Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Murray Mandryk writes that any responsible government has to be willing to prepare for renewed restrictions on activity if the spread of COVID-19 requires it - though sadly, Scott Moe is falling short of that standard while reiterating his determination to prioritize profit over people.

- Matt Bruenig offers a framework for unemployment benefits which offers plenty of food for thought about how Canada's EI can be improved to cover far more people with fewer arbitrary restrictions and limitations.

- Blanca Mugyenyi highlights how preposterous it is for Canada to be pushing ahead with a $19 billion fighter jet purchase while laying the groundwork to cut off benefits to people in the face of a pandemic.

- Jim Pickard, Daniel Thomas and Gill Plimmer discuss how the Libs' infrastructure bank is serving as an embarrassing model for the UK Cons' scheme to privatize infrastructure development. And PressProgress points out that Doug Ford's PC government - which was happy to pour public money into trashing renewable energy and facilitating beer sales - has disappeared a billion dollars promised for repairs to Ontario schools.

- Zoe Yunker exposes the oil and gas industry's demands for perpetual power price subsidies from British Columbia. And Nathan Lemphers and Martin Olszynski discuss the need for Alberta to finally ensure that the fossil fuel sector pays to clean up its own messes.

- Finally, Abrahm Lustgarten highlights the climate migration which has already begun - but which is bound to accelerate if we don't rein in a climate breakdown which threatens to render vast swaths of the Earth uninhabitable. And Thor Benson writes that our experience with coronavirus-related shutdowns has only confirmed that we can't protect our planet merely by reducing individual emissions.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Tavis Smiley discusses the need to speak realistically about the causes and effects of poverty, rather than simply dismissing real human costs as somebody else's fault and problem. And similarly, Tim Stacey comments on the appalling "empathy gap" - which sees upper-class mouthpieces complaining about the cost of luxuries while claiming that the poor have it easier in trying to scrape together the essentials of life.

- But for the most compelling indication as to the consequences of policies designed to attack rather than assist those in need, CBC reports on a Harris poll showing that 39% of Canada's long-term unemployed have completely given up on looking for work - as the Cons' attempts to bully people back to work have predictably done nothing to create opportunities worth pursuing.

- Meanwhile, PressProgress challenges Tim Hudak's complete and baseless belief in the magic of corporate handouts. And Thomas Walkom notes that Hudak's entire jobs plan has been met with nothing but refutation by anybody who takes a meaningful look at it.

- Emily Atkin's report on the Harper Cons' squelching of environmental and scientific reporting is well worth a read. And Charles Pierce offers a reminder that the use of state coercion to further corporate power at the expense of the public interest isn't limited either to the oil sector or to Canada's federal government.

- Finally, Tim Harper poses six questions about murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada which cry out for answers (rather than the Cons' continued denial and obfuscation).

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Joshua Holland writes that for all the social and cultural factors contribution to U.S. sickness and death, inequality ranks at the top of the list:

Here in the United States, our high level of income inequality corresponds with 883, 914 unnecessary deaths each year. More specifically, the report concluded that if we had an income distribution more like that of the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland — or eleven other wealthy countries — every year, about one in three deaths in the US could be avoided.

Put that into perspective. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), tobacco, including second-hand smoke, causes approximately 480,000 deaths every year, and in 2010, traffic accidents killed 33,687 people and 31,672 others died of gunshot wounds.

The mechanism by which a bullet or a car crash kills is readily apparent. Inequality is lethal in ways that are less obvious. It’s a silent killer – a deadly plague that we, as a society, tend not to acknowledge.

- Meanwhile, Paul Krugman highlights the important questions receiving renewed attention as a result of Thomas Piketty's work - along with the reasons why the corporate right doesn't want to see them discussed:

For the past couple of decades, the conservative response to attempts to make soaring incomes at the top into a political issue has involved two lines of defense: first, denial that the rich are actually doing as well and the rest as badly as they are, but when denial fails, claims that those soaring incomes at the top are a justified reward for services rendered. Don’t call them the 1 percent, or the wealthy; call them “job creators.”

