Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Stephen Marche discusses the Cons' ongoing efforts to make Canada a more closed and ignorant country:

Mr. Harper’s campaign for re-election has so far been utterly consistent with the personality trait that has defined his tenure as prime minister: his peculiar hatred for sharing information.

Americans have traditionally looked to Canada as a liberal haven, with gun control, universal health care and good public education.

But the nine and half years of Mr. Harper’s tenure have seen the slow-motion erosion of that reputation for open, responsible government. His stance has been a know-nothing conservatism, applied broadly and effectively. He has consistently limited the capacity of the public to understand what its government is doing, cloaking himself and his Conservative Party in an entitled secrecy, and the country in ignorance.
…
His active promotion of ignorance extends into the functions of government itself. Most shockingly, he ended the mandatory long-form census, a decision protested by nearly 500 organizations in Canada, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Catholic Council of Bishops. In the age of information, he has stripped Canada of its capacity to gather information about itself. The Harper years have seen a subtle darkening of Canadian life.

The darkness has resulted, organically, in one of the most scandal-plagued administrations in Canadian history.

- Jeremy Nuttall writes that the experience of reporting on the Harper Cons' actions bears a striking resemblance to the life of state-controlled media in China. And the Vancouver Sun interviews Gus Van Harten about Harper's efforts to hand power to Chinese businesses at the expense of Canadian citizens and governments.

- Brian Milner and Jeff Lewis are the latest writers to compare Norway's success in preserving its resource wealth to Alberta's minimal reserves.

- Glen McGregor reports that the Cons' Unfair Elections Act - which of course was rammed through Parliament with insufficient review because of the urgency of putting rules in place for this fall's election - was designed to ensure that voters can't trace the source of robocalls until after this fall's election.

- The CP reports that the Cons are looking to resurrect the concept of participating in Star Wars missile defence based on their own efforts to scare the Canadian public. And Amanda Connolly points out just another example of a Con MP - in this case John Williamson - callously using a dead Canadian soldier as a political prop.

- Finally, Robyn Benson examines the status of women in Canada, while highlighting the need to elect a government which isn't out to undermine it. 

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Thomas Frank reviews Zephyr Teachout's Corruption in America, and finds there's even more reason to worry about gross wealth buying power than we could identify before:

We think of all the laws passed over the years to restrict money in politics — and of all the ways the money has flowed under and around those restrictions. And finally, it seems to me, we just gave up out of sheer exhaustion.

According to Teachout, however, it’s much worse than this. Our current Supreme Court, in Citizens United, “took that which had been named corrupt for over 200 years” — which is to say, gifts to politicians — “and renamed it legitimate.” Teachout does not exaggerate. Here is Justice Kennedy again, in the Citizens United decision: “The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach. The government has ‘muffle[d] the voices that best represent the most significant segments of the economy.’ ”

You read that right: The economy needs to be represented in democratic politics, or at least the economy’s “most significant segments,” whatever those are, and therefore corporate “speech,” meaning gifts, ought not to be censored. Corporations now possess the rights that the founders reserved for citizens, and as Teachout explains, what used to be called “corruption becomes democratic responsiveness.”

Let me pause here to take note of another recurring peculiarity in corruption literature: an eerie overlap between theory and practice. If you go back to that “censorship” quotation from Kennedy, you will notice he quotes someone else: his colleague Antonin Scalia, in an opinion from 2003. Google the quote and one place you’ll find it is in a book of Scalia’s opinions that was edited in 2004 by none other than the lobbyist Kevin Ring, an associate of Jack Abramoff who would later be convicted of corrupting public officials.

...

State governments subject to wealthy corporations? Check. Speculators in legislation, infesting the capital? They call it K Street. And that fancy Latin remark about Rome? They do say that of us today. Just turn on your TV sometime and let the cynicism flow.

And all of it has happened, Teachout admonishes, because the founders’ understanding of corruption has been methodically taken apart by a Supreme Court that cynically pretends to worship the founders’ every word. “We could lose our democracy in the process,” Teachout warns, a bit of hyperbole that maybe it’s time to start taking seriously.

- Matt O'Brien highlights Richard Reeves and Isabel Sawhill's research into the gross inequality of opportunity in the U.S. by comparing the income levels of college graduates from poor families to those of high-school dropouts from wealthy ones. And Patricia Kozicka reports that Edmonton schools are putting their thumbs on the scale against the poor even further - withholding such basic aspects of social participation as lunch breaks from students whose families can't afford extra fees.

- Meanwhile, Ellie Mae O'Hagan examines Bolivia's experience as an example of a more fair distribution of wealth leading to economic and social improvements:

According to a report by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, “Bolivia has grown much faster over the last eight years than in any period over the past three and a half decades.” The benefits of such growth have been felt by the Bolivian people: under Morales, poverty has declined by 25% and extreme poverty has declined by 43%; social spending has increased by more than 45%; the real minimum wage has increased by 87.7%; and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean has praised Bolivia for being “one of the few countries that has reduced inequality”. In this respect, the re-election of Morales is really very simple: people like to be economically secure – so if you reduce poverty, they’ll probably vote for you.

- Meanwhile, Tony Burman notes that ill-advised austerity is exacerbating the spread of ebola in all kinds of countries - including the ones who wrongly presumed they didn't need to prepare for it.

- Glen McGregor reports on how Canada's opposition parties are increasing their use of data analytics in the lead up to the 2015 election.

- But of course, changes in party voting will only translate into policy improvement if people are willing to demand that it be followed up with real change. On that front, Thomas Walkom challenges the opposition parties to make clear which of the Cons' destructive policies they'll reverse. And Jim Coyle's review of Michael Harris' Party of One reminds us why we need a new government to restore a commitment to democracy in the face of Stephen Harper's contempt for the idea.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Glen McGregor reports on Michael Sona's conviction as part of the Cons' voter suppression in 2011. But both Michael den Tandt and Sujata Dey emphasize that Sona's conviction was based on his being only one participant in the wider Robocon scheme - and that Stephen Harper and company remain fully responsible for covering up the rest of it.

