Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Paul de Grauwe points out that the European push to force Greece into continued austerity is the most important factor holding back a recovery, as the country would be fully solvent if it were being allowed to borrow money on anything but the most draconian of terms. And Paul Mason criticizes the war that's been declared against the Greek public for trying to pursue democratic governance - while noting that the public's justified dissatisfaction isn't going away regardless of the result of the impending referendum.

- Sherif Alsayed-Ali responds to the news that the UK's intelligence agencies have been conducting illegal spying against Amnesty International - and it's worth noting that Bill C-51 will make Canada's sweeping powers and lack of oversight even worse than the UK's:

Our concerns about mass surveillance are not limited to human rights organizations, although this is already very worrying. Mass surveillance is invasive and a dangerous overreach of government power into our private lives and freedom of expression. In specific circumstances it can also put lives at risk, be used to discredit people or interfere with investigations into human rights violations by governments.

We have good reasons to believe that the British government is interested in our work. Over the past few years we have investigated possible war crimes by UK and US forces in Iraq, Western government involvement in the CIA's torture scheme known as the extraordinary rendition programme, and the callous killing of civilians in US drone strikes in Pakistan: it was recently revealed that GCHQ may have provided assistance for US drone attacks.

The obfuscation, secrecy and determination to avoid any meaningful oversight is worthy of a tin-pot dictatorship. It is time for serious public scrutiny of the behaviour of the British government. We need to know what surveillance programmes the government is operating, what spying they consider to be fair game, and why.

- Andrew Cohen sees the Cons' "Memorial to the Victims of Communism" as a monument to crass and destructive politics.

- Finally, Robin Sears highlights why the Cons' division and narrowcasting are doomed to fail as a strategy for building a natural governing party. And Thomas Walkom writes that the cult of personality around Stephen Harper is leading the Cons to shut out natural allies in the name of worshiping their leader.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Emmanuel Saez examines the U.S.' latest income inequality numbers and finds that the gap between the wealthy few and everybody else is still growing. The Equality Trust finds that the UK's tax system is already conspicuously regressive even as the Cameron Cons plan to make it more so. And Tom Clark reviews Anthony Atkinson's Inequality, featuring the observation that even returning to the distribution of the 1970s will require major (if needed) changes to the economic assumptions we've meekly accepted since then.

- Andrew Mitrovica comments on the Cons' pandering to - and repetition of - anti-Muslim prejudice. And Rick Salutin notes that Canada's shameful treatment of aboriginal people arose out of exactly the same view that cultural difference should be treated as barbarism:

If you opt for zero tolerance, you may destroy something that could be useful now or later. The way to handle "barbaric" practices like forced marriage isn't with a cultural blunderbuss; it's by outlawing particular acts like kidnapping and child marriage, which are already illegal here without attacking any specific cultures.

The point isn't who has the better culture. It's that you never know what challenges you may face in the future and what cultural resources might prove useful and adaptable in facing them. If Scott and Macdonald had succeeded in killing the Indian in the child, through the schools program, we'd be without the resources which First Nations cultures afford us now -- and for whatever crises get thrown up by the always ornery future.

On the other hand, the precedents for declaring what's culturally barbaric and therefore dispensable, are pretty scary, as the exhaustive, heart-rending and indeed poetic work of the TRC on the residential schools program, sadly shows.

- Meanwhile, Michelle Shephard reminds us that what little terrorist risk there is to Canadian safety comes primarily from the bigoted right rather than the people they're so eager to dehumanize.

- Amy Minsky reports on the hundreds of millions of dollars the Cons have spent detaining refugee claimants - as they'd prefer to spend a guaranteed $292 per day per immigrant to lock people up than allow anybody to participate in Canadian society.

- Finally, Jeremy Nuttall looks into a single photo op which offers a galling indication of how much public money is being wasted on the Cons' self-aggrandizement. And John Barber reports on Stephen Harper's latest monument to poor taste, while Bill Waiser slams their disregard for history and truth.

Still awaiting confirmation that his birth, prophesied by a swallow, ignited a bright star in the sky that immediately changed the season from winter to spring and caused an awe-inspiring double rainbow to appear

There are reasonable responses to a Prime Minister's being unable to attend the Canada Winter Games. And then there's Bal Gosal's reply, which sounds much more like the type of understated message we'd expect from a toady of your neighbourhood megalomaniac dictator:

Speaking at the Otway Nordic Ski Center Saturday, Gosal insisted Harper is "probably the greatest sports fan in our country."

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Linda McQuaig discusses how the interests of big banks ended the Cons' willingness to consider postal banking which would produce both better service and more profits for the public:

(C)ompetition is the last thing the banks want. And given their power (straddling the very heart of the Canadian establishment) and their wealth (record profits last year topping $30 billion), the banks tend to get what they want from the Harper government.

This could explain the government’s otherwise baffling decision last fall to reject an option that would have allowed a serious competitor to enter the banking sector, offering financial services to hundreds of thousands of Canadians who currently lack a bank account and often end up paying triple-digit interest rates to payday lenders (otherwise known as loan sharks).

