Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Gary Mason writes about the combination of fatigue and outrage which is producing a particularly toxic mix for anybody attempting to limit the damage caused by COVID-19. Phil Tank laments the sense that protecting people from avoidable infection and death has become controversial, while also reporting on "Unified Grassroots" and other anti-public health forces who have organized to create that reality. And Adam Hunter highlights how Scott Moe's messaging about and to unvaccinated people has turned deferential even as more dangerous variants have emerged.

- Robert Hiltz discusses how Ontario has been one of many jurisdictions which has repeatedly wasted the downtime between waves by choosing to operate in denial rather than doing anything to prepare for foreseeable events. Don Darrah discusses how conservative premiers including Moe are using the damage they've inflicted on health care systems as an excuse to turn more and more necessarily medical services into profit centres for their donors. And Catherine Varner writes about the physicians who are looking at leaving jurisdictions or even the profession due to the violence directed at them by anti-vaxx extremists. 

- Van Badham writes about the crank and conspiracy behind anti-public health protests around the globe. And PressProgress has offered plenty of important reporting on the #FluTruxKlan - including a systematic look at its donors, as well as reports on the intention to pursue intimidation and violence for political ends and how that's been carried out.

- Finally, Cam Scott writes that there are limited lessons for progressive organizers to draw from the right's populist organizing which is necessarily built around fabrications and illusions rather than solving real-world problems. And John Geddes discusses the institutional differences that have helped somewhat in limiting the translation of far-right ideology into formal power.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Linda McQuaig writes about the myth that we have no choice but to pursue privatization - and notes that electric vehicle production represents an ideal opportunity to build public economic capacity:

Is it feasible to save the once-vibrant Oshawa complex and transform it into a publicly owned plant producing environmentally essential products, as part of a Green New Deal?

Gindin notes that during the Second World War, GM facilities were converted to produce military vehicles. He insists that the Oshawa plant be expropriated today without compensation since Canadian taxpayers have already generously subsidized GM. While he acknowledges that the project is a long shot, he adds, “it seems criminal not to at least try.”

Indeed, what is needed is some bold, out-of-the-box thinking that takes us beyond the current dogma of privatization. Given that Canada’s historic auto-making centre is about to be shut down, we should consider creating a publicly owned facility that could potentially start a transformative industry here. If that idea is ultimately rejected, the rejection should be based on something more than the notion that such a project is too ambitious for public enterprise and is best left to the private sector.

In truth, the very ambitiousness of the project seems to call out for public enterprise. For most of our history, we’ve been mere "hewers of wood and drawers of water" and operators of branch plants. When we’ve risen above that, it’s usually been because we’ve created public enterprises that served a broader public purpose than what private interests were offering. We became the country we are today in part because, at key moments our past, some visionary Canadians had bold, ambitious ideas for public enterprises and weren’t deterred by the admonitions of the business elite.

There may be reasons not to turn the Oshawa plant into a green production facility, but let’s not succumb to the ill-informed notion that Canadians aren’t up to the task or that we don’t know how to do public enterprise in this country.

- Jon Milton discusses the importance of treating housing and transit as social goods rather than profit or revenue centres as part of any viable climate plan. And Bill Blaikie writes that we should be far more concerned about a long-term environmental deficit - the extreme damage we're inflicting on our planet - than about incremental differences in budget expectations.

- Erika Shaker compares how Canada's federal parties are addressing the increasing unaffordability of post-secondary education. And Anne Gaviola examines the numerous positive spinoff effects of forgiving student debt.

- John Geddes points out the minimal differences between the tax tinkering of the Libs and Cons (at a galling cost to the federal government's fiscal capacity).

- Finally, Michal Rozworski writes that it should be a no-brainer to bring in more revenue from Canada's wealthiest few, both to fund needed programs and to try to reduce the inequality in power which comes from the concentration of wealth. And Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman write that the U.S. too should be determining how to tax its way toward increased social justice.

New column day

Here, on how right-wing provincial governments across Canada are deliberately denying benefits to their constituents solely to try to avoid any credit going to the federal level in advance of this fall's election.

For further reading...
- Murray Mandryk, Sarath Peiris and plenty of letter writers have already pointed out the pettiness of Scott Moe's refusal to fund projects in Regina.
- Mia Rabson reported on Brian Pallister's refusal to accept funding for energy efficiency in schools (along with the subsequent federal workaround), while Sean Kavanagh has reported on the lack of funding already suffered by Manitoba's education system under an austerian regime.
- John Geddes reports that gas station owners proposed less misleading stickers about fuel prices - but that Doug Ford was unwilling to do anything other than force them to feed into anti-carbon tax messaging.
- Finally, David Climenhaga has also pointed out the similarities between Canada's right-wing clique and a decade of Republican obstructionism.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Ed Miliband writes that there's no contradiction between a climate change plan and an effective economic strategy - and to the contrary, they can and should be entirely aligned. And the Guardian's editorial board recognizes the need to get to net zero emissions sooner rather than later - even if the UK Cons are still working on the latter timeline.

- Meanwhile, Matthew Todd argues that the Extinction Rebellion has helped to turn the tide of public opinion toward greater acknowledgment of the need for urgent climate action. And John Geddes notes that severe weather events have also played a part in forcing people to consider the climate crisis - including in deciding who to support politically. 

