Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Rupert Neate reports on the latest Credit Suisse study showing that wealth continues to concentrate in the hands of a few ultra-rich individuals. And Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe take note of a similar trend for U.S. wages, particularly when it comes to the soaring amount being claimed by CEOs.

- Sharon Treat discusses how the USCMA only figures to put large corporations even further beyond the reach of any regulation in the public interest. And Marie Aspiazu points out its effect on digital rights, including its extension of already-excessive copyright terms.

- The Star's editorial board takes a look at the costs of Doug Ford's cancellation of Ontario's cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. And both Lars Osberg and the C.D. Howe Institute make the case for full fee-and-dividend systems - though it's still worth raising the value of ensuring that some money collected as a result of carbon pollution actually gets applied to reducing the scope of the problem.

- Finally, Simon Enoch argues that climate sanctions may be needed to ensure that the worst offenders don't undermine any effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And George Monbiot writes that in the absence of sorely-needed government action to avert a total climate breakdown, there looks to be little alternative but civil disobedience.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The OECD examines the generational implications of inequality and poverty - with the descendants of poor children in some countries requiring up to nine generations to project to reach an average income.

- Dean Baker writes that the Trump administration is only seeking to further entrench class disparities by locking in exclusionary rights through international trade agreements. And Michael Geist discusses how a few corporate actors have taken over Canada's copyright consultations.

- Meanwhile, Howard Davies notes that a new IMF database shows global debt at at all-time high even after the supposed attempt to rein in unsustainable borrowing after the 2008 economic crisis.

- David Ball reports on Kinder Morgan's disregard for environmental rules in building its Trans Mountain terminal. Needless to say, nobody is expected to face any consequences as a result of that lawlessness - in contrast to David Dodge's willingness to see activists killed in the name of pipeline expansion.

- Finally, D.C. Fraser reports on the Saskatchewan Party's decision to tear down the Justice for Our Stolen Children in the name of expunging any recognition of the abuse of Indigenous peoples from Regina's Canada Day events.

New column day

Here, on the latest threats to a free and open Internet for Canadians.

For further reading...
- Again, Canadaland broke the story of Bell's push to make regulatory restrictions on website access a default answer to copyright issues here, while the FairPlay scheme is here (PDF). Michael Geist discussed some of the problems with Bell's position, while OpenMedia is leading the charge against it. And Sameer Chidra reported on the implicit response from the CRTC's Chris Seidl.
- Matthew Braga reported on Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien's push for a right to be forgotten by multiple means. And both Geist's response and David Fraser's previous submission are worth a look in analyzing the proposal.
- Finally, Marianela Ramos Capela discusses what should be a far larger issue - being the impact of high prices on general access to basic information services.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Stephanie Blankenburg and Richard Kozul-Wright comment on the rise of rent-seeking as a driver of stagnation and inequality. And George Monbiot argues that we shouldn't let our common wealth be used for the sole benefit of a privileged few:

A true commons is managed not for the accumulation of capital or profit, but for the steady production of prosperity or wellbeing. It belongs to a particular group, who might live in or beside it, or who created and sustain it. It is inalienable, which means that it should not be sold or given away. Where it is based on a living resource, such as a forest or a coral reef, the commoners have an interest in its long-term protection, rather than the short-term gain that could be made from its destruction.

The commons have been attacked by both state power and capitalism for centuries. Resources that no one invented or created, or that a large number of people created together, are stolen by those who sniff an opportunity for profit. The saying, attributed to Balzac, that “behind every great fortune lies a great crime” is generally true. “Business acumen” often amounts to discovering novel ways of grabbing other people’s work and assets.
...
Enclosure creates inequality. It produces a rentier economy: those who capture essential resources force everyone else to pay for access. It shatters communities and alienates people from their labour and their surroundings. The ecosystems commoners sustained are liquidated for cash. Inequality, rent, atomisation, alienation, environmental destruction: the loss of the commons has caused or exacerbated many of the afflictions of our age.
...
I’m not proposing we abandon either market or state, but that we balance them by defending and expanding the two neglected sectors. I believe there should be wages for carers, through which the state and private enterprise repay part of the subsidy they receive. And communities should be allowed to take back control of resources on which their prosperity depends. For example, anyone who owns valuable land should pay a local community land contribution (a form of land value tax): compensation for the wealth created by others. Part of this can be harvested by local and national government, to pay for services and to distribute money from richer communities to poorer ones. But the residue should belong to a commons trust formed by the local community. One use to which this money might be put it is to buy back land, creating a genuine commons and regaining and sharing the revenue...

A commons, unlike state spending, obliges people to work together, to sustain their resources and decide how the income should be used. It gives community life a clear focus. It depends on democracy in its truest form. It destroys inequality. It provides an incentive to protect the living world. It creates, in sum, a politics of belonging. 

