Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Larry Beinhart argues that aside from the gross unfairness and economic harm from growing inequality, there's a basic problem trusting the uber-rich to make reasonable decisions with massive amounts of wealth. And George Monbiot makes the case that even as he pretends to be an outsider, Donald Trump epitomizes the problems with a political culture designed to serve those who already have the most.

- Leo Panitch points out that more "trade" deals such as the CETA being pushed by self-proclaimed progressive governments will only strengthen the prejudiced right. Thomas Walkom writes that we shouldn't see a slightly modified side deal as reason to be satisfied with the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement - and notes that in fact, additional protections for European signatories only confirm that Canada is giving up more sovereignty than it needs to. And the Mound of Sound weighs in on the Libs' obsession with trade over people:

Trudeau's Harperesque pursuit of CETA and TPP demonstrates that he means business. This goes straight back to those mandate letters he issued to his freshly minted cabinet ministers as they were sworn in. Even Catherine McKenna's marching orders stipulate that her priorities are to be the economy and the environment. There's no doubt that she meant it when she said she was "as much an economic minister as an environmental minister."

Trade it is then. But, if you're going to make trade your priority, your dominant responsibility, then surely you have to accept full responsibility for the fallout from that pursuit. That's on you, Slick.

One element of that fallout is the rise of Canada's homegrown "precariat." It's a term used to describe the future this free-trading government has bequeathed to our youth. In case you're wondering, that's a future fraught with insecurity and economic peril.
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Morneau won't mention how his own government and its predecessors laid the foundation for this upheaval and uncertainty through its obsessive pursuit of neoliberalism and global free trade, the constant downward spiral. He won't explain why, when even the World Bank and International Monetary Fund can no longer remain silent on the social and economic damage inflicted by globalism, his government remains a faithful adherent to this toxic ideology.

I'm sorry Morneau and you too, Trudeau, but, when you tell Canadians to forego their hopes and resign themselves to a future in the precariat, what you're really telling them is that you won't change course and liberal democracy be damned.

- Kelly Rose Pflug-Back and Ena͞emaehkiw Kesīqnaeh write that one person's accumulation tends to be directly linked to another's dispossession - particularly when it comes to resource extraction over the objections of affected First Nations communities.

- Ryan Maloney reports on Charlie Angus' continued efforts to get the Trudeau Libs to stop discrimination against children on reserve - this time by having to point out that tribunal-ordered funding to meet children's basic needs is not "confetti". And Jonathan Charlton notes that the Saskatoon Health Region's own research show the Lighthouse homeless shelter saving more than twice what it costs - meaning that the Saskatchewan Party's arbitrary cuts to it represent nothing but gratuitous harm to everybody concerned.

- Finally, Emily Peck discusses the World Economic Forum's latest report showing that women work far more than men while being paid significantly less.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Thomas Frank reviews Zephyr Teachout's Corruption in America, and finds there's even more reason to worry about gross wealth buying power than we could identify before:

We think of all the laws passed over the years to restrict money in politics — and of all the ways the money has flowed under and around those restrictions. And finally, it seems to me, we just gave up out of sheer exhaustion.

According to Teachout, however, it’s much worse than this. Our current Supreme Court, in Citizens United, “took that which had been named corrupt for over 200 years” — which is to say, gifts to politicians — “and renamed it legitimate.” Teachout does not exaggerate. Here is Justice Kennedy again, in the Citizens United decision: “The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach. The government has ‘muffle[d] the voices that best represent the most significant segments of the economy.’ ”

You read that right: The economy needs to be represented in democratic politics, or at least the economy’s “most significant segments,” whatever those are, and therefore corporate “speech,” meaning gifts, ought not to be censored. Corporations now possess the rights that the founders reserved for citizens, and as Teachout explains, what used to be called “corruption becomes democratic responsiveness.”

Let me pause here to take note of another recurring peculiarity in corruption literature: an eerie overlap between theory and practice. If you go back to that “censorship” quotation from Kennedy, you will notice he quotes someone else: his colleague Antonin Scalia, in an opinion from 2003. Google the quote and one place you’ll find it is in a book of Scalia’s opinions that was edited in 2004 by none other than the lobbyist Kevin Ring, an associate of Jack Abramoff who would later be convicted of corrupting public officials.

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State governments subject to wealthy corporations? Check. Speculators in legislation, infesting the capital? They call it K Street. And that fancy Latin remark about Rome? They do say that of us today. Just turn on your TV sometime and let the cynicism flow.

And all of it has happened, Teachout admonishes, because the founders’ understanding of corruption has been methodically taken apart by a Supreme Court that cynically pretends to worship the founders’ every word. “We could lose our democracy in the process,” Teachout warns, a bit of hyperbole that maybe it’s time to start taking seriously.

- Matt O'Brien highlights Richard Reeves and Isabel Sawhill's research into the gross inequality of opportunity in the U.S. by comparing the income levels of college graduates from poor families to those of high-school dropouts from wealthy ones. And Patricia Kozicka reports that Edmonton schools are putting their thumbs on the scale against the poor even further - withholding such basic aspects of social participation as lunch breaks from students whose families can't afford extra fees.

