Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Francisco Ferreira discusses the collapse of the existing global economic order - and the need for countries other than the U.S. to take decisive steps to create any alternative which could improve on the flaws in the historical system. And Peter Crowley weighs in on the role a half-century of neoliberalism has played in laying the groundwork for dictatorship. 

- Dave Davies talks to Steven Levitsky about the dire state of U.S. democracy. And Brian Beutler discusses how Donald Trump courts disaster to force everybody else to use their resources preparing for the fallout from his whims. 

- Mark Olalde reports on the threats being made against U.S. civil servants that they face criminal prosecution for whistle-blowing or providing accurate information about the Trump regime's actions. Victor Tangerman reports on Elon Musk's similar pattern of threatening to arrange for the deportation of anybody at Tesla who dared to point out problems with the brakes in their vehicles. And Canada Healthwatch points out that the U.S. has deliberately set up a system for the reporting and intimidation of Canadian health care providers who dare to provide gender-supportive care, abortion, contraception or other care which runs afoul of Trump's ideology. 

- Jason Sattler discusses how Musk deliberately trashed the concept of verification at X - and how important it is to reinstate it through Bluesky and other social media. And Alex Himelfarb writes about the dangers of denialism in undermining the collective action needed to respond to a polycrisis. 

- Finally, Natasha Bulowski highlights how the Cons are flipping the bird to the concept of climate action. Nicholas Hune-Brown discusses how J.D. Vance has become a key focus of the election in Bowmanville-Oshawa North where his buddy Jamil Jivani is trying to take a place in a Con cabinet, while Michael Harris identifies the influence of the Trump regime as just one of several unusual aspects of the federal election campaign. And Justin Ling discusses how Pierre Poilievre is shutting out any but the most sycophantic of media outlets - making for just one more indication that he's following the Trump playbook to the letter. 

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- David Graeber wrote (just before his death) about the need to do more than default back to an unacceptable "normal" once the COVID-19 pandemic is under control. 

- Arthur White-Crummey and Lynn Giebrecht have been writing a series of stories on the longstanding lack of regard for residents and workers in Saskatchewan's long-term care homes, while Dylan Scott notes that the U.S. has matched Canada's pattern in seeing more and worse COVID outbreaks in for-profit facilities. And Bryn Levy reports on the push for stronger protection at the Prairie Pride meat-packing plant where an outbreak was hidden from the union as well as the public.

- Brennan Strndberg-Salmon makes the case to give young people the chance to vote in elections which will shape their future. 

- Dianne Buckner reports on the movement to challenge payday lending which traps people in cycles of debt.

- Stephen Leahy examines the potential for the world to shift to 100% renewable energy by 2030.

- And finally, Emma McIntosh reports on the Peter Bryce Prize for whistleblowing rightly awarded to John O'Connor for his work calling attention to cancer around Alberta's tar sands in the face of suppression from industry and governments.

Wednesday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- The results of Stockton, CA's experiment with a guaranteed income show a predictable improvement in both well-being and economic success for people with income security. Lorne Calvert makes the case to introduce a guaranteed liveable income in Canada. And Will Wilkinson writes about the folly of holding basic supports for children hostage based on the actions of parents.

- Lars Osberg tracks Canada's inequality over the past 75 years. And Ricardo Lamour and Amel Zaazaa examine how taxes and public payments have all too often served to entrench racial disparities.

- Justin Ling takes a look at Canada's profoundly broken system of incarceration. And Brendan Devlin points out how "critical infrastructure" laws are being used to turn legitimate protest into an entry point for the criminal justice system. 

- Daniel Boffey reports on the agreement among EU countries to cooperate in shutting down corporate tax avoidance. And Global Financial Integrity offers its recommendations to embed protections against money laundering into the global economic system.

- Finally, Althia Raj reports on Canada's embarrassing rating at the bottom of the world in protection for whistleblowers.