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford examines the impact of public-sector austerity, and finds that wage cuts for public servants lead to both wage suppression in all sectors, and overall economic stagnation.

- David Macdonald studies (PDF) the effects of income splitting in private corporations, and finds that 0.3% of Canadian households use a tax loophole whose gains go disproportionately to people making over $200,000 per year.

- Colleen Fuller discusses how the corporate sector has taken over Canada's health care system - particularly in British Columbia and other provinces which have been eager to sell off health provision to big business.

- Jenny Uechi reports that the response of corporate titans to the revelations as to how they pulled the strings in Christy Clark's B.C. Lib government is to claim that's how things should be. Meanwhile, Ross Marowits reports that the Trudeau Liberals are going along with SNC-Lavalin's self-serving plan to make sure that corporate criminality doesn't lead to meaningful consequences.

- Finally, Michael Geist writes that Bell is lobbying to turn NAFTA into a mechanism to attack consumers in the name of extreme copyright enforcement.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Baratunde Thurston makes the point that even beyond income and wealth inequality, there's an obviously unfair distribution of second chances in the U.S. depending on one's race and class. Denis Campbell reports on the link between poverty and childhood obesity, while Jen St. Denis highlights how poverty can cause and exacerbate mental health problems.

- Kyle Bakx points out how a systematic effort to encourage people living in poverty to file their tax returns can result in help getting where it's needed most. And conversely, the Star 's editorial board writes that piling fines on people with no means to pay them serves no useful purpose.

- David Cay Johnston examines the U.S.' tax rolls and finds a large number of wealthy Americans paying no income tax at all:

In 2014, the latest year for which we have data, more than two million of the 148.6 million tax-filing households reported negative incomes. The number of such households has been rising for years. In 1994 it was 0.8% of income tax returns, but in 2014 it hit 1.4%. That's one in 73, up from one in 125.

Some of these households have one-time losses, usually from failed business. But many must be wealthy, too, benefiting from liberal tax avoidance laws set by Congress.

My detailed analysis of the official data shows that those who reported negative incomes on average are wealthier and enjoy more cash flow by far than the average American.

Some surprising facts:

• More than a fourth of these non-taxpaying households had paying jobs in 2014.
• These households had vastly more investment income than all but the top half of 1% of all households.
• One in three negative-income households reported receiving taxable interest, compared to 29% of all taxpayers. The average amount they reported was $6,939. For comparison, those making $75,000 to $100,000 in 2014 reported average taxable interest of just $860.

What we do not know is how many of these are people reporting negative income just once – and how many, like Trump, have reported negative income year-after-year, despite huge incomes that they collect free of income tax.
...
When you get to even richer households, Donald Trump territory, you still find negative-income taxpayers: The 410,300 tax households reporting incomes of $1 million or more in 2014 had an average income that was more than $3.3 million. But 444 of these million-dollar-plus households – about one in 900 – paid no income tax.

- Doreen Nichol rightly argues that children living on reserves shouldn't face continued systemic discrimination, while Jody Porter reports that First Nations residents needing medical travel are facing regular breaches of privacy compared to other patients. And CBC reports that the Idle No More movement is rightly demanding that Justin Trudeau live up to his promises, rather than pretending that rhetoric is enough to make up for continued unfair treatment.

- In a similar vein, Nathan Cullen discusses the need to hold the Libs to their promise of electoral reform. And Tavia Grant reports on the Libs' failure to follow through on a commitment to ban the use of asbestos.

- Finally, Judith Lavoie comments on the need for renewed anti-SLAPP protection to allow people to participate meaningfully in public debates about the issues that affect them. And Michael Geist offers his suggestions for the future of Canadian journalism.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Branko Milanovic argues that there's plenty of reason to be concerned about inequality even if one puts aside a utilitarian comparison of individual needs and benefits:

(I)nequality of opportunity affects negatively economic growth (so we now have a negative effect going from my third ground back to the first) which makes inequality of opportunity abhorrent on two grounds: (1) it negates fundamental human equality, and (2) it lowers the pace of material improvements for society.

My argument, if I need to reiterate it, is: you can reject welfarism, hold that inter-personal comparison of utility is impossible, and still feel very strongly that economic outcomes should be made more equal—that inequality should be limited so that it does not strongly affect opportunities, so that it does not slow growth and so that it does not undermine democracy. Isn’t that enough?

- Brad Delong takes note of Barry Eichelgreen's timeline of the development of inequality over the past three centuries. Marvin Shaffer discusses British Columbia's inequitable growth favouring those who already have the most, while Josh Hoxie notes that the U.S.' generation of young adults is bearing the brunt of grossly unequal distributions of income and wealth. Emma Burney points out the OECD's latest report (PDF) on how tax policy can rein in inequality. And John Hood comments on the UK's seeming consensus on the need to address inequality - though it remains to be seen how (if at all) that will be translated into meaningful policy choices.

