Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Steve Roth discusses how inequality and excessive concentration of wealth result in less growth for everybody - even as the researchers finding that correlation try to report the opposite.

- Meanwhile, Davide Furceri and Prakash Loungani examine how loose financial and capital regulation lead to more severe inequality. And Daniel Tencer reports on Toby Sanger's work documenting Canada's most damaging tax loopholes.

- Brent Patterson highlights a new paper on how corporate control agreements stand in the way of meaningful action to fight climate change. And Tim Radford writes that we may need to take far stronger steps than previously anticipated to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in order to avoid a climate catastrophe, while Justin Fisher comments on the need to view climate issues in terms of justice.

- Finally, Luke Savage offers a noteworthy response to the Manning Centre's recent conference - including this observation on how the Cons' leadership contestants look to be out of touch with the social reality facing young voters:

It occurs to me that each and every one of the prospective candidates for the leadership of the CPC came politically of age at around the same time in the 1980s or early 1990s, i.e. during the ascendency of movement conservatism. Then, its calls for “self-sufficiency”, “personal responsibility”, and “individual liberty” over and against the state had an emotional and spiritual resonance that often transcended lines of gender, race, and class. But the lived experience of today’s young people is quite different from those who consider themselves children of the Reagan revolution.

In an economic context characterized by precarious work, low wages, poor financial security, and the widespread exploitation of young labour by employers (who are often from a different generation) across the workforce, solutions that emphasize personal grist and the imperative of an improved work ethic are unlikely to be well-received.

Looking south, it is quite the opposite: Young people appear drawn in much greater measure to Bernie Sanders’ message, and its various attacks on oppressive economic structures, than to movement conservatism’s pickled ethos of “individual liberty” or its various ideological stepchildren (including the Clintonite variant).

Movement conservatism may have dominated the past three decades. But everything I’ve observed this weekend suggests the possibility that something very different may come to dominate the near future.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Tavia Grant reports on the most recent world happiness report from the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. And David Doorey points out a rather striking similarity among the countries at the top of the list, while Dan Gardner highlights Stephen Harper's longstanding goal of removing Canada from the group.

- CBC reveals that thousands of Saskatchewan employers - including hundreds of restaurants - have received permission to use temporary foreign workers rather than paying a fair wage to attract local workers.

- David Climenhaga reveals which public servants are next on the hit list of the Manning Centre and its corporate backers:

Getting back to the original point of all this, right there on the list for consideration were "the problem with municipal public consultations" and "confronting overbearing urban planners."

Given the well-known habit of right-wing think tanks and their ilk to respond compliantly to the wishes of their funders, plus the Calgary development industry's extremely generous contributions revealed by Wenzel, what do you want to bet that we can count on the next MNC to devote considerable attention to these matters?

And what, do you think, will they find to be the problem with municipal public consultations? That they're too democratic? A cynic might wonder, but it's important to remember that the people who finance and staff the Manning Centre, and indeed Preston Manning himself, don't necessarily define democracy the same way you and I do.

They are big on "economic democracy" -- which might cynically be described as the right to get rich as stink any way you please and not pay taxes while you’re about it. They are not so enthusiastic about your right to decide your fate through the ballot box without interference or deception, especially if your preferred representatives are not of a mind to "swing their way."

- And sadly, the attack on public involvement in policy decisions sounds all too familiar to those who read Bruce Johnstone's weekend tirade against Regina's wastewater referendum. Meanwhile, Paul Dechene interviews Michael Fougere (or possibly a random corporate buzzword generator) in an effort to get some explanation for Fougere's position - with predictable results.

- Finally, Aaron Wherry recognizes that the disclosure of relatively small office expenses on the part of elected officials makes for just a tiny (if perhaps necessary) part of a transparent picture of our political scene:

It is, for sure, for our MPs to explain and justify how they spend the public’s money. But we should always be careful to avoid lazy outrage. Or at least we should be mindful to focus on the real enemy—flagrant abuses of the public trust that lack justification. Perspective is also important. Parliament’s ability to scrutinize the billions in spending that it approves each year should, I will earnestly suggest, generally be of greater concern than however much parliamentarians spend on coffee-makers.

Of course, the possibility that we might be distracted by coffee-maker purchases is no excuse to avoid detailing the exact cost, shape and usefulness of every coffee-maker purchased with public funds. I suspect that after some fussing over coffee-makers, we’d all adjust to a world in which we understood our MPs to sometimes both consume coffee themselves and provide it for their staff and guests. Or so I dare to dream.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Karl Nerenberg reports on the House Finance Committee's hearings into income inequality in Canada, featuring a few familiar themes which we should hear far more often from our policy-makers:

"I would make all tax credits refundable, including the current non-refundable ones," Boadway recommended, and then went further, "I would condition many of them to income, the way we condition the GST credit. I would enhance disability tax credits and make them available to all provincial disability recipients."

