Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Oliver Moore reports on Greyhound's elimination of most of its Western Canadian bus service. Emily Riddle offers a reminder that the lack of transportation puts Indigenous women and other marginalized people at risk. And Simon Enoch highlights the obvious need for Saskatchewan to resume operating a public rural bus service.

- The Globe and Mail feigns shock at the revelation that Doug Ford is in fact Doug Ford, while Tom Parkin documents the fiscal crisis Ford is deliberately creating. And Andray Domise appropriately labels Ford's rule-by-antagonism - though it's worth noting that the under the typical right-wing faux-populist model, deliberate attacks on perceived enemies serve largely to distract from the greater goal of looting the public treasury for the benefit of cronies.

- Joel Lexchin examines the large amounts of money spent by big pharma to try to influence Canadian health care providers - and the lack of much means for the public to track the results of that investment.

- Scott Sinclair makes the case for Canada to protect its supply management system from the demands of U.S. agribusiness giants.

- Finally, Michelle Chen writes about a push for New York City to set up a public bank to ensure all of its residents have access to needed financial services. And Maddy Savage points out how Norway's responsible and socially-minded management of resource wealth has made it one of the few developed countries where younger workers are able to live comfortably.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- James Galbraith reminds us of the danger extreme inequality poses to any social bonds - and the need for political action to counteract the current momentum toward further concentration of wealth:

Controlling inequality—like controlling blood pressure—is good for your economic health. Economies with less inequality generally have lower unemployment and stronger productivity growth, and some researchers also claim better human health and social cohesion. In terms of the rest of the world, the peculiar organization of the United States into a boom/bust economy based on finance and high technology is the exception rather than the rule: We combine record-breaking inequality with low unemployment. But this is a formula that generates massive instability, as well as the resentments that gave us President Trump. Countries with stronger stabilizing institutions built on the principle of countervailing power may be less rich over the short term, but they are better-governed and built to last.
...
The US government, in short, needs to break away from the grip of concentrated financial power and from the illusions of dominance that come with feeling exceptional, invincible, and rich. Financial power has an interest in instability at home and abroad. It has an interest in seeking to dominate what can no longer be dominated. It is therefore a vector for depredation and for conflict, neither of which we can afford—especially in an era of existential risks to the environment, through climate change, and to the future of life on the planet, through nuclear war.

Ultimately, therefore, this is a political struggle. “Wealth, as Mr. Hobbes says, is power,” notes Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. And Thomas Hobbes was right; anyone who observes the US political scene knows this, as does anyone who participates in American politics. In the end, inequality—both in the United States and around the world—is a problem that can only have a political solution.

- Robert Kuttner argues that the Trump Republicans' giveaway to their obscenely wealthy donors should be the central issue of the U.S.' midterm elections. And Peter Whoriskey discusses how the monetization of poverty by a predatory financial sector is only making inequality all the worse.

- Martin Sandbu explores the idea of a jobs guarantee, but argues that it's a less desirable alternative to a basic income which would ensure that personal financial security isn't tied to work alone. And Bernadette Meaden discusses the UK Cons' shameful determination to take any source of support away from some of the people who need it most.

- Finally, Roger Noll and Robert Litan respond to Donald Trump's attack on supply management by pointing out the false claims behind it.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- PressProgress highlights the Canada Revenue Agency's long-overdue estimate of the public costs of offshore tax evasion, as well as other new data on the money being withheld through corporate tax non-compliance:

On Thursday, Canada’s tax collection agency published its first ever estimate of the international tax gap, revealing wealthy Canadians are evading up to $3 billion in tax every year through offshore tax havens.

The CRA estimates the amount of money wealthy Canadians are stashing offshore could range between $75.9 billion and $240.5 billion.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, CBC News obtained internal CRA documents that suggests Canada is losing more than $22 billion per year to corporate tax dodgers.

Together, corporate tax dodgers and wealthy elites are now costing Canada at least $25 billion every year – that alone would cover the costs of a national pharmacare plan, introduce a national child care program and cut poverty in Canada in half.

- Meanwhile, Rob Shaw comments on the B.C. Libs' eager facilitation of money laundering through casinos - including by repeatedly shutting down law enforcement investigating the problem. 

- David Macdonald studies the radically inconsistent availability of child care across Canada, including "deserts" where there's no reliable expectation of being able to find care. And CBC notes that most children in Saskatchewan's major cities are trapped in those deserts.

- Michael Tutton reports on a new federal study discussing the massive steps needed to deal with our current rate of climate change.

- Finally, Armine Yalnizyan responds to the corporatist attempt to destroy supply management by pointing out that the only alternative is putting ourselves at the mercy of heavily-subsidized U.S. agribusiness giants.

New column day

Here, taking a look at the voter pools the NDP will be looking to win over in order to come out ahead in if this fall's federal election turns into a two-party race. And I'll note that while Alberta may serve as the most recent precedent, similar patterns can be found in the NDP's previous rises to power in other provinces.

For further reading...
- Both Nanos and EKOS have polled as to the federal parties' accessible and second-choice support, with the NDP currently leading the pack on both fronts.
- And for more about the business groups who have reason to want to see a change from the Cons, Dean Beeby discusses the problems facing Canada's manufacturing sector. Daniel Tencer reported on tech industry opposition to Bill C-51. And Karen Briere reports on how the Trans-Pacific Partnership is creating uncertainty in supply-managed agricultural sectors, while Michael Geist highlighted some of the other obvious costs of the deal.

By their own logic...

The Cons are claiming that a failure to mention a seemingly settled issue in a party's platform should be taken as evidence that the party lacks commitment to it.

The Cons' own platform doesn't mention the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - except to criticize the fact that it doesn't mention property rights.

So does that mean that by the Cons' own standards, we should be worried that they're not committed to the Charter, and will gut it at their first opportunity?

(Of course, I'm sure there are even better examples. So search away at the Cons' platform to see what it is that they're failing to defend.)