- George Hoberg rightly argues that the federal government needs to step up and develop an effective national climate change policy due to the wholly insufficient results of trying to push the issue down to the provinces. But Alex Emmons notes that the oil industry's lobbying at the Republican National Convention represents just one more example of the large amount of money being burned in an effort to stall progress wherever possible. 

- Megan Sandel and Laurel Blatchford discuss the connection between investment in adequate housing and a reduction in health care expenses. And Stephanie Dickrell comments on the massive individual and social costs of child homelessness.

- Finally, Michael Geist studies the Trans-Pacific Partnership's intellectual property rules, and find that they'd impose new and gratuitous burdens and costs on the public in the name of lining corporate pockets.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Mike Barber highlights how Canada's federal election campaign was dominated by messages pushed from the top down rather than citizens' concerns. Erna Paris recognizes that we can't afford to be complacent about the place of outright bigotry in shaping voters' decisions. And Christopher Flavelle writes that the ensuing election result represents a major test for progressives to see whether an ambivalent Liberal government can be pushed toward positive change:

If Canadians accept a few new tax breaks for the middle class, vague pledges on climate change and some symbolic shifts — letting in more Syrian refugees, perhaps, and dropping the previous government’s efforts to ban niqabs in citizenship ceremonies — as the fulfillment of the Liberals’ promise of change, then the complaint that Harper was holding the country back will look hollow.

If, however, the Liberals feel compelled by public opinion to tackle, early on, the more controversial issues they ran on — achieving a meaningful price on carbon, rolling back Harper’s tough-on-crime policies, reforming drug and prostitution laws, changing the way members of Parliament are elected — then the argument that Canada is a progressive country at heart, long thwarted by a prime minister who wasn’t, will acquire some meaning.

The country’s big problems haven’t been solved. We’re about to see how much Liberals, and Canadians in general, want to try.

- Open Canada offers a noteworthy list of foreign policy hopes for the new federal government. And Mike Blanchfield observes that even Stephen Harper's seeming ideological allies in Germany are joining other countries in relief that the Cons are no longer around to obstruct climate change talks and other international actions.

- Peter Henderson reports on the potentially alarming effects the TPP's copyright rules could have on Canadians.

- Melissa Dahl discusses the dangerous effects of excessive work - including its tendency to make people perform worse at the tasks they're overdoing.

- Finally, Delphine Nakache and Leanne Dixon-Perera examine the lives of Canada's temporary foreign workers, with particular emphasis on the dangers of abuse when workers know their legal stay in Canada is limited. 

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Edward Keenan writes that a lack of affordable child care is the crucial financial pressure facing families across the income spectrum. And Michael Wolfson discusses the dangers of talking about taxes in a vacuum without recognizing what we lose by failing to make sure everybody pays a fair share.

- Sam Thielman notes that the Trans-Pacific Partnership's crackdown on intellectual property may seriously threaten our freedom of expression, while Michael Geist highlights the potential for content-blocking and the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out how the TPP transfers massive amounts of power to rightsholders over citizens. And Doug Bolton reports on the recognition that the TPP's restrictions on access to medications will cost lives, while Scott Sinclair takes a closer look at the impact on Canada.

- Meanwhile, Aaron Gluck Thaler highlights a new student movement to fight against C-51 and other unwarranted intrusions on privacy.

- BJ Siekierski and James Munson (with Kevin Page's help) examine how the Harper Cons have trashed Canada's civil service without any idea of the consequences, then covered their tracks for a future government to try to retrace.

- Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch and Susanne Rust write that Exxon engaged in a campaign of public climate denial even as its own researchers knew perfectly well that its business was damaging our planet - and outright welcomed that prospect to the extent it might make Arctic reserves more easily accessible.

- Finally, Karl Nerenberg offers his take on talking about the federal election around the Thanksgiving dinner table - rightly noting that the similarities between the NDP and Lib platforms on some (if not all) points don't represent a reason to ignore the parties' histories and values.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Crawford Kilian reviews Tom Mulcair's Strength of Conviction and describes what we can expect out of an NDP federal government as a result:

He seems likely to be a very pro-family PM, if only because his own family clearly shaped him that way. (His account of courting and marrying Catherine Pinhas is a lovely, funny slice of social history.) So expect affordable daycare to be in his first budget; but if once-housebound mums then flood into the job market, he may find unemployment rates even higher than they are now.

Also expect some help for student debt, and fresh money for post-secondary education -- issues that make Mulcair genuinely angry. An attempt at a true reconciliation with the First Nations seems certain, and we can expect a restoration of Elections Canada and a move to some kind of proportional representation for the next election.

