Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Melissa Benn discusses how private schools entrench a class divide within a generation - and argues that they should be eliminated in favour of an inclusive education system:

(W)e urgently need to renew the conversation about the private-public divide, and move beyond the superficial, profoundly apolitical debates of recent years. These have chiefly been characterised by the rolling out of the same information again and again, almost as if the private schools were not human creations but unchallengeable phenomena like the weather or religious deities. Over and over we are told: private schools achieve higher results; their graduates vacuum up the majority of places at the best universities; they take all the top jobs; they dominate the top of society. There is, as a result, a continual stirring up (with the liberal help of a few capital letters) of resentment, envy and panic – “Private pupils are SIX TIMES more likely to get A* grades at GCSEs than those at state schools”; “A third of private pupils score 3 A* grades at A-level compared to one in TEN at state schools” – finely seasoned with a good dollop of hopelessness: “The awful truth: to get ahead you need a private education.”
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If we are to move the conversation on, then, we need to be clear that the success of private education is not replicable precisely because it offers the already socially and economically privileged superior resources and opportunities that inevitably augment their confidence and capabilities in every sphere. Private day schools now cost, on average, £14,500 a year – more than the annual disposable income of the average English family. Boarding is a great deal more costly. The annual fees of a top private school such as Westminster, which sends more students to Oxbridge than any other school in the country, are around £35,000 a year for boarders. Compare this with the average per-pupil spend in a state secondary school of between £4,000 and £6,000 a year. But the difference is not only in simple resources, for the spread of pupils at many state schools will include those from deprived or struggling families, compounding the pressures on their education and those who teach them, while a private school is in general recruiting from the already affluent, literate and enterprising. Thus, we need to publicly acknowledge that the success of private education is far less to do with character building or autonomous governance than the powerful alchemy of several kinds of advantage.

Now, more than ever, there is a strong moral and political argument in support of integration. At a time of growing divides and damaging inequality, we urgently need public institutions that bring the nation together, not further separate and divide us. For many in the UK, the idea of a unified education system to which all subscribe is too great a leap of the imagination, too daring a proposition – and yet the benefits of a common schooling could be immense.

Finland teaches us not only that state education will never be considered truly first-rate until we give all our children the same high-quality schooling, but also that a country that educates its children together has a better chance of being at ease with itself than one that segregates different parts of the population from an early age.

- And the BBC reports on Scotland's new policy making sanitary products available for free to students in order to remove one obvious drain on students' limited resources.

- Karri Munn-Venn makes the case for a federal budget which focuses on people's well-being, not merely GDP and profits. Gideon Resnick reports on Bernie Sanders' proposal to tax large employers who rely on social benefits to make up for their failure to pay a living wage. And David Olive offers a reminder of the tangible benefits of minimum wage increases.

- Meanwhile, Maya Bhullar talks to Hazel Corcoran the role workers' co-operatives can play in building a diverse economy with shared benefits.

- Finally, the New York Times' editorial board examines how harm reduction strategies are reducing the number of opioid-related deaths at the state level.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The New York Times' editorial board comments on the predictable flow of the Trump tax cuts toward primarily the few who already had more wealth than they could possibly put to productive use. And Tom Parkin discusses Jagmeet Singh's expectation that Canadians expect better from their government:

Surely one sharp contrast will be drawn with Trudeau’s proposed Infrastructure Bank, which hands over public infrastructure financing to private capital investors. Trudeau’s private banking approach increases financing costs significantly. And, because investor profits are required, Trudeau’s plan gives private investors a significant role in controlling which infrastructure projects — roads, bridges, community centres, transit — go forward and which won’t.

On infrastructure, Singh has plenty of room to develop contrasting policies that regain public control over projects and redirect financing costs into more project construction.

Another sharp policy contrast is likely to be drawn over tax policies. Trudeau, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper before him, continues to cut taxes and maintain loopholes for corporations and high-income Canadians, creating an increasingly unfair tax system.
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Singh’s contrasting vow to “unrig” the tax system and restore fairness isn’t new. During his NDP Leadership campaign, Singh released a bundle of tax fairness proposals including increased corporate taxes, higher taxes on incomes over $350,000 and an estate tax on high inherited wealth. Those ideas may now get fine-tuned, but clearly they will not be abandoned.

The broad strokes of Singh’s conflict with Trudeau have been drawn. Jagmeet Singh doesn’t simply seek to replace Justin Trudeau. Singh seeks to rebuild a trust, broken by Trudeau, that public infrastructure and progressive taxation are social goods that create fairness and a strong country. If Singh can rebuild that trust he will have put himself on strong ground for his conflict with Justin Trudeau in 2019.

- Meanwhile, Ed Pilkington reports on the massive amounts of money spread around by U.S. billionaires to attack public-sector unions to lay the groundwork for this week's Supreme Court argument to trash the concept of collective action. And Rachel Cohen highlights some of the consequences if collective bargaining is treated as pure free speech rather than a separate class of activity.  

- Chris O'Neill-Yates reports on Husky's "economic" decision to risk a collision between an oil production vessel and an iceberg, while the Canadian Press reports on the HMCS Calgary's fuel spill off of Vancouver Island.

- Max Fineday argues that there's no prospect of reconciliation in Canada as long as Indigenous people's lives are being treated as expendable. And Tanya Talaga discusses how a long and shameful track record of deaths without accountability parallels the history of injustice for Indigenous people.

- Finally, John Nichols makes the case to lower the legal voting age to 16.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Linda Tirado writes that whatever the language used as an excuse for turning public benefits into private profits, we should know better than to consider it credible:

Given how much I had heard my whole life about British dignity, and the fact that there is a thing here called the House of Lords, I had assumed I would find something like comity and refinement among the people charged with running the place. Instead, I found Boris Johnson.