- Meanwhile, Carol Goar duly mocks Tony Clement's attempt to talk up open government while serving as one of the least accountable ministers in the most secretive Canadian government ever.

- And Justin Ling discusses the myriad of areas in which the Cons are signing away Canadian sovereignty through closed-door trade deals while refusing to admit to what they're doing. 

- David Sirota writes about Los Angeles' attempts to reverse credit swap arrangements which are handing hundreds of millions of dollars from the public to the financial sector - and points out in the process that the city spends more on giveaways to Wall Street than on its own roads.

- Mike de Souza exposes Alberta's sad publicity campaign intended to greenwash the tar sands - or at least muddy the waters in the U.S. But Bob Weber reports that long after that misinformation campaign intended to portray Alberta oil as well-regulated and environmentally responsible, Alberta's government is refusing to regulate pollution based on its assertion that it has no clue how to do so.

- Finally, David Gratzer examines the urgent need for stronger public policy on mental health:

Mental illness is a human tragedy. A patient – off work and sick with depression – recently told me what he missed most from his old life: the ability to laugh. Stuck in darkness, he wished to laugh again. Health-care professionals like me hear such things too often: stories of lost jobs, lost loves, lost years. A recent Danish study suggests that more than a third of the population will have some form of mental illness over their lifetime, with mood and anxiety disorders being the most common.

Mental illness is also a societal tragedy. By one estimate, 500,000 Canadians missed work today because of a mental health problem. The lost productivity and direct health expenses have an economic cost; in a recent analysis for the Mental Health Commission of Canada, the value was pegged at $50-billion a year. Labour economist Richard Layard argues that such estimates are inherently conservative: Mental illness casts a long shadow, over our jails and emergency departments, with total costs of more than 8 per cent of a country’s GDP.

But if mental illness is devastating, common, and costly, there is good news. In many cases, it’s also highly treatable.
...
Yet studies show that people with mental illness routinely fall through the cracks. Only about 1 in 3 will get the health care they need. A pathetic paradox, then: Psychiatry has never been better able to help people yet many don’t get the help they need.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Mitchell Anderson discusses Canada's woeful excuse for negotiations with the oil sector - particularly compared to the lasting social benefits secured by Norway in making the best of similar reserves:

Digging through the numbers, it seems Norway is considerably more skilled at negotiation. By charging higher taxes and investing equity ownership in their own production, the Norwegian taxpayer was paid $46.29 BOE in 2012. That same year, the U.K. taxpayer realized only $20.08 per BOE -- less than half as much.

What about Canada? Much of our production is bitumen, which admittedly is a lower value (and often unprocessed) product with higher extraction costs. That said, it seems the nicest nation on earth is being taken to the cleaners. In 2012, Canada produced more than two billion BOE and collected $18 billion in provincial and federal taxes and royalties. This means that the Canadian taxpayer realized a benefit of about $9 per BOE -- less than one-fifth what Norway collected in the same year.

Canada produces 45 per cent more petroleum than Norway. Imagine for the sake of argument that Canada collected what Norwegians did between 2009 and 2012. In those four years, Canada would have enjoyed revenues of $365 billion -- enough to pay off more than half of our national debt.
...
Every provincial jurisdiction is also in direct competition with each other in a race to the bottom to attract private petroleum investment. Internal government documents accessed by the Alberta Federation of Labour found that B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan charge lower royalty rates than any U.S. state. Bizarrely, this was framed as a public policy achievement.

Since our country has an every-province-for-itself negotiating strategy, job strapped jurisdictions are not only contending with immensely powerful outside forces, but their own angry electorate every few years. It's hard to drive a hard bargain when voters can be maneuvered to take up industry's negotiating position. Nothing motivates a politician quite like the prospect of electoral defeat, and voters have become enlisted as unwitting allies in the billion-dollar brinksmanship of industry to access resources at ever-cheaper prices.

- Jane Gerster's report following up on David Macdonald's study of wealth inequality includes this apt observation from Erin Weir:

In many ways, the growing divide is more concerning than income inequality, said Erin Weir, economist for the United Steelworkers.

“Wealth matters because it also confers political power and social status,” Weir said, adding “wealth makes increasing inequality a self-reinforcing trend: invested wealth is a source of income, those who already have the most wealth have the greatest capacity to accumulate more wealth.”

- Update: And Alex Pareene responds to the latest U.S. Supreme Court ruling to further facilitate the flow of concentrated wealth into politics on by pointing out the possibility of reducing wealth inequality in the first place.

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford reviews the neoliberal policy choices which have exacerbated that inequality over the past few decades.

- Finally, Sheila Fraser rightly slams the Cons' cynical attack on Canadian voting rights. And Bruce Cheadle reports on how the Unfair Elections Act is set up to facilitate yet more Robocon-style schemes - even as Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor confirm the connection between the Cons' party database and the 2011 voter suppression fraud.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Paul Kershaw highlights what's most needed to support Canada's younger generations:

Even with all this personal adaptation, most in Gen X and Y can’t work their way out of the time and income squeeze when they start families. Since two earners bring home little more today than what one breadwinner often did in the 1970s, we’ve gone from 40 hour work weeks to closer to 80 hours. The result? Generations raising young kids are squeezed for time at home. They are squeezed for income because housing prices are nearly double, even though young people often live in condos, or trade yards for time-consuming commutes. And they are squeezed for services like child care, which are essential for many parents to deal with rising costs, but are in short supply, and often cost more than university.
...
What all should ask, however, is why does the Fraser Institute dismiss the reality that younger generations are more squeezed now than in the past? Many will know the think tank is skeptical about the value of government investment. But Gens X and Y and their kids are not the primary beneficiary of social spending. Governments spend around $45,000 a year per retiree in Canada, mostly on health care, pensions and retirement income subsidies. This spending is nearly four times larger than government spending per younger Canadian. Grade school, post-secondary, health care, child care, parental leave, EI and workers compensation all combine for a total of around $12,000 annually per person under age 45.

Younger Canadians already face a generational imbalance in government spending on top of their worsening wages relative to housing costs. By discounting the time, income and service squeeze on younger generations, the Fraser Institute distracts attention away from this imbalance. Fortunately, there are Canadians of all ages across the country who believe younger generations deserve a better deal.