- Meanwhile, Priya Sarin reminds us that plenty of people will lose the chance to have their votes taken into account due to the Cons' voter suppression laws.

- Murray Dobbin writes that Canadians are already getting gouged when it comes to prescription drug costs, while noting that the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade agreements only figure to make matters worse. And Jordan Pearson examines some of the many areas where the copyright provisions of the TPP would force Canada to rewrite its laws to serve foreign corporations rather than the public, while the Star expresses its (perhaps premature) relief that nothing is expected to be finalized before Canadians get some say at the polls.

- The Ontario Federal of Labour sets out five simple reasons to support a $15 federal minimum wage, while the Canadian Union of Postal Workers offers its backing as well. And the Workers' Action Centre confirms that the issue is one that should be dealt with federally to get the ball rolling on increases for workers under provincial jurisdiction as well.

- Finally, Paula Simons comments on the destructiveness of locking up poor people simply because they're poor. Cynthia Hess argues that we should measure our progress by how well we combat inequality and otherwise improve people's lives, not by how many new gadgets we can produce. And Jennifer Szalai discusses the roots and effects of austerity:

Austerity is often promoted as not only economically but morally necessary too — Greece, according to this argument, needs to be taught a very painful lesson, or else it’s going to continue to do silly things with other people’s money. Blyth told me that austerity policies, whatever we want to call them, turn an economic situation into ‘‘a morality tale of saints and sinners,’’ leading to punishment rather than problem-solving. Besides, he says, this morality tale gets it backward. Austerity programs have historically been enacted in reaction to a banking crisis: A government goes into debt in order to rescue the banks, and so private debt is transferred onto the public balance sheet. Public spending is slashed as a result.

Given that the poor benefit more from the kind of government spending that is cut, Blyth writes in his book, austerity ‘‘relies on the poor paying for the mistakes of the rich.’’ Greece’s people are becoming poorer: Last year, Unicef calculated that more than 40 percent of Greek children were living in poverty, a doubling from four years earlier. The conversations about Greece sound depressingly familiar, mimicking the ones we have here about the poor, the rich and who ‘‘deserves’’ what. The setting might change, but the moral stays the same: Those with less are expected to be the ones to do without.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Peter Ladner discusses why our tax and fiscal policies should be designed to reduce inequality - rather than exacerbating it as the Cons are determined to do:

Right now, the richest 20% of Canadian families hold almost 70% of the country’s wealth. The bottom 20% are in a debt position. A CCPA study found that Canada’s wealthiest 86 people have the same net worth as the poorest 34%.

Those of us with capital are adding these new breaks to existing tax breaks for capital gains, taxed at about half the rate of income; an $800,000 lifetime capital gains exemption for business owners; trusts that allow capital gains exemptions to be spread among family members; and a capital gains exemption on windfall real estate gains from a primary residence.

Lest we forget, to quote the U.K. Equality Trust: “In more equal societies people live longer, are less likely to be mentally ill or obese and there are lower rates of infant mortality. Inequality increases property crime and violence. Unequal societies have less social mobility and lower educational scores. 

High levels of income inequality are linked to economic instability, financial crisis, debt and inflation.”

A March 2015 U.K. Office for National Statistics report said “what makes the most difference to personal well-being is the level of an individual’s income relative to those around them.”

In other words, less spread between the richest and poorest.

Why aren’t we designing tax policies to close the wealth gap, not widen it?

- But Ian Welsh offers what's surely part of the answer, as some subsets of the wealthy are particularly motivated to drive down the income of the society around them no matter what harm it causes to everybody concerned.  And a needless extension of monopoly control over copyrighted materials and the negotiation of corporate-friendly deals to the exclusion of the public surely serve as prime examples - while symbolic votes against executive pay at the firm level won't do much to help.

- Meanwhile, Terrell Jermaine Starr identifies just a few of the ways in which the U.S. has criminalized poverty.

- Finally, both the Senate and the Cons are doing everything in their power to make sure Canadians don't find out how Mike Duffy fits into wider problems of systemic abuse and oil-sponsored corporatism. But fortunately, Alison is tracking down what they want to keep hidden.

Friday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Oliver Milman reports on research showing how humanity is destroying its own environmental life support systems. And our appetite for exploitation is proving a failure even from the standpoint of the pursuit of shortsighted greed, as David Dayen considers how the recent drop in oil prices - and consequent market forces limiting further production - may affect a financial sector relying on constant expansion.

- Michael Harris offers another look at the real Stephen Harper to counter the barrage of selective imaging we'll see throughout the year. And Bob Hepburn discusses the need to make sure that neither Harper nor a successor runs roughshod over Canada's democracy.

