Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Dean Beeby reports on the utter uselessness of the latest set of publicly-funded Con propaganda. But more importantly, John Ibbitson notes that most of the provinces have little use for the lone new announcement - meaning that it's for the best if Canadians have indeed tuned out the Cons rather than relying on promises which likely won't come to pass.

- Meanwhile, Dan Leger writes that we should be just as concerned about the Cons' list of friends should be of just as much concern as the enemies lists which have received so much attention:

But as sinister and nasty as the idea of an enemies list is, I worry more about the friends. The memo directs ministerial aides to come up with lists of friends. To what end?

Are these friends going to benefit from plush government contracts? Will special friends enjoy special legislation? Will these friends be appointed as judges, CRTC commissioners, ambassadors or God forbid, senators?

In some ways, it’s almost worse to consider how these friends with benefits will be treated than the enemies, who can’t be treated with much more disrespect than they get now from the government. Enemies are loud and obvious; that’s what makes them enemies. Friends are more subtle and stick to the backrooms where they can operate quietly and profitably.

The ministerial list-makers in Ottawa might be keeping a watch out for the government’s enemies. Canadians would be wise to keep a close eye on its friends.

- Paul Campos discusses the second major insult involved in McDonalds' condescending "financial planning advice". The Observer makes the case for a reasonable living wage. And Ellie Mae O'Hagan reminds us to be skeptical of corporate outlets trying to silence the labour movement in pointing out the imbalance between profits and people:

I've always been mystified by the media's willingness to publish commentary on the labour movement by people who have barely been to so much as a branch meeting. When I've queried this troubling practice to journalist friends, they often lament that it can't be helped because union structures are just "too complicated" to try to get to grips with. That's interesting, because I've never seen a Financial Times reporter write a shoddy article about the markets and then justify it by saying, "it's not my fault, it's the FTSE 100 – it's just too hard!". We don't see articles on morning sickness by Will Hutton; Liz Jones doesn't get commissioned to talk about EU trade agreements, so why is it acceptable for columnists to opine about trade unions when they don't show the slightest interest in understanding them?

Now that Len McCluskey (full disclosure – I work for Unite) has given an interview to Patrick Wintour in the Guardian, I am sure these writers will once again leap towards giving us the benefit of their latest thoughts on the matter. I can summarise every article right here: "Of course we all like unions in principle, but isn't it uncouth when they actually try to do something?"
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At the end of the day, trade unions aren't interesting to the media because working-class politics aren't interesting to the media – largely because so few people in the media are actually working class. The lack of interest, bordering on contempt, towards unions simply reflects the wider marginalisation of working-class issues in the public sphere.

- Finally, Mark Wilson nicely highlights the absurdity of an Apple ad which utterly crushes the concept of subtlety in directing consumers to turn away from genuine experience in favour of "products".

Monday Morning 'Rider Blogging

Needless to say, there isn't much to question after a performance like the 'Riders romp over Hamilton yesterday. But I'll point out a couple of aspects of the 'Riders' recent play which may mean far more than the numbers receiving the most attention so far.

On that front, while "no turnovers in four games!" and "130-yard rushing streak!" make for interesting bits of trivia which do signal some important elements of the 'Riders development as a team, we probably can't count on their being repeated indefinitely. (That goes doubly since the former ignores two interceptions called back due to penalties and a fumble recovered by the 'Riders, and the latter only applies because Kory Sheets piled up yardage after yesterday's game was well in hand.)

More interestingly for the team going forward, we've seen the offensive evolve even over the first few games of the 2013 season.

At the start, Darian Durant primarily kept the chains moving with quick passes caught in traffic. But now, the offence is opening up in a few ways which can only complicate life for defences trying to defend the 'Riders.

Most obviously, Durant's success with a patient precision offence has opened up opportunities for deep passes - with two bombs to Rob Bagg yesterday breaking the game open much like Taj Smith's big game the previous week put the 'Riders ahead to stay.

But Bagg and Smith have also added another dimension to the 'Riders offence. In the past, most of the complementary receivers around Weston Dressler and Chris Getzlaf have been unimpressive in picking up yardage after short catches. But both Bagg and Smith have been effective shedding defenders and breaking tackles after catching the ball the past two games - turning short passes into big gains, and ensuring that even harmless-looking plays can turn nerve-wracking for defenders.
 
Meanwhile, the 'Riders' defence of course had a stellar game in pitching a shutout against the Ticats. But the shutout was based in large part on one of the most basic elements of defensive football: relentlessly effective tackling which shut down plays even after the ball went where the Ticats wanted it to.

Seldom did a Hamilton receiver manage to make a catch without a defender hitting him as the ball arrived. And while the Ticats hardly tried to run the ball, their few efforts to do so were easily snuffed out as the 'Riders' linemen were constantly in position to make a tackle on the first try.

Of course, more skilled groups of receivers than Hamilton's injury-depleted unit will make that more difficult in the games to come. But as long as the 'Riders can stay in the habit of winning the tackling war on both sides of the ball, they'll be in great shape for the rest of the season.

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.

On double standards

Simon Enoch, Paul Dechene and Stephen Whitworth have already weighed in on the City of Regina's choice to blow its nose on a petition that reflects citizen engagement in action. But I'm surprised nobody's yet pointed out the vastly different treatment between two different aspects of the petition.

As Dechene notes, the City took two steps to arbitrarily cut down on the number of names treated as valid. First, it simply threw out over 2,800 names based on the fact that the listed date didn't include the year. And second, it conducted a "sampling" of the names on the remaining list, presuming that any signatures were invalid unless a signatory provided a positive response to a phone-out campaign - then applied the response rate for that sample to the balance of the signatures.