Canada Post had put together a lengthy file supporting the case for “postal banking.” Under such a scheme, Canada Post would offer banking services through its 6,400 postal outlets — stepping into the vacuum left after the big banks closed more than 1,700 branches across the country in the last two decades, leaving hundreds of rural and remote communities without a bank.

What’s more, by entering the lucrative field of financial services, the publicly-owned postal service could have earned significant profits. A management report done for Canada Post concluded that postal banking was a “win-win” strategy.

...

The Harper government’s resistance to the idea is at least partly ideological. Postal banking would essentially create a public banking system — something that would be repugnant to hard-right Conservatives who have spent years dismantling Canada’s public systems and turning them over to the private sector.

- Meanwhile, the Winnipeg Free Press concludes that the CPP represents by far the best option to offer Canadians improved income security in retirement. Which naturally means that the Cons are instead planning to demolish any form of defined-benefit plan, to be replaced by more risky plans intended to be run - and exploited - by the private sector.

- Mathew Paterson debunks the Fraser Institute's sad attempt to pretend that unregulated corporate dominance is anything but a disaster for the environment. And Andrew Flowers tests the business lobby's attempts to demonize unions in the name of "competition" - and finds that countries with greater union density are actually better placed to compete internationally.

- Frances Russell laments how even Canada's elections rules (along with budgets and other policy decisions) are being developed based solely on the Cons' partisan calculations. And Althia Raj points out that the Unfair Elections Act is designed to give special advantages to wealthier candidates.

- Finally, Carol Goar discusses the total lack of accountability or morality among Canada's right-wing political leaders - and recognizes what's needed to end the culture of cult conservatism:

There is nothing new about scandal in Canadians politics. History is replete with tales of ministers on the take, greedy public officials and corrupt mayors.

What has changed is that wrongdoers are no longer required — or even expected — to take responsibility for their actions. They don’t offer to resign. They don’t acknowledge they forfeited the confidence of the public. What they do instead is lash out at the government watchdogs who caught them, the journalists who exposed their malfeasance and the judges who applied the brakes.

To maintain this state of affairs, three conditions are necessary:

The first is an unprecedented level of secrecy or obfuscation by public officials.

The second is a sizable bloc of voters that can be counted on to support a besmirched leader no matter what he or she does.

The third is an electorate so unconcerned — or jaded — that it does nothing.

All three of these conditions currently exist in Canada; not in every jurisdiction but in several of the most prominent centres of government.

The antidote to what ails the body politic is obvious: eradicate the conditions that allow it to thrive.

Demand straight answers from those who are paid to serve the public and make it clear their jobs are on the line. Summon up the will to outvote the “bedrock supporters” who keep discredited politicians in power. Care a little more about Canada.

New column day

Here, on how the cult of "lean" is just part of the most damaging Saskatchewan Party belief which is undermining our health care system and other public services.

For further reading...
- Murray Mandryk has had plenty to say about "lean" in his previous columns.
- And the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses has weighed in with its own criticism of "lean", making it abundantly clear that a large number of health care workers are far from convinced that it's a panacea.

New column day

Here, on the link between personality politics and the culture of scandal that's developed around Stephen Harper, Rob Ford and other political figures.

For further reading...
- Once again, Dan Leger and Leslie MacKinnon provide the column's starting point in discussing the central focus on scandals in 2013.
- Eric Grenier's year-end political grades offer a prime example of the type of election-results-only evaluation that feeds into the problem.
- And Frank Graves discusses the Canadian public's waning trust in its current crop of politicians.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Dan Leger and Leslie MacKinnon both theorize that 2013 represented a new low in Canadian politics. But while the Cons may have taken some new steps in petty scandals and cover-ups (and Rob Ford's clown show managed to attract an unusual amount of attention), I'm not sure how any of it reflects much of a change from the attitude on display by Canada's right for the past several years.

- Similarly, while Robyn Benson recognizes the past year as raising the Cons' gratuitous union-bashing to a new level, it's hard to see that development as anything more than the continuation of a longstanding trend.

- The Star decries the Cons' selfie level of scientific discussion. Mike de Souza reports that the Cons went out of their way to avoid so much as admitting that climate change is a serious issue in response to the most recent IPCC report. And Peter Moskowitz reports on the giant ring of mercury deposits surrounding tar sands developments.

- Bruce Campbell looks back at 25 years of North American free trade, and finds that it's primarily served the corporate sector rather than citizens of any of the countries involved:

The FTA/NAFTA was a big business-driven initiative whose primary purpose was investment deregulation. Trade was important, but as a second order rather than a primary goal.

The agreements did make it easier for business to ship goods and services across the border. However, at its core were new powers and freedoms granted to corporations to facilitate their pursuit of shareholder value.

These provisions enabled corporations to move with minimal restrictions on the North American continent, shifting production to jurisdictions that offered the greatest returns in terms of regulations, subsidies, taxes, labour costs, etc.
...
Between 1950 and 1990, there was a steady drop in the share of national income appropriated by capital (profits) and a rise in labour’s share. In the wake of the FTA/NAFTA, that relationship reversed. Capital’s share rose dramatically; workers wages and salaries’ share fell in lockstep.