- Camille Bains reports on new data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information showing that alcohol remains the substance most responsible for hospitalizations and deaths in Canada. And the Stoney Creek News points out the absurdity of actively promoting the increased sale and distribution of alcohol under those circumstances - though it's well worth noting that Doug Ford has company in recklessly encouraging the increased use of alcohol and its resulting harms. 

- Finally, Mel Watkins discusses how the Waffle movement offers a blueprint - if a dated one - for what progressive nationalism might look like in Canada.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- David Crane identifies the good news in the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report on climate change - which is that we can meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets through readily feasible policy choices as long as our federal government cares enough to make them. And Steven Staples points out that it's entirely possible pair efforts to fight climate change with good jobs, though we can't take the latter for granted:

(A) green job revolution will not happen by itself, no matter how well meaning the intentions.

The York University project, Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change, recently noted an alarming gap in the government climate strategies between rhetoric and reality. A report for the project by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that while provincial governments frequently speak of “jobs and opportunities,” there are few tangible policies and programs in Canada to support job creation and professional development in the context of a green energy transition. Instead, most governments see the creation of green jobs as a consequence of transitioning to a cleaner economy rather than a policy target in and of itself.

It’s becoming apparent that workers need to get involved to ensure that government policies include job creation as a central tenet of Canada’s climate change strategies.
...
Now—with oil prices low, a new Paris agreement on emissions reductions, and a persistent employment problem—is exactly the right time for the government, employers and unions to achieve a just transition that brings about a green economy built on fairness and co-operation.

- Janine Jackson interviews Brendon DeMelle about Exxon's decades-long global warming denialism. And John Geddes rightly criticizes Justin Trudeau's attempt to edit climate change out of the causes of extreme weather events.

- Meanwhile, Ernest Scheyder and Terry Wade examine the wave of bankruptcies hitting the U.S. oil industry - signalling that the reality of radical change based on lower global prices is hitting far beyond Canada's producers. 

- Dan Roberts reports on the Obama administration's move to crack down on some forms of international tax evasion.

- PressProgress calls out the Fraser Institute's attempt to gloss over the lack of support for child care by counting upper-class giveaways aimed at future post-secondary education (among other things) as child care funding.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne offers an explanation of the Libs' incoherent changes to the Senate. 

New column day

Here, on what the Trudeau Libs' first budget tells us about the difficulty turning around a government - and how Saskatchewan voters should take the lesson to heart in deciding whether to settle for four more years of an anti-government governing party.

For further reading...
- I linked to plenty of reviews of the Libs' budget here. And to add a few more to the list, see Paul Wells on the Libs' half-measures and incomplete tasks, John Geddes on their deferred promises in general, Pam Palmater on the especially galling broken promises to First Nations, and Hugh Mackenzie on how the budget backtracks on a promise to close the stock option loophole.
- Meanwhile, we're into the home stretch of the Saskatchewan election after last night's leaders' debate. And I'll have more to say about the debate and how it fits into the broader campaign in a future post.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne discusses Jordan Brennan's research showing that corporate tax cuts have done nothing to help economic growth (but all too much to exacerbate inequality). And Andrew Jackson sets out the main fiscal choice the Libs will have to make in determining whether to keep going down the same path:

(T)he Liberal platform also envisaged temporary deficits to finance higher spending on social programs such as child benefits, a higher Guaranteed Income Supplement for single seniors, public health care, child care and First Nations programs, and did not increase overall federal tax revenues. The proceeds of the new top income tax rate will be recycled entirely into a proposed so-called middle class tax cut which in fact heavily favours the top 10% and weill not even cover the cost of the middle class tax cut.

Progressives will be expecting the government to deliver on its ambitious social agenda, and will note that this could be easily funded on the revenue side by implementing a modest corporate tax increase, by scaling back the so-called middle class tax cut, and by setting more ambitious targets for the promised Liberal review of tax loopholes for the most affluent. Meanwhile, business Liberals, perhaps including Minister of Finance Bill Morneau, will likely be pushing for less social spending than promised in the platform in order to balance the books on the original schedule.

Platforms are crafted to win elections, but governments must make real choices. The Liberal government should stick to its spending promises, but this will require some adjustment to their taxation plans and stated fiscal goals.

- Meanwhile, even to the extent one wants to presume that the Libs were bound to offer tax cuts of some sort, John Geddes notes that one focused on the lowest income tax bracket would produce far more equitable results.

- Deirdre Fulton comments on the hollowing-out of the U.S.' middle class. The Economist weighs in on the UK Cons' attempts to define child poverty out of existence. And Bethany Farr writes that a strong majority of the UK public considers it important to take action to ensure people have access to food - though sadly their government disagrees.

- Sara Mojtehedazeh exposes how Ontario's provincial government (like far too many others) is contributing to the culture of precarious work in its own hiring practices. And in case we needed more indication that the commercialization of government is based on ideology rather than evidence, CBC reports on Saskatchewan Auditor Judy Ferguson's findings that the Wall government hasn't lifted a finger to measure the effects of the "lean" program it's imposing across the public sector.

- Finally, Bryan Thomas and Colleen Flood write that if we want to improve our health care system, the answer lies in modernizing public structures, not selling out to private ones.

Pop quiz

Michael Den Tandt and John Geddes are convinced that Tom Mulcair's speech to the Economic Club of Canada yesterday represents both a massive sea change in Canadian politics, and a response to the NDP's newfound lead in the polls. So let's offer a pop quiz to see if that theory holds up to scrutiny.

