarcely suspecting he is about to beat some country-fried PC cabinet minister who got careless.

Alberta New Democrats’ dreams are much wilder than this. They envision a chaotic “wave” election: a butterfly farts in Banff and they unexpectedly quadruple or quintuple their support, as they would need to, in seats outside Edmonton. But unless things have changed very dramatically in places like Cold Lake or Drumheller, the New Democrat ceiling is a couple of dozen seats. That would leave the overall outcome to be decided by 60-plus PC-Wildrose fights in Calgary and the hinterland.

Needless to say, this type of analysis is rather familiar: in 2011, more than a few pollsters and pundits looked at the NDP's commanding lead in Quebec polls, then declared based on past results that the party couldn't hope to win more than five to ten seats in the province. This line of analysis did not prove prescient.

Granted, Cosh allows for the theoretical possibility of a "wave" while simultaneously writing it off. But in so doing, he misses the point that what he considers to be dramatic change is already playing out in the polls.

No, it's not preposterous - nor even unexpected - for a party to quadruple or quintuple its previous support when current polls already show more than that gain. The NDP's 2012 support by region included results ranging from 5% in Calgary and 5-8% in rural Alberta; the most recent polling shows the NDP in the 25-30% and 30-35% range, respectively. So if the right standard is to ask whether the NDP can increase its 2012 vote by five times or more, the answer is that it's already there or further across much of the province.

That said, looking at the NDP's historical vote is probably the wrong way of approaching the question.

It's doubtful that anybody can claim to have a clear, riding-by-riding picture as to how votes will shift. But the regional polls consistently show a tight three-party race in Calgary and "rest of Alberta", including some with the NDP running ahead in those regions.

Which brings us back to the Quebec problem: how can any reasonable observer look at a party which projects to win as many votes as its opponents over a substantial number of seats, and default to a presumption that it will win none of those individual seats (nor indeed contend for any of them)?

I'd argue that absent some coherent explanation as to how a region can be split up into a series of two-way races which render the three-party numbers unreliable, the best assumption has to be that the distribution of seats will be broadly similar to the distribution of votes (subject to distortion by the first-past-the-post system). And even that type of theory can't be based on Cosh's assumption that the NDP will simply be out of the picture over a set of ridings where its vote share is similar to that of the PCs and Wildrose.

That means the fundamentals of the Alberta race boil down to this: the NDP has a significant head start based on its whopping lead in Edmonton, while the rest of the province is a dead heat where any of the three parties could win a large number of seats, but the best baseline assumption is a relatively even split.

Of course, it's theoretically possible that a party could manage to lose dozens of ridings by small margins to two competitors without managing to get over the top in a single one. (In principle, that could even result in the party winning the most votes without taking a seat. Thanks, FPTP!) But surely that outcome should be seen as a remote possibility, not a baseline expectation.

Similarly, a small shift at the end of the campaign could easily change the three-party dynamic in many different directions. But here too, there's no obvious reason to think a shift can only operate in one direction: surely the NDP is at least as likely as its competitors to be the one to nose ahead at the end, particularly since it's been the only party consistently improving its popular perception throughout the campaign.

To be clear, it's entirely possible that Cosh's assumed outcome might come to pass - and that risk will hopefully serve as motivation for NDP activists as the campaign draws to a close. But that doesn't mean there's any reason for Cosh or anybody else to write off the very strong possibility that the NDP can win as matters stand now.

Update: As Cosh notes, the column was written before this weekend's polls strengthened the evidence as to the NDP's position across Alberta. So readers may want to look to the projections and polls as they stood earlier in evaluating it.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Advance warning

Colby Cosh is starting to buy into the theory that the Clusterduff scandal is being strategically revealed to divert attention away from Robocon. My greater concern is that if there's a Con strategy at play, it lies in the possible aftermath of reports like this.

