Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Harry Stein discusses how government policy is currently designed to exacerbate inequality by subsidizing the concentration of wealth:

This issue brief puts aside the question of whether new policies, such as a global wealth tax, should be enacted to reduce economic inequality. Instead, it explores two existing policies that actually subsidize wealth inequality. First, reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends increase the after-tax rate of return on wealth, which makes it more likely that the rate of return on capital will exceed the overall economic growth rate. Second, capital gains are never subject to the income tax at all if the investor dies, which subsidizes wealth concentration within a family dynasty.
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American wealth is concentrated within the richest families at levels not seen since the 1920s, and the American people should ask whether our government should incur roughly $2 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years for two policies that subsidize wealth inequality. To start answering that question, the public benefits from these subsidies should be weighed against their fiscal cost, as all spending programs and tax expenditures should be. But even if these policies do have some merit, perhaps there are other ways to spend $2 trillion that deliver equal or greater public benefits without subsidizing inequality to such a dramatic extent.

- And Tax Justice points out that even the IMF is beginning to acknowledge that tax evasion (and the tax havens who facilitate it) contribute to poverty and inequality - particularly in the countries which can least afford to have revenue siphoned off.

- Les Whittington reports that Natural Resources Canada is fully aware of the catastrophic economic and health consequences of climate change (despite the Cons' desperate attempts to ignore the facts). And Chris Mooney notes that even in the U.S. where industry-funded denialism is at its strongest, there's relatively little disagreement on the need to prevent those consequences.

- Meanwhile, Robyn Benson sums up how the Cons' approval of Northern Gateway was based entirely on their selective listening - with Enbridge receiving privileged access, and any dissenting voices treated as traitors. And Eden Robinson writes about the increasing outrage among the people who were left out.

- Harsha Walia observes that all of us are affected by the temporary foreign worker program (along with the Cons' other regressive immigration policy). And Tamsyn Burgmann reports on one of the many loopholes left open by the Cons (in this case with an assist from NAFTA).

- Finally, Laurie Penny rightly recognizes that the fight against homelessness should involve ensuring that people have shelter - not the installation of spikes to clear out more-privileged areas.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Kathleen Geier discusses the U.S.' culture of overwork and its human toll:

There is abundant evidence that long working hours is incredibly dangerous from a public health perspective. Fatigued or sleep-deprived workers who drive or operate heavy machinery are an obvious menace to public safety, but there are other health costs associated with overwork as well. A 2004 Center for Disease Control report found that excessive overtime was associated with “poorer perceived general health, increased injury rates, more illnesses, and increased mortality,” and a 2008 study linked long work hours to depression and anxiety. Studies have also shown a strong association between working long hours and developing coronary heart disease.

In its culture of overwork, the United States is very much an outlier, when compared to other industrially advanced nations. Unlike much of Europe, we don’t mandate paid vacations or make it illegal for employees to work more than forty-eight hours a week. The usual justification for American employers’ massive overtime requirements is that they enhance “productivity,” but evidence actually suggests that the opposite is true.
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Americans began agitating for the right to an eight-hour workday over 200 years ago. Countless workers fought and died for that right before it was institutionalized under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. But, sadly, it looks like this is one battle that we all must continue to fight.

- Meanwhile, Lynn Vavreck helps to explain how wealth may lead to a perceived need for more wealth by pointing out how one's definition of "rich" changes at different income levels. The OECD has some suggestions to address the employer-heavy bias in U.S. employment law (h/t to Miles Corak). And Andre Cote comments on the difference a strong child-care system could make in Canada compared to the current alternative:

Let’s think about the downstream implications of not funding child care.

First, there is a big economic impact, as the lack of care tends to reduce the workforce participation rate of mothers with young children. For instance, 77% of mothers with infants work in Québec, compared with 70% in the rest of Canada. Fewer working moms is bad for businesses and for government tax revenues, which fund services…like child care. Some evidence suggests Quebec’s program actually pays for itself.

Second, we forego the educational benefits of providing child care and early learning – especially when targeted at lower-income families. The “human capital” early learning creates – i.e. more able workers later in life – pays dividends by supporting Canada’s productivity and competitiveness.

Third, it has a huge impact on the careers of parents who stay home (again, mostly women). Not only is it demotivating to go back to the office to find that your office-mates have all been promoted ahead of you, but it limits future advancement and earnings potential. For many career-oriented women, it’s a reason to delay having kids, or not to have them at all.

- The CP takes a look at Canadians' views on temporary foreign workers, and finds that the public shares the goal of giving easily-exploited workers the opportunity to build a life in Canada (while recognizing the need to hold employers accountable for abuses).

- Tim Harper discusses how a rigged approval process for the Northern Gateway pipeline did nothing to earn any genuine social license. Frances Russell takes a look at the role British Columbians may play in stopping the Gateway, while Bill Tieleman argues that the 2015 federal election will likely be the decisive factor in determining whether or not it it will ever be built. And PressProgress reminds us why we shouldn't trust the pro-pipeline spinmeisters.

- Finally, Michael Harris writes that Canada's Constitution seems to have earned an increasingly prominent place on the Cons' enemies list.

!!!***BREAKING***!!! THE FIX IS STILL IN!!!

Plenty of commentators theorized this week that the Cons might pay some heed to public opinion when it comes to the Northern Gateway pipeline.

But let's remember where this process all started: from the beginning, the Cons consistently decreed that nobody was permitted to say "no". And we can hardly be surprised that they've ended a review process which was never intended to allow for any other answer by decreeing that Enbridge shall have its way.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Robert Reich proposes that the best way to address corporate criminality is to make sure that those responsible go to jail - rather than simply being able to pay a fine out of corporate coffers and pretend nothing ever happened.

- And Shawn Fraser suggests that Regina developers should pick up the tab for the costs they impose on the city - even as the city itself has opportunities to both better shape residential growth, and turn a profit through its own own development corporation.