Contrary to assurances given Canadians prior to the FTA/NAFTA, big business lobbied hard to reduce program spending and taxes.

Unemployment insurance, health and education transfers, social assistance and housing programs, etc. were “harmonized downward” toward U.S. levels.
...
In the end, the FTA/NAFTA failed to meet the fundamental test of any major policy initiative: to better the lives of its citizens. And it helped weaken the bonds of nationhood embodied in the Canadian social state. 

- Finally, Chris Dillow discusses how gross inequality has led people with the most money and power to think they're above even the slightest interaction with the mere public - and theorizes that we won't be able to restore any level of mutual respect until we've significantly reduced income and wealth inequality. And Lydia DePellis writes that even business groups (at least in the UK) are willing to acknowledge the need for shared rather than hoarded prosperity.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Michael Den Tandt and Jonathan Kay both point out the willingness of conservative (and Conservative) supporters to brush off the obvious misdeeds of their political leaders. And Glen Pearson rightly concludes that the responsibility to elect deserving leaders ultimately lies with voters:

We are guilty of asking to little of ourselves. We find it remarkably easy, natural even, to blame our representatives and yet we put them there. They have no real answers to our unemployment situation, but we either continue to support them because of the party we serve or because we have just given up altogether. We turn away in disgust at all the corruption trials, the hanging around with nefarious types, and the constant role-playing to populist politics, and in that very act of walking away we poison the wells for our children’s future. We will continue to dote on our kids at Christmas, providing what they require, but we won’t fight for their cheaper post-secondary tuitions, their future healthcare requirements, their ability to purchase their own homes or to have meaningful jobs. Our children will be entrusted with billions of dollars in public infrastructure deficits and our way of dealing with it is to walk away from the public space instead of fighting for it – for them.

Apathy is a kind of public trap, with no challenges and therefore no rewards. It just is and the consequences are inevitably bone chilling. Most of us care, just not enough, and if we maintain that attitude then we need to prepare ourselves for more mini-tyrants overrunning our public space. This isn’t about Left or Right, is it? It’s about competence and our ability as a people to overcome our challenges and build on our past successes.

The simple reality is this: it’s not really about Rob Ford and his ilk; it’s about us, and how much incompetence we are willing to endure. We got what we voted for and now we’re paying for it. We need better politicians, but our only way of achieving that target is to be better citizens.

- Meanwhile, Frances Russell writes that any attempt to hand more power to the Senate only figures to render the federal government ineffective in responding to Canadians' needs.

- Josh Eidelson discusses McDonald's instructions to employees to break their food into pieces and stop complaining (as an apparent alternative to being paid enough to avoid hunger and stress). And Jillian Berman finds Walmart going a step further - holding a food drive for its own employees who plainly aren't paid enough to feed themselves.

- Which leads nicely to Alexandre Boulerice's view of the proper role of government in allowing workers some recourse in dealing with employers whose strategy includes grinding them into poverty:

But how do you better advocate for those people who are working at Walmart?
I think as legislators our responsibility is to let the workers decide by themselves. I’m not saying that it’s the role of the government to create unions but it’s the role of government to create an environment where it's possible to create a union when you want it -- you can have legal capacities to fight back if you are against an employer like Walmart or McDonalds that clearly doesn’t accept a union in their workplaces.

- CAUT studies how corporate funding is warping Canadian university research projects.

- Finally, Paul Adams contrasts the NDP's clear position on referendum standards against the Libs' well-practiced ignorance.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- In case anybody hasn't yet seen Andrew Coyne's takedown of anti-intellectual populism, it's well worth a read:

(T)here Mr. Ford sits, immovably: disgraced, largely powerless, but still the mayor. Is that his fault? The city’s? Or is it the fault of those who put him there in the first place, and sustained him through the long train wreck that followed: the staff who failed to report his misdeeds; the commentators who excused them; the partisans who ignored them. Disasters on the Ford scale, we are taught, do not just happen, and while the mayor’s endless supply of lies, manipulativeness and sheer chutzpah have helped to preserve him in office until now, he could not have done it alone.

And of all his enablers, the most culpable are the strategists, the ones who fashioned his image as the defender of the little guy, the suburban strivers, against the downtown elites, with their degrees and their symphonies — the ones who turned a bundle of inchoate resentments into Ford Nation. Sound familiar? It is the same condescending populism, the same aggressively dumb, harshly divisive message that has become the playbook for the right generally in this country, in all its contempt for learning, its disdain for facts, its disrespect of convention and debasing of standards. They can try to run away from him now, but they made this monster, and they will own him for years to come.

Get help? He’s had plenty.

But it's also worth noting that while Ford may make for a particularly vivid example of the dangers of protect-the-leader politics, a similar support system of toadies and apologists surrounds Stephen Harper and other figures as well. And while it may take longer for the problems with a complete lack of personal reflection and responsibility to emerge out of the office of a leader less self-destructive than Ford, we should be working to avoid them in any form.