New column day

Here, on the "hush memo" issued to Saskatchewan doctors, and the Moe government's eagerness to limit any voice for public servants to an ineffective whistleblower process.

For further reading...
- David Giles previously reported on the Saskatchewan Party's plan for a snitch line to centralize all concerns about the health care system. And Adam Hunter's initial report includes the original SHA memo.
- The Public Interest Disclosure Commissioner's most recent annual report is here (PDF). And the relevant legislation is here (PDF): see in particular the limited scope of "wrongdoing" under section 3 which may be addressed, as well as the Commissioner's discretion not to investigate matters of policy choice in section 16(1)(d).
- Finally, Murray Mandryk has also weighed in.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- James Ayre points out Radoslaw Stefanski's study as to how cutting off fossil fuel subsidies subsidies (among other public policy preferences) would go a long way toward helping a transition toward clean, renewable energy.

- Mike De Souza exposes the National Energy Board's service to the oil industry, including by editing reports to suit TransCanada's wishes and by telling a whistleblower into poor pipeline safety to accept a payoff and keep quiet.
 
- Rick Smith calls for the Libs to keep their promise to end the Cons' targeted Canada Revenue Agency attacks on progressive charities, while Alan Freeman argues that we should demand a thorough house-cleaning to ensure the CRA focuses on tax evaders. And Alex Boutillier reports on the continued muzzling of federal scientists.

- The Washington Post's editorial board highlights the unfairness of a criminal justice system designed to impose additional punishment on people living in poverty, while Campbell Robertson discusses how Republican governors have deliberately deprived poor people of the legal representation needed to navigate the system. And Craig and Marc Kielburger discuss how poor families may be trapped by a social safety net more focused on slashing support at the first opportunity than ensuring people have some means to survive.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom notes that differences in regulation may be an important factor in giving consumers the ability to influence corporate behaviour.

On unaccountability

Shorter Harper Cons:

It has come to our attention that we may have come to power on a platform of "whistleblower protection". This was a typo: our plan was instead to pursue "whistleblower prosecution". Don't you dare tell anybody about the error.

New column day

Here, on how the treatment of Peter Bowden's concerns about patient care demonstrate that the Saskatchewan Party can't tell the difference between partisan and public interests.

For further reading...
- The background to the story, including Bowden's comment on understaffing at his Oliver Lodge workplace, was reported on by Clare Clancy here. CBC highlighted the apparent retaliation against Bowden here. And Mike McKinnon reported on the privacy breach involved in the release of details of Bowden's suspension here.
- And Murray Mandryk has already weighed in on the privacy concerns here and here. (Though I'll note that the Saskatchewan Party did theoretically set up a Public Interest Disclosure Commissioner and associated legislation - with the only problem being that it's done absolutely nothing to facilitate a single instance of whistleblowing.)

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Joseph Stiglitz discusses the link between perpetually-increasing inequality and the loss of social trust:

Unfortunately, however, trust is becoming yet another casualty of our country’s staggering inequality: As the gap between Americans widens, the bonds that hold society together weaken. So, too, as more and more people lose faith in a system that seems inexorably stacked against them, and the 1 percent ascend to ever more distant heights, this vital element of our institutions and our way of life is eroding.

The undervaluing of trust has its roots in our most popular economic traditions. Adam Smith argued forcefully that we would do better to trust in the pursuit of self-interest than in the good intentions of those who pursue the general interest. If everyone looked out for just himself, we would reach an equilibrium that was not just comfortable but also productive, in which the economy was fully efficient. To the morally uninspired, it’s an appealing idea: selfishness as the ultimate form of selflessness. (Elsewhere, in particular in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” Smith took a much more balanced view, though most of his latter-day adherents have not followed suit.)

