To dream fondly of the day when ads haunt our dreams

Heather Mallick's column about the public's willingness to sell out to the corporate sector for cheap unfortunately meanders off on a few too many tangents before reaching much of a point. But even if she'd connected with a truly incisive take, snark has nothing on Terence Corcoran - who goes to far as to whine that spam e-mails are "essential in a market economy", and to suggest that any legislation goes too far in regulating the digital equivalent of door-to-door sales.

Which leads to the question: exactly how many people - the marketing industry excepted - actually see the constant intrusion of advertisers as a net social good?

To be clear, there are some genuine reasons for concern about the anti-spam legislation in its present form. But it takes a truly fundamentalist consumerist to suggest that CASL's fundamental flaw is that it might allow people a moment's peace from the ever-expanding reach of the corporate sector.

And indeed, if anybody actually wants to test Corcoran's thesis as to the effect of advertising, surely the more likely conclusion is that we'd rather have less of it blasted at us - in person, on the phone, online and everywhere else - rather than succumbing to a future of an endless series of vacuum salesmen pounding on our doors forever.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

On revolting logic

Shorter Terence Corcoran:

A Spanish-style tax revolt to defund government is the only way for Ontario and Quebec residents to avoid the fiscal disaster caused by the Spanish tax revolt.

On social roles

The work (PDF) of the Saskatchewan Election Study in analyzing public views of unions is worth a read generally. But it's particularly worth noting that the element of union activity which the public considers to be most valuable is also the part facing the most regular attacks from Brad Wall and his corporate boosters.

Here's Loleen Berdahl and David McGrane on the comparative views of different union roles:

In so far as people perceive unions as narrowly defending the interests of their own members, the public reaction is negative. Indeed, almost three in five (58.1 per cent) respondents feel that unions generally ask for too much. However, the public is more positive regarding the broader role of unions, and a strong majority (64.8 per cent) feels that unions play an important role in promoting better working conditions and wages. 

...

Unions will not find a sympathetic public if they are perceived only to be fighting for more money for their members. To garner public support, the union movement needs to frame its communication around its struggles to improve the lives of all workers, and how they aid the most vulnerable in Saskatchewan.

In fact, those who aren't in the workforce (full-time caregivers, students, retirees and the unemployed) are some of the biggest supporters of unions.

And it surely isn't a coincidence that Wall and his party have tried to stifle the most popular (and arguably the most important) part of the role of Saskatchewan's labour movement.

For the most part, the Sask Party hasn't publicly argued that unions should be limited in their role of representing members in dealing with particular employers - even if its specific legislation has been far more extreme than the party's message for public consumption.

But it's been another story when it comes to the role of unions in promoting better working conditions and wages generally. Wall has personally launched broadside attacks against "politically active" unions in general, while his party has tried to silence particular unions who have dared to speak out. And Wall's corporatist cheerleaders have been happy to echo the message that unions should be prevented from doing anything beyond negotiating and enforcing collective bargaining agreements.

Fortunately, the Saskatchewan Election Study polling data offers a strong indication that the general public disagrees with Wall's desire to limit the scope of union activity. And the more the Sask Party tries to crack down on what citizens in general recognize to be an important service, the more likely we'll see the labour movement emerge ahead of Wall's corporate backers in the court of public opinion.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Graham Thomson notes that for all the permutations and combinations that have developed among Alberta's opposition parties over the past few years, the NDP's strong principles have positioned it nicely in the lead up to a possible fall election:

Even though they might not admit it, New Democrats wouldn't mind a fall election. The provincial party is still basking in the afterglow of the Orange Wave that saw federal leader Jack Layton take the party to Official Opposition status for the first time.

The Environics poll of Alberta politics put the New Democrats into a statistical three-way tie for second place with the Wildrose and Liberals. All of a sudden, New Democrats are no longer in fourth place. Also giving the Alberta New Democrats a confidence boost are the federal election results where more than 230,000 Albertans supported the party.

Almost half that support is in Edmonton where the party is focusing its attention on a fall election. And narrowing the focus even more, the NDP won its one Alberta seat in Edmonton-Strathcona with the reelection of Linda Duncan.

It's all good news for Alberta New Democrats, especially Notley who represents the provincial riding of Edmonton-Strathcona and who, thanks to the federal campaign, already has targeted more than 12,000 supporters.
...
Alberta's New Democrats have such a long uphill climb they should equip their candidates with crampons and rope. But they are also among the most optimistic of Alberta's political parties, realizing they are staking out a unique position as the only politicians talking about increasing royalties on oil and gas companies and cracking down more forcefully on the environmental impact of the oilsands.

- Simon Enoch discusses Saskatchewan's highly unusual and distortionary electoral boundaries - just in time for the boundary review process which looks likely to change them.

- Andrew Steele offers some common-sense advice to political parties: for all the promise of online citizen engagement, knocking on doors is still the #1 priority in trying to win over voters.

- I'm not sure we can accurately say that Terence Corcoran is leading Canada's intellectual retreat when politicians like the Ford brothers and the bulk of the federal Cons receive so much more attention. But Erin is right to call out his Tea Party-esque nonsense.