- And Tim Adams interviews Robert Skidelsky about the difference between maximizing wealth and living a good life.

- Robert Fife's story on the coordination between Con senators and multiple members of Stephen Harper's PMO is certainly worth a read. But it's doubly interesting when compared to Greg Weston's access-to-information requests finding absolutely no record of the scandal in the PMO - even as Mike Duffy and others were assembling a written narrative. And it's well worth asking what other scandals have been managed on a nothing-in-writing basis out of Harper's central command.

- Meanwhile, Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that Elections Canada has drawn a few more links between the 2011 election fraud and the Cons.

 - Finally, in a sure sign that there's no social progress that the corporate sector won't eventually try to roll back, Bill Curry reports that the U.S. is trying to rewrite the Trans-Pacific Partnership to allow attacks against anti-smoking policies.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Henry Blodget recognizes that the systematic corporate squeeze on mere workers represents a deliberate choice rather than an inevitability:

One of the big reasons the U.S. economy is so lousy is the American companies are hoarding cash and “maximizing profits” instead of investing in their people and future projects.

This behavior is contributing to record income inequality in the country and starving the primary engine of U.S. economic growth–the vast American middle class–of purchasing power. (See charts below).

If average Americans don’t get paid living wages, they can’t spend much money buying products and services. And when average Americans can’t buy products and services, the companies that sell products and services to average Americans can’t grow. So the profit obsession of America’s big companies is, ironically, hurting their ability to accelerate revenue growth.

One obvious solution to this problem is to encourage companies to pay their people more — to share more of the vast wealth that they create with the people who create it.

The companies have record profit margins, so they can certainly afford to do this.

But, unfortunately, over the past three decades, what began as a healthy and necessary effort to make our companies more efficient after the malaise of the 1970s has evolved into a warped consensus that the only value that companies should create is financial value (cash) and that the only thing managers and owners should ever worry about it making more of it.

This view is an insult to anyone who has ever dreamed of having a job that is about more than money. And it is a short-sighted and destructive view of an economic system...

- And Kendra Coulter makes the case for a retail revolution to ensure that the employment of the future provides a reasonable standard of living for workers:

Most retail jobs epitomize the scourge of precarious work. Retail jobs usually mean poverty-level wages and income insecurity. Schedules are erratic, volatile and provided at the last minute. Retail workers are often disrespected and dismissed as lacking skill, education or value. In other words, retail does not simply reflect inequities. Retail contributes to increasing inequality. This needs to change.
...

More retail workers are joining a growing movement of low-wage service workers who recognize the need to transform lousy jobs into better jobs. Workers at Sirens in Brampton have just chosen unionization as a way to raise the standards at work, for example. These young workers believe retail jobs can and should be good jobs, regardless of who shops in the stores and which brands are sold. Notably, Holt Renfrew workers have repeatedly told me that high prices do not automatically translate into high quality jobs. 

Undoubtedly, the retail terrain will change, but retail jobs are here to stay. It is high time to look beyond the brands and the boardrooms, to how retailers of all kinds treat us. We are not numbers, nor are we disposable. We are workers, citizens, and people who matter.

- Sum Of Us is rightly challenging Eli Lilly's attempt to sue Canada for following an unbiased patent approval process rather than simply handing over half a billion dollars in public and patient money.

- Don Lenihan discusses the difference between the "political" and "policy" types of politicians - and I'll readily approve of his implied view that we should encourage more of the latter. But I do think it's worth noting that the few Cons who have ever ventured into that territory have faced more reprisals than just being denied cabinet positions, while having no apparent role in shaping legislation - meaning that there's only so much power to be taken back by individual MPs without some more concerted push.

- And finally, Glen McGregor's story on Stephen Harper's continued refusal to allow repairs at 24 Sussex Drive might serve to perfectly sum up the Cons' philosophy: Harper and company are perfectly happy with their current life of luxury, and aren't about to let trifles like the public interest interfere.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Friday reading.

- Julian Beltrame writes about the reality that Canada has multiple workers available to fill every job - with an assist from Erin Weir:

The case for job shortages in Canada became thinner Tuesday with the most recent data showing vacancies actually fell to 200,000 at the start of the year, meaning there were 6.5 unemployed workers chasing each opening.
...
“This is a striking low job vacancy number and it really casts doubt on this idea that we have a labour shortage,” said Erin Weir, a labour economist with the United Steelworkers union.

“I think most of this idea of labour shortages is based on anecdotes from the business community. They might have a different definition of a labour shortage. Employers might believe that if they can’t get the employees they want at the wages they are prepared to offer — that’s a labour shortage.”

...

“There’s always the possibility of a specific shortage of specific skills in a particular location, but of course the long-term solution is for more local residents to acquire the needed skills, or for workers with those skills to relocate to that area,” he said.

“The temporary foreign workers program actually works against that by often allowing employers to fill vacancies without offering training or increasing wages.”

- Meanwhile, Alison points out the connection between CBC's Amanda Lang and a group which has relentlessly been promoting the offshoring of Canadian jobs.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that the Cons' preferred contractors don't look to be any more competent or socially responsible than the governing party itself - as the main telemarketer for the Cons is facing bankruptcy while owing nearly $1 million in unpaid taxes and wage assessments.

- Finally, Sean Shaw makes the case for Saskatoon to invest in sorely-needed roads and other infrastructure, rather than buying into the constant Chamber of Commerce demand for perpetually-lower taxes.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Frances Russell weighs in on the Cons' continued contempt for democracy:

The Conservatives under Stephen Harper are running an effective dictatorship. They believe they are quite within their rights to muzzle Parliament, gag civil servants, use taxpayer money for blatant political self-promotion, stand accused of trying to subvert a federal election and hand over much of Canada's magnificent natural heritage to the multinational oil and gas lobby.

What is even more disturbing is that the national media, with a few notable exceptions, has underplayed or ignored these developments that are a clear assault on Canada's democratic institutions and processes.
...
Even more frightening is the code's proclamation that federal employees owe "duty of loyalty" to the "duly elected government" and spells out how offenders can be reported.