- Meanwhile, the CP reports on the clash between biased markets and free speech - as Greenpeace was rejected in its effort to purchase billboard space from the same business which didn't hesitate a second to provide a platform for climate change denialists.

- Andrew Coyne writes that Stephen Harper is racking up scandals and abuses of power at an unprecedented pace. But Chantal Hebert notes that none of the Cons' manipulations can help them avoid responsibility for governing - including by deciding between serving their oil-industry masters and listening to the public about the Northern Gateway pipeline.

- Susan Delacourt takes note that political parties are increasingly looking to brand themselves through means that have nothing to do with politics - while identifying what that says about their seeming mandate to discuss policy choices:

When a political ad arrives through the mail, does the average citizen pore over its contents to determine who paid for it? Again, probably not. A marketing-research fact sheet distributed by Canada Post a few years ago said that the response rate for all direct-mail advertising — not just political ads — was a scant 2.18 per cent. Political parties, in short, might be better off mailing those pamphlets directly to the local recycling stations.

The trick these days, it seems, is to make political advertising look like something slightly more useful: a World Cup schedule, for instance, or the front page of a newspaper.
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Advertisers, private or political, are always going to try to slip their sales messages into products that are useful to consumers or citizens: pens, T-shirts, newspapers, World Cup schedules. 
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A harder question, though, is why political advertising is held in such low esteem that it now has to masquerade as something more relevant to Canadians. Educating the public doesn’t have to be a mission that’s gone entirely out of fashion.

- Finally, Vaughn Palmer reviews the B.C. Libs' consistent pattern of bad faith in dealing with teachers.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Neil Irwin highlights the reality that top-heavy economic growth has done nothing to reduce poverty in the U.S. over the past 40 years:

In Kennedy’s era, [the "rising tide lifts all boats" theory] had the benefit of being true. From 1959 to 1973, the nation’s economy per person grew 82 percent, and that was enough to drive the proportion of the poor population from 22 percent to 11 percent.

But over the last generation in the United States, that simply hasn’t happened. Growth has been pretty good, up 147 percent per capita. But rather than decline further, the poverty rate has bounced around in the 12 to 15 percent range — higher than it was even in the early 1970s. The mystery of why — and how to change that — is one of the most fundamental challenges in the nation’s fight against poverty.

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The 1959 to 1973 period might be an unfair benchmark. The Great Society social safety net programs were being put in place, and they may have had a poverty-lowering effect separate from that of the overall economic trends. In other words, it may be simply that during that time, strong growth and a falling poverty rate happened to take place simultaneously for unrelated reasons. And there presumably is some level of poverty below which the official poverty rate will never fall, driven by people whose problems run much deeper than economics.

But the facts still cast doubt on the notion that growth alone will solve America’s poverty problem.

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The reality is that low-income workers are putting in more hours on the job than they did a generation ago — and the financial rewards for doing so just haven’t increased.

That’s the real lesson of the data: If you want to address poverty in the United States, it’s not enough to say that you need to create better incentives for lower-income people to work. You also have to devise strategies that make the benefits of a stronger economy show up in the wages of the people on the edge of poverty, who need it most desperately.

- Kate Allen reports that 300 scientists have teamed up to call attention to the flawed assessment process applied to the Gateway pipeline, while Kai Nagata theorizes that the Cons might well scrap the project themselves. But I have my doubts about that theory in light of the Harper Cons' continued devotion to Keystone XL even as it produces a constant flow of shutdowns, leaks and spills.

- Meanwhile, the Montreal Gazette laments the Cons' continued climate change obstruction.

- PressProgress offers ten reasons to be worried about the Cons' disregard for privacy. Colin Horgan recognizes that while the Cons' arguments against an effective census were nonsensical in that context, they would represent a strong case against the accountability-free sharing of personal information which the Cons now want to ram into law. And Michael Harris discusses how fits into Harper's Genghis Khan-like view of power.

- Frances Russell writes about Canada's descent from being internationally admired for its model democratic system, to serving as a cautionary tale.

- Finally, Seth Klein points out how modest tax increases on the wealthy could fully fund needed improvements to B.C.'s education system. But naturally, the Clark Libs are fully focused on attacking the province's teachers instead.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Will Hutton writes about Thomas Piketty's rebuttal to the false claim that inequality has to be encouraged in the name of development - and the reality that we have a public policy choice whether to privilege returns on capital or broad-based growth:

It is a startling thesis and one extraordinarily unwelcome to those who think capitalism and inequality need each other. Capitalism requires inequality of wealth, runs this right-of-centre argument, to stimulate risk-taking and effort; governments trying to stem it with taxes on wealth, capital, inheritance and property kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Thus Messrs Cameron and Osborne faithfully champion lower inheritance taxes, refuse to reshape the council tax and boast about the business-friendly low capital gains and corporation tax regime.

Piketty deploys 200 years of data to prove them wrong. Capital, he argues, is blind. Once its returns – investing in anything from buy-to-let property to a new car factory – exceed the real growth of wages and output, as historically they always have done (excepting a few periods such as 1910 to 1950), then inevitably the stock of capital will rise disproportionately faster within the overall pattern of output. Wealth inequality rises exponentially.

The process is made worse by inheritance and, in the US and UK, by the rise of extravagantly paid "super managers". High executive pay has nothing to do with real merit, writes Piketty – it is much lower, for example, in mainland Europe and Japan. Rather, it has become an Anglo-Saxon social norm permitted by the ideology of "meritocratic extremism", in essence, self-serving greed to keep up with the other rich. This is an important element in Piketty's thinking: rising inequality of wealth is not immutable. Societies can indulge it or they can challenge it.
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The lesson of the past is that societies try to protect themselves: they close their borders or have revolutions – or end up going to war. Piketty fears a repeat. His critics argue that with higher living standards resentment of the ultra-rich may no longer be as great – and his data is under intense scrutiny for mistakes. So far it has all held up.