The following passages are from speeches Mulcair delivered:
(a) to the Economic Club of Canada in April 2012;
(b) to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce in February 2013;
(c) to the Economic Club of Canada in January 2015; and
(d) to the Economic Club of Canada in June 2015.

Can you match the date with the passage to determine which speeches represented the unremarkable status quo ante, and which "willy-nilly upset the apple cart" and represented a new "aim...to forestall a worried reaction to his emergence as a serious challenger"?

1:

As New Democrats, we believe in a vision for sustainable, long-term growth that will create wealth and prosperity here...

Not just for today, but for generations to come.

That means building a diversified economy that includes value-added jobs and thriving export industries.

It means upgrading and refining our own natural resources...instead of building pipelines to ship raw bitumen overseas.

It means making polluters pay for the pollution they create rather than leaving that cleanup to future generations.

And it means developing a coherent and strategic vision that creates the right environment for foreign investment… while ensuring a well-defined “net benefit” to Canada.

Industry has also begun to realize that we can no longer disconnect principles like these from the bottom line.

2:

I don't believe budgets balance themselves, nor do I believe they become balanced just because you pass a law – zap (you're) balanced.

But I do believe that it is fundamentally important that the federal government live within its means.

In the NDP, that idea goes back to the beginning.

I come from the school of Tommy Douglas who balanced 17 budgets in a row while he ushered in Medicare.

Or Roy Romanow, who rescued Saskatchewan from bankruptcy with prudent fiscal management.

Or Manitoba’s Gary Doer, who has the best track record of any Premier in the modern era for balanced budgets.

And you don't have to take our word for it.

The federal Department of Finance’s own reports show that NDP governments are the best at balancing the books when in office.

3:

Our first task, therefore, must be to convince Canadians that New Democrats will be competent public administrators.

Not the most exciting campaign slogan, I know, but with nearly 35 years in public service, when it comes to public administration, I have a record to run on.

Beyond restoring basic competence, we must also conduct ourselves with a genuine respect for the role of government.

Government can’t do everything. But while maintaining a healthy respect for its limitations, we should also acknowledge that government is the place we come together to build the better, fairer Canada we all want.

4:

I believe in growing the economy through prudent, strategic investments and sound fiscal policy. Policies that attract investment and stimulate the creation of stable, full-time jobs.

For example, the New Democratic Party has an open and progressive approach to international trade. We support the free trade agreement with South Korea, and the agreement in principle with Europe.

The goal is to put the emphasis back on sustainable economic growth. Growth that will help not only today’s middle class, but our children and grandchildren. This means building a diversified economy that focuses on the creation of value-added jobs.

When we consider recent events – the job losses, the closures, the withdrawing of investment, and skyrocketing of household debt I believe that the focus of our response must be on the hard-working families who feel the effects of these events day-in and day-out.

Their struggles will always guide my priorities.

With strategic investments and a concrete plan, we can provide the squeezed middle class with a stronger economy and better shock absorbers to ensure they weather the storm in the coming months and years ahead.

The correct answers are : (a)-3, (b)-1, (c)-4, (d)-2.

Feel free to peruse the speeches as a whole to see if there's some difference missed in the above passages. But it's certainly worth asking: is there any truth to the claim that there's a radical difference in the NDP's economic message? Or is that simply a matter of pundits changing their own emphasis to suit a narrative or outright ignoring what Mulcair has said before, even as Mulcair (possibly unlike some of his opponents) stays broadly consistent?

On foundational assumptions

Shorter John Geddes:

Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. And so the miserable results of Stephen Harper's consistent privatization, free trade obsession and corporate tax slashing don't count as a conservative record.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Andrew Coyne sees the powerful impact of local forces on nomination contests as evidence that grassroots democracy is still alive and well in Canada - no matter how much the Cons and Libs may wish otherwise:

What’s common to both of these stories is not only the willingness of local candidates and riding associations to defy the powers that be but their obstinate insistence that these races should be what party leaders claim they are: open nominations. With any luck, this obstreperousness will spread. Thanks to redistricting, there will be other ridings where incumbents face off against incumbents; in others, the promise of open nominations will run into the reality that leaders have favourites. Ridings that resist the inevitable attempts to stage-manage these races will do their parties a favour. Tilted nominations are not open nominations. They’re not even nominations, really.

The tendency, when these fights break out, is to view them as signs of weakness and division, if not anarchy. The tone of news coverage is often disapproving, as if party leaders were indulgent parents who neglected to discipline their children. Reporters pepper their stories with words like “messy,” “ugly,” even “vicious.” This is what you get, they seem to say, when you leave it to ridings to decide these matters. Yes, it is. Isn’t it glorious?

- But of course, we should be hoping for greater democratic participation (and yes, influence over results) within the broader electorate as well. And PressProgress notes that the Cons' Unfair Elections Act looks to benefit Pierre Poutine and his fraudster ilk at the expense of actual voters - while Alison points out the risk that any report on Robocon may be pushed past the next federal election due to the Cons' blindside attacks against Elections Canada.

- Thomas Walkom writes that Canada has received good value - if perhaps something less than the greatest possible return - from the long-term health care accord which the Cons chose to scrap.

- John Geddes highlights the stark gap between the Cons' lip service paid to climate change (based mostly on taking credit for the actions of others), and their utter negligence in reality. And the Edmonton Journal's editorial board makes it clear that even Alberta recognizes the need for real action to replace the current strategy of using misleading PR campaigns to greenwash dirty oil production.

