Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Thomas Walkom writes about the Libs' dangerous efforts to turn the page on COVID-19 as Canada's primary political concern.
- Murray Mandryk highlights how Scott Moe's budget accomplishes nothing either to address our immediate crisis, or to chart a long-term course for Saskatchewan. And Sareth Pereis writes that a budget intended to paper over severe social, health and economic challenges until after election day only ensures that we'll face far more pain in the future.
- Robyn Urback rightly slams large grocery chains for trying to take back pay increases from their workers while a pandemic continues to put them at risk every day. And Rosa Marchitelli exposes how Colliers is among the employers engaged in systematic wage and time theft from employees - but faces none of the consequences common when the shoe is alleged to be on the other foot.
- Bryan Labby reports on new polling showing that Albertans are increasingly willing to pay a sales tax in order to properly fund public services.
- Jennifer Koshan, Lisa Silver, and Jonnette Watson Hamilton challenge the Jason Kenney UCP's attack on peaceful expression and assembly. And Brandi Morin reports on the racial targeting underlying Bill 1.
- Finally, Owen Jones discusses how the toppling of statues is forcing the UK to confront its own ongoing racism.
Showing posts with label sarath pereis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sarath pereis. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Thursday, March 19, 2020
On safety concerns
One of the great mysteries of Scott Moe’s tenure in power is how he’s evaded scrutiny for a personal track record which has demonstrated a gross lack of judgment - including getting convicted of impaired driving, causing a separate accident which killed another person, and filing for bankruptcy.
In the Saskatchewan Party’s leadership campaign, Moe managed to stay just below front-runner status which might have caused competitors to focus more on his weaknesses. And since he took power, the NDP has understandably focused on the many problems with what Moe’s government has been doing more while in office, rather than his past personal actions.
To be sure, it’s a noble impulse to presume that people can overcome and learn from their past tragedies. But there comes a point where we need to ask whether somebody is repeating the patterns which caused them to happen.
And in Moe’s case, the answer is alarming.
Moe offered a brief media tour when his fatal car crash was raised during the course of the Saskatchewan Party leadership campaign. And his responses then are telling today.
While Moe acknowledged the collision, he avoided humanizing the victim (phrasing his descriptions along the lines of “there was a fatality”). And he's equally plainly dodged any self-awareness or responsibility - recognizing that the RCMP’s investigation determined that he drove unsafely, but portraying the crash as a mere matter of whether he proceeded “a few moments earlier, a few moments later”, rather than something for which he bore any fault.
Moe’s pattern of barrelling ahead with insufficient regard for the safety of himself or others has followed him into power. And now, it’s set the tone for his government.
It would have been telling enough for Moe to pursue a snap spring election at the best of times. Even leaving aside the lack of ethics involved in manipulating a fixed election date for partisan advantage, Canadian political history is rife with leaders who received a rude awakening after indulging in enough hubris to believe that an unnecessary early election was the road to holding power indefinitely.
Even worse, though, Moe was positively gleeful in taunting the NDP and the province about calling an election at a time when any avoidable person-to-person contact exacerbates the risks of a public health emergency - while his party also mocked the NDP's well-founded efforts to point out how dangerous that would have been.
Having reluctantly ruled out the snap election plan (while again refusing to admit he could possibly have been in the wrong), Moe has continued to demonstrate a glaring lack of attention to dangerous driving conditions, insisting on presenting budget documentation for political consumption long after anybody could possibly think it bore any resemblance to reality. It was only this week that he finally and farcically decided to erase the revenue side of the ledger altogether from a spending plan - which figures to allow his party to advertise its election platform on the public dime.
That’s all consistent with the Saskatchewan Party's political strategy of making loud announcements, spending millions of corporate dollars on slanderous attack ads, and hoping to have people make surface judgments based on a lack of information. (And if Moe had been able to get his way, an election held during a pandemic might well have helped in creating that political environment.)
And the problem goes far beyond Moe himself: as he's set the example, his passengers in cabinet have chosen to egg him on. Gord Wyant has taken to shouting insults at any passer-by brazen enough to suggest that Moe keep his eyes on the road; Don Morgan and Jim Reiter have gone out of their way to moon Meili and the NDP, rather than focusing on some of the most important cabinet roles in a public health crisis.
The end result is that Moe’s reckless joyride is endangering everybody in Saskatchewan. And as a province, we need to ask how many people have to get killed by our premier’s unsafe driving before we finally wrestle the keys away.
In the Saskatchewan Party’s leadership campaign, Moe managed to stay just below front-runner status which might have caused competitors to focus more on his weaknesses. And since he took power, the NDP has understandably focused on the many problems with what Moe’s government has been doing more while in office, rather than his past personal actions.
To be sure, it’s a noble impulse to presume that people can overcome and learn from their past tragedies. But there comes a point where we need to ask whether somebody is repeating the patterns which caused them to happen.
And in Moe’s case, the answer is alarming.
Moe offered a brief media tour when his fatal car crash was raised during the course of the Saskatchewan Party leadership campaign. And his responses then are telling today.
While Moe acknowledged the collision, he avoided humanizing the victim (phrasing his descriptions along the lines of “there was a fatality”). And he's equally plainly dodged any self-awareness or responsibility - recognizing that the RCMP’s investigation determined that he drove unsafely, but portraying the crash as a mere matter of whether he proceeded “a few moments earlier, a few moments later”, rather than something for which he bore any fault.
Moe’s pattern of barrelling ahead with insufficient regard for the safety of himself or others has followed him into power. And now, it’s set the tone for his government.