- Rebecca Rolfers interviews Angus Deaton about the connection between corporatism, inequality and poor health:

Q. In your latest book, you take the unusual approach of combining health and income inequality into well-being. Most economists deal with them separately; how do health and income inequality combined relate to economic and social progress?

I think it’s important to recognize that progress is an engine of inequality, and a key fact about progress is that it opens up gaps between people who lead the progress — and therefore benefit from it — and the rest. The principle [sic] criterion for concern about inequality is whether there is a natural spread of the benefits of progress, so that eventually, everyone is better off, or whether the benefits are and remain concentrated among a privileged few. In the realm of health, innovation and social health practices (e.g., avoiding germs, quitting smoking) generally spread in ways that improve life expectancy. I view the greater risk to economic, social and even political welfare to be income inequality.

Q. Can you explain some of the similarities and distinctions between health and income inequality?

Some health inequalities are due to improvements in health technology and knowledge. If those things first go to the better-off and the better-educated and later spread to others, then that is a temporary inequality and not a problem. It’s like the green shoot in the garden: it means spring will come and everything will be green. But if that shoot is just one plant and nothing else ever grows, that is a problem. The same is true of health inequality. If the benefits of health innovation and access never spread, we wouldn’t be very happy about it. Progress tends to come at the price of inequality, at least initially; but eventually we expect that progress to be broadly shared.

- David Climenhaga points out that Alberta's oil development has resulted in nothing of the sort, to the point where the province is now effectively giving its resources away to keep corporate profits up. And CBC reports on research showing the high levels of poverty in Alberta long before resource prices started to fall.

- Finally, Michael Geist weighs in on how the Cons' copyright law has been turned into a distribution mechanism for fraudulent corporate trolling. And even the National Post's editorial board sees that preference for rent-seeking over consumer rights as a bridge too far.

On universal freedoms

I won't wade too far into the sudden discussion of political advertising raised by the Cons' plans to change copyright law to favour political advertising, as Michael Geist has largely captured the most important points. But I will raise one quibble with Geist which hints at a more reasonable legal reform.

My criticism of the government here is not in seeking to protect political speech by ensuring that the law features sufficient flexibility to allow for appropriate uses without permission. Rather, it stems from the view that there are far better policy approaches available than an awkward self-interested exception.

As a starting point, I think the government should simply rely on existing law. With a robust fair dealing provision and a cap on liability for non-commercial infringement, the risk of an infringement claim is low.  This proposal may be a solution in search of a problem and we would do better to test the boundaries of the current law rather than bury an exception in a budget bill.

Alternatively, if the government is convinced that fair dealing does not fully cover political speech, the far better approach would be to establish a full fair use provision in Canada. A fair use provision offers the benefits of applying in all circumstances (not just political advertising) and would be available to all users (not just political parties and candidates). Moreover, it would ensure that usage would be subject to a fairness analysis, which this exception does not appear to do.

Now, I can appreciate the argument for a broad fair dealing exception to copyright law. But some of the distinctions highlighted by Geist might well be justified in the case of a type of speech which as long been acknowledged as lying at the core of our fundamental freedoms: if political speech is indeed of central importance even as compared to other forms of speech, then it's not clear that the fairness analysis applied in other contexts should limit the use of information for political purposes.

As a result, I'd see the crucial points of attack against the Cons' plan arising out of two areas: the fact that it applies only to political advertising rather than any type of public discussion, and the difference between "all users" and "just political parties and candidates".

In their proposal, the Cons have effectively confirmed that they see political discussion as being conducted solely by paid partisan actors, for the benefit of paid partisan actors. And by implication, members of the public are limited to being passive viewers of the ads generated by the parties.

But there's no reason why we should accept that distinction. Instead, any recognition of the importance of political speech should lead us to want all citizens to have the ability to make use of publicly-available information to share their views - whether or not they're operating under a a party banner, and whether or not they can afford to fund an advertising campaign.

In other words, if we want to ensure that broadcast materials are properly available to inform a full public debate, then there's no reasonable basis for carving out special privileges for partisan advertising. Instead, material should be equally available to parties, individuals and other political actors alike for use in whatever medium they see fit. And if the Cons intend to use copyright law to amplify their own preferred message distribution channels while comparatively silencing others, that - not any concern about the editorial decisions of the media - should be the more important objection to their attitude toward democracy.

[Update: In a followup post, Geist makes much the same point.]

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Stephen Beer argues that the UK's Labour Party should take the lead in arguing for a financial transactions tax oriented toward reducing inequality:

The banking sector is incorrigible. It cannot alone reform itself or repair its relationship with the rest of society. For example, just before his retirement, Bank of England governor Mervyn King reported that banks were lobbying government ministers against action by regulators. It is almost as if the financial crisis never happened; banks are still lobbying for lighter touch regulation.