Nor does it seem likely that human beings' inherent sense of justice has been suspended. Of course the reaction plays out differently in different eras: I suspect some of the energy behind Scottish nationalism is the desire to build a country where toxic wealth inequalities are less indulged than in England.

The solutions – a top income tax rate of up to 80%, effective inheritance tax, proper property taxes and, because the issue is global, a global wealth tax – are currently inconceivable.

But as Piketty says, the task of economists is to make them more conceivable. Capital certainly does that.

- And Paul Krugman takes a look at the gross amount of wealth - by Gabriel Zucman's estimate up to 8% of all the wealth on the planet - which has been funneled to tax havens in order to be isolated from any contribution to the social good.

- Of course, any public response to the continued distortion of political systems in favour of the wealth will require a massive amount of citizen activism. And Alexandra Bradbury and Jane Slaughter discuss how to build an enduring movement.

- Meanwhile, Kitimat's plebiscite rejecting the Northern Gateway pipeline should serve as an important demonstration that even the best-funded corporate propaganda campaign won't necessarily win out against a strong community.

- But it's a much more difficult task to achieve a change in general policies. And there's plenty of reason to focus on the Cons' continued refusal to regulate the oil industry which now represents Canada's largest source of CO2 pollution - particularly as the rest of the world starts to notice that renewable alternatives are well within reach.

- Finally, Marianne Lenabat wonders how Canada has been turned into one of the most reactionary actors on the global scene in recent years even when public opinion is still generally favourable toward social democracy.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Ian Welsh discusses the nature of prosperity - and the illusion that it means nothing more than increased economic activity:

All other things being equal more productive capacity is better. The more stuff we can make, in theory, the better off we’ll be. But in practice, it doesn’t always work that way.

Part of the problem is due to hierarchies and inequality. Inequality is undeniably bad for us. The more unequal your society is, the lower the median lifespan. The more unequal the society, the sicker, in general. More heart attacks, much more stress. The more unequal, the more crime. These links are robust.

The links run two ways. On the one hand, humans find inequality stressful. The human body, if subject to long term stress, becomes unhealthy and far more likely to be sick. People who feel unequal act less capable than those who feel equal. This is true for the rich and powerful in unequal societies and the poor. Everyone suffers. Though the poor and weak do suffer more, even the rich and powerful would be healthier and live longer in equal societies, most likely simply due to the stress effect.

The second part is distribution, or rather, the question of who gets to decide the distribution. The more unequal a society, the less stuff the poor and middle class have, comparatively. Some technologies tend to lead to more inequality, some tend to lead to more equality.  ...
Increases in productive capacity and technological advancement do not always lead to welfare and when they do, it do not have to do so immediately. The industrial revolution certainly did lead to increased human welfare, but if you were of the generations thrown off the land and made to work in the early factories, often 6 1/2 days a week, in horrible conditions, you would not have thought so. You were in virtually every way worse off than before being thrown off the land, and so were your children. A few industrialists and the people around them certainly did very well, but that is not prosperity, nor is it affluence.

Prosperity, in the end, is as much about power and politics as it is about technology and productive ability. The ability to make more does not ensure we are making the right things, or that the people who need them, get them. Productive capacity which is not shared is not prosperity.

- Meanwhile, PressProgress highlights the Cons' latest efforts to make sure workers don't share in any benefit from corporate operations.

- Keith Stewart writes that the oil sector's interest in fostering dependence on its product runs contrary to the social interest in generating clean and renewable energy, while Andrew Gage explains the NEB's choice not to take seriously the most obvious risks involved in the Gateway pipeline and tanker project. And Erin Weir offers up PCS' minimal royalty projections as the latest example of how Saskatchewan's dependence on corporate potash production is producing little return for the province's resources.

- Finally, Greg Weston reports on CSEC's illegal intrusion into the online activity of travellers at Canadian airports:

The latest Snowden document indicates the spy service was provided with information captured from unsuspecting travellers' wireless devices by the airport's free Wi-Fi system over a two-week period.

Experts say that probably included many Canadians whose smartphone and laptop signals were intercepted without their knowledge as they passed through the terminal.

The document shows the federal intelligence agency was then able to track the travellers for a week or more as they — and their wireless devices — showed up in other Wi-Fi "hot spots" in cities across Canada and even at U.S. airports.

That included people visiting other airports, hotels, coffee shops and restaurants, libraries, ground transportation hubs, and any number of places among the literally thousands with public wireless internet access.

The document shows CSEC had so much data it could even track the travellers back in time through the days leading up to their arrival at the airport, these experts say.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Frank Graves recognizes that the dismal mood of young Canadians is based on the economic reality that the expected trend toward intergenerational progress has been reversed.

- Meanwhile, Jesse Myerson discusses five policy proposals which would give younger citizens a far more fair chance at success than they currently hold. Ben Irwin lists twenty elements of life in poverty which figure to be unfamiliar to anybody at higher income levels. And Dennis Raphael nicely boils down the policy choices we face in addressing family poverty:

Research carried out by UNICEF points out that those nations with the lowest child and family poverty rates are, not surprisingly, those nations with the smallest proportion of low-paid workers. Low-paid workers are much more common in nations where the labour sector is weak, government does little to manage the economy in the service of all, and public participation is less than the case in other countries. They are also the nations with a system of proportional representation that allows greater citizen input into the election process. It is not only the Nordic nations that do well in reducing child and family poverty. The Continental nations of Europe also do far better than we do in Canada. 

This analysis suggests that the best means of reducing child and family poverty is to reduce the imbalances in power and influence that exist among Canadians. The best — and easiest way — to do this is to make it easier to organize workplaces, increase the progressivity of income taxes, and assure that all members of the population, regardless of their class status, have the benefits and supports necessary to avoid poverty. 

The recent history of public policy in Canada has been to do the opposite. There have been sustained attacks on organized labour, taxes have been reduced on the wealthy, and the social safety net has been weakened.