On tax breaks for upper income Canadians and corporations, Boadway prescribed tough medicine: "I would eliminate the dividend tax credit and make the taxation of dividends, capital gains, and interest more even. I would rationalize the corporate tax to make it distortion-free and making it a tax on supernormal profits or so-called rents."
...
Corak would also expand the use of EI to support parental leave, based on the notion that family life, especially for those with precarious and low incomes, is under great stress these days.

And, like Boadway, Corak advocates for an expanded tax base, in particular targeting income from capital. He even suggested to the Committee that it might be the time to consider an inheritance tax in Canada.
...
The CMA President started by saying that the effectiveness of the health care system together with biology and heredity only account for about half of the totality of health outcomes -- outcomes which are measured by such indicators as incidence of disease, life expectancy, and rate of use of the health system.

"Having a much greater impact," Reid said, "Are factors such as the state of a person's housing, whether people get enough to eat, how educated they are and what kind of experiences they had in their early childhood."

These social determinants of health, she explained, account for fully half of health outcomes and "the most influential of these determinants is income."

- But while our representatives are just starting to discuss the harm done by inequality, the corporate sector is looking to ensure that democratic decision-making does nothing to reduce it.

- Phil Plait takes note of the Cons' belief that science is worthless except to the extent it can be exploited for a profit. And Sixth Estate discusses why a mass-production market model looks to be utterly useless in addressing the steady evolution of bacteria.

- Finally, Lawrence Martin writes about the Broadbent Institute's work to provide a focal point for progressive organizing. But I do hope it's aiming higher than the Manning Centre for World Domination in terms of actually wanting to improve public engagement, rather than serving as a means of central control over activists, media and politicians alike.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Sixth Estate rounds up the party and organizational affiliations on Canada's major opinion pages. And in case anybody was wondering why our political dialogue so often has nothing at all to do with the public's real concerns about inequality and instability:

I identified a total of 218 op-eds, of which 104 were written by people with a direct connection to a political party, an economic interest group (business executives and unionists), representatives of those groups (progressive think tanks, business think tanks, trade associations, etc.), and social conservatives. Of those 104, 21% came from big-C Conservatives and allies like the ADQ, 13% were contributed by Liberal insiders and politicians, and just 6% came from the NDP.

The differences were even more stark with respect to the supportive think tanks and other groups which feed into these parties. (It’s worth noting here that despite election rhetoric to the contrary, Liberals are for the most part pro-business.) An astounding 70% of the op-eds were written by business executives, free-market think tanks, and trade associations. In contrast, just five articles came from progressive think tanks (and a sixth from the Mowat Centre, which I counted as progressive even though it really isn’t), and just one from a trade unionist.

- Meanwhile, Dr. Dawg points out how coverage of Robocon has largely glossed over public demand for by-elections and a thorough investigation, while Dave questions why the Cons' electoral fraud school and talking-point dispenser is receiving publicly-funded not-for-profit treatment. And Union Blogs offers at least one source of balance against that normal slant.

- But then, the Cons are also working on tilting the playing field even more - with opposition MPs working to ensure neither our electoral boundaries nor our Parliamentary system are reshaped for the sole benefit of Stephen Harper.

- Finally, for those who haven't seen enough NDP leadership coverage from this corner, you can look forward to a Saskatchewan provincial leadership campaign in 2013.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- On the Robocon front, Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher's latest good work investigating the Cons' electoral fraud got Maher expelled from the Manning Centre's hive-mind-building exercise. And the robocalling firms themselves are being similarly aggressive in trying to shut down any discussion of their role - perhaps in large part due to the obscene amounts of money they've brought in from their Con benefactors. Lawrence Martin wonders what Stephen Harper knew about Robocon as it was set up and implemented. And the Guelph Mercury called out the Cons for their nonsensical spin, while Steven Chase added York Centre to the list of ridings which received false robocalls like the ones first identified in Guelph.

- Naturally, the Cons' brand of fiscal management includes nearly free stuff for war profiteers.

- Kemal Dervis points out a couple of highly important theories about the concentration of wealth: first, that wealth tends to become concentrated in the absence of public policy measures to ensure its redistribution; and second, that such concentration tends to result in overall economic stagnation. Which is to say that if voters have indeed bought into the Cons' spin that progress is either impossible or not the job of our only structural counterweight to corporate power, it's long past time to start reversing that trend.