- Rhys Kesselman and Lana Payne both make the case for a more secure CPP retirement system. And Payne in particular highlights why we shouldn't buy the Cons' excuse for refusing to strengthen the CPP:

This week, the federal government announced it will be in surplus, conveniently, in time for the next election. And despite it being two years away, the federal Conservatives have announced what they will be doing with that surplus. More tax cuts. Sigh!
 
Of course the current deficit is, in large part, due to failed tax-cut policies that left the cupboard bare. An empty cupboard means the federal Conservatives have a handy excuse to ignore legitimate needs in the country, like investing in a new Health Accord. That fits fine with their agenda regarding health
care: eroding Canada’s universal medicare system through sheer neglect.
...
So it is clear. The Harper government has taken care of corporate Canada, but what about people, citizens; in particular, future retirees?

Unfortunately and stupidly, the federal government continues to drag its heels with respect to the retirement crisis facing Canadians, and is doing nothing to address the real problems facing Canadian workers.

 - Doug Cuthand discusses the Cons' appalling choice to spend upwards of a hundred millions of dollar per year on legal fees to attack First Nations in court - rather than working on improving the lives of First Nations citizens.

- Finally, David DesBaillets reviews the opportunities and challenges facing the Quebec NDP.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Frances Russell finds that authoritarianism and bozo eruptions are two of the defining characteristics of right-wing politics in Canada:

Put simply, the double standard states “ I can do it but you can’t because…” followed by a lengthy list of inequalities: because I’m better than you; because I’m older than you; because I’m smarter than you; because I’m richer than you; because I have more power than you; because I’m a man and you’re a woman;…because, because, because.

The double standard holds different people more, less, or not at all accountable for their actions according to different – and unequal – standards. The list of those standards is a roadmap to most of humanity’s ugliest traits, from discrimination against and persecution of those who are different or have the temerity to disagree with the power elite to outright social, gender-based, religious or ethnic discrimination to a desire to “stamp out the rot.”
...

When it comes to lawbreakers, it’s not surprising authoritarians want to impose long prison sentences, especially if the criminal is “unsavoury” and, obviously, lacking connections in high places.

High RWAs generally believe crimes are more serious than non-authoritarians. They also believe more strongly in the efficacy of punishment. They tend to see criminals as repulsive and disgusting and admit to feeling satisfaction and pleasure at being able to punish wrongdoers.

Significantly, Altemeyer also found that high RWAs can, however, be very selective if the criminal or wrongdoer in question is an authority figure. Hence, the rock-solid and perhaps even growing support still being granted to Ford even as his troubles with the law and close connections to criminals and criminal behaviour grow.

- Meanwhile, Mark Ballard finds another prime example of the double standard at work from the UK's Conservatives, who are furiously scrubbing all references to their past statements and promises (from mirror and archive sites as well as their own website) after promising to govern openly and accountably.

- Robyn Allan discusses the blatant falsehoods behind Joe Oliver's Keystone XL spin.

- And finally, PressProgress neatly summarizes the effects of the Cons' income-splitting scheme:

The largest share of the benefit would go to high-income families where one partner is in the top tax bracket and the other has no earned income (think Leave it to Beaver). The Conservative approach to income splitting would provide no benefit at all to single-parent families – even though more than a quarter (28%) of all children live in single-parent families. The same holds true for families where both partners work and have incomes below $43,561.

 

In other words, income-splitting provides zero relief to families with children who are most in need, including those who live in poverty. Rather, what it does is transfer more of the tax burden onto single-parent families and lower- and middle-income families. It promises to exacerbate – not reduce – existing income and gender inequality.

Maybe that's the point.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- The CP reports on the latest federal-provincial discussion about pensions. And as is so often the case, all parties at the table seem to agree that there's an important problem to be fixed - even as Brad Wall, Stephen Harper and others stand firmly in the way of any actual change to ensure a more secure retirement for Canadians.

- Gerald Caplan wonders whether the Cons' base will give up on Harper, while Dan Leger thinks it's Harper himself who should start turning his loyalties elsewhere. But Andrew Coyne offers up the definitive take on the Cons coming out of their closed-door Calgary convention - even if he's a little ways behind the curve in noticing some cultish tendencies:

But the impression was that of a party closing in on itself, of a leadership that accepts no blame for the depths into which the party has sunk, but that sees itself as wholly the victim of outside enemies. As a short-term strategy for preserving internal unity, this has its uses. The problem is that the list of enemies keeps growing, and as it grows, starts to include more and more of the party’s staunchest supporters. Some of the prime minister’s closest confidants and advisers are now on the list, from Tom Flanagan to — the scapegoat of the month — Nigel Wright.
...
Thus the Conservative tragedy grinds on. When your only principle is paranoia — when your central organizing proposition is that “everyone is out to get us” — when every criticism is merely confirmation of the essential rightness of that proposition, and every deviation is evidence of disloyalty, then you are less a party than a cult.

I don’t say that is what the party has become. But it is an early warning sign in any group when its members are required to cut themselves off from the outside world.