- And Don Lenihan rightly questions the corporate media's attempts to downplay the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us, while recognizing the most important influence on escalating executive wealth extraction:

CEOs’ high compensation also relies on a culture of collusion. Boards of directors hire CEOs and set their compensation. But this has at least as much to do with the collegial nature of the corporate executive world as with markets. Boards are an elite professional club. To become a member—most of whom are still men—people work hard to cultivate the right connections, say the right things, dress properly and be recognized as a “team player.” If not, they don’t get in—or at least they don’t last. And therein lays the problem.

Many members sit on multiple boards and depend on this for a substantial part of their income. The more robust the compensation packages for CEOs, the more likely board members are to see their own status and compensation enhanced. No one wants to upset the applecart. On the contrary, there are very strong incentives to support the trend to ever better packages, and serious risks for opposing it—even if one thinks it is unnecessary or wrong.

“The market” provides the perfect alibi. It allows board members to ascribe CEOs’ salaries to an impersonal calculus. They talk about the remarkable skills and learning of CEOs, the small talent pool available to run big organizations, the risk of losing such talent, and so on.

In a private moment, however, the same people can be surprisingly candid about how becoming a successful CEO has less to do with exceptional management skills than proper grooming, meticulous planning, and a ruthless dedication to the goal.

- Finally, Chantal Hebert suggests that Stephen Harper would be smart to say "no" to the Northern Gateway pipeline. But given his apparent lack of concern that Canada's top spy watchdog - responsible for overseeing agencies reported to have plotted with oil interests to spy on First Nations and environmental groups - is himself lobbying on Enbridge's behalf, we can safely say that Harper isn't the least bit concerned with maintaining the appearance of intelligence or unbiased evaluation.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne writes that Canadians care plenty about the well-being of hungry children even if the Cons don't:

After a firestorm of shocked responses from Canadians, Mr. Moore apologized for his “insensitive comment” uttered days before Christmas. What he did not apologize for or reassess was his belief in the kind of fend-for-yourself country his remarks support.

The apology came likely because this is the season of goodwill and it is no time to remind Canadians what drives the current federal government, begging the question of why it is tolerated any time of the year.

Yet despite the outrage, despite their unending troubles, this government marches on towards its goal of building a country where we no longer truly care about the plight of our neighbours.

- PressProgress highlights the unregulated growth of the tar sands and other closely-related industries - including a massive increase in private air traffic. Terry Glavin suggests that there's only one right answer for the Harper Cons in making the final call on the Norther Gateway pipeline. And Stephen Hume isn't buying the Cons' attempts to demonize all opposition to it:

[The Conservatives are making] an argument that non-governmental organizations vowing to stop the proposed project following its approval by the National Energy Board — subject to more than 200 conditions — are somehow undermining the democratic process through intimidation, threats of violent protest, political sabotage, slander and disinformation.

This is all code. It is intended to define a category to which those who think the pipeline is a bad idea can be routinely consigned. Thus, opposition may be dismissed without assessing the merits of the objections — simply opposing the pipeline invites automatic framing of that protest as the work of enemies of the Canadian way of life.

British Columbians have heard all this rhetoric before. It is a propaganda strategy devised by giant public relations firms. It was first deployed here more than 20 years ago by the forest industry in response to protest and civil disobedience aimed at preventing the denuding of great swaths of the province with vast industrial clearcuts.
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A word to the enthusiasts for this approach: It didn’t work in the early 1990s; it won’t work now.

- Meanwhile, Mike de Souza reports that having eliminated any environmental protection for nearly all of Canada's fisheries and waterways, the Cons are now slashing funding for what few water protection programs were left - even though the department itself has made clear that it needs more resources rather than less.

- Finally, Robin Sears comments on how a scandal-filled year in politics may serve to undermine trust in our political institutions. (Though the sad reality is that the politicians most responsible for that loss of trust are exactly the ones whose ideology might benefit from public antipathy toward politics.)

[Edit: added link.]

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Bill Moyers offers up a superb summary and reading list on inequality:

Inequality in America: How bad is it? In 2011, Mother Jones published a series of charts capturing the depth of inequality in the US, which remains one of the best big-picture looks at the problem out there. We have greater inequality of accumulated wealth than income, and University of California sociologist William Domhoff’s “Who Rules America” provided the details. In The Atlantic, Max Fisher offered a map of global inequality that named the US among the most unequal wealthy countries, and Mark Gongloff reported in the Huffington Post about a study that found that we have the fastest growth in inequality in the developed world. Thomas Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede and Sam Osoro wrote a brief on the black/ white wealth gap at the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, and Brookings’ Benjamin Harris and Melissa Kearny offered 12 facts about America’s struggling lower middle class.

I’m not poor. Why should I care? Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argued in The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better that greater inequality correlates with, and may cause, all sorts of social harms – from crime to obesity to alcoholism. John Crace interviewed the authors for The Guardian, and Wilkinson penned an article for CNN. A study conducted by Sir Michael Marmot, a professor of epidemiology at University College London, found that high levels of inequality cause stress and harm the health of both rich and poor. Justin Wolfers noted that higher inequality correlates with less upward mobility. A report by the UN found that higher levels of inequality were accompanied by slower overall growth. World Bank economist Branko Milanovic found that it’s more “fun” to live in more equal societies.

- Justine Hunter writes about the litigation expected to follow from the Cons' rubber-stamp for the Northern Gateway pipeline.

- Sheila Pratt reports that 75 officers from Alberta's already non-functional environmental regulator have been lured into an industry-funded group doesn't offer much reason for confidence that public interests are going to be represented any better in the near future. And Douglas Fischer takes a look at the massive amounts of private money being used to fund climate denialism with less and less donor transparency.

- Michael Byers critiques the Cons' obsession with the North Pole. And Matthew Fisher writes that the Cons' posturing has taken away from efforts to present a sound scientific position - which may result on Canada losing out on claims it might otherwise have been able to win.