But events — and economic research — over the past 30 years have shown not only that we cannot rely on self-interest, but also that no economy, not even a modern, market-based economy like America’s, can function well without a modicum of trust — and that unmitigated selfishness inevitably diminishes trust.
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Trust between individuals is usually reciprocal. But if I think that you are cheating me, it is more likely that I will retaliate, and try to cheat you. (These notions have been well developed in a branch of economics called the “theory of repeated games.”) When Americans see a tax system that taxes the wealthiest at a fraction of what they pay, they feel that they are fools to play along. All the more so when the wealthiest are able to move profits off shore. The fact that this can be done without breaking the law simply shows Americans that the financial and legal systems are designed by and for the rich.

As the trust deficit persists, a deeper rot takes hold: Attitudes and norms begin to change. When no one is trustworthy, it will be only fools who trust. The concept of fairness itself is eroded. A study published last year by the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the upper classes are more likely to engage in what has traditionally been considered unethical behavior. Perhaps this is the only way for some to reconcile their worldview with their outlandish financial success, often achieved through actions that reveal a kind of moral deprivation.

It’s hard to know just how far we’ve gone down the path toward complete trust disintegration, but the evidence is not encouraging.

Economic inequality, political inequality, and an inequality-promoting legal system all mutually reinforce one another. We get a legal system that provides privileges to the rich and powerful. Occasionally, individual egregious behavior is punished (Bernard L. Madoff comes to mind); but none of those who headed our mighty banks are held accountable.

As always, it is the poor and the unconnected who suffer most from this, and who are the most repeatedly deceived.

- Meanwhile, David Hutton discusses the Cons' crackdown on whistleblowers and anybody else who tries to bring inconvenient truths to light. And Glen McGregor's look at the Cons' latest fund-raising pitch tells us what kind of action they're looking to punish with incessant fund-raising appeals:

The Citizen received these fundraising pitches after submitting an email address to a Conservative Party website that encouraged users to send Happy Mother’s Day greeting to Harper’s wife, Laureen.

- Grant Robertson and Kim Mackrael write that the regulatory system which we should be able to trust to ensure Canadians' safety instead did nothing in response to questions about the safety of shipping oil by rail. And ThinkProgress surveys 45 fossil fuel-related disasters from 2013 which didn't receive the coverage they deserved.

- Finally, Max Fawcett writes about the absurdity of Alberta's royalty regime which allows. And it shouldn't escape notice that Saskatchewan's resource management is even more slanted toward converting public resources into private payouts - with the public paying up to 120% of the cost of resource extractors' operations.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Tom Bergin reports on a predictable corporate attack on the very idea of government sovereignty - as tax evaders are insisting that their own demand for "certainty" in the availability of tax havens should trump the ability of tax authorities to assess where revenue should be taxed:

The companies said the existing practice of recognizing inter-company transactions gave business greater certainty and encouraged trade by helping ensure the same profits were not taxed more than once.

Business groups were also cool on a proposal tabled in June by the Group of Eight (G8) leading developed economies, that companies should provide information to tax authorities on their earnings and tax payments on a country-by-country basis.

- And we can probably count on the Cons for one being highly sympathetic to the view that institutional cover-ups are more important than factual and fair policy - as the firing of EI whistleblower Sylvie Therrien confirms.

- Karl Nerenberg points out Thomas Mulcair's neat skewering of Stephen Harper when it comes to Harper's loud proclamation that he personally reviewed and approved Pamela Wallin's expenses. Andrew Coyne wonders why the Cons dedicated a shady, party-wide cover-up operation to something as mundane as Senate expenses, while Lawrence Martin documents Harper's relationship (or lack thereof) with the truth.And Tim Harper observes that the Senate has made an airtight case for its own abolition.

- Kathryn May reports on the latest anti-worker legislation slipped into the Cons' omnibus budget bill. And Thomas Walkom sees the union-bashing as a distraction from the Cons' Senate corruption.

- Finally, Fraser Harland and Mark Dance discuss how the Cons have harmed Canada's federal government for decades to come:

Could there be a more politically awkward and unpopular case for a future finance minister to try to make than that deficits are not always bad and that one’s own government need not be kept on such a short leash?

