Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Armine Yalnizyan highlights how Volkswagen's emissions cheating scandal is just one more compelling piece of evidence against trusting the corporate sector to regulate itself:

The trend is towards asking industries to monitor themselves (at their own suggestion), which they quite happily will do, and tell you what they think you want to know.

Now there is a role for self-regulation. Most adults practice self-regulation to some degree. But when we pass laws against certain types of behaviour, we don't think people should police themselves. We hire police to ensure that the laws are obeyed.

Corporations' sole purpose is to make money. That motive doesn't make them more trustworthy than individuals.

If the VW story isn't a huge wake-up call about the failure of corporate self-regulation, I don't know what is. We need good rules, well enforced. Without good enforcement, good rules are just a charade of fairness.

- And needless to say, the fact that a political party is approved as unwilling to act in the public interest is hardly a vote of confidence - which, as Linda McQuaig notes, is exactly the pitch Conrad Black is making for Justin Trudeau and the Libs.

- Meanwhile, Andrew MacLeod finds Con and Lib candidates alike supporting Republican-style drug testing for EI recipients - as the desire to unleash the corporate sector's worst impulses is characteristically paired with the desire to intrude on individual privacy. 

- CBC reports on the Cons' reassurance that people can avoid the effects of two-tier citizenship just as long as they renounce their heritage. (But it's worth noting even that position may not be based in fact, since one need only eligible for other citizenship to have Canadian citizenship revoked, not actually maintain it.)

- Finally, CTV reports that Stephen Harper's PMO inserted itself into decision-making about Syrian refugees for the clear purpose of excluding Muslims. And Tim Harper is the latest to point out that the Cons' xenophobia should be called out as more than just a distraction.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Andrew Jackson takes a look at some dire predictions about the continued spread of inequality, and notes that we need to act now in order to reverse the trend. And UN Special Rapporteur Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona discusses how more progressive tax policies - including a focus on maximizing revenue - are needed to support both greater equality and the effective exercise of human rights:

States must realize the full potential of tax collection as a tool to generate revenue for the fulfilment of human rights obligations and to redress discrimination and inequality. Human rights principles regarding participation, transparency, accountability and non-discrimination should be followed throughout the whole revenue-raising cycle. For this purpose, States should:

(a) Seek to increase tax revenue in a manner compatible with their human rights obligations of non-discrimination and equality, and increase the allocation of revenues collected to budget areas that contribute to the enjoyment of human rights;
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(i) Take strict measures to tackle tax abuse, in particular by corporations and high net-worth individuals;
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(l) Ensure that extractive industries are subject to appropriate tax rates and export duties, and that the human rights of affected communities and future generations are protected in the exploitation of natural resources;
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(n) Ensure the public revenue raised from the financial sector is commensurate to the sector’s profitability and the risks it generates; implement a financial transaction tax, and consider allocating the revenues specifically to expenditure that can contribute to the realization of human rights;

(o) Implement regulations that prevent the role played by the financial sector in aiding tax evasion and profit-shifting.

- Meanwhile, Tom Sandborn highlights the role of unions in pushing us toward greater equality and social health. Sherri Torjman and Ken Battle criticize the Cons' determination to go in exactly the wrong direction by dumping piles of free money on wealthy, one-income households while ignoring social needs.

- Nicholas Keung exposes the policy of "medical repatriation" under which employers exploit migrant workers in Canada until they become ill or injured, then fire them and send them home to be somebody else's problem. In related news, Lord Everyman Conrad Black is convinced that every worker is protected to the point where there's no need for organized labour.

