Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Frances Ryan rightly calls out the anti-choice right for having no interest in the well-being of children once they're born:

(S)mall-state ideology can make it devastatingly difficult for a low-income parent to look after a child. Look at the controversial “two-child” limit to child tax credits under universal credit (UC). From its inception, it was predicted the policy would lead to hundreds of thousands of additional children living in poverty, but it’s now emerging that some women are even feeling forced to have abortions because they can’t afford to go ahead with the pregnancy. “It wasn’t planned but it was very much wanted. I was crying as they wheeled me in,” one woman told the Mirror this month about her abortion; without the safety net of tax credits, she had no way to afford another baby. Women in Northern Ireland in similar positions have an even more restricted choice: the rape-exemption clause that gives some women on UC a financial reprieve endangers women who haven’t reported their attack to the police (in Northern Ireland, failure to report a crime is an offence) and, as the renewed calls for reproductive rights in light of the Irish vote has highlighted, Northern Irish women have no legal access to abortion in their own country if they feel they can’t raise a child.

Recent years have in fact seen a determined removal of support from low-income mothers – everything from forcing single parents (90% of whom are women) to look for work once their child turns three or have their benefits sanctioned, to the benefit cap, a policy so regressive it was actually ruled to be unlawful when forced on single parents with toddlers.
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In the post-crash austerity era, this sense of social solidarity towards children has noticeably lessened. Under each policy to remove state support from parents there’s a lurking narrative that working-class women are “breeding too much” or that low-income children are drains on the “hardworking taxpayer”. (“Why should I pay for someone else to have more kids?” is the rejoinder on most articles advocating child benefits). In the real world, pregnancy is rarely predictable – contraception fails, relationships end, and jobs are lost – and besides, even the most ardent individualist would admit low-income children have done nothing to “deserve” their own poverty.

We are at the point in which it is not rare to hear of infants living in B&Bs, sleeping on cardboard, or even scrambling for food in school bins. If the ongoing debate over abortion rights teaches us anything, it’s that there are no shortage of voices content to defend the “unborn”. It’s a shame few are willing to give the same care to those children who are already here.

- And Elizabeth Wall-Weiler points out the vicious cycle of separating children from teenage mothers in care - which tends only to ensure a lack of family security across generations.

- Edgardo Sepulveda examines the effect on inequality of the party platforms in Ontario's provincial election, showing the stark distinction between the increased fairness of the NDP's platform and the exacerbated inequality on offer from Doug Ford. And Michael Laxer's roundup contrasts the real Conservative scandals which have been downplayed by the media against the contrived attempts to manufacture controversy surrounding the NDP. 

- Andrew Jackson reviews Christo Aivailis' The Constant Liberal on Pierre Trudeau's consistent pattern of trying absorb progressive activity into centrist power structures to dilute its ultimate effect.

- Finally, Helene Laverdiere criticizes the Libs' insistence on enabling the sale of arms to human rights abusers.

Wednesday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Dayen wonders whether the Obama administration's decision to end the use of private prisons might represent the needed start of a movement away from relying on poor corporate services as a substitute for public action:

Private prisons experienced more safety and security incidents. They had higher rates of assaults, inadequate medical checkups and compliance, eight times as many incidents of contraband cell-phone smuggling, and often housed new inmates in solitary confinement units, seemingly for lack of space. The report also detailed several grisly incidents since 2008: three riots in one Reeves County, Texas facility in two months; the death of a corrections officer in a riot in Natchez, Mississippi; and the closure of the Willacy County (Texas) Correctional Center, after inmates burned it to the ground.