This is a historic -- and very disturbing -- development. In genuine democracies, the civil service is expected to be non-partisan and loyal to the Crown (the nation and its citizens), not to the politicians of the current government.

How long will Canada be able to claim to be a first-world democracy if this anti-intellectual, anti-science and clearly anti-democratic climate persists in Ottawa's corridors of power?

- Meanwhile, Bill Curry and Stuart Thompson take a look at the number the Cons have left out of the budget and find that they're again attacking the Canada Food Inspection Agency - slashing 15% of the budget from an organization which is already being told to accept an honour system from operators rather than actually functioning as a regulator.

- Glen McGregor provides a desperately-needed bit of sunlight into the shady operations of the Fraser Institute - but notes that the bulk of the organization's budget comes from millions in untraceable money from other foundations, along with seven-figure foreign donations.

- And finally, Erin Weir highlights how the Saskatchewan Party's business tax giveaways have nothing to do with economic development and everything to do with freebies for Brad Wall's corporate sponsors:

Saskatchewan already has a lower rate of 10 per cent for manufacturing and processing - the industries most able to relocate among jurisdictions. Corporate taxes do not explain Saskatchewan's loss of 4,200 manufacturing jobs in the past seven years. For example, several meat-packing plants moved to Manitoba, where such manufacturing facilities actually pay a higher provincial rate of 12 per cent.

Krawetz proposes to cut the general corporate tax rate, which applies to large resource, financial, construction and service companies. Clearly, a potash mine cannot move to another province in pursuit of lower corporate taxes.

Similarly, a construction contractor working on that mine must operate in Saskatchewan. Businesses that exploit local resources or serve local markets do not leave because of modest differences in corporate taxes.

A common misconception is that businesses can simply report their profits in whichever province has the lowest tax rate. In fact, the Canada Revenue Agency apportions each company's taxable Canadian profits among provinces based on the actual location of its sales and employees.

A corporation operating in a province must pay its corporate tax there.
...

(C)orporate tax rates have very little effect on private investment financed by debt, Canadian equity or American companies. However, corporate tax cuts reduce the revenue available to fund public investment in highways, bridges, schools, universities and other economically important facilities.

Statistics Canada concludes: "Between 1962 and 2006, roughly one-half of the total growth in multifactor productivity in the private sector was the result of growth in public infrastructure." The government of Saskatchewan should cancel planned corporate tax cuts and instead invest in needed provincial services and infrastructure.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Edward Greenspon discusses the importance of a public service whose focus extends beyond the narrow interests of the government of the day:

The hundreds of thousands of Canadians who work for governments, particularly those employed - in the evolving argot of recent decades - as knowledge workers or symbolic analysts or members of the creative class, are, in a sense, servants. They owe a duty of loyalty to carry out the programs and policies of the elected government of the day.

But they also have a broader public duty to the pursuit of truth and the open exchange of information integral to democracy. Thus we have Freedom of Information laws and whistleblower legislation. We also have public servants regularly appearing before Parliamentary committees, which tells us they are not meant merely to be seen and not heard. Rather, they are fair witnesses to facts and trends that shape the progress of the nation, laying down a base of understanding from which political discourse can flower.

The tension between their public and servant roles does not render their jobs impossible, merely challenging. In the normal run of things, governments protect them from the worst effects of this tension by listening to their advice, not disclosing it and not blaming them for decisions taken by the political class. All three, of course are periodically breached. The extraordinary resignation of the country's Chief Statistician a couple of years ago flowed not from the government's refusal to heed his advice on the census, but rather his minister's mischaracterization of that advice.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne slams the Cons for their typical budget dishonesty. Glen McGregor reports on the public money being used to defend Jason Kenney and Alykhan Velshi's attacks on George Galloway - featuring the Harper Cons' mission statement of "Defamation and misfeasance in public office. Ongoing." And Murray Mandryk discusses the Sask Party's implausible evasiveness when it comes to the misuse of IPAC funding.

- The CP reports on the Cons' decision to isolate Canada as the lone country withdrawing from a global treaty on desertification. But I suspect the answer as to why they're doing it is fairly straightforward, as a government seeking to edit out of existence all references to scientific research, poverty and environmental issues surely had little interest in this:

The UN body has a research committee dedicated to finding ways to stop the spread of droughts that lay waste to farmland across the planet, particularly Africa.

Scientists, governments and civil society organizations are headed to Bonn next month "to carry out the first ever comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of desertification, land degradation and drought," says a notice from the United Nations Environment Program.

"Also, for the very first time, governments will provide concrete data on the status of poverty and of land cover in the areas affected by desertification in their countries."

- Finally, it shouldn't come as any surprise that on-reserve schools receive up to 50% less funding than off-reserve equivalents. But there's little indication that our current provincial and federal governments see that gap as a problem - meaning that improvement seems highly unlikely until at least the next election cycle.

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.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Chrystia Freeland points out why productivity doesn't provide an accurate picture of economic development if it merely results in increased inequality rather than shared benefits:

Productivity and innovation, the focus of policy makers and business leaders, no longer guarantee widely shared prosperity. “Digital technologies are different in that they allow people with skills to replicate their talents to serve billions,” Mr. Brynjolfsson said. “There is really a drastic winner-take-all effect because every industry is becoming like the software industry.”

Classical economic theory isn’t entirely wrong. The danger isn’t — as it was easy to fear during the depths of the financial crisis — structural unemployment. The problem is what kind of jobs, at what kind of salaries, the shiny new technologically powered economy of the future will generate.

Lawrence H. Summers, the Harvard professor and former U.S. secretary of the Treasury, has a vivid way of describing the dystopian possibility. “As economists like to explain, the system will equilibrate at full employment,” Mr. Summers said in a public interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month. “But maybe the way it will equilibrate at full employment is there’ll be specialists at cleaning the shallow end and the deep end of rich people’s swimming pools. And that’s a problematic way for society to function.” 