- Finally, Christina Patterson writes that the economic forces which have already undermined wages at the bottom of the income scale may soon do similar damage to the middle class.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Robert Reich discusses the Koch brothers and their place in the U.S.' new plutocracy:

The Kochs exemplify a new reality that strikes at the heart of America. The vast wealth that has accumulated at the top of the American economy is not itself the problem. The problem is that political power tends to rise to where the money is. And this combination of great wealth with political power leads to greater and greater accumulations and concentrations of both — tilting the playing field in favor of the Kochs and their ilk, and against the rest of us.

America is not yet an oligarchy, but that’s where the Kochs and a few other billionaires are taking us.
...
When billionaires supplant political parties, candidates are beholden directly to the billionaires. And if and when those candidates win election, the billionaires will be completely in charge.
...
A new gilded age is starting to look a lot like the old one. The only way to stop this is through concerted political action. Yet the only large-scale political action we’re witnessing is that of Charles and David Koch, and their billionaire imitators.

- Don Martin notes that the Cons' idea of an election seems to dovetail with Vladimir Putin's. And Andrew Coyne tears into both the substance of the Unfair Elections Act, and the thoroughly adversarial process being used to ram it into law:

(U)nder any normal government, this would be considered fairly devastating stuff: not only near universal expert opposition, but a widely held suspicion that the bill, far from merely flawed, is expressly designed to tilt the next election in the Conservatives’ favour. As for Poilievre, the revelations that he had acted in such consummate bad faith on such a critically important bill — failing to consult, ignoring some experts’ advice and misrepresenting others — would ordinarily be career-limiting, to say the least.

But this is not a normal government. It does not operate in the usual way, nor does it feel bound by the usual rules. After all, if this were a normal government, it would not have as its minister for democratic reform such a noxious partisan as Poilievre, whose contempt for Parliament and its traditions registers every time he rises to speak in it.
...
But as this is not a normal government, Poilievre has instead doubled down. To the detailed objections of its critics, he offers nothing but the same, and I mean exactly the same, talking points, recited without evident effort to persuade but merely to impress upon his listeners how genuinely uninterested in their opinion he is. To Neufeld’s complaints at having his report misrepresented, he responds that Neufeld does not understand his own report. The inaccurate and out-of-context passages he had cited from it were, he told Parliament, quoted “accurately and in context.” If Neufeld did not wish to use these words, he blithely told the CBC’s Evan Solomon, he should not have written them.

And so we face the likelihood, as incredible as it sounds, of the government using the majority it won in the last election to pass a bill widely perceived as intended to fix the next — and contesting that election in the shadow of illegitimacy the bill would cast. It will do so, what is more, not in spite of the opposition it has aroused, but because of it: because it has convinced itself that all such opposition, from whatever source, proceeds from the same implacably partisan motives as its own.

- Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt ties the Unfair Elections Act into the Cons' general desire to combine sophisticated and unregulated private control over information with a less-informed public sector:

Conservatives, allergic to registries and census forms in government, have spent the past 10 years scooping up citizen data for their political use, depositing it into a formidable machine they call the Constituent Information Management System (CIMS.)
...
The proposed electoral reform does promise to crack down on people trying to pass themselves off as voters with inadequate identification — a measure that every election expert says will remove voting rights for thousands of Canadians without adequate ID — seniors, youth and aboriginal people in particular.

It’s as if the Conservatives have been watching a whole different movie from the rest of us. The problem wasn’t fake ID in the 2011 election; the problem was fake phone calls, telling voters that their ballot-box location was changed. We didn’t have too many over-eager voters in 2011. We had someone trying to keep people away from the ballot box.

For the sake of argument, however, let’s say that voter ID is a problem.

Why not spend some money to get voters equipped with proper identification before 2015? Why not use that big CIMS database to find out who doesn’t have the proper ID to exercise the basic, democratic right of voting? What about a Canadian citizenship card, complete with residence details?

- John Geddes points out another area where the Cons aren't letting data inform public policy - as they're choosing what even the Department of Finance recognizes to be less economic development based on nothing more than their distaste for public pensions like the CPP.

- Finally, Mark Kennedy reports on this weekend's Broadbent Institute Progress Summit. And for those of us who can't be there in person, the proceedings are being streamed online here.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- Jeremy Nuttall discusses why the Cons' temporary foreign worker program is ripe for abuse, as it ensures workers have every incentive to avoid reporting employer wrongdoing since the employer can singlehandedly ship the employee out of Canada in retaliation.

- But the good news is that workers who aren't quite so easily sent away are making efforts to fight back against the Cons' anti-labour plans - as Kathryn May reports on a pledge among public service unions not to give in to attacks on sick leave and disability benefits. And on the provincial level, SOS Crowns exposes and questions the Saskatchewan Party's privatization of essential infrastructre.

- John Geddes discusses what the Cons want to eliminate in order to make way for subsidies tied to specific employers:

Schemes to place hard-to-employ young people in jobs tend to come and go. BladeRunners is the exception. The British Columbia program has been around since 1994, long enough that even its managers aren’t entirely clear on how it got its name—and for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to single it out as a proven model. BladeRunners helps unemployed 15- to 30-year-olds—mostly Aboriginal, sometimes homeless, often with histories of substance abuse—learn basic skills and land several key weeks of job experience. Counsellors are on call around the clock when participants run into the inevitable problems.