This is not the first time that the Harper Conservatives have set out to pin their successors to the wall.

The death of the long-form census undermines the ability of future governments to pursue smart and informed social policy, the equivalent to covering up the eyes and ears of the public service. Broken threads of data have guaranteed the illegibility of long-term trends, enfeebling the capacity of governments to make smart choices for future generations.

The same strategy is at play on the government’s fiscal flank. The cuts to the GST were roundly criticized by policy experts for blowing a hole in government coffers while doing little to alleviate the financial burden of individual Canadians. Once again, though, reversing this policy decision would require a serious expenditure of political capital by a future government from which it could be difficult to recover.
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Taken together though, these measures show themselves to be more than just short-term vote grabs. Rather, they are political and legislative ropes around the wrists of future governments as well as blindfolds over their eyes. To the extent that reversal of these measures is possible, it would in many cases involve complex and counterintuitive policy explanations to voters, likely to devastate their champions in the polls.

Calling Harper a visionless incrementalist is currently a popular trope for the opposition parties and liberal pundits. However, they should not lose sight of the fact that Harper’s goal could be to handcuff and constrain government far beyond his own tenure. In that respect, he may turn out to be a visionary after all.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Duncan Cameron discusses how the G20 is dancing around the problem of corporate tax evasion. The Economist issues a call to action against offshoring. And David Atkins points out what's more likely needed to deal with a global problem which can be exacerbated by just a few defectors:

What is needed are global treaties with negative enforcement mechanisms, including but not limited to potential tariffs and sanctions, for nations that refuse to put rules in place to curb corporate theft and malfeasance. Nations that allow corporations conduct the worst forms of corporate tax evasion and arbitrage should be made pariahs as surely as those who harbor terrorists and violate the most basic human rights. Like most white collar crime, the cause and effect between harm done and suffering received is indirect, so it lacks the same emotional stigma. But the removal of trillions of dollars from the world economy into corporate tax havens that could have gone to education, infrastructure, climate change abatement and poverty alleviation directly damages and even destroys the lives of hundreds of millions of people, just so that a few can live the most opulent lives of any creature on the planet in its entire history.

The world doesn't currently have such international protocols. But it should. And in time, it will. When it does, our age will have seemed quite barbaric indeed.

- Laurel Rothman and Andrew Lynk comment on the link between health and poverty in Canada. CBC highlights Canada's place at the bottom of the list of comparable OECD countries when it comes to funding early childhood education. And while I don't fully agree with his concerns about social programs, Jordon Cooper discusses how the difficulty of surviving poverty makes it far more difficult to build a life in the longer term:

A study entitled Some Consequences of Having Too Little was published last year, in which researchers considered how the scarcity of resources changed behaviours. When you have nothing, your focus is on acquiring that basic need, which uses up your good decisions and distracts your brain from its ability to make good decisions in other areas. Those constant survival needs take up a lot of time and energy that should be used in other areas.

Of course this leads to poor decisions, because our focus is on what we don't have, not on what it needs to get ahead. Our desire to deal with the stress leads to impulsive decisions. The immediate gratification helps in the short term, but causes problems later if rent money is used or if money is borrowed.
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A wide-scale study in Britain showed that the longer people were homeless and in shelters, the worse off they were and the less they were able to cope. It's why "housing first" programs are so important. Margins and security allow you to go on to tackle other issues such as employment or health. Those margins are helped by having savings and money, but our social services system now barely keeps people alive. No wonder it is so hard to escape the cycle.

- In contrast, Andrew Coyne figures all we really need to do in order to claim victory over poverty is move the goalposts - preferably to ground level around the 20-yard line compared to the once-agreed standard of eradicating child poverty altogether.

- Mike Hudema discusses the Cons' failures when it comes to rail safety. And Leslie Young reports on Alberta's pitiful enforcement of environmental laws.

