Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Polly Toynbee discusses how the UK's attacks on social programs are based on gross ignorance about what social spending does (and who it helps):

The Citizens Advice Bureau reports a rise of 78% in the last six months in people needing food banks to keep going. Many have jobs, but their pay doesn't see them to the end of the week. The CAB chief executive says millions of families face a "perfect storm" with benefit cuts, low wages, short hours and the high cost of living. Even in apparently well-to-do areas, community halls and churches are opening food banks so all can see those queuing for tins of beans and packets of pasta: basic calories, no treats and nothing fresh.
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YouGov's polling for the TUC found remarkable ignorance of the facts. People think 41% of the budget goes on unemployment – the real figure is 3%. They think fraud accounts for 27%: even Iain Duncan Smith's own figure is 0.7%. They think people have little incentive to work. In reality a parent working 30 hours on minimum pay gets £138 more than on the dole. Polling for the Institute for Public Policy Research similarly wildly mistakes who gets what. People think immigrants account for the biggest slice when pensioners take half. They say pensioners and the disabled are the most deserving, but if so, why is there no outcry about disability cuts and Atos tests where 1,300 people died last year after being found "fit for work"?
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The trouble with advocacy for the plight of the hard done-by is that we must always find "perfect" cases, people utterly blameless in every aspect of their life, judged by criteria none of us apply to ourselves, our family or friends. Mistakes, errors of judgment, bad habits, all too human in everyone else are unforgivable in anyone receiving benefits from the taxpayer: weed out smokers or drinkers or anyone too stupid, too lazy, too fat, too angry, too lacking in get-up-and-go or just too depressed to put on a good show.

How do you reconcile people's sugar-coated sympathy for imaginary unfortunates with their strong impulse to blame and punish real-life poor people? That's the conundrum that myriad think-tank reports and charities giving the true facts still fail to crack.

- Meanwhile, the CCPA and the Wellesley Institute wasted no time in debunking the Fraser Institute's pathetic assault on the well-being of families with children.

- In a similar vein, Toby Sanger neatly debunks the Conference Board of Canada's latest paean to P3s. And Simon Enoch and David Weir have responded to a few of the more ludicrous defences of turning public services into privatized profit centres when it comes to Regina's water treatment referendum.

- Stephen LaRose points out the level of diligence Michael Fougere and company are putting into the City of Regina's operations.

- And finally, pogge responds to Robert Decary's report on federal government surveillance by writing that we should expect our watchdogs to have at least some bite. But it seems to me that the problem goes even further than that.

There's certainly room for debate whether a watchdog should be able to make binding orders - i.e. whether it should be able to bite into activity as it happens, or merely bark out a warning. But I don't see how anybody can reasonably defend the position that a watchdog should be forced to wear blinders rather than getting a full picture - and the lack of any information whatsoever in response to Decary's inquiries looks to me to be the most damning part of his findings.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Peter Buffett rightly questions the trend toward making the provision of basic necessities subordinate to a corporate mindset, rather than putting human needs first:

As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.

But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life.

And with more business-minded folks getting into the act, business principles are trumpeted as an important element to add to the philanthropic sector. I now hear people ask, “what’s the R.O.I.?” when it comes to alleviating human suffering, as if return on investment were the only measure of success. Microlending and financial literacy (now I’m going to upset people who are wonderful folks and a few dear friends) — what is this really about? People will certainly learn how to integrate into our system of debt and repayment with interest. People will rise above making $2 a day to enter our world of goods and services so they can buy more. But doesn’t all this just feed the beast?

I’m really not calling for an end to capitalism; I’m calling for humanism. 

- And Moises Velasquez-Manoff discusses the inherent and destructive stress involved in living in poverty:

Although professionals may bemoan their long work hours and high-pressure careers, really, there’s stress, and then there’s Stress with a capital “S.” The former can be considered a manageable if unpleasant part of life; in the right amount, it may even strengthen one’s mettle. The latter kills.

What’s the difference? Scientists have settled on an oddly subjective explanation: the more helpless one feels when facing a given stressor, they argue, the more toxic that stressor’s effects.

That sense of control tends to decline as one descends the socioeconomic ladder, with potentially grave consequences. Those on the bottom are more than three times as likely to die prematurely as those at the top. They’re also more likely to suffer from depression, heart disease and diabetes. Perhaps most devastating, the stress of poverty early in life can have consequences that last into adulthood.
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A nurturing bond with a caregiver in a stimulating environment appears essential for proper brain development and healthy maturation of the stress response. That sounds easy enough, except that such bonds, and the broader social networks that support them, are precisely what poverty disrupts. If you’re an underpaid, overworked parent — worried, behind on rent, living in a crime-ridden neighborhood — your parental skills are more likely to be compromised. That’s worrisome given the trends in the United States. About one in five children now lives below the poverty line, a 35 percent increase in a decade. Unicef recently ranked the United States No. 26 in childhood well-being, out of 29 developed countries. When considering just childhood poverty, only Romania fares worse.