There has been little remorse from the sector during a time when living standards have been falling and the country has been stuck in an economic depression for more than half a decade.

Moreover...if we are going to talk about remorse, we should also look for repentance. Repentance is more than saying sorry. It is about turning away from the old way of doing things and going in a new direction.

- Uniglobal discusses a recognition strike by Amazon's employees in Germany.

- Chris Severson-Baker considers the Cold Lake blowout to be the first real test for Alberta's new industry-operated regulatory system. Needless to say, the results so far aren't encouraging.

- Meanwhile, having extracted as many profits as it could by operating unsafely, MMA has managed to cloak itself in court protection to avoid liability for blowing up much of Lac-Mégantic.

- Finally, Michael Geist comments on the U.S.' continued attempts to force ever more draconian copyright laws on Canada and other countries - primarily to preserve cash cows for Disney and other corporate conglomerates.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Murray Dobbin contrasts the B.C. NDP's recent election loss against the type of popular focus which helped Saskatchewan's CCF to earn a twenty-year stay in office in the face of far more hysterical opposition:

You can design a campaign that projects a positive vision of the future but two things about the NDP's approach doomed it to failure. First, you can't run a positive campaign in a month. It takes time to engage people in a vision of the future, even one they agree with.  Secondly, the NDP tied one hand behind its back by failing to hold the Liberals to account for the horrible, destructive policies they implemented over twelve long years.
...
Tommy Douglas and the CCF (the precursor of the NDP) won power in 1944 in a province totally dominated by a Liberal, pro-business party machine for decades. It won a landslide victory in a media atmosphere of absolute hysteria (headline: "CCF will seize farms"), fearmongering and blatant lies. The CCF held power for twenty uninterrupted years. How? It started out as a movement and retained that character for many years afterward. It was deeply rooted in community. People felt ownership of it and its policies and out (of) that came government programs that met the expressed needs of the people. And that, in turn, brought enormous trust in government. 

People's distrust of government now runs so deep that it will take years of trust-building to regain some democratic equilibrium. That means a totally different kind of politics and a totally different kind of political party. Progressive parties run by brain trusts, engaging in politics as a game, will ultimately lose. For them progressive policies are simply pieces on a chess board, not part of a larger vision. And the longer this style of politics goes on, the more institutionalized and inward looking such parties, including the NDP, become.

- But if we're looking at comparing which types of politics deserve some measure of trust, we can rule out a few fairly easily. For example, Martin Regg Cohn writes about the false promise of privatized liquor sales, while Kathy Tomlinson reports on yet more examples of the temporary foreign worker program being used (with the Cons' approval) to replace qualified Canadians with easily-exploited temporary imports.

- In the latest in the Cons' Senate expense scandal, CTV reports that the paperwork for the hush payment from Nigel Wright to Mike Duffy was drawn up by special counsel in the Prime Minister's Office. Michael Harris writes that Stephen Harper's PMO is falling apart, while Lawrence Martin sees the Cons' abuses of power as reaching a critical mass. Sid Green and various Reform alumni all make the case for Senate abolition if the Cons can't be trusted to police their own. Andrew Coyne sets out the laws which the Cons had to know were violated. And while John Ivison may be the last person left to pretend accountability has anything to do with the Cons' value structure, he does nicely contrast the Cons' one-time promises against their actions once in office.

- Meanwhile, the Cons' commitment to accountability also includes blatant patronage and support for criminal bid-rigging. Try to act surprised.

- Finally, Paul Adams rightly notes that the great challenge for media participants in our time is how to manage the vast amount of available information - and that we should see that development as a massive improvement from the restricted supply which once existed. But we should be more than wary of attempts to push information back behind closed doors, whether through laws or through litigation.

#mtlqc13 Priority Resolution - Human Rights

The final panel on policy resolutions at the NDP's Montreal convention will deal with human rights issues. And the Young New Democrats of Quebec have proposed a resolution which covers a number of issues worth including in that discussion:

6-26-13
Resolution on Rights in the Digital Age
Submitted by the Young New Democrats of Quebec
WHEREAS protecting digital rights is necessary to develop a sustainable economy in the 21st century;
BE IT RESOLVED that a new subsection (6.10) be added to the Policy Book:
6.10 Rights in the digital age
New Democrats believe in:
(a) Ensuring all Canadians have affordable high-speed Internet access.
(b) Updating the notion of copyright for the 21st century, while protecting creators.
(c) Preventing malicious prosecutions for copyright infringement.
(d) Putting an end to the legal protection for “digital locks,” to enable Canadians to transfer their digital content from one medium to another.
(e) Protecting the right to privacy and free expression on the Internet.
(f) Reforming the patent system with such measures as patent lifespan that varies by sector and measures to limit malicious prosecutions.
(g) Making government more transparent by adopting open government principles.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Subsection 6.7 g be struck from the Policy Book.