- And Michael Harris comments on another obvious set of problems in developing a functional society, as the manipulation of interest rates by a financial sector left to nothing but an irrational honour system served to siphon massive amounts of wealth toward a privileged few:

The snakes in suits who think about sleazy ways of making money day and night couldn’t have dreamed up a better scam than manipulating the Libor. Anyone who pays a mortgage or struggles with a student loan feels their power. So do the people who get less of a dividend on their corporate bonds.

But for bankers and brokers with cash-register hearts, the possibilities of profit and benefit from fiddling the Libor were endless.

That’s because the rate was whatever they said it was. Setting it became a vast exercise in Scout’s Honour run amok. Floor traders who assisted in the scam increased their bonuses. The colluding banks made money by lending at a higher interest rate, knowing that they had the ability to artificially lower their costs when borrowing the same currency by driving down the Libor. Governments had the appearance of wisdom.
...
The thievery and deception went on for years. Finally, heads rolled and charges were laid. As usual, public and private regulators proved to be direct relatives of Rip Van Winkle. They bleated, lamb-like, claiming to be shocked that the world’s biggest banks had turned international banking into a private casino. In that gaming house, the cards were marked, the dice loaded, and everyone got fleeced but the guys who drove Ferraris.
...
The Libor scandal, you see, was actually aided and abetted by the government of the day and the Bank of England. No one was regulating the Wild West banking practices because they had opted for the so-called “light touch” approach to supervising banking.

People with the lightest touch usually turn out to be pickpockets. De-regulation of the banking industry unleashed 10,000 hyenas on an unsuspecting public.

Which is particularly worth noting as other areas of interest - such as, say, Saskatchewan's environment - are also shifted toward models where the specialized expertise of regulators gives way to a similar "light touch" to encourage innovative evasion tactics.

 

- Better Way Alberta emphatically refutes Alison Redford's claim that the province's budget problems are a matter of spending rather than revenue, pointing out that Alberta could raise tens of billions of dollars each year simply by applying a more reasonable royalty structure and a tax system consistent more with other Canadian provinces.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher offer an overview of where Robocon stands, as well as the news that Elections Canada's review of the Cons' vote suppression is still in progress but running into limitations in its own investigative authority.

- Finally, Jeffrey Simpson recognizes that the Cons' much-ballyhooed Office of Religious Freedom is intended purely for domestic political consumption rather than any plausible hope of influence around the world.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Ray Grigg explains how Idle No More and other decentralized social movements may make for a crucial counterweight to the Harper Cons and their command-and-control philosophy:

Systems are always bigger and more complex than the individuals who try to control them. So political systems, like ecological ones, can be influenced and guided for a while by the stringent and obsessive management of details, but the intricate convolutions within their countless interacting parts eventually expose the futility of such effort. This is now becoming apparent in the present Conservative government in Canada under the authoritative - some say autocratic - leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Prime Minister is known for his propensity to control, a predilection that includes his caucus, parliament and the research studies from every scientist in the employ of the federal government. All information is vetted through his office, the PMO, to be certain it conforms to the message and the image he wants to portray of himself as a rational and competent manager of the nation's business. But this strategy ultimately fails because even the most fastidious control can never match the complexity of systems. Like trying to prevent water from flowing downhill, pressures build, leaks occur, the ground saturates, and the whole containment effort finally collapses.
...
The Idle No More movement is so diverse and amorphous that it will be difficult to control by the Prime Minister and his powerful PMO. Such a vague and unfocused opponent will be an elusive target for Stephen Harper's vindictiveness. A restless and evolving movement with a wide range of demands will be impossible to manipulate with his secretive strategies. So Stephen Harper's suspicious nature will be forced to confront a dilemma of his own making. Charisma is not going to solve this problem. And if frustration should activate the morose streak in his character, he can stew in it until the end of First Nations' patience - which could be a very long time.

- Murray Mandryk criticizes David Marit's recitation of the Cons' message in his rare dissent from Saskatchewan's electoral boundaries commission report. But the more significant follow-up point looks to be the continued use of unsourced and misleading robocalls to push the Cons' talking points.

- CBC reports on the history of public spending on stadium projects - with the unsurprising conclusion being that the public generally doesn't gain anything from its massive expenditures.

- Straight Goods notes that a private surgery clinic which was supposed to be Alberta's health care panacea just a decade ago is now bankrupt - with the public picking up the bill to keep services running as the operators have no interest in treating patients under the terms of their existing contracts. [Update: a reader notes that SG's version of the story looks to be a reprint from 2010.]

- Finally, Trish Hennessy follows up on this week's Statistics Canada figures on inequality by running the numbers on Canada's privileged class.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Friday reading.

- In response to the Fraser Institute's latest attempt to foment panic (to be used as an excuse to attack public programs and hand yet more free money to corporations), Trish Hennessy explains the province's choices in terms anybody should be able to understand:

The austerity experiment has been waged in several European Union countries: Massive cuts in government spending for four years drove Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland into full-scale economic depression. Meanwhile, the U.K. is struggling to get off its austerity treadmill, despite the less than stellar results there.

Ontario could pretend that more of the same – cutbacks – will yield different results than it has already in Europe. But even the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Oliver Blanchard, has come out saying Europe went too far with austerity measures.

As for California, CCPA Economist Hugh Mackenzie says: “It’s suffering primarily from the kind of policies the Fraser Institute advocates: cutting and freezing taxes when it doesn’t make any sense to do so. Even the most superficial reading of the California experience points to the role that tax freezes, tax cuts and various propositions designed to limit the ability of California to meet its obligations.”

Austerity poses a similar threat in Ontario, where more government cutbacks could lead to higher unemployment – including youth unemployment, which is already unacceptably high in Ontario.

Yes, Ontario did incur a deficit during the worst of the global economic crisis – due in part to dropping tax revenues, which always occurs during a recession, and aided by stimulus spending that helped prevent even more job losses.

The province launched into spending cuts before the economy had fully recovered, which hasn’t helped matters.

That said, Ontario’s deficit is on the mend more rapidly than expected. The Finance Minister says it’s already almost $3 billion less than his Fall 2012 prediction. Barring another economic downturn, Ontario’s deficit will be balanced by 2017 – quite possibly earlier, without needing to lay off workers, axe services and dangle more tax cuts in front of corporations.