- Finally, Joel Harden reviews Brad Lavigne's Building the Orange Wave - and it's well worth noting his take on what's often left out of Lavigne's otherwise strong account:

This, as some have said, wasn’t the NDP our grandparents built. Gone were any pretensions to socialism in the party’s constitution. Absent were genuine efforts to row against the tide of established thinking.

Present instead was "social-ism," an approach Tony Blair championed (using the ideas of Anthony Giddens) to move the British Labour Party "beyond left and right." Layton’s adoption of this mantra involved repeated claims to make "Parliament work for people."

Lavigne claims the party did this at several crucial moments: during budget wrangles with Liberals in 2004 and 2005, and the parliamentary dispute of 2008-2009. I’ll leave it to others to debate the merits of those claims.

My issue is with Lavigne's view that the NDP’s rise came from a shift "beyond politics," and embrace of populist messaging, neither of which rings true for me. Lavigne’s focus on high-level strategy undermines his assessment of Layton’s strengths, and why many activists and movements held him in such high regard.

For me, the Orange Wave started with Layton’s courting of Quebec voters and reputation as an activist politician.

Unlike most NDP leaders, he didn’t antagonize Quebec on constitutional questions, was proudly green and opposed to war in Afghanistan. This made the NDP, as Lavigne explains, a magnet for public animosity in Quebec against Harper, and a rallying point for those seeking to oust him.
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There’s a real difference between strategy to seek a political vision, and strategy as a political vision -- we need more of the former and less of the latter.

As Lavigne notes, the Conservatives have built a solid infrastructure to communicate their ideas and mobilize grassroots supporters. A recent study insists that the left needs a similar infrastructure to challenge corporate power and its dissemination of fend-for-yourself, neoliberal ideas. Strategists like Lavigne have an important role to play in that process, but not without the energy, and commitment, of social movements.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Robert Reich laments the indecency of gross inequality (and the economic policies designed to exacerbate it):

(F)or more than three decades we’ve been going backwards. It’s far more difficult today for a child from a poor family to become a middle-class or wealthy adult. Or even for a middle-class child to become wealthy.

The major reason is widening inequality. The longer the ladder, the harder the climb. America is now more unequal that it’s been for eighty or more years, with the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of all developed nations. Equal opportunity has become a pipe dream.

Rather than respond with policies to reverse the trend and get us back on the road to equal opportunity and widely-shared prosperity, we’ve spent much of the last three decades doing the opposite.
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(T)he underlying issue is a moral one: What do we owe one another as members of the same society?

Conservatives answer that question by saying it’s a matter of personal choice – of charitable works, philanthropy, and individual acts of kindness joined in “a thousand points of light.”

But that leaves out what we could and should seek to accomplish together as a society. It neglects the organization of our economy, and its social consequences. It minimizes the potential role of democracy in determining the rules of the game, as well as the corruption of democracy by big money. It overlooks our strivings for social justice.

In short, it ducks the meaning of a decent society.

- And Ian Welsh points out that an economy built around unnecessary scarcity only facilitates negative outcomes in both absolute and relative terms:

We, in the West, live in scarcity economies.  The key bottleneck resources are scarce, and the decision has been made to keep them scarce.  Our entire economic policy from about 1979 can be summarized as follows: ordinary people cannot be allowed to have a real raise which translates into spending on oil.
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When you live in a scarcity society, it’s almost impossible to receive permission to do anything real, and you have to put up with how your boss treats you, unless you have a very in-demand skillset, because the next job isn’t a sure thing.  Infrastructure isn’t maintained, new institutions aren’t built, and every old institution tries to create a rental stream (thus the huge increases in tuition and the huge decreases in grants.)  You can’t build high-speed rail, heck you can’t even maintain the freeways properly.  Bridges start collapsing, and so on.

This isn’t just about resource shortages.  A resource shortage may start the sequence, but it is the deliberate refusal to deal with the resource shortage which turns it from a challenge into an era, which turns a rich society into a scarcity society.

- Meanwhile, Alison's latest Dilbit takes a look at the lack of thinking behind the NEB's Gateway approval. And David Suzuki points out the lunacy of approving a pipeline based on future research to figure out exactly what harm it figures to cause:

"Spills will happen, there is no question about that," the Vancouver-based broadcaster and scientist told The Vancouver Sun. "The question, is what do you do about it?"
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Among the panel's 209 conditions recommended Thursday, Enbridge should: research programs into oil-spill cleanup and the varying physical and chemical properties of the oil intended to be shipped, including studies into dispersion and remediation; conduct pre-operations emergency response exercises and develop an emergency preparedness and response exercise and training program.

"It's absurd to say we have to do state-of-the-art research and all that after the pipeline is allowed to go through," Suzuki continued. "There is no known technology that can clean up the mess once it occurs. They can't sop up most of the oil; it's simply dispersed into the atmosphere, water or land."

- Finally, both Andrew Coyne and Stephen Maher discuss the Supreme Court's ruling striking several Criminal Code provisions related to prostitution.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Don Lenihan is the latest to highlight the difference between citizens and consumers - as well as why we should want to act as the former:

In the old view, public debate is all about defining the public interest by establishing collective needs. This requires a very different view of public debate. Rather than seeing it as a chance to advance my wants, it asks me, as a citizen, to consider the needs of the community. This means I must listen to others, weigh their claims, examine the evidence, and make trade-offs and compromises.

When Delacourt talks about citizens having once had a sense of the common good or being willing to make sacrifices for it, we don’t need to believe there was once a golden age of civic participation to agree with her.

The real point is that, not so long ago, citizens had a much clearer sense of their responsibility—as citizens—to balance their personal wants against the public good. Rob Ford’s proclivity to treat citizens first and foremost as taxpayers—and Ford Nation’s inclination to respond—shows just how far we have strayed from this vision.