- It will surely come as a shock - particularly for those paid to pretend otherwise - to learn that supposedly unbreachable containment ponds may not live up to their billing. And Robyn Allan discusses the cynical manipulation behind Christy Clark's attempt to sell pipelines and tanker traffic by telling British Columbians their only other choice is even more hazardous transport of tar sand products by rail.

- Finally, Stuart Trew discusses Canada's sudden and unexpected ratification of rules taking yet more power out of the hands of governments and open courts to better serve the interests of transnational corporations.

On family ties

Laura Ryckewaert's report on the Cons' Senate strategy has already received plenty of attention. But I'm more interested in a senior Conservative's excuses for Stephen Harper's actual appointees than what looks like another delay strategy in substance:

The senior Conservative source said members of the Conservative Party are less uneasy than might be expected because Sen. Wallin, Sen. Duffy and Sen. Brazeau “are not longtime Conservatives.”

“These are folks who were appointed to the Senate for a number of different reasons. So in that sense, it’s not as if they’re seen as one of the family that’s suddenly done bad things,” said the source.

Of course, it's worth wondering whether the "not one of the family" dodge - questionable enough as applied to, say, the individual chosen to serve as the face of Conservative budget infomercials and party fund-raisers alike - can possibly be withheld from the range of people already caught up in the Clusterduff net. But Nigel Wright, Carolyn Stewart Olsen, David Tkachuk and others may want to watch carefully for declarations that they've been officially expelled from the Cons' cult.

That said, the more important lesson may arise for anybody asked to step into Duffy and Wallin's shoes as a celebrity endorser for Harper and his apparently-exclusive clique: anybody falling short of the title "longtime Conservative" will be readily used up and thrown out. Which might offer all the more reason not to put one's own reputation on the line to serve the Cons.

Juxtaposition

Bert Brown this week, shedding crocodile tears over blind partisanship in the Senate:

The real problem, Brown told HuffPost, is that the overwhelming majority of senators don’t do the job they were appointed to do.

Senators are supposed to represent their province’s interest “but they don’t,” he said; they just follow what their party’s leadership tells them to do.

“They just vote either for Liberals or for Conservatives,” he said.

“I was there for five years and eight months and we voted everything that was voted to the Conservative government, every one. There was one guy who said who wanted to abstain once,” Brown recounted.

Senators toe the party line out of a sense of loyalty to the person who appointed them, the retired senator said.

Bert Brown less than two years ago, offering his view as to the duties of an appointed Senator:

"Every senator in this caucus needs to decide where their loyalty should be and must be. The answer is simple; our loyalty is to the man who brought us here, the man who has wanted Senate reform since he entered politics, the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper," Brown wrote.

[Edit: fixed title.]

Shocker

Nobody could have foreseen that the much-ballyhooed Backbench Spring would give way to the Toadying Summer Olympics. But sure enough, the first question from a Con MP nominally challenging his party's whip looks like a gold medalist in the Party Boot-Licking and Tar Sands Shilling biathlon.

As best, it looks like we may be able to draw some amusement seeing the Cons' backbenchers compete for the right to ask future variations on "Mr. Prime Minister, your government has the momentum of a runaway freight train loaded with Uncle Cappy's Magic Non-Polluting Petroleum-Derivative Elixir, which will never spill and we shouldn't care if it does. Why are you so popular?". But anybody holding out hope that there might be some critical thought forthcoming from within the Cons figures to be in for a long wait.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Stephen Hume rightly mocks the Fraser Institute for using its tax-exempt status to whine about individuals who don't earn enough to pay income taxes. But I'll take the opportunity to reiterate a point I've made before: progressive governments in particular will do far better to consider how public resources can be used to benefit people of all income levels, rather than buying into the "get people off the tax rolls" rhetoric that only allows corporate interests to make arbitrary distinctions between "makers and takers".

- Meanwhile, Canadians for Tax Fairness catch bank officials trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public on the use of tax havens to shelter financial profits.

- Alison discusses how yet another spate of spills and tough questions has caused problems for oil industry shills. But I doubt they're complaining so long as they're still in charge of setting public policy.

- And there isn't much indication that the corporate sector will lose the ability to warp legislation in its own favour anytime soon.

- Finally, Mia Rabson, the Winnipeg Free Press, the Toronto Star, and the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix all weigh in on Stephen Harper's muzzing of his MPs (and how it reflects a deeper democratic deficit). And Tim Harper muses that the Cons may be well past their (however sad) prime as a government.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Tanya Gold discusses how the UK Cons - like other right-wing parties around the globe - are seeking to minimize the effectiveness of government by declaring that anybody who can benefit from social support is inherently undeserving:

How many benefits have been unfairly removed or reduced? But there is meaning behind this farce; it was no mistake. This is a rehearsal for the future of the welfare state, as seen through Tory spectacles – they are resentful at paying for anything. Need is now irrelevant.