The more stories we hear about Duffy acting like a slightly-more-gluttonous Hedonismbot with the full support and encouragement of Stephen Harper's inner circle, the easier it will be for some operative to deliberately plant a false story within that pattern - with the goal of at least uniting the 28% behind the Cons in outrage that anybody would continue to report on months of damaging revelations after one part of the narrative doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Which isn't to say we should hesitate to discuss new revelations as they surface. But I'll hope the crystallizing narrative surrounding Duffy and Harper's PMO doesn't result in the media letting its guard down - lest one mistake serve to give the Cons a way out.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- The Economist adds a noteworthy voice to the chorus calling for greater tax enforcement to ensure the corporate elite pays its fair share:

Characterising this steady financing as short-term lending is “the ultimate example of form over substance” and undermines a fundamental tenet of American tax policy, huffed Mr Levin. When an HP executive tried to insist the manoeuvre did not constitute profit repatriation, the senator wielded an internal HP document in which it was discussed—in the repatriation-strategy section. The Senate investigators said they suspected other companies were doing the same thing but couldn’t say how prevalent the practice was.

Who to blame for all this darting through loopholes? To no one’s surprise, Mr Levin pointed the finger mostly at the companies that engage in “tax alchemy”.
...
The rule-setters and enforcers deserve their share of the blame. It is true that enforcement of arm’s-length deals is tricky because no two intangible assets are quite the same, making it hard to establish a fair price. Moreover, the IRS has to rely in part on the taxpaying company’s own projections of cash flows, risks and so on. But the agency leans too often on the side of leniency. It does not help that transfer-pricing regulations have grown unwieldy. Some experts describe them as unworkable.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board also took some flak at the hearing. Jack Ciesielski, an independent accounting expert, was scathing about a FASB exception that allows firms to avoid reporting and reserving for American tax liabilities for foreign earnings if they plan to invest these “permanently” overseas—a loophole that they continue to exploit even as they lobby for a tax break so they can bring those same profits home.

By focusing on a few striking cases, Mr Levin and his staff have increased their chances of making a splash with an issue that many find mind-numbingly technical. And profit-shifting is, as he put it, doubly problematic today, given the fragility of the economy and the fact that corporate-tax receipts are at historic lows as a percentage of federal revenue. Expect the IRS to take a dimmer view of avoidance schemes going forward. Whether it will prove a match for the multinationals’ phalanxes of lawyers and beancounters is another matter.

- In case there was any doubt how the power imbalance between employers and workers in Canada is being exploited, CJME confirms that gas station attendants in Saskatchewan - as in Ontario and elsewhere - are being encouraged to risk life and limb to avoid being docked pay based on gas theft. And Wendy Stueck reports on the unsafe living conditions facing temporary agricultural workers in British Columbia.

- For those worried that Robocon wasn't being investigated beyond the most glaring case in Guelph, Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor confirm that Elections Canada is looking into plenty more citizens' concerns.

- Dr. Dawg and Colby Cosh tear into the Globe and Mail and its public editor for a pitiful response to compelling concerns about plagiarism.

- Finally, Rick Mercer rants as to why we need to rant more often. But I'll add that while a good rant can help to define a problem, the words don't go far if not paired with some plan to solve it.

Leadership 2012 Roundup

Apparently there have been a few developments in the NDP's leadership race - and indeed enough that I'll likely need to apply a bit more a filter on what I catalogue in my roundup posts. (In particular, I'll generally stop pointing out survey or event-based coverage which doesn't add much by way of new content, as well as setting a higher standard for endorsements and policy announcements to count as newsworthy.)

With that in mind, let's run through some of what's new over the past few days other than the polls already discussed here.

- Paul Dewar's campaign largely set the tone for the start of the week - both by releasing its internal polling results, and by implicitly slamming other candidates (if not by name) as likely to abandon the party's principles.

- Thomas Mulcair lowered his expectations for his own Quebec membership drive, but . Meanwhile, Bruce Anderson commented on Mulcair's effective challenge to NDP voters to accept different positions than the party has proposed in the past.

- Peggy Nash issued a clarification on the role the federal government should play in eliminating the need for health care user fees, though not before Colby Cosh noted her position with interest and Thomas Walkom lamented her answer in Sunday's debate. Nash then found stronger ground in defending the ability of workers to retire at 65. Tim Harper wrote about Nash's strategy of presenting herself as a consensus-builder, including her response to the question of whether she should be discounted based on the NDP's limited success under Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough:

In fact, the McLaughlin-McDonough era gives pause in some elements in this party about choosing another female consensus-builder, even in the party that has worked harder to achieve gender parity than either of the other two main federal parties.

“Does that mean the Liberals won’t be electing another man?" Nash asks.

- Brian Topp unveiled the endorsement of Doris Layton - which may hold plenty of sentimental sway as the race draws to a close.