- Meanwhile, Miles Corak explains that the most privileged 1% wants to avoid any talk of inequality by pointing out how it's getting worse. And Andrew Jackson breaks that group down even further to find our wealthiest citizens are paying far less than they did a decade ago even as their incomes have skyrocketed:

The top 0.1 per cent paid income tax at an average effective rate of 35.4 per cent in 2010. While much higher than the effective tax rate paid by the bottom 99 per cent, that is only slightly higher than the effective income tax rate of 33.3 per cent, which was paid by the top 1 per cent as a whole.

The effective income tax rate paid by the top 0.1 per cent has fallen very sharply, from 41.6 per cent to 35.4 per cent since 2000. This compares to a fall in the effective rate from 39.4 per cent to 33.3 per cent for the top 1 per cent as a whole, and a fall from 18.0 per cent to 14.8 per cent for the bottom 99 per cent.

One has to question why federal and provincial governments have chosen to cut effective top tax rates by so much while the income share of the super-affluent has been rising so rapidly.

- It's better than nothing to see that the Cons have been forced to walk back their commitment to secret loans. But perhaps the more important evidence of warped priorities (which don't seem to have changed) can be found in the original story - where Glen McGregor notes that the Cons set up the system to ensure a steady flow of photo ops rather but not any public accountability whatsoever:

The loan agreements with the businesses that get the money requires them to accept public disclosure, but the contribution agreement between the government and the development organizations does not provide for public disclosure.

It does, however, require the development organization to “participate in and assist with the co-ordination of a public announcement by the minister in the form of an event,” and “co-ordinate a mutually agreement on venue, date and time in light of the availability of the minister for public media events outlining project achievements.”

- And the Cons are also pushing the envelope in trying to silence civil servants who have the ability to point out where political directions are leading them astray - with CIDA's loyalty oath serving as the latest example. And of course, that inclination toward perpetual cover-ups only figures to encourage waste and other harmful outcomes.

- Finally, and speaking of waste: yes, the Canadian public was billed $1 million to ship Stephen Harper's limousines across the Pacific. No wonder the Cons are trying to stop the opposition parties from asking order paper questions like the one that revealed that sad reality.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Murray Dobbin writes about the significance of Idle No More as a shift away from the presumption that First Nations' interests are represented solely by elected officials:

There are some fascinating similarities between the Idle No More phenomenon and the Occupy movement. Both reflect a political dualism: they are focused on the lack of democracy, justice and equality for ordinary people and they are implicitly (and with Idle No More explicitly) telling conventional movement organizations that are supposed to speak for them that they have failed. And it should come as no surprise that most members of the leadership of Idle No More are women.

By the late 1980s government funding had established a mutually beneficial relationship between governments and aboriginal leaders. Into this status quo of continued poverty came native women's organizations which were genuinely radical (they had no big salaries to lose) and often critical of the totally male dominated aboriginal groups. They were the voices of aboriginal communities -- but lack of resources and bullying by the government-funded "official" organizations eventually prevailed. That they are back in leadership roles is one of the most important and positive aspects of the movement.

Idle No More is the most exciting development in aboriginal politics in two generations. It has rightfully scared the hell out of the entire First Nations leadership -- from Shawn Atleo down to the hundreds of chiefs, too many of whom do in fact live high on the hog while their band members suffer. And it has got the attention of Stephen Harper, a man who has dedicated his political career to the interests of the oil and other resource industries threatened by Idle No More. Remember that he cancelled the Kelowna Accord soon after he became prime minister. The only reason Harper met with First Nations leaders is because his intelligence gathering told him this could be real trouble. Let's hope it is.

- Meanwhile, Aaron Wherry interviews Romeo Saganash about his own path toward federal politics:

I had a mission in life and that was to help building bridges between my people and the rest of Quebec and Canadian society. My whole purpose was that over the last 30 years. When Jack first approached me in 2006 to run for the NDP, there was still a lot of unfinished business with the Cree at that time, so I preferred to continue to work with the Cree until 2011 when I thought was the timing was great for me. The campaign slogan was travaillons ensemble and that was me over the years.

The intent at that time was for me to run in Quebec City. I had worked from Quebec City for the grand council, my work base was in Quebec City and I had been there for 20 years, so I knew practically everybody in Quebec City. But Jack, and that was probably the only thing that he refused from me, said to me, no, my friend, you’re going back home. And I always loved the way that he explained his refusal to me. He said, look at this way: all of the challenges, the global challenges that we have today, the environment, climate change, relations with aboriginal peoples, the future of aboriginal peoples, resource development, the future of the north, the new geopolitical realities of the Arctic, you name them, they’re all in that riding. And he said, who better than you can represent that riding? And in a sense I’d never thought about it, because it’s so diverse in terms of population. There are Cree in my riding, there are Inuit in my riding, there are Algonquins in my riding, there are forestry workers in my riding, there are mining workers in my riding. More than half the province gets its electricity from that territory. It’s a huge riding, it’s the second largest in the country. And I know the riding very well. It’s a riding where the James Bay-Northern Quebec agreement, first model treaty, applies as well, more than half of the riding is covered by this constitutional arrangement. And I know that treaty very, very well. And I think Jack was right. And I’m certainly glad that he insisted.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report on the continued investigation against Dean Del Mastro's 2008 campaign for breaking Canadian electoral law. And Jim Bronskill points out Jim Flaherty's misuse of his ministerial title and resources to try to influence CRTC licensing decisions.

- Finally, Michael Geist discusses how the Cons' anti-spam legislation remains in limbo after being passed years ago - and has given way to pro-spam regulations at the behest of businesses who don't want to have to justify loading up Canadians' inboxes with unwanted ads.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Crawford Kilian comments on Chrystia Freeland's Plutocrats as a useful expression of trends many of us have seen in action for some time:

(T)he plutonomy is not just booming, but skewing the still-depressed economy the rest of us live in. Many of the plutocrats reflect soberly on Andrew Carnegie's comment that the man who dies rich dies disgraced. Many, including George Soros, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, are giving away their billions to various causes and charities.