It sounds like the sort of feel-good program any politician might rush to line up behind. But the B.C. provincial government cites BladeRunners as a prime example of the kind of training that the federal Conservatives are out to cut. At issue is the so-called Canada Job Grant (CJG), announced by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty with considerable fanfare in last year’s federal budget. Under the CJG, Flaherty proposed that the federal government, the provinces and employers each pay a third of up to $15,000 a year for every employee enrolled for training at an eligible institution. But there was a catch: The federal government’s $300-million share was to be taken out of the $500 million a year Ottawa transfers to provinces under existing labour-market agreements—the main source of BladeRunners’ $6-million budget.

- Finally, Ketaki Gohale reports on the level of social responsibility we can expect from big pharma (which we should keep in mind the next time it claims that giveaways are needed to support the development and commercialization of medication):

Bayer Chief Executive Officer Marijn Dekkers called the compulsory license “essentially theft.”

“We did not develop this medicine for Indians,” Dekkers said Dec. 3. “We developed it for western patients who can afford it.”

Fortunately, Médecins Sans Frontières offers up the appropriate response.

On consensus positions

I won't break down in detail the bevy of reviews of the current position of Tom Mulcair and the federal NDP - including pieces by Bruce Stewart, John Ibbitson and John Geddes. But it's worth highlighting the areas where I'd see no need to challenge the consensus reflected in those articles - as well as the one where some pushback is absolutely needed.

On the bright side, there's little reason to see anything but opportunity in the public's views of both the NDP as a voting option, and Mulcair as a leader. As Geddes in particular notes, the main goals for a party approaching an election figure to be a sufficient base to support a strong national campaign, and a plausible path to build on that base toward a winning coalition.

And all indicators on that front look to be positive.

Of course, any party would prefer to start with the pole position. But there's plenty of room for growth as part of a close three-way contest (as appears to be the current state of federal politics). And indeed, the media narrative of "Mulcair is great, but has anybody noticed?" looks like a rather nice launching pad for a winning campaign - as the positive impressions built between elections create room for a strong campaign to resonate.

In that respect, remember that the NDP started the 2011 campaign in the mid-teens in the polls - and with a leader whose approval ratings weren't substantially different from Mulcair's today. But is there some reason to think Mulcair might have more trouble adding to the current starting point?

Well, both Ibbitson and Geddes make the claim that the public will see mindless support for free trade in all possible forms is a mandatory precondition for any party or leader being fit to govern. And from that starting point, both insist that Mulcair has no choice but to get in line behind the CETA - no matter how much that might frustrate a large number of existing supporters.

But I'm not sure one could invent a better example of the commentariat substituting its own views for those of voters in the absence of a shred of evidence.

The persuadable voters being pursued during the course any campaign are likely to be those with the fewest entrenched policy positions. And anybody willing to vote solely on their devotion to free trade is almost certain to be either a committed Con or at best a Con/Lib swing voter - and thus well beyond the NDP's pool of potential supporters.

Meanwhile, the CETA also offers huge opportunities to build on the NDP's preferred messages: what better way to be the party of affordability than to point out billions of extra dollars in prescription drug costs foisted on the public?

Instead, the larger question remains that of how to emerge as the most liked and trusted leader in the face of Justin Trudeau's campaign to be all things to all people. But taking any meaningful policy principles off the table will only strengthen Trudeau's hand.

As for what will enable the NDP to gain the upper hand, that remains to be seen. In retrospect, the NDP's Senate abolition campaign could hardly have worked out any better in placing the party alone alongside the general public. And there figure to be plenty more opportunities for Trudeau to either end up on the wrong side of major issues, or watch his personal image succumb to another Con ad blitz.

If that doesn't happen, then the NDP's best course of action is to grow the number of committed base voters who won't be taken in by a charm offensive. But if it does, the NDP is as well positioned to form government as it's ever been. And Mulcair's strong performance in Parliament can only bode well for his chances of winning over the public once the campaign starts.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Paul Krugman highlights why inequality is indeed an issue which demands action - both for its own sake, and for its impact on other goals such as economic sustainability. And Bill Moyers discusses the difference between a government responsive to its people and one completely controlled by elites:

The historian Plutarch warned us long ago of what happens when there is no brake on the power of great wealth to subvert the electorate. "The abuse of buying and selling votes," he wrote of Rome, "crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread in the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of emperors."
...
Why are record numbers of Americans on food stamps? Because record numbers of Americans are in poverty. Why are people falling through the cracks? Because there are cracks to fall through. It is simply astonishing that in this rich nation more than 21 million Americans are still in need of full-time work, many of them running out of jobless benefits, while our financial class pockets record profits, spends lavishly on campaigns to secure a political order that serves its own interests, and demands that our political class push for further austerity. Meanwhile, roughly 46 million Americans live at or below the poverty line and, with the exception of Romania, no developed country has a higher percent of kids in poverty than we do. Yet a study by scholars at Northwestern University and Vanderbilt finds little support among the wealthiest Americans for policy reforms to reduce income inequality.
...
I should make it clear that I don't harbor any idealized notion of politics and democracy. Remember, I worked for Lyndon Johnson. Nor do I romanticize "the people." You should read my mail and posts on right-wing websites. I understand the politician in Texas who said of the state legislature, "If you think these guys are bad, you should see their constituents."

But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens (something otherwise known as social justice) and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That can be the difference between democracy and plutocracy.