The PR for the project, enthusiastically pursued by the Tory press, is ongoing, if unsophisticated. Its purpose is to incite so much contempt for benefit claimants in the wider population, and so much denial about who, and who is not, a benefit claimant, that we will dumbly watch children live in revolting conditions without complaint. Any kind of state intervention is now a blissful boon deserving of a kiss on the ministerial boot. Last week Alan Milburn, the government's luckless adviser on social mobility, said it was "vanishingly unlikely" that the government will meet its child poverty targets. No it won't; of course it won't. Far better to change the way child poverty is measured or, in common speak, stop counting the bodies.

"Benefit queen" stories are dripped on the media, courtesy of DWP moles, as if they were representative; and Ukip, that wonky opportunist, jumps on the bandwagon, seeking to make benefit claimants pay for necessities by electronic card, so they cannot squander their bags of taxpayer gold on Sky TV, cider, ciggies, condoms and, presumably, membership of the Communist party of Great Britain. The project chugs on, fuelled by distortion and lies, denouncing the weak, praising the strong – the changes to childcare funding announced last week will largely benefit the wealthy. Who is surprised?

- Meanwhile, if we didn't already have enough examples of the Harper Cons doing exactly the same thing, Jane Kittmer's story epitomizes anti-socialism in action - as in keeping with the Cons' orders to slash EI payments, a new mother diagnosed with breast cancer is being denied benefits.

- Alice nicely details why voters are headed to the polls in Labrador for a by-election. And the NDP looks to be well prepared in choosing Harry Borlase as its nominee.

- Glen McGregor finds that the Stepher Harper-based branding of all federal government activity which was controversial a few years ago is now standard operating procedure. And Alison highlights a particular egregious example.

- Finally, Joseph Schwartz notes that while the corporate press is offering grudging recognition that egalitarian Scandinavian economies have outperformed the rest of the developed world, it's also going out of its way to keep omitting crucial points about why they work so well:

[The Economist] praises Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway for accomplishments often touted by social democrats—low poverty rates, egalitarian distribution, and efficient public services. But the magazine argues that these are now “centrist” societies because they balance their budgets, allow for consumer “choice” within their public services, and nurture risk-taking entrepreneurs. The Economist sheepishly admits that these countries funnel over 50 percent of their GDP through the public sector (versus a meager 30 percent in the United States and 36 percent in Great Britain). But Adrian Woolridge’s “special report” places inordinate emphasis on how the Nordic nations’ have trimmed their (still) generous paid leave, sick day, and disability benefits, while touting Sweden’s switch from a defined-benefit to defined-contribution public pension plan.

The Economist never once mentions that the Nordic economic model of growth-with-equity derives from the continued existence of a powerful labor movement (union density is above 70 percent in each country, versus 11.3 percent in the United States and 17 percent in Great Britain). Nor does it tell us that the historical dominance of social democracy means that Nordic conservative parties resemble Obama-style Democrats. Even as social democratic parties move in and out of government, the “Nordic model” draws heavily upon the egalitarian values of its labor movement and social democratic parties.

The publics in these countries trust government because the social democrats built their welfare state upon a vision of comprehensive and universal social rights. All members of society receive publicly financed health care, child care, and education. The central government ensures that these goods are financed equitably and are of high quality—so the upper-middle class remains loyal to these services and gladly pays the high taxes to support them. The Nordic nations long ago recognized that means-tested programs end up being poorly funded and unsustainable because they are often opposed by those just above the poverty line. (The vicious politics of “welfare reform” in Britain and the United States depended upon only the poor being eligible for child-care support from the state.)
...
The feature also fails to mention the crucial role that trade union power and policy played in the creation of the Nordic model. From the 1950s onward, Nordic unions adhered to a “solidaristic wage policy” bargaining strategy, fighting for higher-percentage wage gains for the lowest-paid workers. The aim was both to decrease wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers and to force corporations to transition out of inefficient industries. Unions opposed a “race to the bottom” model of capitalist development in favor of a high-wage, high-productivity model grounded upon union power.

Juxtaposition

Bert Brown today, trying to justify the public footing a nine-figure annual bill for a cesspool of patronage and corruption:

“It’s one of the five major institutions of the Canadian government and if you were to take that away, you’d just be creating a dictatorship,” Brown said in an interview in his office overlooking Parliament Hill. “Anytime you get a prime minister that won’t listen to anything but his own advice, you get some of the crazy things that we’ve seen.”

Bert Brown less than two years ago, explaining his own belief that Senators should avoid questioning any of the Prime Minister's actions lest they be seen as disloyal:

"Every senator in this caucus needs to decide where their loyalty should be and must be. The answer is simple; our loyalty is to the man who brought us here, the man who has wanted Senate reform since he entered politics, the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper," Brown wrote.

So Brown's idea of a bulwark against executive-branch dictatorship is...a branch of government whose responsibility is to maintain perpetual loyalty no matter how unreasonable the executive branch becomes. As if we needed another reason to abolish the institution designed to allow Brown and his ilk to interfere with the operations of Canadian democracy.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Susan Delacourt writes that laughable conspiracy theories look to be the Cons' stock in trade as they fight against any accountability for electoral fraud:

(I)t may be true that Ford has left-wing opponents on council and that the Council of Canadians, which has launched the legal challenge on so-called robocalls, would prefer that Harper had not win the last election.