Individually, those causes may be admirable (Soros has worked hard to promote democracy in eastern Europe). Collectively, those causes may be compromised and diverted from their original purposes by the sheer quantity of plutocratic money available. And of course many billionaires like the Koch brothers are pumping money into political causes that promise to keep their taxes low while suffocating government programs for the rest of us.

This is just one form of plutocratic "rent-seeking" -- getting one's businesses into a monopoly position, or lowering their operational costs, through favourable legislation. Every business, after all, wants to improve its own working conditions, just as every worker does.

But what is good for one's business is not always good for the country. Rent-seeking simply runs up the plutocrats' revenues while doing nothing for their customers. And it never occurs to such plutocrats that their success ultimately stems from the system created and maintained by the rest of society. As Barack Obama observed, "You didn't build that."

Freeland makes a useful contrast between plutocrats who are pro-market and those who are pro-business: In the market, companies compete, innovate, or die if they can't. This is the "creative destruction" that brings genuine improvements in living standards, and it's still at work. As one plutocrat told Freeland, the big companies used to eat the little ones. Now the swift eat the slow.
But in business, one tries to protect one's own company by eliminating the competition (and the innovation). Historically, innovators become consolidators and rent-seekers, creating a new privileged class of their children and hangers-on.

- And on a related note, Frances Russell writes that we're now in the age of corporate shakedowns of government:

A Canadian government official puts it this way: “I’ve seen the letters from the New York and D.C. law firms coming up to the Canadian government on virtually every new environmental regulation … Virtually all of the new initiatives were targeted and most of them never saw the light of day.”

These so-called “pre-emptive strikes” are on the rise, with investment arbitration no longer a last resort but a political weapon in a wider war of attrition against states.

Even already-adopted laws on public health and environmental protection have been abandoned or watered down because of the threat of huge damage claims. Canada backed away from anti-smoking policies after Big Tobacco threatened to seek compensation.

NAFTA and its growing ranks of copycats like the Canada-Europe Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership are about nothing less than entrenching de facto government by transnational corporations. So far, the corporations are winning. In the process, they’re not just enriching themselves but also a global network of fabulously wealthy lawyers and accountants busy impoverishing governments and their citizens to achieve maximum profits for the multinationals they represent.

- Frank Graves discusses how arguably rational political calculations on the part of the Cons may be producing decisions which directly attack Canada's future:

The political calculus couldn’t be clearer: it makes great sense for a conservative politician to concentrate on emotionally resonant policies and communications which will appeal to a group that votes en masse. It also makes sense to discourage the participation of younger voters (who wouldn’t vote for you anyway) through negative advertising and policy positions that are of little interest, or antagonistic, to those younger voters.

The net result, however, is a gerontocracy which reflects the exaggerated and imagined fears of older Canada precisely at a time when we urgently need the more optimistic and innovative outlook of the relatively scarcer youth portion of our society. So good politics becomes highly suspect as a tool for meeting the severe challenges of the 21st century.

This growing disconnect between the public interest and what works in the political marketplace is a serious challenge. The mounting generational tensions in our society are just one particularly unwelcome expression of this.

- Trish Hennessy runs the numbers on how First Nations have been frozen out of social gains in Canada.

- Finally, Andrew Potter expands on Glen McGregor's ideas for more productive political journalism:

If there is a big takeaway from "McDogme95" (as Stephen Maher calls it) it is this: It is an opportunity for political journalists to retrench and concentrate their energies on what they are best positioned and best qualified to do: work sources, file ATIP requests, comb through public databases, and break stories that are in the public interest. That in turn creates a space for academics to insert themselves directly into the conversation through their own devices (Twitter, blogs, etc), or through more traditional means such as op-eds or essays. (I can't think of a better example of this than Peter Loewen's recent essay for the Citizen looking at what Stephen Harper is up to.)

Canadian politics is in need of both better reporting and better contributions by academics. Glen McGregor's manifesto is an excellent first step at articulating the proper division of labour that will take us in that direction.

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Michael Harris comments on Stephen Harper's reckless choice to gamble that Theresa Spence in particular and First Nations issues in general will go away on their own, rather than exhibiting any leadership whatsoever:

Stephen Harper has placed his bet. It is clear from his strategy that he believes he will be going neither to a meeting nor a funeral and that sufficient pressure can be brought to bear on Chief Spence that she will voluntarily discontinue her hunger strike. That is why he has placed the prestige of Leona Aglukkaq and Patrick Brazeau squarely on the barrelhead by having both of them support the government’s position.

If Harper is right, his victory will be, at best, a partial and temporary one. Yes, there will be people who will praise his steadfastness on matters of protocol as a sign of leadership. But those will mostly be white people who are simply tired of wrestling with the profound issues raised by Chief Spence.

As for Canada’s aboriginal peoples, they will have been humiliated yet again. And this time, the humiliation will have been inflicted by a government which has imposed new rules for the environment and resource development without consulting Parliament, let alone the original stewards of this land. If all Harper’s government has to give to First Nations is ceremonial gesturing, trouble — big trouble — lies ahead.

But there is also the possibility that the PM’s calculation will prove to be the biggest mistake of his political life, and one of the national tragedies of Canadian public affairs. And all because Harper has turned what should have been an exercise in emotional intelligence into just another game of political hardball.

- Susan Delacourt suggests that the de-normalization process applied to tobacco products might be appropriate for guns as well:

(I)f American politicians are serious about tackling that plague of gun violence, they might want to consider how they have dealt with the buyers and sellers of tobacco. Through a combination of bans, stigma and yes, chipping away at rights, tobacco is still a legal product but it’s been “denormalized” — removed from the mainstream of daily life, with smokers made to feel intensely responsible for the ills they inflict on society.

That wouldn’t be a bad outcome of a sustained campaign against guns either, especially that responsibility part.

Who knows? With the right mix of political will and anti-gun measures, Americans might dream of a day when neither cigarettes nor firearms are brandished in public.

- And Tabatha Southey offers up some well-deserved mockery toward the NRA's attempt to argue that the only cure for gun violence is more guns.

