Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- Lana Payne criticizes two forms of cash hoarding: both the assets sitting idle in corporate coffers, and the money that's been funneled offshore by wealthy individuals:

By the end of each episode (of "Hoarders")...the audience finds out if the featured hoarders have been able to get their behaviour under control or if they have “fallen into the deep end of this painful disease.”
The difference between these hoarders and those we have been reading about in recent days in newspapers like The Guardian and The Globe and Mail is that one group acquires “a large number of possessions that others would consider useless,” and the other acquires possessions of value like cash and assets.

But both suffer from the inability to discard their hoarded possessions.

Take corporate Canada. Progressive economists have been complaining for some time about their cash and asset hoarding. Canada’s Governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, has also been critical of corporate Canada’s hoarding practices, saying there is no reason keeping Canadian companies from investing.

Certainly they have been given incentive enough to do so. But billions in corporate tax cuts have instead been stockpiled on top of their more than half a trillion dollars in cash reserves, rather than invested in the economy.

 - The Star-Phoenix editorial board worries that the Council of the Federation's attempts to encourage cooperation on health care will come to nothing if we can't count on a federal government to take on exactly the leadership role the Harper Cons have abandoned:

Although eight years ago Ottawa was setting conditions on its grants and even talking about a national pharmacare program, including a universal bulk-buying strategy to control costs, the Harper government is clear about its disinclination to be a big part of Canada's flagship social contract.

Without any federal leadership, Canadians can expect their health system, like the dream of a national energy strategy, to be sacrificed at the altar of narrow-minded provincial politics.

- Dr. Dawg highlights the absurdity of the RCMP labeling anybody who dares to express concern about an anti-environment government and its resource-sector puppeteers as a security threat.

- Finally, I don't expect the suggestion to get far for a multitude of reasons. But Ralph Surette's proposal that younger Liberals (including Justin Trudeau) ought to turn their individual efforts to building the NDP at least offers a more plausible means to unite the vast majority of Canadian progressives than formal merger plans which would inevitably result in years of wrangling among two separate party structures.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Erin notes that the revenue gap being used as an excuse to demand massive cuts in Ontario is nearly entirely closed with a more plausible set of underlying assumptions and projections - and that's without taking the look at revenue which was omitted from Don Drummond's mandate.

- thwap points out that Canadians need to highlight the importance of Robocon to make sure it leads to lasting consequences for the party which sees fraud as a valuable strategic tool. Which means it's well worth noting the followup reporting from Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor, the repentance of Victor Pocaterra, and new columns from Barbara Yaffe, Warren Kinsella, Chantal Hebert, Dan Gardner, the Calgary Herald and the Telegram. And even the dissenting voices of Nik Nanos and Colin Horgan questioning how voters will respond may make for a useful discussion as to whether Canadians will and should be outraged.

- Meanwhile, those looking to tie Robocon into larger issues of human nature will find some perfectly-timed reporting on the link between greed, unethical behaviour and wealth inequality.

- Bruce Cox opines that dissent is a vital part of democracy - rather than a bug to be crushed as the Cons seem to believe.

- Finally, Rights and Democracy hasn't gone away - and Paul Wells notes that the same issues he so carefully addresses over the past couple of years are now reported to have been equally obvious to the Cons for some time before that.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Erin nicely summarizes Don Drummond's report on Ontario's finances. But it's worth noting that leaving aside Drummond's own choice not to follow the instruction, anybody looking for a thorough analysis of Ontario's fiscal realities should be able to discount the report in its entirety based on the fact that Dalton McGuinty's marching orders included an instruction not to even look at how revenue increases might help to address deficits.

- Frances Russell points out how Enbridge's Gateway pipeline could inflict direct economic damage on Canada. But lest there be any doubt who to blame for the attempts to ram the project down the country's throat, Mike de Souza reports that even Enbridge itself doesn't want to rush the environmental approval process at the breakneck pace being encouraged by the Harper Cons.

- Meanwhile, Shawn McCarthy confirms that the Cons' list of civil society groups being targeted as "extremist" threats includes the likes of Greenpeace.

- Finally, Ken Gray describes the Cons' insistence on pushing ahead with F-35s as a betrayal of reality-based fiscal conservatism. And the utter absence of any backup plan can only make the Cons' folly look all the worse.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Stephanie Larocque highlights the Cons' gall in hanging onto federal reimbursements from their own ad scam even after having admitted their guilt:

You don't have to prove guilt when the charged plead guilty. And that is exactly what happened last week when the Conservative Party entered into an agreement in Ottawa where they would plead guilty to overspending and pay the maximum fine allowable under the Canada Elections Act if the charges were dropped against their senior members.

One might think that pleading guilty to attempting to circumvent the rules that manage our democracy would be done with an air of regret or remorse. When it comes to the Conservatives, however, you would be wrong. Instead, Conservative spokesman Fred DeLorey issued a statement claiming the plea bargain was "a big victory'' for the party in its five-year "administrative dispute'' with Elections Canada over the legality of the in-and-out scheme. "Every single Conservative accused of wrongdoing has been cleared today,'' DeLorey said.