 - Andrew Sullivan makes a similar point in commenting on the impact of Pope Francis' discussion of market zealotry (h/t to Cathie):

(T)he way in which market capitalism has become a good in itself on the American right is, well, perniciously wrong. As soon as a system ceases to be a means to a human good, and becomes an end in itself, it has become a false idol. Perhaps the apotheosis of that idol worship was the belief – brandished on the degenerate right in the past decade or two – that markets are self-regulating. Of course they’re not, as Adam Smith would have been the first to inform you. Another assumption embedded on the American right is that more wealth is always a good thing. The Church must say no. This is a lie. Wealth is a neutral thing above a certain basic level of non-drudgery. Above that, it can be an absolutely evil, deceptive thing, distorting human souls, warping their dignity, vulgarizing their character. An American right that worships at the altar of both free markets and material wealth, and that takes these two idols as their primary goods, is not just non-Catholic. It is anathema to Catholicism and to the Gospels.

- Michael Valpy writes about the connection between extractive economics, inequality and social exclusion - while observing that those exact factors are serving to reinforce each other in Canada.

- Meanwhile, Matthew Hays offers a devastating look at how Canada is beginning to look from abroad - with Rob Ford serving only as the most prominent example of a crude, selfish and thoughtless persona. And Scott Reid points out the systematic elimination of any sense of shame from right-wing politics as a substantial part of the problem.

- Finally, John Geddes writes that the Cons' patently absurd attacks on improvements to the Canada Pension Plan are making it needlessly difficult to discuss how to ensure retirement security for Canadians. And Tammy Schirle and Kevin Milligan offer their own proposal to bolster the CPP.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Aviva Shen looks at Monsanto's history of regulatory capture - with the recent "Monsanto Protection Act" serving as just a minor example in a long list of control over U.S. law:

Monsanto insists that its revolving door is in overdrive because Monsanto employees are simply the best qualified for positions in these agencies, who certainly don’t hold onto their loyalty to the company in their new roles.

Yet it’s hard to ignore how Monsanto has benefited from these connections. The USDA has never denied a single application for Monsanto’s genetically engineered crops. USDA chief Tom Vilsack briefly considered limiting Monsanto’s alfalfa planting to protect organic crops from contamination, but deregulated it entirely instead. In another win for the company, their controversial growth hormone for cows was approved under Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lobbyist-turned-USDA-administrator-turned-FDA Deputy Commissioner, even though it was banned in the European Union, Japan, Australia, and Canada over health concerns. The hormone was approved in the US after Monsanto employee Margaret Miller oversaw a report on its safety, took a job at the FDA, and promptly approved her own report. Another Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddiqui, later wrote the USDA’s organic food standards, allowing irradiated and genetically modified foods to label themselves as organic...

The controversy behind the Monsanto Protection Act is a case study in Monsanto’s cozy relationship with regulators. In 2010, a federal judge chided the USDA for violating environmental law by rushing through approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered Round Up Ready sugar beets. The judge ordered a halt on all planting of the beets until an environmental study was completed. Ignoring the court, the USDA deregulated the beets anyway, claiming that the delay would result in a sugar shortage.

That’s because Monsanto controls 95 percent of the sugar beet market, making it virtually impossible for farmers to find alternatives. Industry consolidation among a handful of corporations has driven up seed prices and stifled innovation by smaller firms. It’s no wonder, then, that a massive beet shortage would have occurred if Monsanto’s beets had been delayed for a couple years of environmental review. With the help of complacent federal regulators, Monsanto is the only game in town.

- Matthew Yglesias writes that corporate excesses are making longstanding Marxist critiques of capitalism look entirely accurate. Dave Cournoyer compares the kid-glove treatment of billionaires illegally funnelling money into Alberta's political system to the reprisals against workers concerned for their own safety. And the Vancouver Sun writes about the choice of the Harper Cons and their provincial cousins to develop a P3 industry to systematically convert public infrastructure projects into private profits.

- All of which is to suggest that there's reason to be skeptical of John Geddes' view that corporate tax cheats will ultimately get what's coming to them as a result of greater public awareness of tax avoidance. And indeed, I fully expect to see a few isolated cases of obvious individual abuses touted as having fully resolved any problem as an excuse to avoid a real look at questionable transfer pricing and other means of corporate tax evasion.

- Meanwhile, Althia Raj reports on the effect of the Cons' wage suppression policies on actual temporary foreign workers - who figure to wind up stuck in "low-wage ghettos" due to their inability to pursue alternate employment or point out employer abuses.

- Finally, Tom Kott writes that Justin Trudeau falls comfortably within the elite corporate consensus, planning to win over Con voters primarily by parroting their right-wing policy prescriptions.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Tabatha Southey rightly turns Brad Trost into a poster boy for the Harper Cons' deliberate aversion to critical self-evaluation:

We shouldn’t be too quick to judge.

Let’s instead take a cue from Conservative MP Brad Trost, who, when questioned regarding the calls, said, “I don’t think there was anything wrong with the robo-call. I think it was good and accurate information and we should stand behind it.”

Then Canada’s Candide went on to add, “I didn’t hear it. I don’t know the script. Don’t know anything. … One of my colleagues had it at her residence and her husband got it and he said it was fine. I’ll take his word for it.”

We may have lost the penny this week, but I hope we coined the word “Trostful,” which I will define as “marked by a total belief in the reliability, truth and strength of anything your colleague tells you was said to her by her husband, or similar evidence.”