But how do you make that defense if the rich derive much of their income not from the work they do but from the assets they own? And what if great wealth comes increasingly not from enterprise but from inheritance?

What Mr. Piketty shows is that these are not idle questions. Western societies before World War I were indeed dominated by an oligarchy of inherited wealth — and his book makes a compelling case that we’re well on our way back toward that state.

- Canadians for Tax Fairness comments on the connection between the Senate's corporate links and the preferential tax treatment of stock options.

- Mike Moffatt writes about the devastating effect of long-term unemployment on future hiring - and how that reality means it's futile to punish the long-term unemployed by cutting off benefits. But it's worth noting that rushing people back to whatever work is immediately available isn't necessarily the only available response - and I'd be particularly curious whether employer prejudice against applicants who have been out of the workforce can be addressed as a problem in and of itself, rather than being taken as an unchangeable assumption.

- Finally, Laura Beaulne-Stuebing reports on the role of social media activity in drawing attention to - and ultimately changing - the Unfair Elections Act.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jordan Brennan and Jim Stanford put to rest any attempt to minimize the growth of inequality in Canada:

(I)ncome inequality has reached a historic extreme. Inequality was high during the 1920s and 1930s (the “gilded age”), but fell sharply during the Second World War (as Canadians got back to work and taxes were raised to pay for the war effort). The three decades after the Second World War — a “golden age” of controlled capitalism — saw further decline in inequality. The economy was booming and powerful institutions (like progressive taxation and surging unionization) ensured the wealth was broadly shared.

Since 1980, however, we’ve entered another “gilded age.” Business-friendly economic and social policies replaced the former Keynesian welfare regime. In recent years, inequality has reached levels higher than at any time since the 1930s. And it is clearly staying that way, regardless of small year-to-year fluctuations.

Does income inequality matter? There’s a growing consensus among scientists from many disciplines that it does: in complex, surprising and economically important ways. Numerous studies document a powerful relationship between income inequality and varied dimensions of social pathology.

Indicators as diverse as happiness, mental illness, infant mortality, children’s educational performance, teenage pregnancy, homicide, imprisonment, social trust and social mobility all get worse as the income gaps within society deepen.

- But David Spencer writes that corporate efforts to demonize the poor and suppress wages to minimize their freedom of choice date back centuries. And Paul Krugman comments on the selective rage of the privileged - who are happy to accept multi-billion-dollar bailouts for themselves while demanding that workers lift themselves up by their own bootstraps.

- Meanwhile, Trish Hennessy (via Diablogue) discusses Ontario's self-defeating austerity policies. And Sean Geobey studies how young workers in particular are bearing the brunt the province's failures.

- Finally, Paul Adams highlights what we lose when politics turns into a matter of mere consumer culture rather than citizen activism:

Political parties run attack ads because they don’t really care if some of us are turned off politics — so long as they turn off more of the other parties’ supporters than they do their own. It really doesn’t matter if they’re damaging the system. Election after election, fewer and fewer people trudge to the polls — but someone always wins.

The most depressing aspect of all this may be that as the parties market themselves to a largely disengaged audience, they inevitably latch on to our wispiest impulses. Those impulses, Delacourt argues, are increasingly about what can we buy and for how much, whether that’s hockey equipment for the kids or a new smartphone for ourselves — often with a credit card, of course.

As a result there’s precious little space left on the shelf for, say, climate change or the disgraceful circumstances of our native peoples. Things like that might concern citizens — but they just don’t interest shoppers.

Saturday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Saturday reading.

- Hamida Ghafour writes about the effect of tax avoidance by the world's wealthy on the lives of the rest of the population - particularly when coupled with austerity pushed based on a lack of revenue:

The OECD is a fierce defender of free-market capitalism. But Saint-Amans says politicians are realizing that rules set up in the 1920s need reform because allowing corporations and the very rich to hang on to huge amounts of wealth is bad for the economy.