Of course, the open government theme is addressed in a number of other resolutions (including two I've mentioned before). But the NDP will be well served to also embrace the combination of intellectual property policy oriented toward creativity rather than rent-seeking, a commitment to Internet accessibility, and protections for both privacy and free expression online. And in each case, the party has the opportunity to stand alone in taking the side of Canadian citizens in dealing with rapacious (and deservedly unpopular) corporate interests.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Cory Doctorow duly blasts the Harper Cons for meekly complying with an onerous copyright treaty which isn't even in force. Which raises the question: if the Cons were really interested in demonstrating some independence as a response to the U.S. declining to rubber-stamp Keystone XL, wouldn't this be the best time to show some backbone?

- Mike Blanchfield reports on the conclusions of the UN's right-to-food envoy - including that the Harper Cons have managed to make food less accessible for Canadians through means ranging from the destruction of the long-form census to an insistence on signing ill-advised trade pacts.

- Meanwhile, CBC highlights Vic Toews' stunning claim that if the Cons appointed a desperately flawed candidate to head up Canada's security watchdog, it's the fault of other parties for not sufficiently pointing out that the Cons are utterly clueless and unfit to govern. So in the interest of helping Toews out: YOU ARE UTTERLY CLUELESS AND UNFIT TO GOVERN. PLEASE STOP YOUR CURRENT ACTIONS BEFORE YOU DO ANY FURTHER DAMAGE.

- James Stewart tests the theory that income tax rates result in any meaningful movement among the 1%. And not surprisingly, our corporate overlords are much less likely to move themselves than their assets into tax havens.

- Finally, Tim Harper wonders whether crossing the floor should carry a penalty for MPs.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Duncan Cameron highlights the choice between austerity and prosperity facing the governments of both Canada and the U.S.:

The economic realities faced by working people in both Canada and the United States need to be addressed. Talk about putting the fiscal house in order is code for taking money away from working people. It does not preclude giving grossly indecent fiscal advantages to corporations.
...
The debate about the fiscal cliff is important because it helps focus attention on how government policy can have negative or positive effects on quality of life, and living standards.

Getting agreement on the link between spending increases and prosperity would be an improvement over falsehoods put about in Canada and the U.S. about how austerity is necessary to reduce deficits. It is not, and will not. All austerity does is reduce the standard of living of citizens.

 - But David Macdonald worries that the Cons have already made their choice - and that they'll use an economy that's weaker than (oh-so-loudly) advertised as an excuse to make matters all the worse for Canadians. And Thomas Walkom's hope that Jim Flaherty might be merely wrong rather than outright crazy doesn't seem particularly reassuring - particularly keeping in mind that his government's response to the 2008 crash was to push austerity from day one until political calculations intervened.

- Michael Geist explains how the Cons' copyright legislation will affect content creators and users.

- And Andrew Nikiforuk discusses the risks the Cons are pushing on Canada through an investment-protection racket with China.

- Finally, Paul Adams points out the significance of California voters simultaneously voting to raise their own taxes, and giving state Democrats the supermajority they need to have room to maneuver. But I'd think the even more telling sign that tax protest messages may have run their course is that even with an explicit tax increase on their ballot, California voters turned out in relatively low numbers - meaning that anti-taxers weren't able to motivate citizens to vote against it.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- In keeping with the theme of my column this week, the Mound of Sound highlights the distinction between a "plutonomy" which serves as the source of easy profits, and a "precariat" which businesses are looking to treat as irrelevant (except when they need a bailout).

- And Ken Georgetti discusses how that distinction fits with the regular attacks on organized labour from the Cons and their provincial cousins: 

The erosion of collective bargaining is linked directly to a growing income gap in our society. Corporate profits are at near or record highs while the wages of Canadians have stagnated for an entire generation. There is a direct relationship between attacks upon unions and a shrinking of the Canadian middle class.

Left to its own devices, free collective bargaining really does work for the common good. Unions have been able to ensure that workers share, at least to some extent, in the corporate profits that they helped create. Unions have been successful in reducing systemic wage gaps in workplaces. Being in a union means better wages for women, workers of colour, aboriginal people and people with disabilities.

The more equal wage structure in unionized workplaces sets wage and benefit standards that spill over into other workplaces. Employees tend to be paid better when they live in communities with unionized workers earning decent wages. Finally, countries with strong labour movements have a larger, more vibrant middle class and achieve greater societal fairness because unions advocate for government policies that benefit all working people, not just their own members.

Our government's heavy-handed interventions in the labour market weaken basic labour rights, and that hurts all middle class Canadians.

- Meanwhile, David Olive points out that austerians are simply exacerbating exactly the problems they claim to want to fix, while also creating longer-term investment deficits that will need to be addressed later.