 - Meanwhile, Murray Mandryk is rather sharper in his depiction of the Cons:

That the Conservatives denied involvement in the anonymous robocalls until being caught, red-handed, by the PostMedia voice analysis makes this explanation a dubious one. But that they have kept repeating the deceit at every available opportunity pretty much shows how disingenuous their denials really are..

They offered nonsense briefs to the commission arguing Saskatchewan hadn't grown much in the past 10 years and rural and urban voters had identical interests anyway. They stacked the meetings with friendlies spewing similar nonsense. They exaggerated how many of their friend-lies actually attended the meetings or presented briefs and then they claimed these meetings represented 75-per-cent provincewide opposition to the new boundaries.

And even when caught with their little "miscommunication" of the truth - even when the Conservatives had to own up to the fact that they were the ones responsible for the phoney and misleading push polling - they remorselessly did it in a way in which they simply repeated every one of the above falsehoods all over again.

Remorse? You've got a better chance of finding it in most federal prisons.

- Charles Hamilton reports on the Sask Party's announcement that it won't countenance any public benefit from alcohol sales. Don Gunderson rightly responds that it's the citizens of the province who will lose out as a result of that corporate giveaway.

- Chantal Hebert and John Geddes both wonder whether the particularly egregious abuses of public trust and money from Stephen Harper's highest-profile Senate appointees will pave the way for the abolition of the unelected chamber.

- And finally, John Ibbitson concludes the Globe and Mail's series on making Parliament relevant again by writing that courage on the part of MPs is the most important ingredient in a democratic revival.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Friday reading.

- Paul Dechene interviews Marc Spooner about Saskatchewan residents left behind in the province's boom:

One way that our growing income gap can be hand-waved away is by pointing to the fact that every other province that goes through an economic boom faces this.

Perhaps it’s just a natural result of us going through a transitional phase?

Spooner doesn’t find that argument compelling.

“That implies a very non-responsive government,” he says. “Can we not learn from our neighbours in the west? Can we not see what happened in Alberta and be forward-looking and do precisely what a government ought to do and that’s step in when the market fails?

“It comes as no surprise that in times of boom that the marginalized get further marginalized. So why not step in and have a rainy day fund for precisely these reasons and see this as an opportunity to invest in the commons?”

- But it isn't just boom provinces who are engaging in the same pattern of handouts for the rich and clawbacks from its citizens - as Maria Babbage reports that Ontario's Lib government has let $1.4 billion in outstanding corporate taxes go uncollected while putting the screws to teachers and other workers in the name of deficit reduction.

- Megan Leslie and Peter Julian ended the fall sitting of Parliament by co-writing a piece on the need to develop clean energy in Canada. And Ian Bailey and Gloria Galloway report on Nathan Cullen's continued advocacy on behalf of British Columbia in fighting the Northern Gateway pipeline.

- Paul McLeod and Dr. Dawg both comment on Andrew Scheer's inevitable decision that a governing party can't shut down debate and voting on proposed amendments simply by declaring that it won't allow its members to consider them.

- Meanwhile, pogge examines an off-hand comment about a "devil's advocate in the PMO", and wonders why our Official Opposition isn't instead being allowed to carry out its intended purpose of holding the government to account - and how the Cons have managed to get away with declaring that disagreement is a sign of disloyalty.

- Finally, both Andrew Coyne and John Geddes express their disbelief that the Cons still haven't stopped spinning even after being force to acknowledge that years of bare declarations that an F-35 purchase was finalized and necessary were utter nonsense.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Richard Thaler criticizes Mitt Romney's obsession with upper-end tax cuts by pointing out the factors which actually serve to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship:

Romney wants to cut top rates by 20 percent, maintain the favorable treatment given to capital gains and dividends, and completely eliminate the estate tax, which currently only kicks in on estates in excess of $5 million for an individual or $10 million for a (heterosexual) married couple.

In other words, this is a strategy that emphasizes maximizing the after-tax returns if and when you hit it big. Yet if you think about the way most new businesses are started, it should be clear that these tax incentives have very little to do with the decisions facing most new entrepreneurs.

The typical business startup (think Joe the Plumber) begins with an initial stake that has been saved or borrowed, and 97 percent of small-business owners make less than $250,000 a year. It is a good bet that when Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Page were creating their new businesses in their proverbial garages, they weren’t giving much thought to the tax rate they would have to pay if they struck it rich. Rather, they were hoping their startups would survive, something that less than half of new businesses succeed in doing.
...
Research in behavioral economics shows that when people consider risky propositions, they are especially concerned about the downside. Roughly speaking, people weigh losses about twice as heavily as gains, a phenomenon called “loss aversion.”

So if we really want to encourage risk takers and job creators, we should concentrate on what will happen to them in the all-too-likely event that their brilliant idea doesn’t pan out and the new venture flops.
...
Cutting taxes on high-income earners is unlikely to be the most cost-effective way of stimulating new business startups. If entrepreneurs who hit it big have to pay the same tax rate on their capital gains as on their ordinary income, they are unlikely to give up on their dreams. When people are contemplating starting a new enterprise, the last thing they are worried about is the tax rate their heirs might have to pay if they die as billionaires. But if they aren’t sure they can provide health insurance and a home to live in for their family should they fail, they may play it safe. 

- Meanwhile, Rebecca Leber discusses the return on investment in tax breaks for the oil industry - with the main effect of handing free money to already-profitable businesses being to ensure that they lobby for even more freebies.

- John Geddes documents the long-standing link between water protection and the environment which the Cons are apparently determined to write out of existence.

