Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Rupert Neate writes about the twelve-figure tax avoidance by the U.S.' largest tech firms, while noting that Amazon stands out as the worst offender. And Meagan Day interviews Ramesh Srninivasan about the need to democratize the administration of the Internet.

- Meanwhile, Grace Blakeley makes the case to socialize the financial sector to ensure it serves the public rather than facilitating the concentration of wealth. And Anoosh Chakelian hopes that a devastating report on child poverty will offer a much-needed reality check in the course of the UK's general election.

- Animal Justice notes that Jason Kenney and Doug Ford are following in the Republicans' footsteps by planning to punish people for attempting to expose animal abuse.

- Chris Turner writes about Kenney's pursuit of modern-day McCarthyism. And Graham Thomson notes that rather than representing a necessary result of otherwise justifiable choices, the framing of large number of people as enemies is central to Kenney's political strategy. 

- Finally, Omar Washington writes that the re-election of Justin Trudeau in the wake of his blackface exploits represents a sad failure on the part of Canada's electorate. And Jordan Bober argues that Trudeau should at least recognize the need to put electoral reform back on the table after an election which has produced some of the most distorted first-past-the-post results yet.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Mitchell Anderson discusses the Ten Commandments that have ensured that Norway's oil wealth is preserved for the benefit of citizens. But it's particularly worth contrasting Norway's philosophy surrounding non-renewable resources against the frenzy to extract everything today at any price (which of course currently dominates western Canadian politics):

Norway was in no rush to develop their oil resources, and determined that it would only be on their own terms with a clear benefit to Norwegians. So strong was this sentiment that an all-party parliamentary white paper itemized "10 commandments" (see sidebar) for oil development, later enshrined into the Norwegian Petroleum Act.
...
When global oil prices shot up in 1974 after the Middle East oil embargo, the Norwegian government decided that a major tax increase was needed to ensure that oil companies would not realize windfall profits at the expense of the Norwegian taxpayer.

Professor Einar Lie at the University of Oslo researched the history of this period and describes how the government used the newly formed Statoil to gather intelligence on how far they could push foreign companies.

"The Norwegian civil servants wanted to squeeze this lemon to the maximum but they did not want to foreign oil companies to leave. So they talked extensively with Statoil, which had a lot of informed contacts with the other oil companies to find out just how much they would be able to take without the foreign companies leaving Norway. They were extremely pragmatic on how to get the maximum taxation."

- Karen Foster points out the gap between the reasonable expectations of younger workers about their ability to retire after putting in several decades of hard work, and the public policy direction set by the Cons and others to ensure that retirement is delayed and rendered less secure.

- Common Dreams documents how workers in the UK have been placed on a private employment blacklist based on suspicions of citizen activism.

- And finally, neither Thomas Walkom nor Craig McInnes buys the Cons' spin that a decision on the Northern Gateway pipeline will be anything but a political calculation by an oil-soaked government.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Bruce Johnstone and the Star-Phoenix editorial board both join the voices decrying the Cons' decision to throw parliamentary democracy under their omnibus budget bill. And Gerald Caplan points out the Harper Cons' more general tendency to silence dissenting views:

(T)here’s little doubt the government was deliberately crippling many of Canada’s best and brightest, including many groups who upheld the country’s good reputation abroad that the Harper government was cavalierly undermining. In any event, the groups weren’t targeted because of their actual achievements, which were often exemplary.

Something entirely different was going on here. In the words of Amnesty International Canada’s Alex Neve, this was part of the government’s systematic “campaign against advocacy and dissent,” a campaign that has only deepened since last year’s majority election. And the message Stephen Harper was sending home from Europe was that there’s more to come. Your government is after dissidents, folks.
...
There is a fundamental issue of democracy here. There should be no illusions about the almost unlimited power of a majority government in Canada. Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world, has nothing like the unilateral power of Stephen Harper. It may have taken a little longer for the Prime Minister to pass his omnibus “budget” than he liked, but pass it will, as will everything else he wants to do. None of the defunded organizations will get their money back. None of the silenced watchdogs will get their voices back. Environmental groups will soon feel the full wrath of this petrol-fixated government.

- In keeping with this week's theme of recognizing the consequences of reckless resource development, Nicholas Kusnetz reports on the damage a poorly-regulated oil sector is inflicting on North Dakota:

According to data obtained by ProPublica, oil companies in North Dakota reported more than 1,000 accidental releases of oil, drilling wastewater or other fluids in 2011, about as many as in the previous two years combined. Many more illicit releases went unreported, state regulators acknowledge, when companies dumped truckloads of toxic fluid along the road or drained waste pits illegally.

- It's certainly interesting to see a few leading proponents of sabermetrics speaking out about how the philosophy can be applied to politics. But the most important point to be made is likely that there's more at stake in political strategy than one-time wins and losses:

James likened the idea of trying to win an election through get-out-the-vote drives as "analogous to trying to win a pennant race by doing better in the close games." A team that won 75 games and lost 87 over the course of a season could get to 90 wins if they changed their win-loss record in one-run games from 26-29 to 41-14.

"It can happen," James said. "But it's a lousy strategy."

"When people disagree with you, what you ultimately have to do is persuade people to agree with you -- period," he added. "You can't ultimately dodge defeat by winning close elections."

- Finally, pogge notes that the Cons' strategy of devolving power away from Parliament toward ministers' office hasn't given them quite as much room to govern without accountability as they seem to have hoped. And Dean Del Mastro, Con ethics spokesperson, is in yet more trouble.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Among the other possible tests in an impending Etobicoke Centre by-election, here's one I'll be curious to watch: will attention to the Robocon scandal turn the Cons' usual misleading robocall blast strategy into a liability rather than a low-cost means of injecting messages into voters' minds?