- But lest we worry that the Petro Party won't tolerate any accountability at all, we can rest assured that whistleblowers will continue to be subject to severe repercussions.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Gerald Kaplan discusses how the privileges of power have contributed to the utterly callous response to the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion by Stephen Harper and Ed Burkhardt:

For me, of all Burkhardt’s outrageous statements nothing surpasses his public accusation that the train’s engineer, Tom Harding, was responsible for the disaster, suspending him without pay. Among the victims of the train derailment, Tom Harding must now be included.

In truth, of course, Burkhardt had no more clue than you or I or Lord Acton how the derailment happened and who might be responsible. Indeed, his own company policies have very pointedly been questioned. Yet he simply invented the culprit, because I suppose that’s what rich and powerful people are able to do.
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Prime Minister Harper is the other powerhouse who showed last week that he knows he can get away with just about anything. First, he named Pierre Poilievre as his new Minister of State for Democratic Reform, an oxymoron by any standard. Globe columnist Lawrence Martin describes Poilievre as “one of [Harper’s] most belligerent, thuggish, MPs”. Next to the Prime Minister himself, with his obsession about “enemies”, no member of this government has demonstrated contempt for the spirit of democracy more than Mr. Poilievre. As Lawrence Martin wrote, this was one of Mr. Harper’s well-known “in-your-face moves.”

Second, Mr. Harper appointed to the sensitive post of Canadian ambassador to Jordan (with responsibility to Iraq) one Bruno Saccomani, who until that moment was his bodyguard, or, more formally, the RCMP man who headed his security team.

It is surely not too much to expect a Canadian ambassador to know something about the complex world of diplomacy and all that entails. And if you’re being assigned to be our country’s chief representative in two turbulent countries in a dangerously volatile region, shouldn’t you have a soupcon of background in the area? Or is that just me?

- Meanwhile, Miles Corak points out the disturbingly tight relationship between family background and economic outcomes in the U.S. And while Canada serves for now as a contrast, it's well worth noting that the Harper Cons are doing their best to push us down the same path of walled-off wealth for a few and a precarious living for the rest.

- Paul Krugman highlights the dishonesty and anti-worker bias behind the Great Pension Scare. Which, needless to say, is presented a propos of nothing.

[Update: Let's add Doug J's take:

The war against public pensions reminds me of the Iraq War. Even if one accepts that there is/was a big pre-existing problem in either case, the constant stream of lies is troubling.]

- Also, the Cons make clear what happens to honest civil servants who allow truth to undermine their deliberately false talking points. 

- The Ottawa Citizen recognizes and laments the shameful exploitation of hungry First Nations Canadians for experimentation. Bernard Valcourt isn't so big on shame, and considers the matter closed by an apology for other monstrous attacks on First Nations culture.

- Finally, Susan Delacourt comments on why the Cons' departmental enemies lists may go far beyond politics as usual - particularly if information intended for government use only is being illegally loaded into CIMS for partisan purposes.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Dennis Gruending writes about the importance of Edgar Schmidt's whistleblowing against unconstitutional legislation:

Schmidt says that he has over a period of years raised concerns about what he considers the department’s flawed practices. He has done that through various official channels, up to the deputy minister level — in both Liberal and Conservative governments. He says he has never received a satisfactory response and that he has gone to court as a matter of last resort.

Schmidt says the consequences of the department’s failure to act appropriately are serious. The state should be ensuring that it makes laws that it believes conform to the Charter and Bill of Rights. Instead, it is left to citizens, who usually do not have the resources, to discover and challenge such offending laws.

- Michael Harris notes that the Cons' efforts to silence any criticism have now extended to attacks on individual journalists - with Stephen Maher as only the latest example:

The measure for the kind of work that Maher, McGregor, Tim Naumetz and Greg Weston do is not the metric of public relations. The question is not whether their stories are good or bad for the government.

The question is whether the stories are true. If they’re not, it doesn’t mean that the reporters hate the government — just that they’re wrong. If they’re right, they form part of the composite of facts that makes up public reality. The RCMP are now involved in the investigation and the public is entitled to know that. Thanks to Stephen Maher, it does.