It’s not hard to figure out why this happens. Private companies win contracts to manage federal prisons by undercutting the Bureau of Prisons’ operational costs. Unlike the government, private prison companies must also take their profit margins out of their budgets. The only way to make that work is to massively drop labor costs, corresponding to a severe degradation of the quality of prison management.
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That reflects the problem with privatization as a whole. Private companies must carry out a government function—be it water, parking meters, mass transit, or K-12 schools—at a lower cost than the government can provide it, while taking their profit off the top. Time and again, the results reveal that to be impossible, at least if you want to provide the same quality of service. Yet we keep privatizing. Whether it’s Republicans expanding Medicaid or cash-strapped cities handing over bus service to Uber and Lyft, eventually costs shift from taxpayers to the users of the services, oversight becomes impotent as officials grow reliant on outsourcing contracts, and attempts to maximize profits lead to service breakdowns.

- But CBC reports that the worst is yet to come in Saskatchewan as Brad Wall has publicly put SaskTel up for corporate raiding.

- Jacki Andre discusses the hidden costs of living with a disability - which make it particularly unconscionable for Wall's Saskatchewan Party to be trying to squeeze pennies out of people who rely on already-inadequate disability benefits.

- Floyd Perras highlights the multiple factors that contribute to (and exacerbate) homelessness. And Rocca Perla comments on the need to include social determinants of health within medical treatment of patients.

- Pat Rich describes the Canadian Medical Association's rude awakening in finding out that Lib Health Minister Jane Philpott has no interest in its key priorities for improved care. And Alison points out how the Libs are conspicuously trying to wriggle out of their promise to end the unfairness of first-past-the-post politics.

- Finally, Anna MacDonald makes the case for stronger transparency as a means of limiting the harm of global arms dealing. But if there was any doubt that the Trudeau Libs are firmly on the side of weapons proliferation, Helene Laverdiere points out their inexplicable decision to stand against nuclear disarmament.

Leadership 2012 Roundup

A quick look back at the last few days in the NDP's leadership race...

- In addition to his support from Leadnow and Avaaz, Nathan Cullen won cross-partisan support from the B.C. Green Liberal Caucus. But it's an open question whether the result will be a net plus for Cullen, as a positive response from a group which apparently fits comfortably within the Conservative-friendly B.C. Liberals may not send quite the message he's hoping for in trying to unite anti-Con forces. Meanwhile, Cullen also took questions on Rabble, featuring this noteworthy response on the relative role of government and business:

Traditionally private industry has existed under the power of the state and that it was a privilege (not a right) to operate a business. Now it seems that the tail wags the dog and that Canada now has a lobbyist for the oil sector in the prime minister and his cabinet. I'm not aware of any legislative barriers that prevent our governments from re-establishing the role and responsibility of the state.

- Paul Dewar filled in the last major gap in his base of endorsers, picking up the nod of two highly-respected Quebec MPs in Helene Laverdiere and Hoang Mai. Dewar also took questions and criticism about his French - but that makes his ability to convince at least a couple of the NDP's new wave of Quebec MPs of his merit all the more important.

- Thomas Mulcair earned a public endorsement from Charles Taylor - leaving roughly zero room for anybody to counter with a more distinguished party figure in Quebec.

- Brian Topp confirmed that if elected leader, he'd ask a Quebec MP to step aside to allow him to run in a by-election - which as Aaron Wherry notes makes for a well-worn path to Stornoway. But I wonder whether it would be worth making the case that Topp might be able to do more good outside the House in any event: after all, it's not as if asking daily questions to a perpetually-unresponsive Stephen Harper did wonders for the public's impression of the last two Lib leaders. Topp then made an appearance on the House with Evan Solomon, responding with his answer to each of the other candidates' cases for the leadership.

- And on the media and commentary side, Lawrence Martin updated the number of NDP members and voters anticipated in advance of yesterday's deadline. And it's worth keeping in mind the difference between the two: if turnout is in the two-thirds-of-members range normally seen in leadership votes, then a total membership of 115,000 would likely set the number of votes required to win in the range of 40,000. PSAC-Quebec released a report card on candidate responses to a survey on values about the public service - but perhaps more striking than the union's own evaluation is the fact that only three candidates responded in the first place. And Trefor analyzed the candidates' positions on Israel/Palestine policy, while DL classified the candidates into two tiers.