- Finally, on the commentary side, John Ibbitson theorized following Sunday's debate that the leadership campaign will involve a decision whether or not to abandon social democracy to move to the centre - though I'm not entirely sure how he placed Topp on the centrist part of any divide. Andrew Coyne mused about a similar question while noting that the effect of going toward the centre might be to lose an identity that has served the NDP well. Lawrence Martin scratched the surface of the possibility of end-of-campaign alliances which might determine the campaign's outcome. Vincent Marissal criticized the length of the campaign, but without offering any obvious explanation as to how a shorter leadership race would have made a different for the decision faced by NDP members. Stephen's list of factors to consider in deciding how to vote is well worth a look. And the last word goes to Alice's latest analysis.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your election eve reading.

- Yes, the party polling is positive enough for the last day of the election campaign: Forum places the NDP at 33% (to the Cons' 35), Abacus Data places the NDP at 32% (to the Cons' 37), and Nanos finds the NDP at 31% and within 6 points of the lead - all signalling that a relatively small continuation of the campaign's growth trend can push the NDP into a clear first place.

- But perhaps the most telling numbers are the Nanos (warning: PDF) - which have Jack Layton not only overtaking Stephen Harper once again, but also reaching new highs overall and in trust and vision even after his opponents have launched about all the attacks and smears they'll be able to land during the court of the campaign.

- So will the NDP's popular support translate into an equally strong wave at the polls? It'll certainly help if voters take up Susan Delacourt's challenge to show at least part of the enthusiasm we put into building up our Olympic athletes into our democracy.

- That said, citizen engagement can't and shouldn't end at the ballot box. And Michael Posner's article on citizen panels offers one way of making sure that the kind of interest that's been building over the last month gets channeled into better policy outcomes.

- Finally, while I hope Colby Cosh is wrong in his seat projections, at least one of his points is well worth highlighting:

The shift to the NDP isn’t a result of appeals to particular economic sectors or social groupings that might vary from riding to riding. It is a personality-driven shift; a true mass movement. It is, in part, surely driven by universal human reactions to (Jack) Layton’s courage. He is fighting an election he might easily have avoided.

In fact...Layton faced a choice: fight an election now, which is a squalid and exhausting task for a healthy person, or take time to recover from cancer and a broken hip in relative peace. This was as a free a choice as can be imagined. Nobody on the face of earth would have blamed him for taking a break. He decided not to, and whether he did it for the advantage of the party or for the interests of the country, the decision boils down to “He did a brutally difficult thing because he thought it needed doing”. If you ask me, it’s pretty damn admirable even if he just thought selfishly that this was his best chance at being Prime Minister.

[Edit: moved strategic voting discussion to its own post.]

Wednesday Morning Links

Content goes here.

- Linda McQuaig's latest column builds on the inequality theme of The Trouble With Billionaires, pointing out how wealth turns into other forms of power as well:

The wealthy exert influence not just through campaign contributions, but at every stage of the political process: in the forming of political parties, the writing of party platforms, the selection of candidates, the drafting and amending of legislation, not to mention the shaping of public opinion through think-tanks and media ownership.

The wealthy also often employ a form of blackmail, either directly or indirectly threatening they'll leave the country if governments don't capitulate to their demands for lower taxes. While it's hard to imagine political leaders caving in to similar threats from other groups -- say, electricians or teachers -- the sheer economic power of the wealthy seems to quickly bring governments to heel.

- Which would surely make for yet another point of confusion for Rafe Mair's Man from Mars:

Our Man from Mars would look at how we run our business affairs and would be struck by the way large pools of capital form themselves into corporations that can't be controlled. How would we expect them to be controlled when the people who want nice comfy laws finance the governing party which makes up the rules?

MFM would note that corporations spend huge sums anaesthetizing the public with full paid ads on every aspect of life telling the bumpkins what wonderful corporate citizens they are and how all their decisions were for the good of all. These ads make no reference to the fact that their only obligation is to make money for the shareholder and their good behaviour is in the hands of a friendly, indeed compliant, government.
...
Our Man from Mars, writing his report, would conclude that western democracies call themselves democracies much like communist countries once did. On being questioned about the liberties of citizens as compared to places like China, he would be bound to conclude that these Canadians have more freedom but that's steadily eroding and that, besides, the free speech in this country is about as effective as going out in a boat by yourself and shouting damnation on the powers that dictate and enforce.