At one level, no one should be surprised at this scurrilous attack on a reporter. The Harper government, and the prime minister personally, specialize in character assassination when opposed.

It is one of the oldest and dirtiest tricks in the book. 

 - And Tabatha Southey wonders what additional abuses of power we might see from the Harper Cons in the years to come.

- While far too many seem to be eager to turn Mali into Canada's next ill-thought-out military intervention, Thomas Walkom makes the case for caution.

- Finally, Daniel Wilson highlights why there's rather less reason for patience when it comes to the federal government's neglect of First Nations.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Joseph Stiglitz discusses how the U.S.' extreme inequality is limiting its prospects for economic recovery:

There are all kinds of excuses for inequality. Some say it’s beyond our control, pointing to market forces like globalization, trade liberalization, the technological revolution, the “rise of the rest.” Others assert that doing anything about it would make us all worse off, by stifling our already sputtering economic engine. These are self-serving, ignorant falsehoods.

Market forces don’t exist in a vacuum — we shape them. Other countries, like fast-growing Brazil, have shaped them in ways that have lowered inequality while creating more opportunity and higher growth. Countries far poorer than ours have decided that all young people should have access to food, education and health care so they can fulfill their aspirations.

Our legal framework and the way we enforce it has provided more scope here for abuses by the financial sector; for perverse compensation for chief executives; for monopolies’ ability to take unjust advantage of their concentrated power.
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The good news is that our thinking has been reframed: it used to be that we asked how much growth we would be willing to sacrifice for a little more equality and opportunity. Now we realize that we are paying a high price for our inequality and that alleviating it and promoting growth are intertwined, complementary goals. It will be up to all of us — our leaders included — to muster the courage and foresight to finally treat this beleaguering malady.

- Meanwhile, The Economist's Free Exchange blog notes that cities and neighbourhoods which make the effort to fund public services tend to generate a virtuous cycle in terms of overall well-being - while those who have tried to operate on the cheap have paid the price by falling behind further:

(C)ities that hoovered up more skilled workers became more productive and paid higher wages to high and low skill workers. But cities that attracted a large share of skilled workers then experienced a major improvement in their local amenities. The quality of local schools rose, for instance. Crime fell. Cultural and entertainment opportunities expanded. Thanks to slow housing supply growth, housing costs in these places soared. And because low skill households have been less willing to pay for the improvements in amenities, they've left for cheaper cities.

And here's the kicker: once one takes into account the rising amenity values in skilled places it turns out that growth in welfare inequality has been larger than growth in income inequality.

- Benedict Carey discusses the poverty trap - where those with less money wind up paying more for necessities as immediate needs override any capacity to plan:

The usual explanations for reckless borrowing focus on people’s character, or social norms that promote free spending and instant gratification. But recent research has shown that scarcity by itself is enough to cause this kind of financial self-sabotage.

 “When we put people in situations of scarcity in experiments, they get into poverty traps,” said Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. “They borrow at high interest rates that hurt them, in ways they knew to avoid when there was less scarcity.”

The psychological burden of debt not only saps intellectual resources, it also reinforces the reckless behavior, and quickly, Dr. Shafir and other experts said. Millions of Americans have been keeping the lights on through hard times with borrowed money, running a kind of shell game to keep bill collectors away. The average debt for households earning $20,000 a year or less more than doubled to $26,000 between 2001 and 2010, according to the Urban Institute. The averages for households in slightly higher brackets grew by 50 to 90 percent in the same period. 

- Finally, the Star's editorial board salutes Edgar Schmidt's much-needed whistleblowing against the unconstitutional legislation. And Iain Hunter notes that the problem is particularly obvious when the lack of a proper review from the civil service is combined with the Cons' habit of ramming through legislation without debate (or even any particular thought).

[Edit: fixed typo.]