- Meanwhile, Ellie Mae O'Hagan examines Bolivia's experience as an example of a more fair distribution of wealth leading to economic and social improvements:

According to a report by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, “Bolivia has grown much faster over the last eight years than in any period over the past three and a half decades.” The benefits of such growth have been felt by the Bolivian people: under Morales, poverty has declined by 25% and extreme poverty has declined by 43%; social spending has increased by more than 45%; the real minimum wage has increased by 87.7%; and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean has praised Bolivia for being “one of the few countries that has reduced inequality”. In this respect, the re-election of Morales is really very simple: people like to be economically secure – so if you reduce poverty, they’ll probably vote for you.

- Meanwhile, Tony Burman notes that ill-advised austerity is exacerbating the spread of ebola in all kinds of countries - including the ones who wrongly presumed they didn't need to prepare for it.

- Glen McGregor reports on how Canada's opposition parties are increasing their use of data analytics in the lead up to the 2015 election.

- But of course, changes in party voting will only translate into policy improvement if people are willing to demand that it be followed up with real change. On that front, Thomas Walkom challenges the opposition parties to make clear which of the Cons' destructive policies they'll reverse. And Jim Coyle's review of Michael Harris' Party of One reminds us why we need a new government to restore a commitment to democracy in the face of Stephen Harper's contempt for the idea.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Lynn Stuart Parramore offers five convincing pieces of evidence to suggest that the U.S.' plutocrats are losing their minds in their effort to set themselves apart from the rabble. Kevin Roose tells a story about some awful, awful (and disturbingly wealthy and powerful) people. And Patrick Wintour discusses how the UK Cons are dedicating significant public resources to placing impossible demands on the unemployed - then cutting off the livelihood of anybody not acrobatic enough to jump through their newly-created hoops.

- So there's plenty of reason to think Ana Marie Cox is right to call for the middle and lower classes to start putting up a fight against the perpetual top-down class war:

People are angry – and maybe people should be angry. Both Perkins and Mankiw seem to think that the poor (or just the not-rich!) resent the wealthy simply because they have so much. They think we resent the number of zeros in their paychecks. Of course not. We resent that those zeros come out of ours.

Mankiw asks the simplistic question: Are CEOs so valuable as to be worth their exorbitant paychecks? He answers it perhaps even more simply, by cherry-picking famous people. But the question on most people’s minds is simpler still, and yet somehow too difficult for the CEOs and their enablers to comprehend: Am I so expendable as to be worth such a small paycheck ... or no paycheck at all?

To the extent that income inequality is a threat to the rich, it’s not because they are so wealthy – at some point, the wealth of the most wealthy just becomes absurdly unimaginable anyway. No, it’s because the wealth of the super-rich is just so damn far away, without any rungs in the ladder between, no assistance for that leap of faith that allows those who struggle to hope their struggles can cease.

- And Davide Furceri and Prakash Lounganin note that two of the leading causes of growing inequality are public-sector austerity and greater privileges being accorded to private capital. (Not concidentally, those are of course two of the Cons' top political priorities.)

- The Star argues that the Cons shouldn't force a jobs grant program onto Canada's provinces (or workers). But as Thomas Walkom writes, questions of what's fair or appropriate seem rather distant in the face of a government which has nothing but contempt for the law.

- Finally, Paul Adams recognizes what's missing from Canada's federal political scene as a three-party race develops:

The fact that cooperation between the parties and their leaders is not imminent seems to have obscured the possibility — the likelihood, even — that there will be a minority government after 2015, as there was after three of the last four elections.

In that situation, the parties will have to choose with whom they cooperate and on what terms.
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(P)arties will probably have to cooperate after the 2015 election — unless they want to see Canadian politics descend into the dysfunctional mess we’ve see south of the border and, at times, here at home in the first decade of this century.

Voters and the media should be pressing the parties hard to explain their approach to cooperation — including who their preferred partners might be in the event we return to minority government in 2015.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Pierre Brochu and David Green study the effect of minimum wage rates, and find a connection between a higher minimum wage and greater employment stability. But if there's a choice between stable, well-paying work and precarious employment where job churn and wage reductions are seen as the norm, far too many policy-makers are choosing the latter - as Annie Lowrey notes that U.S. states are actively slashing benefits for unemployed workers to force them to grab desperately at whatever is available.

- Meanwhile, Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato and Owen Zidar offer reason to doubt the theory that corporate tax giveaways have any redeeming social value. And Toby Sanger calls out Gwyn Morgan for attacking workers' pensions as being too lavish while collecting millions each year himself (plus enjoying preferential tax treatment on his stock options).

- Martha Rosenberg looks at six examples of drugs which were approved and mass-marketed in the face of massive risks and side effects - as big pharma chased down immediate profits at the expense of unwitting patients. And Scott Stelmaschuk highlights the lack of real choice for consumers - not to mention the lack of investment in the public interest - where a few well-connected corporate entities control most of the major goods and services people need.

- Sticking to the subject of illusions of choice, Thomas Walkom reminds us of the Libs' track record in federal government - featuring their simultaneously taking credit for both introducing and slashing the public programs which once did more to mitigate against corporate domination.

- Finally, Deborah Campbell interviews Ron Diebert about the dangers of mass surveillance. And Nafeez Ahmed provides a prime example of the type of excuse being used to brand large numbers of citizens as potential threats, noting that mere opposition to fracking has resulted in activists being labeled as terrorists.