- Andrew Leach offers his take on what the National Energy Board's rubber-stamping of Northern Gateway means. And Stephen Hume points out the absurdity of the Cons' carefully-scripted process.

- Meanwhile, having managed to eliminate environmental considerations from the Gateway's environmental review process, Stephen Harper has once again kicked any possible greenhouse gas emission regulations past the next federal election. That may break the streak of consecutive "next year!" promises before it reaches an even ten - but it also seems to leave no room for any pretense that a Con government will ever regulate the oil sector.

- Andrew Jackson calls out the Cons' doublespeak on the affordability of a secure pension system. And John Geddes identifies Stephen Harper's pension rhetoric as yet another example of the Cons' beggar-thy-neighbour, every-man-for-himself philosophy.

- Finally, CAUT finds that a strong majority of Canadians both support and recognize the need for unions - while only the predictable 28% would rather see unions and workers silenced.

Reconciliation fail

Shorter Joe Oliver:

We Conservatives are so committed to building trust and relationships with First Nations, we feel we can safely ignore a report saying we're failing miserably on all fronts and instead claim all the necessary work is done. So who wants to partner up with us?

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Ed Broadbent comments on Parliament's review of inequality in Canada:

In a more encouraging vein, the majority report cautiously endorses some positive proposals. Given stated support from both of the opposition parties, these could, and should, move to the top of the government agenda as we approach the 2014 federal Budget and the 2015 federal election.

The Broadbent Institute and other witnesses highlighted the need to increase the Working Income Tax Benefit (WITB) which supplements the incomes of working poor families, thus raising earned income from low wage jobs and helping offset unnecessary barriers to moving from welfare to work.

The majority report calls on the federal government to “formally review the WITB to determine how it could be expanded or modified to further benefit Canadians.”

The majority report, again accompanied by stronger statements from the opposition parties, further calls on the federal government “to make early childhood education and child care more accessible and affordable in all areas of the country, including through increased support for affordable early childhood and education and care programs.”

Such programs are key to removing barriers to work by single parents, mainly women, and are also important to expanding lifetime opportunities for low income children. However, the key question to ask of the Conservatives is whether they are actually prepared to fund income supports for the working poor and early childhood programs. After all, their stated priorities, following elimination of the deficit, are to cut income taxes by introducing family income splitting and by raising contribution limits for Tax Free Savings Accounts.

- Meanwhile, Martin Regg Cohn notes that Jim Flaherty is standing in the way of a secure retirement for a substantial number of Canadians while being able to look forward to multiple political pensions himself.  And Lawrence Martin looks at Peter Kent's brief stay as a Harper cabinet member - but finds that Kent himself is far more critical of the media than of the government which ignored his own recommendations.

- Dene Moore reports on the imminent release of the NEB's Northern Gateway review. But I'll offer a reminder of the reality which has largely been edited out of coverage of the NEB's hearings: rather than representing a "yea or nay" evaluation, the entire process was set up by the Cons to prohibit a "nay" conclusion.

- Frances Russell discusses the spread of low-paying work in the service sector - with a particular focus on how some employers are going out of their way to force workers to work multiple McJobs rather than receiving overtime or benefits through a single workplace.

- Finally, Heather Mallick points out the importance of tax revenue to build a functional society:

I am a tax eccentric. I like taxes and frequently rejoice at what they give me: highways, air traffic control, emergency rooms, the tracking of the emerald ash borer, abortion rights, traffic lights, schools, food safety, the RCMP’s terrific boots, policing, regulating, licensing, autopsies, compassion, all the things that make us an organized and rational nation that is a pleasure to live in. I don’t trip over small corpses on the way home. It’s rather nice.

Conservatives, on the other hand, enjoy these services while abusing taxes as the necrotizing flesh disease of Canadian life.
...
(T)axing is more complicated than that, as essayist Jim Stanford says. “Governments decide, in the context of the conflicting and contradictory political pressures they face, what programs they will provide. Then they figure out how to fund those programs.”

Neo-liberals cut taxes first, Stanford says, while the programs exist, thus creating a deficit that is used to justify further cuts. We are manipulated. For example, we are told that we can’t afford pensions. Neither can we raise payroll taxes to raise CPP benefits for the future.

But we can pay them if we choose to.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Scott Sinclair discusses how CETA could create extreme and unnecessary risk in Canada's banking and financial system:

The failure of a single company (such as Lehman Brothers in October 2008) or unchecked growth in markets for high-risk financial products (such as sub-prime mortgages) can quickly cascade out of control, threatening the integrity of the entire system. Especially during a crisis, financial regulators need to act decisively, without worrying about expensive lawsuits from disgruntled foreign investors. But that’s precisely the toxic ingredient the CETA negotiations have introduced into the mix.

The EU insists that foreign investors must have unimpeded rights to challenge banking and other financial regulations through investor-state dispute settlement. The Canadian Department of Finance is arguing that financial sector regulation is of such critical importance to the economy that regulatory measures must be shielded from direct challenge by foreign investors.

Negotiators reportedly are at an impasse and this issue is now on the list to be resolved by politicians. Given the intense pressure to close a deal, politicians could overrule Finance officials and undermine the ability of regulators to avert or stem future financial crises.
...
Ironically, Europeans are learning the folly of this approach the hard way. Foreign investors have turned to investor-state arbitration to try to recover losses from Europe’s seemingly interminable financial crisis. In the first investor-state case ever by a Chinese mainland investor, a Chinese financial services company is suing Belgium under a 2005 Belgium-China investment protection treaty. Ping An, the largest single shareholder in the Belgian-Dutch bank Fortis, allegedly lost $2.3 billion USD when government authorities, who stepped in to rescue the financial giant, subsequently sold off assets over the objections of minority shareholders. Foreign investors have also filed investor-state claims against both Greece and Cyprus to recover losses incurred under financial restructuring programs.