- Finally, Matt Taibbi points out one of the many outrageous possibilities on the U.S. political scene, as it seems entirely possible that corporations who have sent money offshore will once again be rewarded for their manipulation of the law with a tax holiday.

On surprising standards

I'm sure Terence Corcoran thinks he's making a brilliant sarcastic point of some sort. But ideology aside, is there actually any reason to disagree in the slightest with his portrayal of the Guardian's take on the NotW scandal?

And we have The Guardian, revered organ of the British left, leading the charge against News of the World, reviled organ of the Murdochian right, for breach of journalistic ethics — the same Guardian that became the British home of WikiLeaks’ illegal dump of U.S. diplomatic communications. Clearly a large double-standard reigns at The Guardian. It is good and just for the media to engage in illegal activity to wage ideological war on causes and political powers those same media have determined in their wisdom to be wrong or immoral, but it is reprehensible and immoral to engage in illegal activity to probe the private affairs of celebrities, royalty or common people.

Or put in simpler terms: is Corcoran honestly arguing that the media should be just as vigilant and ready to toss aside the formalities of the law in "(probing) the private affairs...of common people" as it is in holding policymakers (who may themselves have ordered information suppressed on questionable grounds) to account for their decisions?

Because if so, I can't believe he hasn't yet found his way to Sun Media.

Wednesday Morning Links

Content goes here.

- Erin takes on Jack Mintz' latest set of fact-free tax-cut cheerleading, this time by pointing to Mintz' own apparently-forgotten words about the optimal tax level:

He claims that the revenue loss will be “relatively small” or “relatively insignificant” without actually suggesting a dollar amount (pages 3 and 20). By comparison, the Department of Finance (see Table 3.5), the opposition parties, and even the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters estimate that this cut will reduce annual corporate tax revenues by $6 billion.

The “relatively small” claim has a footnote citing the 2007 Tax Competitiveness Report, also authored by Mintz. That report referenced “the tax-revenue-maximizing rate of 28 percent” (pages 0, 14 and 22).

The proposal Mintz now finds so odious is to roll back the federal rate to 18%. With a 10% provincial rate, that would mean a combined rate of 28%!

So, today’s report alleges that there is “little, if any, revenue cost” (page 20) to cutting well below what Mintz himself identified as the “tax-revenue-maximizing rate.” (Finance Canada and I think the revenue-maximizing rate is far above 28%.)

- And even better, Erin is at least getting a few lines in edgewise in CP's coverage of Mintz. Though four lines compared to at least as many full articles dedicated to Mintz is far less than what's needed to provide any semblance of balance to the discussion.

- Carol Goar criticizes the opacity of over a hundred billion dollars in tax breaks currently littering Canada's public policy:

(I)t would be salutary to scrap some (tax breaks). The trouble is neither MPs nor citizens have enough information to evaluate or debate them. Parliamentarians can’t hold the government to account for them. Taxpayers can’t ask that an outdated or inequitable tax expenditure be scrapped in order to preserve a valued program or service.

It’s wrong that these tax preferences are not part of pre-budget consultations. They have an important bearing on the cost of government and the size of the deficit.

It is regrettable that Canadians have to rely to guesstimates and pocket-calculator figures. But what is most disturbing is that a multi-billion component of the nation’s finances is off-limits to the people who pay Canada’s bills.

- Finally, Terence Corcoran, it's time to step away from the Kool-Aid. (Or else provide some evidence for the stunning assertion that innovation has been universally "repressed" since time immemorial.)

None so blind as those who refuse to see

Shorter Terence Corcoran:

If we assume that the bottom 50% are too insignificant to count, the top 1% too exclusive to be lumped in with their lessers, and the time period before the begin of the '80s greedfest too distant to be worth considering, then wealth disparity has hardly increased at all.

WHEEEEEEE! It's HACKEY-SLASHEY TIME!!!!!!!

If Stockwell Day is less than sorry about making reckless federal budget cuts, Terence Corcoran is positively giddy about the prospect. But let's set aside how wary one should be about anybody who's been sitting in the corner for years lovingly stroking an axe in hopes of being offered the chance to play executioner.

Even ignoring that starting point, shouldn't the fact that Corcoran's #1 idea is to gut health care modernization serve as a rather stark signal that the idea may not be in line with the priorities of Canadians?

The far end of the spectrum

Shorter Terence Corcoran:
It utterly baffles me why the federal government would auction off space on the wireless spectrum for prices which providers are more than willing to pay, rather than simply handing it to telecoms for free.

A cool reception

Shorter Terence Corcoran (2 for 1 special edition!):
I simply can't conceive of a value system which would prioritize the survival of half the species on Earth, along with a substantial proportion of humanity, over a cheaper supply of consumer goods.

-and-

Having successfully lobbied the Con government to thumb its nose at Canada's Kyoto obligations, allow me to lecture you on the sacrosanct inviolability of international trade agreements.

Noxious emissions

Shorter Terence Corcoran:
If Canada's highest-profile corporate figures are more willing to recognize the need for action on climate change than the Con government, that only demonstrates that big business isn't sufficiently business-friendly.