I don't think anyone has ever looked a an agreement that admits guilt as ever clearing anyone of wrongdoing. The notion is ludicrous. The coordinated overspending done by funneling funds through 67 ridings just happened spontaneously? No, the Conservatives accused of wrongdoing were only spared the embarrassment of having their involvement in the scheme dissected in open court rather than being cleared of anything.
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Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey responded that "The question of reimbursements will be dealt with in the ongoing civil proceedings." referring to the civil case the Tories brought against Elections Canada in which they dispute Elections Canada's ability to refuse to reimburse expense claims.

In other words, guilt not just without remorse, without apology, and without even having the decency to immediately repay funds improperly received from the taxpayers that they have already admitted were the result of a scheme to overspend their limits. Indeed, should they win the civil case they would compel Elections Canada to reimburse the outstanding expense claims which they have already agreed were illegal. The nerve of this position is staggering. They admit wrongdoing yet continue to seek a means of profiting from that wrongdoing, trying to have excessive refunds that were requested with fraudulent receipts taken from your tax dollars.

- pogge blasts Ontario's McGuinty Libs for decreeing that any deficit reduction will be accomplished solely through service cuts rather than even the most obviously needed tax increases.

- Mike DeSouza reports on Greenpeace's expose of multi-billion-dollar corporate lobbying against action on climate change.

- Tim Naumetz points out that even as the Cons claim to be retaining a meaningful gun licensing regime, their bill to torch the long gun registry also includes provisions to make it impossible to enforced the individual licensing rules.

- Finally, the Calgary Herald editorial board lists its home city as one of the areas which has been poorly served by utterly useless Con MPs over the past decade. And it's well worth using the attention of the NDP's national leadership campaign to change the part of the story which laments the lack of a viable alternative.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- I'm sympathetic to Greenpeace's argument that Bruce Carson should be seen as having lobbied the Cons on the tar sands as well as on water. But I'm not sure it entirely holds up based on another of the most obvious loopholes in the Cons' lobbying scheme.

Based on the regulations designed by the Cons, if the government asks for input from a person or group, the resulting discussion doesn't count as lobbying. Which means that the Cons' lobbying rules serve mostly to impose additional obligations on anybody presenting a message they don't want to hear, while ensuring that their cronies can pitch and develop self-interested schemes at the Cons' invitation without having to disclose a word of it.

- In case there was any doubt, even the Cons' numbers confirm that corporate tax measures have been by far the least effective form of stimulus over the past several years - to the point where they feel obliged to include a vague footnote about their having "among the higher multiplier effects in the long run" to justify the obvious lack of near-term benefit. Notably missing, of course, is any actual comparison of the multiplier for any other type of investment.

- While I still take the view that a real defence of a coalition stands to benefit all opposition parties, John Geddes is right in noting that more talk of cooperative politics is ultimately a plus for the NDP:

The coalition issue remains so novel in Canada that how it might play out over a full campaign is impossible to predict. Public opinion turned against the concept in the fall of 2008, but a senior NDP campaign strategist says debate surrounding it could actually help them in an election. The NDP has long struggled against the reluctance of many voters to cast a ballot for a party that doesn’t stand much chance of winning. If the possibility of a coalition with the Liberals gains wider acceptance, the strategist says, then Layton’s platform will be have to be viewed more seriously as a potential part of that government policy. Winning outright won’t be everything anymore. Some NDP organizers hope that realization will force the media, and the public, to pay closer attention to Layton’s positions on the issues.

- Finally, Linda McQuaig highlights the glaring gap between the supposed need to give the wealthy everything they could think to ask for and more, and the expectation that everybody else will pitch in to make up the difference:

(W)hy is greed and love of money considered good in the case of a wealthy investor, while the wider desire for simply a decent living standard is increasingly considered an expectation that may have to be curbed in ordinary citizens?

As deficits pile up, we are soon to be inundated with the message that we are living beyond our means and must learn to do with less.

Certainly, our small wealthy super-elite seems determined to ensure that nothing gets in the way of its right to fully indulge its greed, and that the burden of deficit-reduction is imposed on others.
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(T)here’s nothing “realistic” about the conclusion that the middle class — either here or in the U.S. — must learn to do with less, that we must accept a world where parents are forced to choose between affording their retirement and sending their kids to college.

Both Canada and the U.S. were deficit-free not long ago. Indeed, Canada was running major surpluses until the 2008 Wall Street crash sent the world economy reeling.

What is unsustainable is society’s willingness to accommodate the greed of the super-rich.
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The solution isn’t to censor (Kevin O'Leary) and his billionaire friends, simply give them less air time and tell them, sweethearts, we’re just going to have to raise your taxes.