- Glen McGregor proposes a few simple steps toward better political reporting.

- Finally, Ipsos Reid's poll results showing over 60% of Canadians disapproving of the Cons' environmental failures are significant enough on their own. But I find some of the wording to be especially noteworthy:

The Ipsos Reid survey suggests that 61 per cent of Canadians disagree with the statement “the Harper government is doing a good job at protecting Canada’s environment.”
...
The survey also found that 63 per cent of Canadians disagree with the statement “the Harper government has struck the right balance between economic growth and environmental protection and management.”

Now, based on conventional wisdom, the latter question would be significantly more favourable to the Cons than the former: it encourages the respondent to think about what's supposed to be the party's strength on the economy, and ask whether that offsets any concern about the environment.

But apparently Ipsos Reid's respondents were even less inclined to give the Cons a pass on the environment when asked whether they'd struck the right balance than based on environmental considerations alone. And that looks to me to suggest some vulnerable territory on the economy and general trust in the Cons' decision-making along with the obvious weakness on the environment.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Chrystia Freeland discusses the developing view that inequality can serve to stifle growth and development, while more equitable tax systems and social supports can encourage them:

Set aside any moral or political concerns you may have about rising income inequality – worries about poverty, justice, undue political influence or even social mobility. According to Mr. Dervis, a growing number of economists suspect that once inequality passes a certain point, it may jeopardize economic stability and economic growth.

As his book argues, “rebalancing of the distribution of income may play a role in unlocking the U.S. economy’s growth potential in a sustainable way.”

Now that is a truly radical thought, and it brings us back to Mr. Milanovic’s earlier view that income inequality was a forbidden subject in the United States.

Worrying about the poor is one thing. To contend that equality is necessary for growth is an altogether different and more radical idea. Three decades later, trickle-down economics has met its antithesis. We are set for one of the great battles of ideas of our time.

- And Paul Krugman rightly paints the U.S.' recent election as a well-defined class clash - and one where the public interest won out:

(T)he disappointed plutocrats weren’t wrong about who was on their side. This was very much an election pitting the interests of the very rich against those of the middle class and the poor.

 And the Obama campaign won largely by disregarding the warnings of squeamish “centrists” and embracing that reality, stressing the class-war aspect of the confrontation. This ensured not only that President Obama won by huge margins among lower-income voters, but that those voters turned out in large numbers, sealing his victory.

The important thing to understand now is that while the election is over, the class war isn’t. The same people who bet big on Mr. Romney, and lost, are now trying to win by stealth — in the name of fiscal responsibility — the ground they failed to gain in an open election.

- Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor dig into the details of Elections Canada's continued investigation into Robocon - including complaints in 56 separate ridings. And Sixth Estate puts the latest news into context, wondering why it's taken this long to start seeking even basic contact information for the parties responsible.

- Finally, the Star nicely sums up how the Cons' latest round of international belligerence (this time trying to bully the Palestinian Authority into withdrawing its since-approved application for observer state status at the UN) is only marginalizing Canada on the world stage.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Bill Curry reports on the Cons' latest public-sector slashing. But there hasn't yet been much discussion of the most alarming number: upwards of 30% of the Cons' cuts are coming from the Canada Revenue Agency, which at last notice already lacked sufficient staff to properly collect tax revenue. Which means that the Cons' plans continue to have everything to do with attacking federal fiscal capacity, and nothing at all to do with balancing the budget.

- Meanwhile, the Cons have apparently discovered the value of having audits of government activity conducted by experts with experience in the public sector:

The latest records released under the Access to Information law show Tining had found out from the privacy commissioner’s staff that Stoddart planned to hire outside specialists to do an audit of how veterans’ information was handled.

“Given the significant impacts on our department from the findings of the initial investigation, I wanted to take this opportunity to ask you to reconsider this approach in favour of using your own staff,” Tining wrote in a letter to “Jennifer.”

“I believe it would be in our mutual interest that the auditors be very familiar with federal government operations and have the benefit of being sensitized to the environment in which we are all working.”

Which naturally raises some question as to why they've eliminated the the public auditing service put in place to provide exactly those benefits for federal departments.

- Andrew Coyne writes about the potential for a guaranteed annual income - and rightly notes that the only real issues with such a plan involve turf wars and the need to establish a reasonable set of accompanying incentives. But lest anybody think there's much to be accomplished by merely trying to make minor incremental changes to benefit programs, Thomas Walkom points to Jordan Brennan's CCPA study on how increased inequality is largely the result of severe power imbalances.

- Finally, Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher break the news that Elections Canada was well aware about complaints about the Cons' false robocalls before the 2011 election. But the most worrisome aspect of the latest revelation is that while Elections Canada intervened in court to present its side of the story as to what happened in Boris Wrzesnewskyj's Etobicoke Centre challenge, it hasn't done anything to correct the public record in response to the Cons' debunked claim that issues of fraudulent phone calls were never raised until after the election.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Chris Hayes notes that Mitt Romney's $50,000-a-plate dinner caught on video represents a rare glimpse inside the U.S.' plutocracy - as well as a strong argument as to why we shouldn't allow that group to decide policy affecting the public at large:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

- Meanwhile, Linda McQuaig notes that Mitt Romney's great mistake was to expose a bit too much of what his party has long stood for.

- The CP documents the latest example of the Cons trying to distance themselves from mere commoners - as a much-ballyhooed Tony Clement Twitter town hall actually involved an exercise in underlings delivering pre-determined spin on his behalf.

- But that of course ranks a distant second as the most disturbing story about the Cons' manipulation of online interaction with Canadians, as Glen McGregor posts and writes about Jason Kenney's creepy e-mail to GLBT advocates. And it's well worth noting that the use of e-mail addresses supplied on a petition to a federal department as conduits for talking point delivery looks to be as clear an example as we've seen of the Cons' politicization of every piece of information they can collect - not to mention flagrant disregard for the federal Privacy Act and its protection of personal information.

- Finally, the Mound of Sound notes that income inequality in the U.S. may be worse today than in the era of slavery.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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