- Mariana Mazzucato discusses how public investment is needed to support economic progress based on research and development rather than exploitation and rent-seeking:

Silicon Valley is a result of massive direct public investments (not subsidies) along the entire innovation chain—from basic and applied research to late stage commercialization. While venture capitalists, mythologized by Renzi, pursue short-run profits, focusing on an early ‘exit’ through either an IPO or a buyout, the US government has proved to be the patient public financier, providing (through a decentralized network of state agencies) patient high risk finance to companies like Compaq, Intel and Apple. And today is supplying the same kind of finance to green companies like successful Tesla, which recently received a $465 million guaranteed loan, and less successful Solyndra which received a $500 million loan: in the innovation game you win some lose some.
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Pretending instead that innovation will come to Italy by simply lowering tax, and reducing regulations—especially around the labor market of course (the usual easy target)— ignores this history. Ironically Renzi is selectively copying only one thing from the US: the much criticized 2012 Jumpstart Our Businesses Act (JOBS Act). And it is no surprise he got such a welcome in the City this week given that it is precisely these kind of policies that create one of the most dysfunctional aspects of modern day capitalism: socialization of risks, privatization of rewards. The US JOBS Act attempted to provide risk averse venture capitalists with even less investment risk, by relaxing financial disclosure requirements for smaller firms (those with less than $1 billion in annual revenue). It also legalized ‘crowd funding’, meaning that VCs can recruit a wider range of investors (and individuals) when taking firms public. How this can generate actual job growth – when it seems tailored to ensure that VC investors can reap massive returns on small firms touting government technologies – is difficult to know.   Indeed there is an increasing army of small firms that complain about how they lose out from VC’s speculation and short-termism.

If Renzi wants to bring innovation and dynamism to Italy he must yes make Italy more efficient, but also move beyond the sole focus on ‘rigidities’. The discussion should move towards a debate on the types of long-term investments that are needed, by the public and private sector alike, and to crucially ask Italian business and finance to step up to the game. Don’t suck up to the City (and Italian finance) but ask the financial sector to stop lobbying for lower capital gains, which is only making them more short-term, and to actually co-invest with you in the long-term areas that smart innovation led growth requires. Ask Italian business to stop asking for subsidies and handouts, stop complaining about red tape and decide to co-invest alongside government in the opportunities which will shape Italy’s innovative future. And when told by conservative economists that all he needs to do is to cut tax, he should be picky and focus on reducing taxes on hiring labor—not on capital gains—and then remind them that the tax rate paid by the top earners was close to 90% under President Eisenhower, a US Republican and ex military general—hardly a communist—who reigned in the USA in an era in which some of the most important investments in innovation were made

- Finally, Haroon Siddiqui recognizes that Stephen Harper is always up for whatever war is on offer, making it impossible to believe his claim that every single time the push for military action is based on a unique or genuine threate. Boris points out that the best-case scenario in getting involved in Iraq now is to be stuck in an indefinite containment and suppression mission. And Peggy Mason argues that the consistent choice to pursue war over engagement in the Middle East only figures to make matters worse.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Bill Tieleman tears into James Moore for his callous disregard for child hunger, while PressProgress reminds us that plenty of the Cons' policy choices reflect Moore's complete lack of concern for his neighbours' children. And Polly Toynbee looks in detail at the UK Cons' attempts to turn support for needy children into a perceived political weakness rather than a matter of basic empathy and compassion:

The dirty war has begun; the early signs are that this will be the most poisonous, socially damaging election campaign for many a long year. Corrosive malice will be poured over anyone on any benefit. The Conservatives are convinced they are laying a killer trap by branding Labour as "the welfare party".
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The language used by Zahawi captures a swelling theme of the election – dividing the "taxpayer" from the "benefit taker" – with this: "Many couples take the decision to delay having a third or fourth child until they are sure they can afford it." The comments that followed were heavily anti-child: "If you can't afford kids why expect the state to keep them?" and "It's a parent's responsibility to provide, not the government". There lies the great dividing line: why should the state support children at all?