- And as if to prove Mair's and McQuaig's points, here's Neil Reynolds predictably beating the drum for tax cuts even when they contradict his own data:

Canadian tax-collection statistics suggest that this supply-side law may well be operative here – only more so. On average, we remit to the federal government only 16.6 per cent of GDP in taxes regardless of rates. In the 1960s, it was 15.9 per cent of GDP. In the 1970s, 17.3 per cent. In the 1980s, 15.5 per cent. In the 1990s, 17.7 per cent. (From 2001 through 2009, reflecting a serious recession, revenue from all tax sources fell to 14.3 per cent.)

For those keeping track, that would make for a 3.4% difference between the 1990s (when taxes were hiked in order to balance budgets) and the 2000s (when taxes were lowered as the first order of business once deficits were brought down) - included in Reynolds' column in support of the theory that tax rates don't affect revenue. But fortunately, he's on the right side of the corporate media, so he'll be taken far more seriously than those of us who actually look at the numbers.

[Update: For a more thorough debunking, see Erin's post.]

- Meanwhile, Colby Cosh is right to note that "disappearing middle class" isn't necessarily the right term for extreme wealth inequality, and that "between neighbourhood" comparisons probably aren't the best way of analyzing the disparity. But can we also agree that it's worth doing something to address the danger of a "new Gilded Age, a realm of pervasively low marginal taxes and new deregulated industries" once we've removed those less-obvious problems from the picture?

- Finally, Ned Franks nicely connects the dots between the Cons' unproductive Parliaments in terms of the number of bills passed, and the fact that they've used omnibus budget bills to pass major changes without serious review:

n terms of productivity, Parliament has reached a new low. According to Franks, only 45 per cent of the bills introduced by the Harper government thus far have actually made it through the entire legislative process to royal assent.

And that can't all be blamed on the tribulations of running a minority government. Franks' records show the minority government of Lester Pearson during the 1960s managed to see 86 per cent of its bills through to royal assent.

The Trudeau government (both minority and majority) managed 72 per cent, Mulroney's majority government hit 83 per cent and Chretien's majority batted 69 per cent.

Since the Second World War, the number of bills receiving royal assent each year has declined steadily from an average of 67 a year during the King-St. Laurent era to 27 under Harper.

That doesn't necessarily mean the Harper government is legislating less. Franks said the government pushed about half of a normal year's legislation through in a single bill — this year's massive budget implementation bill which included varied measures dealing with all manner of subjects from environmental assessments to the post office to the future of Canada's atomic energy industry.

Franks finds the trend to omnibus bills particularly worrisome since it short-circuits the whole point of parliamentary scrutiny in a healthy democracy.

Suddenly it all makes sense

So that's why there's a significant backlash against even trying to measure happiness as a positive outcome - as at least Andrew Jackson's quick chart suggests that it correlates nicely with low inequality. But let's take the comparison a step further by also considering the provincial ranks for GDP per capita. Among the interesting connections between the three factors:

- Prince Edward Island ranks #1 for both lowest inequality and most satisfaction. And the fact that the province ranks #10 in GDP per capita doesn't seem to have affected the high degree of provincial happiness.
- Conversely, British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan all rank in the top 5 for GDP per capita, while also ranking as the four provinces notably higher than the others in inequality. And all have a happiness ranking significantly below their GDP ranking (5 and 9, 4 and 10, 1 and 5, and 2 and 4 respectively).
- And for those wondering whether there's an inevitable conflict between reducing inequality and the level of GDP per capita, Newfoundland and Labrador looks to serve as a strong counterexample - ranking #3 in per-capita GDP, tied for #3 in lowest inequality, and #2 in satisfaction.

Of course, the above is only an extremely rough look based on a crude ranking which doesn't take into account the level of difference between provinces. But on the surface, there looks to be enough of a disconnect between GDP and citizen satisfaction to suggest that any attempt to actually determine what people want - rather than simply assuming that it correlates with and is measured by wealth - may well lead to some serious questions about our current policy direction.

On joyless positions

Most of the time, Colby Cosh stands out as one of the prominent Canadian commentators most willing to be skeptical of questionable conventional wisdom. But his post on new efforts to measure happiness reveals one obvious bit of unquestioning belief in a highly dubious assumption. And it's worth pointing out how that unduly narrow focus figures to lead to the wrong policy prescriptions.