I began to feel at home immediately. Then I heard the term “skivers and strivers”. It felt familiar – in America we say “makers and takers”. If you listen, you can’t help but hear US-style campaigning creeping into the British political system. It’s not only the rhyming phrases meant to boil an incredibly nuanced issue down to a simple cops v robbers scenario. It’s the exact same arguments.
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There is only so much variation you can put on one school of political thought, and both men are fairly mainstream-to-right with occasional forays into ideological counterproductivity. Both want to pare government spending to the bone, ostensibly to cut the debt and/or deficit depending on which we are very concerned with this week. In the end, you’ll wind up with some pretty sizeable tax cuts to the wealthy either way.

But can two countries with very different approaches to shared sacrifice and benefit have the same economic strategies? Given that a British citizen thinks it their right to see a doctor, and an American citizen may or may not think that the very idea is the reddest of Soviet plots, can privatising healthcare really solve the woes of both nations’ systems? It seems unlikely, given that the US still has an incredible number of people who are uninsured and the system is largely still run by private companies, that the solution will resemble what’s needed in the NHS.

- Jeremy Nuttall weighs in on the growth of food bank use in Canada. Miles Corak takes a look at income inequality, pointing out that a Working Income Tax Benefit which didn't wither away to nothing for the vast majority of workers would represent a good start in developing a more fair economic system. And Lars Osberg points out that there's plenty of room to increase how much high-end income goes to fund needed social benefits, while Carol Goar offers a few more suggestions as to how to pay for the Libs' campaign promises.

- CBC reports on the Canadian Institute for Health Information's latest study on the persistence - and in some case expansion - of health inequalities in Canada. And Canadian Doctors for Medicare calls for the federal government to step in and ensure that access to health care doesn't become a privilege reserved for the rich.

- Yves Engler writes that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is all about corporate control rather than free trade. And Michael Geist points out how the TPP is particularly flawed in its restrictions on digital policy.

- Barrie McKenna reports that the Libs are dropping at least one of the Cons' most gratuitous corporate giveaways by eliminating a mandatory P3 screen for infrastructure funding.

- Finally, the New York Times rightly argues that mass surveillance is neither necessary nor particularly helpful in trying to keep the public safe.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Charles Campbell discusses Robert Reich's work to highlight the importance of a fair and progressive tax system. And while Lawrence Martin is right to lament the systematic destruction of Canada's public revenue streams under the Libs and Cons alike, his fatalistic view that nobody can stem the tide doesn't seem to match the evidence that the public - in Canada and the U.S. alike - sees inequality as a problem to be solved rather than a fair result of corporate-friendly policies.

- Mark Taliano writes about the Harper Cons' distaste for evidence-based policy. And even the New York Times takes note of Stephen Harper's desperate attempts to suppress science when it comes to the tar sands:

Science is the gathering of hypotheses and the endless testing of them. It involves checking and double-checking, self-criticism and a willingness to overturn even fundamental assumptions if they prove to be wrong. But none of this can happen without open communication among scientists. This is more than an attack on academic freedom. It is an attempt to guarantee public ignorance.

It is also designed to make sure that nothing gets in the way of the northern resource rush — the feverish effort to mine the earth and the ocean with little regard for environmental consequences. The Harper policy seems designed to make sure that the tar sands project proceeds quietly, with no surprises, no bad news, no alarms from government scientists. To all the other kinds of pollution the tar sands will yield, we must now add another: the degradation of vital streams of research and information.

- Meanwhile, Tim Naumetz reports on Con rail safety spin which bears a striking resemblance to that on climate change: point to long-broken promises and not-yet-drafted regulations as "action", and hope nobody notices the difference between that and actual progress.

- And Paul Wells responds to selective leaks about the Cons' supposed reset by looking back at past throne speeches:

(G)etting righteous on behalf of consumers would have the virtue of novelty. If this government stands up for consumers, it has until now been bashful about saying so. The most recent Throne Speech, only 25 months ago, contained no mention of the word “consumer.” Previous Throne Speeches—there have been six in total from various Harper governments up to now—contained hardly any more language on consumers’ rights. But those old speeches make fun reading today anyway, for their mix of forced rhetoric, policy dead ends and, here and there, a few real portents of what Harper had in store.

On Oct. 16, 2007, Michaëlle Jean delivered the Harper government’s second Throne Speech. It contained one reference to consumers. “Our government shares the concern of parents about the safety of consumer products and food.” It also promised “binding national regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions across all major industrial sectors—with requirements for emissions reductions starting this year.” Six years later, there are still no regulations for the oil sands.

On Nov. 19, 2008, after Harper’s first re-election, everyone was back in the Senate for another big speech. “Our government will follow through with legislation providing better oversight of food, drug and consumer products,” Jean said. The government also promised to “respect the jurisdiction of the provinces and territories and . . . enshrine its principles of federalism in a charter of open federalism.” That didn’t happen.

The 2008 Speech’s odes to Parliament’s greatness read a little funny in retrospect. “Parliament is Canada’s most important national institution . . . Parliament should be an expression of our highest ideals and deepest values, our greatest hopes and grandest dreams for the future of our children.” Two weeks later, the three opposition parties tried to give Harper’s job to Stéphane Dion. Harper promptly petitioned the GG to prorogue the session, thereby saving his bacon. Rarely since has Parliament expressed anyone’s values or hopes. Even Harper prefers to express his values and hopes as far from the Commons as he can get.

- Finally, Duncan Cameron takes a look at the goals of each Canadian political party for this fall and beyond.