But these are not illegal views in this country — at least not yet. Demonization of your adversaries is a spin tactic, not a legal defence.

Besides, Hamilton knows that the concern over misleading calls in the last election doesn’t start or end with the “left-wing” Council of Canadians.

Elections Canada was in touch with Hamilton a few days before the May 2, 2011, vote, according to recently released documents, asking why the organization was receiving multiple complaints of misleading, voter-misdirection phone calls coming from Conservative campaign headquarters.

Moreover, a criminal investigation is underway in Guelph, Ont., as well as dozens of other ridings across the country where voters have reported waves of fraudulent calls, trying to divert them from proper polling locations.

If this is just some crazy left-wing scheme, it’s a remarkably large one, mapped out and executed in advance of voting. With that many resources at its disposal, you’d wonder why the left wing didn’t go to the extra trouble of winning the election 18 months ago.

- Robert Macdonald and Tracy Shildrick report that right-wing attempts to moralize about a loss of work ethic based on existence of bare-bones social programs have about as much basis in reality as "tax cuts for rich = win!!!" (which is to say none whatsoever):

(W)e managed to recruit 20 families where there was long-term worklessness across two generations and interviewed family members in depth. It was clear that these families did not inhabit of "a culture of worklessness". People told us that they deplored "the miserable existence" of a life on benefits. Families experiencing long-term worklessness remained committed to the value of work. Workless parents were unanimous in not wanting their children to end up in the same situation as themselves.

They actively tried to help their children find jobs (for example, by accompanying them to job interviews to provide moral support). As one 50-year-old father said: "What I want is for my family to have jobs. They're not asking for anything big, that's the thing, they are not, like, being greedy." Unemployed young adults in these families were strongly committed to conventional values about work as part of a normal transition to adulthood. They were keen to avoid the poverty, worklessness and other problems experienced by their parents.

The long-term worklessness of parents in these families was a result of the impact of complex, multiple problems associated with living in deep poverty over years (particularly related to ill health). In an already tight labour market, these problems combined to place them at the back of a long queue for jobs.

- Meanwhile, Jonathan Kay recognizes that Canada's relative equality compared to the U.S. has long offered an economic advantage - and that we only stand to lose out as the Cons try to push us toward a less fair distribution of income and tax obligations:

Applying social-justice arguments, many leftists have seized on this data to make the case that American capitalism, in its current state, is fundamentally immoral. But even die-hard laissez-faire types should be concerned by America’s increasingly U-shaped income profile. The very poor don’t buy much. And the very rich spend a relatively small amount of their money on consumer goods. A mass-retail capitalist economy cannot function if it is not being fuelled by a prosperous middle class that’s too rich for Family Dollar, but too poor for Saks.

Income polarization also gives rise to all sorts of more intangible losses for a society — including in the areas of trust and social mobility. A society of haves and have-nots is a society of gated communities side-by-side with trailer parks, the sort of scene one witnesses in Latin America. The polarization of wealth also has a corrosive effect on democratic politics, because it encourages plutocrats and entrenched corporate interests to funnel billions into whatever corps of political ideologues are willing to robotically defend the status quo — a phenomenon that was on display in the recent U.S. election campaign.

- Finally, it isn't only opinion columnists making the case that greater equality is an essential goal for Canada, as Aaron Wherry's year-end interview with Tom Mulcair includes this on intergenerational equity as an emerging question of equality:

When we see 330,000 temporary foreign workers brought into this country, deprived of their rights, bringing down working conditions for Canadians, when we see the loss of hundreds of thousands of good manufacturing jobs that had enough of a salary for a family to live on and a pension, people are worried. You know, for the first time we’re being told by a government that you have to settle for less, that your kids are going to have to settle for less. We think that we can still continue to grow and to have a greater country and a better place for the greater good. So we want prosperity, but the difference between us is we want prosperity for everyone.

In the past 35 years, the top 20% only have seen their revenues increase, the other 80% have seen actually seen their revenues drop. So we’re on the verge of becoming the first generation in Canadian history to leave less to our kids than what we got. And we find that unacceptable. That’s why we have this theme of sustainable development. If I could dial it back, the base of a social democratic approach is to remove inequalities in society. The big battle of generations ago was working people, making sure they had their rights and that they had a decent standard of living. One of the basic inequalities in our society today is an inequality between generations, it’s intergenerational equity that we’re talking about.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jon Wisman and Aaron Pacitti put a price tag on the upward redistribution of wealth in the U.S.:

Between 1983 and 2007, total inflation-adjusted wealth in the U.S. increased by $27 trillion. If divided equally, every man woman and child would be almost $90,000 richer.

But of course it wasn’t divided equally. Almost half of the $27 trillion (49 percent) was claimed by the richest one percent — $11.7 million more for each of their households. The top 10 percent grabbed almost $29 trillion, or 106 percent of the total. Meanwhile, the bottom 90 percent suffered an average decline of just over $16,000 per household.