Here's Cosh:

There is a great deal of excitement nowadays, among the gormless, about “happiness” research of this nature. I’ve mentioned before that I think “food miles”/”locavorism” represents one trendy, naïve attempt to create a modern-day alterna-Marxism and establish a quasi-religious standard of value not founded in economic exchange. “Gross national happiness”, which is popular with greens and Europeans looking for alternatives to odious “Anglo-Saxon” neoliberalism, is surely an analogous phenomenon. The correct public policies, you see, are really the ones that create the most net happiness, as opposed to necessarily being those that create GDP growth; so isn’t it the most natural thing in the world to just ask people how happy they are and use regression techniques to sniff out the underlying factors?
...
Money won’t make you happy, they say—but they’re not really referring to the whole package of benefits of having money; they’re talking about an artificially isolated, Unca-Scrooge’s-vault kind of enjoyment of money for its own sake. And guess what: money actually still turns out to be pretty damn good at making people happier, even when you do your best to reduce it to nothing but the sight of chains of zeroes in a bankbook or the ability to purchase a nice stereo.

If you don’t think money really makes people happier, try offering five-dollar bills on the street, and see whether your wallet runs out before folks stop taking the cash. The gross-national-happiness proponents will be tempted to reply that the results of such an “experiment” may reflect a delusional, unhealthy, socially cultivated preoccupation with money; in other words, they’re willing to accept self-reports of people saying “I feel about a 2 today”, but totally unwilling to accept the gold standard of revealed preference.

As far as I can tell, Cosh's attempt to dismiss all measures other than GDP as a standard for policy outcomes gives rise to two major questions - and Cosh lands on the wrong side of both.

First, is money indeed the "gold standard of revealed preference"? And even if one takes GDP to be the current "gold standard", does that mean we should deliberately dismiss any attempt to develop better measures?

Since I understand Cosh to be somewhat of a hockey fan, let's consider both questions by analogy to a general manager who makes a comparable assumption in running a team.

Hockey is ultimately about scoring more goals than one's opponent. And while most other measures of player value are based on some element of subjective assessment which is tracked unevenly and only minimally traceable to the outcome of a particular game, information about who has scored the most goals is readily available to assess any particular player or team.

So why not bypass the uncertainty of scouting reports, player projections and advanced metrics, and simply run a team on the basis of the simplest measure which has some theoretical link to the desired outcome - i.e. acquiring players who have the best track record of scoring goals?

Of course, the answer is fairly obvious: the fact that goals are reliably tracked and have some link to winning doesn't make them the be-all and end-all in team development. A general manager would probably find willing trading partners if he decided to build a forward unit around Ilya Kovalchuk, Alexandre Burrows, Matt Moulson and Jussi Jokinen, with Marc-Andre Bergeron and Ian White as his key defencemen and Ron Hextall lured out of retirement to cover all the goal-scoring angles. But that effort might - and only might - succeed even on the one measure being considered. (After all, context does matter in developing a player's track record even for goal-scoring - and that's no less true in analyzing the factors underlying GDP changes than in figuring out why a hockey player has scored goals.)

But it's a virtual certainty that using goal-scoring as a proxy for overall player talent simply because it offers an easy way to evaluate players would result in utter disaster for the team's won-loss record. So any general manager who did decide to convert his team to a form of Borschevskevism wouldn't figure to last in the job for long.

Mind you, that's largely the case in hockey because there are obviously other factors which play a role in the game (i.e. goal prevention), and a broader indicator of success that's widely accepted in the form of wins and losses. But is it accurate to say that both aren't also present in the case of the GDP vs. "other measures of happiness" argument?

Well, let's go back to our first two questions. Does anybody honestly believe that wealth maximization is the goal of such a substantial proportion of human behaviour as to serve as a remotely reasonable substitute for "that which we seek in policy development"? There may not be any easy answer as to how to weight the relative priorities, but I don't see much room for dispute that family, friends, leisure time, positive impact on one's community, and other factors are all part of a balanced life which most people tend to seek.

And indeed, unless Cosh himself has put together a thorough economic analysis as to how he can expect to make the most possible money in his current job (and by his own account obtain more satisfaction by the "gold standard of revealed preference"), I'd be inclined to see his own choice of career paths - involving an apparent tradeoff of money for public influence as compared to, say, investment banking - as a counterargument to his view that wealth maximization should be seen as the lone and central priority for decision-making at either the individual or the societal level.