-Vanessa Brcic calls for British Columbia to restore the Therapeutics Initiative as a sorely-needed fair arbiter of drug effectiveness. The Star pleads for somebody to take on long-term responsibility for the Experimental Lakes Area. And Stephen LaRose points to Winnipeg as a prime example of the (nonexistent) returns when a civic government prioritizes big-money sports and entertainment over actual needs.

- Finally, Haroon Siddiqui holds out some hope that Chris Alexander might revisit some of Jason Kenney's most damaging moves as Minister of Immigration (though I'd add "employer-driven" to his overall freeze proposal):

Kenney’s changes have not been popular, have not worked, have not reduced backlogs and have not improved the system — indeed, have made a mess of it.

We are bringing 250,000 immigrants a year and tens of thousands of guest workers when 1.3 million Canadians don’t have jobs, another million are underemployed or have given up looking for work, and the unemployment rate for both the young as well as new immigrants is twice the national average. Of the immigrants who do have jobs, three in four are not using the education and skills for which they were picked as immigrants.

Perversely, the temporary foreign workers program (which brought in at least 500,000 workers) grew even as the economy slowed down. Kenney’s mantra of “skills shortages” has been shown to be a bit of a fraud. As the Star’s Nicholas Keung reported Tuesday, for example, Canada imported more than 6,000 temps as chefs and cooks in 2011, when Canadian colleges are churning out culinary graduates in record numbers.
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All this brings me, Mr. Alexander, to ask you this:

Tell us why you should not freeze immigration until the job picture improves, both for them and Canadians; axe the temporary foreign workers program; restore health benefits to refugees; stop the shameful treatment of the Roma; and why your government that emphasizes family values is being so punitive toward the family reunification of immigrant families.

Sunday Afternoon 'Rider Blogging

I was going to post about the 'Riders' offseason...until Stephen LaRose said pretty much everything I planned to say. So instead, I'll stick to pointing out where I'd question or clarify LaRose's take.

Simply put, I think he's right to compare the current 'Rider team to the 1976 version as a needlessly old group assembled with too little regard for the team's longer-term development. But I also think that the current roster is closer to 1976 than 1977: with one important caveat, the veterans aren't so far over the hill that the team figures to suffer.

And indeed, there's still at least some room for improvement over last season. The offense has plenty of weapons if the offensive line stays healthy and develops together (as I don't see Patrick Neufeld being anything more than a backup if a unit of Fulton/LaBatte/Picard/Best/Heenan plays to its potential), and the defence has far more playmakers than last year's version if John Chick and Ricky Foley have anything left in the tank.

With that in mind, I'd place the 'Riders' expected record - given fairly good health - around 10-8 (with plenty of early wins and a few more late losses). But that may not lead the 'Riders to continue the trend of teams making and winning the Grey Cup at home, particularly if the veterans wear down over the course of the season.

And the 'Riders are facing some ugly risks further down their depth chart. The biggest problem with filling out one's roster by thumbing through past CFL yearbooks is that there are few young players with any prospect of stepping into a bigger role to replace anybody who gets hurt (with the receiver position looking like the lone exception). Darian Durant's health is an absolute must for any 'Rider hopes; Neufeld may not be a part of the ideal offensive line, but without him the team has no margin for error with its remaining unit; an already-small defensive line could reach a critical point with a single injury to Keith Shologan or Tearrius George; and the linebacking corps is comprised almost entirely of players who have washed out elsewhere.

Now, if there's a rational strategy to be pursued with the current roster, it might well involve overpaying some veterans early, being prepared to trade or cut anybody who doesn't play up to his past peak level in the first few weeks, and encouraging the remaining vets to mentor a wave of new players around mid-season to set the 'Riders up for both a playoff drive and seasons to come. But given Brendan Taman's preference for pricey vets and lack of focus on player development, the plan instead seems to be to ride the new arrivals as far as possible - with no backup plan in sight.


That might well lead to the type of panic trade feared by LaRose - but a precarious cap situation figures to limit how many more vets the 'Riders can take on during the season. Which means that the best hope may be for the team's new imports to join the front office in failing to notice that it's no longer the late aughts - and stay healthy and productive accordingly.