While the risk of an investor-state dispute is highest during a crisis, under Europe’s proposed CETA approach, more routine financial regulations could also be vulnerable. For example, the Canadian government has tightened mortgage regulations four times since 2008. Canadian officials have publicly confirmed that these are just the sort of regulations that the Europeans want to see exposed to challenge.

- And Matt Taibbi exposes the dirty truth behind the ratings agencies whose word has been relied upon as the basis for far too many economic decisions:

Ratings agencies are the glue that ostensibly holds the entire financial industry together. These gigantic companies – also known as Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations, or NRSROs – have teams of examiners who analyze companies, cities, towns, countries, mortgage borrowers, anybody or anything that takes on debt or creates an investment vehicle.

Their primary function is to help define what's safe to buy, and what isn't. A triple-A rating is to the financial world what the USDA seal of approval is to a meat-eater, or virginity is to a Catholic. It's supposed to be sacrosanct, inviolable: According to Moody's own reports, AAA investments "should survive the equivalent of the U.S. Great Depression."

It's not a stretch to say the whole financial industry revolves around the compass point of the absolutely safe AAA rating. But the financial crisis happened because AAA ratings stopped being something that had to be earned and turned into something that could be paid for.

- Mike de Souza reports on the latest revelations about the Cons using public money to do PR work for the oil sector - explicitly working to "support" the Northern Gateway pipeline even as they claim to be carrying out an unbiased regulatory process. But Barbara Yaffe notes that British Columbians aren't buying the spin - and yet another Enbridge spill won't do much to help the impression that the Cons' oil-industry funders are far more concerned with papering over serious concerns about health and the environment than actually operating safely. 

- Meanwhile, in the department of policies the public actually wants to see Canada's government working on, Steve Morgan discusses EKOS' polling showing 78% popular support for public funding for needed prescription drugs:

Canadians have good reasons to want such reform. Every developed country with a universal healthcare system provides universal coverage of prescription drugs… except Canada.

Drug coverage is provided in all comparable healthcare systems because, when prescribed and used appropriately, prescription drugs can be among the most cost-effective forms of providing healthcare. The architects of these other systems know that charging patients for prescriptions will impede the use of essential medicines – which can cost the healthcare system in other ways, such as increased hospitalizations.

In Canada, many patients cannot afford to take medicines prescribed by their doctors. The recent poll by EKOS suggests that, in the past five years, about one in five Canadians (23%) have chosen not to fill a prescription because of out-of-pocket costs. That’s a lot of missed prescriptions.

Such access problems are prevented when medically necessary prescriptions are covered as part of the healthcare system. Countries with such access – every other developed country with universal healthcare – also spend considerably less on pharmaceuticals than Canada does. This is because healthcare systems that purchase medicines on behalf of entire populations have significant bargaining power in price negotiations with drug manufacturers.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne offers a handy guide to the rights and wrongs involved in Justin Trudeau's massive speaking fees and the Cons' publicly-funded response.

On meaningless spin

Far too many people who should know better have tried to find some significance in the B.C. government's submission to the Harper Cons' Northern Gateway rubber-stamping process. So in case anybody needs a refresher course, here's why we shouldn't see it as an important development.

To start with, B.C.'s announcement doesn't represent a "decision" in any meaningful sense of the word. After all, the B.C. Lib government signed an equivalency agreement (PDF) three years ago in which they agreed to let Stephen Harper decide any environmental questions related to the Northern Gateway pipeline - meaning that the say of Christy Clark and her government at this point is no greater than that of any of the witnesses the Cons have sought to shut out of the process.

Now, it's true that in the absence of the equivalency agreement, there would have been some substantial uncertainty as to the relative authority of the federal and provincial governments. But it's the B.C. Libs who chose to resolve that uncertainty in favour of giving the Harper Cons sole decision-making power.

And the Cons have gone out of their way to abuse their newfound power to decide what process will apply to the pipeline. At last notice, that process included (among other glaring flaws) a refusal to allow participants to ask questions about concerns which Enbridge and the government don't want to talk about, a limitation to the National Energy Board's authority stating that it has no jurisdiction to say "no" for environmental reasons, and a cabinet override to allow Harper to say "yes" even if the NEB finds the science to be so damning as to make it impossible to build the pipeline safely.

All of which is to say that Clark's posturing this week has precisely zero substantive impact on the formal approval process for Northern Gateway. And given that the Cons have made it clear that they're not interested in letting the public interest get in the way of tar-sands profits, there's little reason for optimism that Clark's intervention will suddenly cause them to develop a conscience.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- To the extent corporatist voices are pushing increased private involvement in funding Canadian health care, their main argument generally involves the claim that private insurers will be more willing to fund expensive courses of treatment which might be rationed out of public plans. But Don Butler reports that at least one of the major private insurers is taking exactly the opposite view in describing the future of private prescription drug insurance:

Private drug plans that provide coverage to 19 million Canadians are not sustainable in their current form, according to an executive at Great West Life Assurance, one of Canada’s largest insurance companies.
...
While the cost of “maintenance drugs” to control such things as blood pressure and cholesterol levels has risen by 58 per cent since 2005, Martinez said the biggest threat is the skyrocketing cost of new biologic and specialty drugs.
...
Traditionally, employers have responded by raising premiums or copayments for employees. “But that’s not sustainable, either,” Martinez said in an interview. New management techniques are essential, she said.

For example, Great West Life has begun to use case management in cases involving high-cost drug claims, Martinez said. “If you are taking a very high-cost drug, we are going to appoint a case manager to your case who’s going to monitor your use of the drug and your physician’s prescribing of the drug.”
...
Other conference participants said the best solution would be the creation of a government-run program of universal pharmacare that would cover all Canadians.

“Every developed country in the world with a universal health care system provides universal coverage for drugs, except Canada,” said Steve Morgan, associate director of the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research at the University of British Columbia.