It would have been telling enough for Moe to pursue a snap spring election at the best of times. Even leaving aside the lack of ethics involved in manipulating a fixed election date for partisan advantage, Canadian political history is rife with leaders who received a rude awakening after indulging in enough hubris to believe that an unnecessary early election was the road to holding power indefinitely.
Even worse, though, Moe was positively gleeful in taunting the NDP and the province about calling an election at a time when any avoidable person-to-person contact exacerbates the risks of a public health emergency - while his party also mocked the NDP's well-founded efforts to point out how dangerous that would have been.
Having reluctantly ruled out the snap election plan (while again refusing to admit he could possibly have been in the wrong), Moe has continued to demonstrate a glaring lack of attention to dangerous driving conditions, insisting on presenting budget documentation for political consumption long after anybody could possibly think it bore any resemblance to reality. It was only this week that he finally and farcically decided to erase the revenue side of the ledger altogether from a spending plan - which figures to allow his party to advertise its election platform on the public dime.
That’s all consistent with the Saskatchewan Party's political strategy of making loud announcements, spending millions of corporate dollars on slanderous attack ads, and hoping to have people make surface judgments based on a lack of information. (And if Moe had been able to get his way, an election held during a pandemic might well have helped in creating that political environment.)
And the problem goes far beyond Moe himself: as he's set the example, his passengers in cabinet have chosen to egg him on. Gord Wyant has taken to shouting insults at any passer-by brazen enough to suggest that Moe keep his eyes on the road; Don Morgan and Jim Reiter have gone out of their way to moon Meili and the NDP, rather than focusing on some of the most important cabinet roles in a public health crisis.
The end result is that Moe’s reckless joyride is endangering everybody in Saskatchewan. And as a province, we need to ask how many people have to get killed by our premier’s unsafe driving before we finally wrestle the keys away.
Thursday, October 31, 2019
New column day
Here, on the problems with the Saskatchewan Party's mismanagement which deserve far more attention than Scott Moe's attempts to pick fights with the federal government for show - including the need to plan for a future in which fossil fuel extraction won't be the basis for a viable economy.
For further reading...
- Again, Sarath Pereis and Murray Mandryk have both commented on Moe's childish posturing against the federal government.
- CBC has reported on the high personal debt faced by Saskatchewan's residents. And Stephen Gordon's chart of mortgages in arrears shows that more people are underwater than at any time since the end and aftermath of the Devine years.
- Umair Irfan reports on the combination of planned blackouts and wildfires devastating California as one of the most obvious immediate consequences of the climate crisis.
- Finally, Jillian Ambrose reports on the emerging plans to fully power the world with offshore wind turbines, while Nicola Davis reports on developing technology which could allow electric vehicles to charge in minutes. Reuters takes note that Volkswagen is rapidly transitioning its production from combustion engines to electric based on the recognition that the former won't remain viable for long. And Noah Smith comments on the end of the oil age.
For further reading...
- Again, Sarath Pereis and Murray Mandryk have both commented on Moe's childish posturing against the federal government.
- CBC has reported on the high personal debt faced by Saskatchewan's residents. And Stephen Gordon's chart of mortgages in arrears shows that more people are underwater than at any time since the end and aftermath of the Devine years.
- Umair Irfan reports on the combination of planned blackouts and wildfires devastating California as one of the most obvious immediate consequences of the climate crisis.
- Finally, Jillian Ambrose reports on the emerging plans to fully power the world with offshore wind turbines, while Nicola Davis reports on developing technology which could allow electric vehicles to charge in minutes. Reuters takes note that Volkswagen is rapidly transitioning its production from combustion engines to electric based on the recognition that the former won't remain viable for long. And Noah Smith comments on the end of the oil age.
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Klaus Schwab comments on the importance of making decisions with far more of a long-term focus, rather paying attention only to short-term dollar calculations:
- Elizabeth Renzetti writes that this week's federal election result only increases the desperate need for a proportional electoral system. And David Beers discusses the continued fallout from Justin Trudeau's broken promise to implement one.
- Finally, Sarath Peiris rightly criticizes Scott Moe for stoking separatism and ignorance. And
Murray Mandryk writes that Moe's temper tantrum about the federal election results is the last thing Saskatchewan needs.
- Klaus Schwab comments on the importance of making decisions with far more of a long-term focus, rather paying attention only to short-term dollar calculations:
(W)e should develop scorecards to track our performance on these long-term priorities. To that end, I have three suggestions. First, we need to rethink GDP as our “key performance indicator” in economic policymaking. Second, we should embrace independent tracking tools for assessing progress under the Paris agreement and the SDGs. Third, we must implement “stakeholder capitalism” by introducing an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scorecard for businesses.- Karl Nerenberg suggests that the Libs should be willing to work with the NDP and the Greens in a collaborative government. And Paul Wells argues that it's time to prove that it's possible for our politics to be better than we're currently being forced to accept.
...
Adopting these three scorecards – new global growth metrics, a climate tracker, and a measure of ESG – would go a long way toward addressing the world’s greatest long-term challenges. It would also help us alleviate today’s economic crises and avoid future ones, by demonstrating to a disgruntled public that political and business leaders really are working for everyone’s interests, and not just their own. I invite every stakeholder in the global economy to join in these efforts to end the era of short-termism.
- Elizabeth Renzetti writes that this week's federal election result only increases the desperate need for a proportional electoral system. And David Beers discusses the continued fallout from Justin Trudeau's broken promise to implement one.
- Finally, Sarath Peiris rightly criticizes Scott Moe for stoking separatism and ignorance. And
Murray Mandryk writes that Moe's temper tantrum about the federal election results is the last thing Saskatchewan needs.
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