- Dr. Dawg points out that the Cons' absurd attacks on Erin Weir (and anybody else who may ever have been involved in politics) is probably better classified as farce and ultra-hypocrisy than a serious threat. But he misses what strikes me as an even more obvious example of the sheer idiocy of Randy Hoback's position: if running for a political party makes one unfit to comment on public policy issues, then wouldn't every single government minister who testifies be subject to exactly the same challenge?

- The Cons' latest "nothing to see here" moment on the environmental front features the U.S.' EPA potentially taking over pollution monitoring in Canada. But hey, what could go wrong if we let, say, a future Sarah Palin administration decide what (if anything) it wants to regulate?

- Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail has suddenly realized that the Cons' utter negligence when it comes to the environment might lead to disaster. If only it had arrived at that conclusion a little over a year ago.

- And finally, Linda McQuaig describes the Cons' efforts to turn environmentally-interested citizens into enemies of the state:

(C)reating a chill among environmental activists seems to be precisely the aim of the Harper team, as it gears up for a new stage in its battle to sideline anyone raising questions about the relentless growth of Alberta’s oilsands.

And the involvement of Eaton somehow highlights the David and Goliath nature of the climate change fight, as the Harper government lines up with wealthy interests in a battle that particularly imperils some of world’s poorest people who live in low-lying regions soon to be engulfed by rising seas.

It seems unnecessary to point out that the proper role of government is to protect the public interest, which includes not only encouraging economic development but also protecting us against the devastating consequences of climate change.

But, with his close ties to the oil industry, Harper has long sought to derail global climate action.

Now, with a majority government, Harper’s campaign to scuttle action on climate change has taken a more insidious turn, as he uses the resources of the state to intimidate and silence critics.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Since the Cons don't seem to have much else in their quiver at the moment, I'm sure they'll keep trying to pretend that it's monstrous of Thomas Mulcair to suggest that all industries (including those in Alberta) pay the cost of their real environmental impact. But the sales pitch isn't getting any easier when the people who meet Mulcair without a partisan agenda react like this:

(L)ocal leaders and businesses have been more measured in replying to Mr. Mulcair than rival politicians, and avoided any inflammatory language after Thursday's visit.

“In my opinion, it was a productive discussion. We outlined some of the challenges we face and discussed Suncor’s approach to responsibly develop this resource in a manner that also respects communities and stakeholders,” Suncor said in an e-mail statement attributed to Mark Little, its executive vice-president of oil sands.

Melissa Blake, mayor of the local Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, spent half an hour with Mr. Mulcair at her Fort McMurray office Thursday morning.

They agreed on the need for environmental oversight in the region. “Nobody in the province is disagreeing with that,” Ms. Blake told The Globe and Mail afterward.

- Meanwhile, if there is common recognition of the need for oil-sands development to be environmentally responsible, the news of mercury contamination in the area surely signals that the Cons are failing utterly in that goal.

- And the Cons' efforts to build an enemies list elsewhere are receiving due criticism as well - with Randy Hoback's McCarthyism rightly getting highlighted as an example.

- Having hinted at the idea myself I'm glad to see the Canadian Medical Association calling for policies to be assessed for their effects on health.

- And finally, it shouldn't come as much shock that more onerous IP legislation is all about boosting corporate profits rather than actually generating innovation. But in case we needed confirmation, Eduardo Porter provides it.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Gerald Caplan skewers the tendency of right-wingers - most recently expressed by the federal minister responsible - to see child care as some kind of bizarre conspiracy:

What deeply distressed these callers was the fear that ECE, sanctioned by the Ontario Ministry of Education, organized by your local school board, conducted by highly qualified staff, was a diabolical plot to do something terrible, unspeakable, to their children’s minds. To steal them away from their families. Some explicitly declared that the purpose was to turn their children into Communists, even though the Soviet Union had dissolved four years earlier. Others insisted that the state intended to brainwash children in any number of unknown ways for malevolent purposes. Though what these could possibly be no one could ever say.

There was no plausible rebuttal to these delusions. This was a matter of deep superstition, not reason or science. This was the very antithesis of commonsense. I wondered how these parents could ever trust the school system, since the same provincial governments and school boards who would offer ECE were responsible for the next 15 years of their kids’ schooling.

But there was no answer, not even an attempt at one. Many Conservatives – including those who seem to win elections in Canada – simply have an irrational hatred of ECE, a delusional certainty that its purpose is evil, and a paranoid fear of its impact on their children.

The consequences of this blind conviction is to severely penalize millions of Canadians desperate for assistance with childcare, with the worst penalties as always being paid by those already struggling to get by, and especially – as always – by the mothers.

- In case there were any points left standing in the usual spin about slashing corporate taxes as a matter of competing with other countries, Erin highlights the fact that the carefully chosen comparison relies on giving full weight to less-developed, new OECD countries rather than looking at economies even remotely similar to Canada's.

- I'll grant that there isn't much directly linking the personal requests about Errol Mendes and Amir Attaran with the federal Cons directly. But particularly given the news from the U.S. showing disturbing coordination between government and private-sector power brokers in attacking dissenting voices (by fraud and/or extortion if necessary), we shouldn't get distracted by the semantic question of who submitted a particular request in pointing out how it fits with the intimidation tactics we've come to expect from the Cons and their allies.

- Finally, some may find the news that some Cons reject any action on climate change based on the belief that it isn't part of God's will. But let's not miss the upside to the Cons holding faith-based beliefs: shouldn't it be possible to encourage them to be equally uninterested in most other areas of policy by asking who they are to try to override the will of a divine being?