- But while the Cons are obviously still determined to read from predetermined scripts with no regard for any connection to reality, I'd think it's noteworthy that they're barely able to keep a straight face while spouting their most prominent (and farcical) set of talking points.

- And finally, for those who haven't yet seen them, Regina's unofficial election results are here - featuring more than a few disappointments, but some reason for optimism based on both some far closer races than we've seen recently and a few strong new voices within the city's representative bodies.

Saturday Afternoon Links

This and that to end your Saturday.

- As pointed out by Paul Krugman, Kathleen Geier recognizes an obvious possible cause of a declining life expectancy for some less-wealthy Americans:

I will offer an alternative hypothesis, one which is not explicitly identified in the Times article: inequality. In the U.S., the period between 1990 and 2008, which is a period that saw such steep declines in life expectancy for the least well-off white people, is also a period during which economic inequality soared. Moreover, there is a compelling body of research that suggests that inequality itself — quite apart from low incomes, or lack of health insurance — is associated with more negative health outcomes for those at the bottom of the heap. One of the most famous series of studies of the social determinants of health, Britain’s Whitehall Studies, had as their subjects British civil servants, all of whom health insurance and (presumably) decent enough jobs. Intriguingly, these studies

found a strong association between grade levels of civil servant employment and mortality rates from a range of causes. Men in the lowest grade (messengers, doorkeepers, etc.) had a mortality rate three times higher than that of men in the highest grade (administrators).

...
I believe that inequality-related stressors are likely to be the determining factors in declining American life expectancies, as well. I’m surprised, in fact, that the Times article did not specifically identify inequality as a causal factor, because the health risks associated with economic inequality are well-established in the scientific literature. For decades, the United States has been making a series of political choices that has distributed wealth and power upwards and left working Americans not only poorer and sicker, but also feeling far more burdened and distressed, and experiencing far less security and control over their lives. The consequences of these choices have been devastating, and absent a dramatic reversal in our political course, they are likely to get even worse. Where inequality is concerned, Republicans have their foot on the accelerator, while the best the Democrats seem to be able to do is to (temporarily) put their foot on the brake.

- And Adam Davidson-Harden recognizes the need to reverse the trend of social backsliding arising out of increased inequality as a crucial reason why we need fight back against attacks on labour and other progressive forces:

If I was a betting man (which I'm not), I'd put my money behind the idea that the Ontario Liberals thought they could win a majority government out of declaring war on teachers in the recent round of byelections. Of course, they were wrong on that score, but they are still working on a strategy that banks on austerity as a key plank in their platform, from the Drummond report on.

The snake-oil consists of a fairly simple, business and bank-approved message: we can't afford social programs anymore. We need to retrench them and cut everything in the public sector. We don't have the money (repeat that last five times or more to get the general point). Meanwhile, Ontario sports some of the lowest corporate taxes in any developed economy.

Rolling over sends a message to the political prophets and priests of austerity. It says to them: 'well, maybe we have things too good after all. Maybe the rights, benefits and working conditions/learning conditions we've won are too much. Maybe we don't deserve them.' Rolling over under assault is giving up, and giving up is interpreted by employers and governments as simply acknowledging that they're right, that austerity is the default, inevitable, unavoidable, a universal fate of retrenching social programs.   

- Meanwhile, Althia Raj reports that Ontario is just one of far too many provinces with no interest in protecting its interests while negotiating the CETA. But it's worth noting that such agreements are normally designed to ensure the ongoing erosion of democratic power no matter who holds office at any given time: exemptions can't be added without other parties' agreement, but can be permanently destroyed by a single term of a right-wing government.

- Finally, John Geddes' profile of Tom Mulcair is well worth a read.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Frances Russell comments on how the Harper Cons are ready to impose exactly the kind of centralized and unresponsive decision-making they've long loathed - but only when it comes to favouring Alberta's interests over B.C.'s real environmental concerns. But Michael Harris notes that Harper is entirely likely to see his job as nothing more than serving the interests of the oil patch.

- Meanwhile, Susan Riley confirms that the problem with the Gateway pipeline is indeed one of environmental risk, not Christy Clark's money grab:

(T)he Northern Gateway is not worth the risk, environmentally, or politically.

And, while pipeline boosters enthuse about the schools, hospitals and jobs enhanced oil exports to China will provide, they ignore the social and economic costs of responding to crop failures, water shortages, forest fires and the other baleful consequences of rising global temperatures.

Outside of an increasingly frayed consensus, there are dissenters — notably, federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, the Green party, and B.C.’s NDP opposition, all of whom oppose the Northern Gateway.

As Quebec Premier Jean Charest said at the premiers’ annual gabfest this week, “you cannot disassociate the issues of energy with issues that touch climate change.”

In fact, the environment has to be at the centre of future energy policy — not from virtue, but from necessity. It isn’t about changing their messaging; oil-addicted political leaders have to change course.

If they don’t figure that out soon, with luck, they’ll be gone.

- John Geddes thoroughly reviews the Cons' regressive drug policy, which features massive cuts to already-limited rehabilitation programs in order to pour millions more into criminalization. And David Hutton reports on the sheer lunacy of a Saskatoon methadone program which provides support only after a user is already pregnant or infected with HIV - with Ryan Meili contributing some commentary.

- Finally, Erik Loomis provides two vivid examples of workers fired merely for recognizing problems with their employers in an apparent effort to intimidate others into silence. But there shouldn't be much doubt what happens when workers lack a voice altogether.