As the Child Poverty Action Group eloquently argues, benefits for children not only spread the cost of living between richer and poorer, but also smooth the bumps in everyone's life cycle. When children are born costs are highest and earnings meagre, but later many will earn more, pay more tax and get less out. The banal moral truth is that children are the future, paying for the care of the childless. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says this government's legacy will be a steep rise in child poverty by 2015: a monumental £12bn benefit cut is in George Osborne's post-2015 plan.
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Cameron bets the screw can be turned twice as hard, as Osborne enters the election with huge cuts to meet his impossible deficit targets. Labour has no intention of matching his plan. The only way to avoid the Tory "trap" is to tell the truth of where incomes are heading, how child poverty is soaring. Rachel Reeves lays out her policy for the first time in January. Ed Miliband has already said he'd shrink the housing benefit bill by building homes, and the dole with guaranteed jobs for the unemployed and a living wage to ease the cost of tax credits. Labour can never out-nasty the Tories, so nice is the only way to be.

- Elizabeth Benzetti highlights the absurdity of wealthy and privileged scions of the right like Conrad Black and Rob Ford putting on a "woe is us!" routine while calling for life to be worse for mere ordinary citizens. And Andrew Coyne similarly laments the infantilism and lack of principle which form the basis of the right in Canada - though he's too quick to try to distance that impulse from conservative politics.

- Anna Mehler Paperny reports on the state of minimum wage laws in Canada - with not a single jurisdiction providing for the minimum wage above the poverty line. Andrew Jackson takes a look at the composition of Canada's workforce and notes that a majority of workers may have trouble reaching what would generally be seen as a middle class lifestyle. And the Globe and Mail rightly slams Jim Flaherty for positioning himself as the primary obstacle barring the way to a sufficient Canada Pension Plan.

- David McLaren comments on the Cons' decision to restore a colonial philosophy to Canada's foreign policy. And John Baird's spin on the Cons' international priorities is accurate only to the extent that their sole concern is with profits rather than jobs.

- Finally, Sandra Azocar and Noel Somerville take a look at Alberta's experience to make the case against for-profit seniors care:

The inconvenient reality is that, because of acute staff shortages, seniors are not being fed properly and medications are not being administered properly.

The magnitude of the current staffing problem has been well documented in a recent study done by the Parkland Institute. This study, entitled From Bad to Worse — Residential Elder Care in Alberta, demonstrates the deterioration that has occurred in Alberta from 1999 to 2009.

The Parkland study quantifies the differences in care provided in public, not-for-profit and private for-profit facilities. The hours of care per patient in not-for-profit facilities was 83 per cent of that provided in publicly operated facilities. The hours of care per patient in private for-profit facilities was only 71 per cent of that provided in the publicly operated facilities.
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(T)he availability of long-term care beds in Alberta, relative to the age 75-plus population, has slipped by 20 per cent and is now the second lowest of any Canadian province. This decline is on top of the 40 per cent cut in long-term care beds per capita that occurred in the 1990s. Further, over the study period, the number of assisted living beds which provide much lower level of care, has grown by 187 per cent.

All of these realities suggest that the government is pursuing a continuing care strategy that serves to divest itself of responsibility for providing care to seniors. When it comes to expanding seniors care in this province, this government has opted to give massive public handouts primarily to corporations seeking to profit from the health needs of seniors.

Ironically, Premier Alison Redford won the Tory leadership race in large part by claiming to be devoted to our public health-care system. Yet this government continues its ideologically driven efforts to shift costs and responsibility from the government to individual health care users and to promote increased private-sector participation. Sadly, this is why we are now more than ever hearing heartbreaking stories from seniors and their families that attest to the shabby state of elderly care in our province.

No comment necessary

Conrad Black, patron saint of Canada's right-wing movement including the Harper government, provides an unusually stark example of just how much repression neocons will accept and embrace if it means attacking the preferred enemy du jour:

The Munich Games in 1972 were designed to do for the temporary country of West Germany what it had been initially hoped the 1936 Games would do for the temporary country of Weimar Germany. Once again, the legitimate German quest for acceptance was frustrated, this time by the murderous outrage of Black September against the Israeli team. Ironically, the Germans bungled the challenge and a number of Israelis and German special forces died. (At least Hitler’s security forces would have done a very professional job of disposing of any terrorist efforts at the Berlin Games.)

Taken in

Shorter Peter Worthington: It was just last week that I joined the Ad Hoc Committee for Conrad Black. And they already sent me this nifty tinfoil hat!