So it's fairly easy to demonstrate that judging policy based on its GDP impacts alone presents a distorted picture of our ultimate desired results, just like judging hockey players on their goal total alone. But that leaves the second question to be asked: could it be that we should still ignore other possible types of measurement based on the chosen indicator coming closer to the mark?

Here, there's somewhat of a divergence between the two scenarios since hockey involves a built-in greater end result, in the form of team wins and losses.

But I presume Cosh is aware that hockey, like other sports, has undergone more and more analysis in recent years which has given rise to new and better ways of evaluating players than traditional statistics. And a crucial part of finding better indicators is a willingness to research different ideas. Some of those may not prove more accurate than comfortable traditional statistics, but can still both add context to the existing numbers, and point in the right direction toward the development of new ways of evaluating outcomes which come far closer to the mark.

That means that in at least this one case, Cosh is the one making the absurd argument that we should deride and close our eyes to research which may - or may not - result in better ways of thinking about what we're actually seeking to accomplish in developing public policy, simply because he prefers focusing on the more easily-measured GDP instead. Which seems like a sure way to prioritize that measurable indicator over the results that people actually want - and to ensure that in the longer term, we fall far behind those who put some effort into figuring out how best to define and measure success.

(Edit: fixed typos.)

Sunday Night Links

This and that to start your week...

- It's worth noting that Jim Prentice's reaction to fish deformities resulting from the tar sands is somewhat out of character for the Cons, consisting more of respectful acknowledgment than of immediate dismissal. But I still won't be holding my breath waiting for the Cons to do anything but stonewall any meaningful study or action.

- Alex Himelfarb comments on the insidious effect of social traps on the course of policy development:

(T)here is a good deal of room to disagree about which priorities merit our tax dollars and which criteria to use to assess what works. This is what politics is all about. But even among those who value a particular program, say public education or medicare, or agree on the value of particular public investments, say greening the economy, there will be tax reluctance if there is no trust. That’s the perfect social trap. We know what is in our shared interest but we do not have sufficient trust to do what is needed. For example, a recent Canadian study demonstrates how much money could be saved through a national pharmacare program, not to mention the benefits to health, productivity and social justice. Some Canadians will of course react with immediate horror at the very idea but, putting this aside for the moment, would those who do embrace the idea be willing to pay more taxes for it? Some will say, yes to the idea but ask, why me for more taxes, why not those who can most afford it or who derive most benefit from the advantages of Canada’s opportunities or who do most damage for example through pollution. Some will say that too many people will exploit the system, overuse it or worse, and I am not going to pay for that. And some will say government simply cannot deliver the goods. No trust. No taxes. Trapped.

And sadly, Colby Cosh is working on ensnaring us all the more thoroughly.

- Michael Geist rightly skewers some "shockingly misleading" copyright propaganda. But aren't we past being shocked by now?

- Rick Salutin's column tracing the Straussian roots of Stephen Harper's political strategy doesn't cover a lot of new ground. But his theory that Canada's political scene might have offered an ideal target is worth some further discussion:

One can see the appeal of Canada to Straussians. The U.S. always had so much fevered religiosity, hypernationalism and paranoid individualism, you hardly needed to seed them there by stealth. Here, though, we still have liberals, Liberals, even social democrats. We may be Straussianism’s happy hunting ground.

And might one add that a relatively civil scene on all sides prior to Harper's ascension made us ripe for manipulation?

- Finally, while the two-party dynamic has once again made it difficult to get traction, the New Brunswick NDP seems to be getting a well-deserved positive reception for its economic plans. And this CBC piece presenting the party's job tax credit is well worth a look - particularly Tony Myatt's closing line:

So hard to say goodbye

Apparently at least some commentators just aren't quite ready to give up on Quebec's margarine colour regulation as their main argument to criticize the idea of active government based merely on the fact that it no longer exists. Shorter Colby Cosh (by reference to William Watson):

The margarine colour example serves as living proof that we need to be extra-suspicious of regulations to make sure corporate interests can't lobby for a regulatory philosophy which ultimately helps nobody but themselves. But don't take my word for it: ask the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. Or the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Or...

On politicization

Shorter Colby Cosh:
I can't imagine stronger evidence of a partisan judiciary than five judges appointed or promoted by Liberals overturning a Liberal law.