Those countries all spend far less on prescription drugs than Canadians spend, and their citizens have better access to essential drugs than Canadians do, Morgan said.

- Haroon Siddiqui rightly approves of Barack Obama's work to eliminate the perpetual fear and panic pushed by Republicans over the past decade-plus, while contrasting it against Stephen Harper's fear-building in Canada.

- Frances Russell writes about the folly of the Northern Gateway pipeline.

- Finally, I'll second PLG's take on the lesson the NDP should draw about narrative from British Columbia's recent provincial election. But I'll expand on it slightly by pointing out the ultimate failure of a branding effort built around genuine comparative fiscal prudence.

After all, the B.C. NDP publicly pointed out the implausibility of Christy Clark's budget numbers and thus offered less than it could have as to the shape of an NDP government - presumably based on the theory that it would fit with a "responsible managers" message. But the choice looks to have been almost entirely forgotten through the course of the campaign - meaning that the Libs won by simultaneously scaremongering about deficits, and promising to maintain higher deficits and debt levels through their platform.

Sunday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading.

- Daniel Kaufman notes that the EU is on the verge of implementing new standards for transparency in oil extraction - while recognizing that big oil has fought the effort every step of the way in an effort to keep its activities secret. And Shaun Thomas discusses the no-knowledge zone set up around the Northern Gateway pipeline, as Nathan Cullen's questions within the review process revealed that the federal government hadn't so much as talked to First Nations or affected industries about the possible impact of an oil spill.

- But then, the Cons can at least claim consistency in their general preference for ignorance. And the sudden elimination of a low-cost, high-use library program from Prince Albert's federal penitentiary certainly fits into that worldview. Meanwhile, Frances Woolley asks some questions as to how economists should deal with the first data set from the National Household Survey since the Cons scrapped the long-form census.

- And in case there was any doubt why the Cons and the facts tend to end up on opposite sides of any issue, Randeep Ramesh points out that the numbers being thrown around by the U.K. Conservatives as the basis for attacks on social programs aren't any more plausible than the since-debunked ones used to justify austerity for austerity's sake.

- Haroon Siddiqui continues his criticism of the Cons' push toward temporary and disposable foreign workers, this time labelling Jason Kenney as the headhunter-in-chief for employers looking to drive wages down.

- Finally, Tabatha Southey nicely lampoons Fox News North's attempt to strongarm the CRTC into handing it mandatory subscriber funding:

(A)n ideologically right-wing news organization is asking a governmental regulatory body to force private businesses, in the form of television providers, to carry it in their basic packages – thus demanding that cable subscribers pay for a channel whether they want to watch it or not.

“And why does Sun News Network believe the CRTC should do this?” you might ask.
“Is this not the same Sun News Network whose vice-president, Kory Teneycke, complained in a 2010 commentary in the Sun chain’s newspapers that mandatory carriage was ‘tantamount to a tax on everyone’ with cable or satellite service?” You wonder, because you are very well read.

“Is it not a bit surreal that we should be forced to pay for a television station that devotes much of its airtime to complaining that we are forced to pay for another television channel, the CBC, which we watch in far greater numbers?” You demand to know, because you spend a lot of time thinking about Canadian broadcasting regulation.

Well, the Sun News representatives explained, the CRTC should grant them increasingly difficult-to-obtain mandatory carriage status because, without this government assistance, the network cannot survive as a business, and also because Canadian content is inherently good for us.

Just as there are no atheists in a foxhole, there are apparently no free-market capitalists in a financial black hole, and the people at Sun News cannot spread the blame for their poor ratings thin enough.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Stephen Maher points out why we shouldn't believe the Cons for a second when they claim to care about cracking down on offshore tax evasion:

The top level of Canadian society is a small club, and it includes politicians. The people who run the country are on excellent terms with the business people who squirrel away money in offshore tax havens.

Shea's meaningless tough talk was prompted by a CBC report that said Saskatchewan lawyer Tony Merchant has $1.7 million in a Cook Islands bank. Merchant's wife, Pana, was appointed to the Senate by Jean Chretien in 2002.

Do our politicians want the CRA to crack down on their friends and relatives?

Cockfield points out that the government is ruthless in prosecuting welfare cheats, but offshore cheats are able to skate.

"Super-rich people get tax breaks from tax officials," he said. "It's just part of the power structure."

It's clear that neither the CRA nor the government likes talking about the huge amount of Canadian money sitting in offshore bank accounts.

- Don Braid notes that Alberta's brief attempt to pretend to care about climate change has given way to a familiar "we'll do the least we can get away with" approach, accompanied by attempts to back away from an already-weak trial balloon. Barry Saxifrage highlights why Alberta can't be seen as anything but one of Canada's worst provincial offenders when it comes to exacerbating climate change.

- Meanwhile, Nathan Cullen writes about the impact of new pipelines on the people who stand to be affected - and who the Cons want to cut out of the process. And Andrew Nikiforuk (with help from Robyn Allan) points out that the arguments for massive new pipelines extending in every direction from the tar sands represent nothing but false promises.

- Trevor Herriot takes a closer look at the community pasture program the Cons have trashed without any apparent interest in what's being lost.

- Karl Nerenberg wonders what additional information investigators will be able to get from Michael Sona now that he's been officially charged (and again thrown under the bus by the party apparatchiks who controlled access to the Cons' voter database).

- And finally, Marc Spooner and Paul Orlowski make the case for revisiting the Saskatchewan Party's decision to impose standardized testing.

Juxtaposition

Shorter tar sands shills trying to get the general public to do their PR work:

Our oil industry affects every single Canadian from coast to coast to coast. Speak up in defence of your corporate masters - it's your patriotic duty!

Shorter tar sands shills when it comes to assessing the potential environmental damage from new pipelines:

If we can't see oil dripping off of you, we don't care what you have to say.

[Update: And by the way, take a look at Alison's Dilbit cartoons if you haven't yet.)