“When you have a political crisis, I am sad to say it, you have political support and political heat,” he says in an interview from OECD headquarters in Paris. “European countries are turning to corporations and saying, ‘You don’t want us to become bankrupt. Please, pay your taxes and let’s make the changes together, otherwise we collapse. And if we collapse so will you.’”

Last year, several G20 finance ministers asked him for a report on how big companies move vast profits around the globe to avoid being taxed. Saint-Amans will release the report on Feb. 12.

“I didn’t anticipate it would happen so fast,” he says. “The fiscal crisis has turned into a budget crisis. . . . The ministers from G20 cannot explain to their people that they should pay more tax but big, profitable companies will not pay more.”

- Doug Saunders notes that Canada's foreign policy has taken a colonial turn in Africa as the Cons work to promote resource interests rather than humanitarian issues.

- Paul Wells rightly argues that the Cons' attempts to silence Kevin Page only prove he's done his job properly. But that doesn't mean that, say, Canada's unemployed should be satisfied with being declared "bad guys" as a badge of honour when there's an opportunity to challenge the government that's attacking them.

- Meanwhile, Sarah Schmidt reports that the Cons are likewise slamming the conclusions of their own sodium working group, and instead insisting that Canadians shouldn't bother caring how much of a health risk is found in their food.

- Finally, the New Union Project offers an update on the merger between CEP and CAW.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Wednesday reading.

- Pat Atkinson highlights what should probably be the story of the year for 2012: the continued degradation of Canadian democracy under a government which views Parliament and the public with an alarming degree of contempt:

Harper's Conservatives see Parliament as a nuisance. Committees meet in secret, and opposition MPs aren't to reveal what is learned. And it is clear that most of Parliament's power has been centralized into a prime minister's office that is determined to control governing party MPs and even its cabinet ministers.

Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of politics at the University of Manitoba, describes the power and effectiveness of Canada's Parliament being "at the bottom of the heap."

"It has lost tremendous ground in terms of public support and confidence," he says.

So why should Canadians care about parliamentary democracy and whether the Harper government introduces two several-hundred-page omnibus bills? After all, the prime minister has a mandate from the people of Canada to govern.

But as Canadians we need to remind ourselves that we elect members of Parliament, not a government or, for that matter, a prime minister. We live in a parliamentary democracy which is "a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them."

Each time precedents, procedures and even laws are tossed out the window by the prime minister in the name of political expediency with little or no debate, it chips away another brick in our democratic foundation.
...
Democracy in Canada isn't quite what it used to be. Maybe next year we will start to pay attention.

- Meanwhile, David Pugliese reports on the Cons' efforts to hide even previously-available information about a Canadian troop killed by Israeli forces. [Update: And Dr. Dawg points to the report for those all the more curious about it now that it's being suppressed.]

- The Vancouver Sun makes the case to keep the Christmas spirit in mind throughout the year:

Whatever the origins of the current unofficial Boxing Day holiday, it's an opportunity to remember that while Christmas is always accompanied by a lot of natural Canadian generosity, it's needed all year round, not just on a seasonal basis.

It's one thing to make sure the homeless and the marginalized get a Christmas dinner and some festive cheer to mark the annual festival, it's another to make a commitment to keep the giving going at those times when it's still needed but not so high profile.
...
Whether we're out there today indulging ourselves or taking it easy at home in recovery mode, let's not forget that the spirit of Christmas isn't a momentary affair that ends on Dec. 26 - it actually begins there.

- Meanwhile, Gail Shea thinks Canada's unemployed should be a bit more charitable toward employers who would like to use them on the cheap.

- Finally, the Tyee's Ideas series checks in on the remarkable progress of the Rolling Jubilee:

In November, Perisic and members of Strike Debt launched the Rolling Jubilee, an initiative that buys up debt only to erase it. Described as a bailout for the people, the project uses online donations to purchase debt in secondary markets (where collectors pay pennies on the dollar for loans already charged off by the banks). Instead of employing aggressive bounty hunting tactics, Occupiers forgive the debt.

It's a symbolic gesture, allowing a few Americans struggling with out-of-control medical, credit card and student debt to start fresh. "We're trying to shine a light on the predatory nature of the industry," she says. "At the same time we're trying to shine a light on how the system works." So far nearly $500,000 in donations have rolled in: enough to buy over $9 million in distressed debt.