What could be bought with the $29 trillion increase in the top ten percent’s wealth over the past three decades? Strikingly, it covers all of the expenses necessary for our future collective well-being — the very expenses that, we’re told, can’t be funded because of budget deficits and rising public debt.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the United States needs to spend $2.2 trillion over the next five years to meet its infrastructure needs. To ensure that Social Security can pay all promised benefits for the next 75 years would cost $8.6 trillion. Providing all needed Medicare funding for the next 75 years would cost a total of $4.6 trillion.

To pay for all Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and subsidies for purchasing health insurance through the Affordable Care Act for the next 10 years would cost $1.5 trillion. To close all projected federal budget deficits until 2021 would cost $7 trillion. Taking back the $29 trillion would cover all of these needs and the $5.1 trillion that would be left over could pay off about one-third of the national debt.

The rich managed to capture this $29 trillion because they gained greater command over the political process, which allowed them to engineer economic policy for their own gain. Their greater wealth meant greater command over the political process, which in turn made them wealthier. The explosion of corporate lobbyists and corporate campaign contributions leveraged their political influence. 

- Simon Enoch points out that the Sask Party's plan for the province seems to be to turn Saskatchewan into Oklahoma North. And no, that's nothing close to a positive result:

Oklahoma adopted right-to-work legislation in 2001. Despite claims by proponents that the adoption of RTW would result in a mass influx of jobs to the state, since (its) adoption Oklahoma has lost a third of their manufacturing jobs and the average number of new companies coming into the state has been one-third lower in the decade since RTW was adopted than in the preceding decade. Moreover, Oklahoma’s unemployment rate in 2010 was double what it was when RTW was first adopted in 2001.

Surveys of manufacturers show that despite the claims of RTW champions, right-to-work laws are not a significant factor in decisions to relocate. Indeed, in 2010 manufacturers ranked it sixteenth among factors affecting location decisions. For higher-tech, higher-wage employers, nine of the ten most-favoured states are non-RTW, led by union-friendly Massachusetts.
...Certainly, there is no doubt that the adoption of RTW significantly reduces average wage-levels. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the impact of RTW laws is to lower average income by about $1,500 a year and to decrease the odds of getting supplemental health insurance or a pension through your job—for both union and nonunion workers alike.

However, the impact of RTW is not confined to wages. According to recent research from the University of Michigan that examined the U.S. construction industry, the rate of industry fatalities is 40 percent higher and the rate of occupational fatalities is 34 percent greater in right-to-work states than in free-bargaining states. Given that Saskatchewan already has one of the worst workplace injury rates in the country, it seems we can ill-afford to adopt legislation that would contribute to even greater levels of risk for Saskatchewan workers.

Social issues are not immune to the effect of right-to-work laws either. Eleven of the 15 states with the highest poverty rates in the U.S. are RTW states, while nine of the 11 states with the lowest are worker-friendly. Furthermore, the percentage of the 2008 population living in poverty in RTW states was 14.4 percent, while the percentage in worker-friendly states was 12.4 percent. In regards to health insurance, we find that 18.6 percent of people in RTW states are uninsured, while only 13.9 percent of people in worker-friendly states are uninsured. Lastly, RTW laws may even influence your life expectancy! Darrell Minor found that of the 13 states with the highest life expectancy rates, 10 are worker-friendly states. Conversely, of the 12 states with the lowest life expectancy rates, only two are worker-friendly states. In worker-friendly states, citizens can expect to live 77.6 years (the median), while citizens in RTW states can expect to die at 76.7.

- David Pugliese's blog post is a nice first step in pointing out the absurdity of the Cons wasting public resources to make identical announcements in multiple cities. But I'll suggest that best possible response might be to make use of the local media coverage the strategy is designed to pull in: a single video splicing together the voices and faces of a dozen spokespuppets chanting the same passage in unison (with duly ominous music) would just about match the dystopian vision behind the Cons' communications strategy.

- Meanwhile, the latest snag in Robocon involves the Cons' phone bank service provider trying to conceal the evidence which would actually determine who's telling the truth as to whether live calls directed voters to the wrong places. And it's not hard to infer that the Cons and their suppliers would be much less determined to fight disclosure of the facts if they didn't undermine their public story.

New column day

Here, on the importance of substance over spin in politics - and the counterproductive effect of dedicating a party's resources to the opposite effect.

For further reading...
- As I've previously noted, the observations of Allan Gregg and Winslow Wheeler are here and here respectively.
- Joe Klein discussed the impact of Bill Clinton's DNC speech.
- pogge nicely sums up my take on Tom Mulcair's choice to trust in the Cons when it comes to Iran rather than mounting a meaningful defence of diplomacy, while Justine Hunter reports on Adrian Dix' statement that he's cutting down his policy agenda just as he approaches an opportunity to implement it.
- And finally, impolitical notes that Joan Crockett is taking the all-deference approach to its logical conclusion by stating explicitly that her job as a Con candidate and MP is to mindlessly do her leader's bidding.