- Finally, Joe Couture reports and Murray Mandryk opines on the shape of the Saskatchewan NDP's upcoming leadership campaign, while Ailsa Watkinson discusses the work the Sask Party and its hand-picked chief commissioner have put in to demolish human rights protections as long as it's in power.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Amy Minsky uncovers some suspicious-looking spending patterns underlying Robocon, while Postmedia also points out that election results in at least a couple of seats may plausibly be subject to challenge. Emma Pullman offers some more details on the Manning Centre's voter suppression school. And Andrew Coyne expands on the culture that's led to the Cons' combination of regular scandals and complete denial of the obvious, while Bob Hepburn makes the point that Harper has far exceeded the abuses that causes voters to turn against Brian Mulroney and reduce his party to three two seats. [Fixed as per comment.]

- Dale Smith notes that the Cons have granted REAL Women of Canada - active homophobia and all - the opportunity to make recommendations as to who should receive medals for public and service.

- Ben Parfitt offers reason for concern about whether the public will ever be informed about problems with pipelines, as a known leak in an existing line with the potential to affect well water has been subject to a complete whitewash for a period of over six months.

- And Thomas Walkom notes that while it's a plus to see Toronto's City Council express reservations about CETA, there's plenty more work to be done at all levels of government.

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Chantal Hebert points out that the biggest difference resulting from the NDP's emergence as Canada's official opposition may have to do with gender rather than age:

A lot has been written and said about the youthfulness of the new Parliament but at first glance, it is the larger place that women are staking out in the House of Commons that strikes the eye.

The latter is a direct by-product of the advent of the NDP as official Opposition.

Layton’s caucus boasts more women than the past parliamentary average. At 40 per cent, the NDP is as close to parity as any federal party has ever come. The party also exhibits a greater willingness to walk the talk of gender equality.

In their previous incarnation as official Opposition, the Liberals did not lack for able women but ultimately the front line of the party was very much a boys club.

Under Michael Ignatieff, the high-profile portfolios of foreign affairs, health, finance and the environment were all held by male critics. Under the NDP, three of those roles — including finance — are now spoken for by women.

- The Bloc's decision to be seen as being onside with the Cons by supporting the budget wasn't surprising enough on its own. But the choice looks particularly odd when compared to the gratuitous obstruction the Bloc leveled at the NDP in scheduling around its convention. And it surely can't be a positive sign if the most substantial contribution the Bloc thinks it can make is to try to ratchet up the incivility level.

- While Greg's critique of Jean Chretien's conservatism is right on point, I'm not sure there's much reason to criticize Susan Delacourt's blog post - particularly when it includes this needed correction to several days worth of highly misleading headlines:

(T)here are some "values" I'd definitely associate more with Conservativism, especially Harper's brand. One of those is a greater emphasis on patriotism and the military. Another would be a belief that the private sector has better ideas than government. In those terms, Canadians' support for those values is actually waning, the poll shows. So how is it possible to say that this brand of conservatism is on the rise?

In other words, the Manning spin about a country moving to the right isn't just unfounded based on a single data point, it's outright false based on past polling. Which goes a long way toward explaining why the Cons are so afraid to defend the bulk of their policies.

- Finally, Alex Balingall comments on the value of humour in getting citizens engaged in politics:

“This generation has a lot of skepticism,” says Boler. “They have a very different political world and a different sort of political sensibility.” That could be why shitharperdid.ca garnered more than four million page views in its first three days, the vast majority of which, says Devlin, came from people under 35. Journalism students at New York University also recently went for laughs by producing a music video for My Water’s On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song), which aims to bring attention to the practice of creating fissures deep underground to loosen up fossil fuels for extraction. The song has a funky, hip-hop feel and includes lines such as, “Frack baby frack till the break of dawn.” So far, the video has been viewed nearly 100,000 times on YouTube. “In all the elections past, we’ve never really had anything aimed specifically at our generation,” says Lisa Lagace, a 25-year-old editorial and marketing assistant. “It’s just been the same old thing: a bunch of old guys talking.”

Boler says this disaffection is fed by a “crisis of faith in truth,” something she sees as an American cultural import. “There’s hardly anyone any longer who has an idealized notion that those in power—or those with economic power—have our best interests at heart,” she says. “The public has lost trust in government, in politicians, in media, in people running Wall Street.” And, she adds, “this generation is growing up in a very grim world,” where laughs are appreciated as a way of tempering the bleakness. Boler also argues that political satire can create an avenue for political engagement—even if that doesn’t always mean turning out to vote. Her proof: the 400,000 who came out for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, led by American satirists Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart last fall.

And while both Devlin and Boler say political satire is on the rise, they also see it as a revival of something “almost ancient.” Comedians have traditionally used satire to express dissent and hold leaders accountable.

Deep thought

I know a large-C Conservative pollster's survey for an all-caps HYPERCONSERVATIVE propaganda tank is the first place I'd look for accurate information about Canadian public opinion.