"It obviously touched a nerve," Perisic says of the Jubilee's eager public response. Combined with donations to Occupy Sandy, another relief-focused branch of Occupy 2.0, donations to the OWS movement in November 2012 outpaced donations for all of 2011. "We've been getting so many emails," she continues. "What's become obvious is that people are really looking for something to plug into. They want to be part of some collective action."

Juxtaposition

Jim Flaherty...

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Monday new rule changes to define "suitable employment'' and "reasonable'' efforts at finding work have yet to come down, but as far as he's concerned people should be prepared to take pretty well any available job.

"There is no bad job, the only bad job is not having a job,'' he told reporters.

...meet reality:

By 2011, results from a longitudinal study of over 7000 people were being reported, enabling assessment of the effects of moving in and out of jobs of high or low quality. Poor jobs were defined by a suite of characteristics including high demands, low control, unfair pay, and insecurity. The results showed that when people moved from unemployment to a good job there were beneficial effects on their health, but that moving from unemployment to poor jobs was actually detrimental on some health measures. “We find that jobs with poor psychosocial attributes are no better,” wrote the team, “and may have even more adverse effects on mental health, than unemployment.”

Parliament In Review: September 22, 2011

Thursday was another fairly short day of debate in the House of Commons due to the visit by UK Prime Minister David Cameron. But that doesn't mean there was any lack of perfectly telling content as MPs continued to debate the Cons' omnibus crime bill.

The Big Issue...

...was once again the Cons' crime bill. And one of the main opposition critiques discussed at several points yesterday looks to be one with some legs, particularly since it nicely parries the Cons' excuse for slashing the federal government.

Here's the concise form from Don Davies (which was followed by the extended version from Paul Dewar):

I hear the Minister of Finance repeatedly attack the Liberals about downloading costs to the provinces in the nineties. That is exactly what the current bills will do as well. They will download costs to the provinces because many of the people who go to jail will be in provincial institutions.

Of course, the fact that the costs of the Cons' crime bills will be borne largely by the provinces isn't exactly news. But it's still a point well worth emphasizing - particularly when it figures to mean lining up all but the most sycophantic of provinces on the right side of the issue.

Meanwhile, Vic Toews offered a couple of memorable if painful interventions - not only taking responsibility for the return of the "unreported crime" canard, but making the stunning statement that we should be concerned rather than proud about having more a humane prison system than the U.S.' mess (where Toews delights in inmates serving "real time").

And yet, somehow Toews managed to avoid contributing the most jaw-dropping statement from a Con MP. That honour goes to Joyce Bateman - who contributed this gem in response to Kirsty Duncan's mention of a study by the Canadian Paediatric Society criticizing (that's *criticizing*) the bill:

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague a question on her comments.

I understand from her comments that the Canadian Paediatric Society has approved our bill, the bill that is front of the House as we speak. I am very concerned that she is worried about that, because these are the front-line doctors. These are the people who see children hurt. These are the people who see the ravages of abuse. They see the ravages of sexual abuse on young children.

I am thrilled that the Canadian Paediatric Society is supportive of this bill, because their members are the first line and are able to see that.

Could my hon. colleague please explain why she is concerned with their support?

Now, it seems fairly obvious that Bateman must have mis-heard Duncan's statement. But surely anybody with a modicum of sense would have at least considered whether it made any sense for Duncan to contort her speech into a criticism of the Canadian Paediatric Society before choosing to ask a question focused on the point. And once again, all indications are that anything of the sort has long since been drummed out of the Cons.

In Brief

Peter Julian slammed the Cons for failing to enforce the terms of approval for foreign takeover deals, using Stelco as a prime example. Peggy Nash pointed out that the waste of two million unemployed Canadians is making our economic picture worse for everybody. And Christine Moore chose the occasion of David Cameron's visit to ask why the Cons won't follow his lead in taking commercial flights rather than using personal jets and helicopters.