- Grant Robertson reports on the Cons' willingness to let banks select and fund their own "external complaints bodies", rather than answering to any accountability mechanism anybody whose findings might not be entirely in keeping with the bank's desires.

- Finally, Michael Geist details how CETA is being used to imposed draconian copyright restrictions with little public attention.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Mia Rabson writes that patronage and secrecy are thriving under the Harper Cons, even after they've lost any excuse about other parties' ability to stop their plans:

But when the federal appointments process has no transparency, any time someone with political ties as strong as Larkin's gets a pretty plum appointment (she could earn up to $17,000 a year in per diems for attending board meetings), it is always going to raise serious questions about the merits of the appointment.

It is interesting that with some other major promises Harper couldn't fulfil in a minority government -- such as eliminating the long-gun registry and the monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board -- he simply held off until he got his majority and then pushed the changes through.

But when it came to an appointments commission to turn off the taps to the patronage gravy train, Harper earned his monopoly and then eliminated the whole idea entirely in a little more than a year.

If the prime minister still believes in openness and transparency in appointments and that people should be chosen based on merit, not party ties, there is no sign of it.

- Martin Regg Cohn discusses Tim Hudak's attack on Ontario workers:

Ontario’s PC party is coming to Caterpillar’s defence — by branding the victims as the villains. Yes, blame the union — because big labour can’t see the Caterpillars marching.

That’s the forward-looking vision you’ll be hearing from Opposition Leader Tim Hudak, who has unveiled a radical anti-union agenda to help rebrand his putatively Progressive Conservative party: the end of unionism, replaced by a more “flexible” future.

Hudak eschews the loaded phrase, “right-to-work,” which evokes an aggressive, Wisconsin-style anti-union movement. But make no mistake, this is a declaration of war against organized labour by a politician firing the starter’s pistol in a race to the bottom.

Under his new Tory roadmap, Ontario will become a province where Caterpillars crush unions. A place where workers who still benefit from collective bargaining need not pay union dues — so that membership atrophies, money dries up, and the labour movement is disemboweled.

- Meanwhile, David Climenhaga duly mocks the National Post's horror at discovering that unions aren't leaving youth outreach solely to the corporate sector.

- Finally, Bea Vongdouangchanh cites Michael Geist in reporting that the copyright bill forced through Parliament by the Cons has needlessly imposed a strict digital lock scheme which will punish Canadian consumers for the sole benefit of corporate content distributors.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Trish Hennessy reminds us that a system of taxes and social spending is ultimately the most valuable means of pooling our resources for everybody's benefit. And E.J. Dionne highlights the need for progressives to speak up for the principle of collective public action.

- Head Tale posts an interview with Ryan Meili, featuring this discussion of Saskatchewan's defining values:

Do you think there is such a thing as “Saskatchewan values”? If so, how would you define this?
Like any place, Saskatchewan has good and bad parts of its history. The finer parts, those that reflect the best side of our province, are when we have faced hardship through collective action. In many ways, this has defined our view of ourselves. And that’s something in which we rightfully take pride. I have seen similar actions, and self-concepts, in communities around the world, however, and so I don’t think this is a uniquely Sask phenomenon. I also see these values being challenged as during boom times we lose some sight of what it’s like to struggle and take on more of an “every man for himself” mentality. It would be dangerous to assume that because we have the history we do that our Sask values will resurface to combat this. Values and beliefs are like muscles. If they aren’t exercised and put into practice, they can atrophy.

- In analyzing the voting patterns of different age groups I'm not sure many people recognize the cumulative impact of political outreach over time - and conversely the difficulty in motivating younger citizens to vote for the first time if they haven't received much attention before. But Michael Lightstone reports that the NDP isn't wasting any time in reaching out to voters who will be eligible to vote for the first time in 2015:

Mulcair said federal New Democrats will hit Canada’s post-secondary campuses this fall, as well as schools where most pupils would be too young to vote if an election were held now.

 “I met a young man at an event in my riding (Friday) night who told me he was turning 15 in July. I said: ‘You know, you’re allowed to vote in the next federal election.’ He was all happy; he hadn’t thought about it.

“But believe me, we’re thinking about it,” Mulcair told delegates to the Nova Scotia NDP provincial convention at an area resort. “We’re going to be in the high schools as well. We’re going to be talking to them.”

Mulcair, 57, said his generation of politicians “has to take part of the blame” for voter apathy. Later, he told reporters that counteracting such lack of interest is no easy task.

“It’s a vexing problem,” Mulcair acknowledged. “Especially when you look at the statistics among young people. And when young people don’t vote, the right wing wins and democracy loses."

- Finally, Michael Geist worries that we're seeing the most extreme anti-consumer stance yet on the part of corporate media lobbyists.