And there's a particularly jarring disconnect between those two steps.

Simply put, if the City was going to be calling out to confirm the validity of information on the petitions in any event, there's no excuse for their pitching petitions based on the date without conducting comparable sampling to assess that issue. After all, it would have taken little added work to conduct a similar sampling of the signatures which didn't list the year, and determine whether the intended year was in fact 2013.

But apparently sampling techniques were seen as utterly unacceptable if they served to validate rather than exclude signatures.

And based on the City's earlier attempt to change the rules in the middle of the petition campaign in order to prevent any referendum, we have to presume they had some even more restrictive form of "verification" ready in the wings if the phone campaign didn't figure to meet its goal of avoiding the referendum threshold: perhaps setting up an in-person roll call with 15 minutes notice, and disqualifying the signature of anybody not present to respond to his or her name being called.

It remains to be seen how Council will answer the Clerk's report - though anybody counting on most of the current crop to value public input when a chance for a private operator to bleed the city dry is at stake figures to be in for a long wait. But there's reason to hope that the Clerk's double standard will give the petitioners a fighting chance if we see the expected response.

Update: Paul Dechene has more. 

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jim Stanford discusses the OECD's findings that job protection actually improves better employment outcomes - while "flexible" labour markets serve only to ensure less opportunity for workers. And Sid Ryan makes the case for premiers to reject a low-wage agenda.

- Oil spills are happening all over the place without being reported. Nobody has any idea what's causing them or what to do about them. Traditional First Nations land is being contaminated. So all in all, it's business as usual in the Cons' dirty-oil economy.

- Meanwhile, investigators into the Lac-Mégantic disaster are keying in on the composition of the oil being shipped - since ordinary crude shouldn't produce the type of explosion that decimated Lac-Mégantic. And Greenpeace rightly calls for some wider consideration of the different types of oil being shipped and used when it comes to setting regulations.

- While I haven't seen much worth commenting on about the Cons' cabinet shuffle, I'll offer one followup note on Pierre Poilievre's history as a robocaller. Having operated a robocall firm himself, he'll likely have as good an idea as anybody both how to take advantage of the law as it stands now, and how to amend the Canada Elections Act so as not to prevent the Cons' robocall contractors from continuing their shady operations. And particularly given the reports this spring that previous elections legislation was stopped at the behest of the Cons' caucus, I'd suspect that's exactly why he's been given the role.

- Finally, Colin Horgan muses about the Cons' strategy in releasing details of their cabinet deck chair rearrangement on Twitter.

Musical interlude

Copyright - Rock Machine

Friday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to end your week.

- Patrick Wintour and Simon Bowers discuss the G20's predictable finding that our global tax system isn't set up to address the problem of offshore tax evasion:

The long-awaited report, prepared for a meeting of the G20 finance ministers in Moscow this weekend, says a "bold move by policymakers" is necessary to prevent a worsening in the position. The OECD calls it "a turning point in the history of international co-operation on tax".

The action plan sets out 15 initiatives for arming tax authorities around the world with the tools to crack down on some of the areas international leaders agree are among the most widely exploited by multinational tax avoiders. These initiatives are to produce a range of recommendations for changes to the tax treaty rulebook, with deadlines ranging from 12 months to two and a half years.

Among the highlights are additional disclosures multinationals must make to all tax authorities, helping officials know where to look for the worst avoidance. There are proposals to require companies such as Amazon with extensive warehouse networks in a country to pay more local tax; multinationals posting high-value "intangible" assets, such as brands and intellectual property rights, to tax havens will also be targeted, as will tax breaks introduced by individual countries that are seen as predatory.

The report sets out 15 separate actions the international community needs to take to modernise a tax system established in the 1920s. It argues the tax system is outmoded and unequipped to deal with mobile multinational firms that have found innumerable ways of avoiding tax, often by shifting profits to low-tax countries.

- And the exploitation of loopholes and weak government goes a long way toward explaining why economic security seems to be sorely lacking even in the midst of the plenty discussed by Tom Streithorst:

On the one hand, technology has made us all much more productive than we were 30 years ago. On the other, jobs have evaporated. Steel that used to require hundreds of men to manufacture now can be made with a dozen. A small businessman no longer needs to hire a secretary or a bookkeeper. Inexpensive software and a personal computer lets him do their jobs in a fraction of the time all by himself. The internet puts specialist knowledge that used to be almost impossible to find instantaneously on our laptops. The personal computer is doing to the office worker what the internal combustion engine did to the horse a century ago, making him obsolete.

Most of us are working harder, for less money and with no job security. My father and I both worked at the same large corporation but there was a difference, a difference determined by our respective eras: he was staff, I was freelance. When he got sick, the company found him doctors, paid his salary, put considerable effort into his recovery. Had I ever gotten sick, they would have simply forgotten my name. He yelled at the CEO habitually without any fear of losing his job. I mouthed off once to a middle manager and was never hired again. He had a defined benefit pension paid for by the corporation, the government gave me a tax break should I choose to save for my own retirement. The company had legal and moral responsibilities to him, which both he and they viewed as sacrosanct. All they owed me was a day’s pay for a day’s work. His generation gave their youth to a corporation, and the corporation took care of them in their old age. Today loyalty, if it exists at all, goes just one way.
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The interaction between falling house prices, mortgage-backed securities, and third party repo agreements was the trigger of this disaster, but the larger lesson is that we are in this mess today because our post-scarcity world economy cannot produce sufficient effective demand required to keep everybody employed. From 1938 to 1945, war created that demand. From 1945 to 1973, prosperity, rising wages, and advertising created that demand. From 1982 to 2007, debt fuelled consumption financed by ever rising asset prices created that demand. In 2007, as fear roiled the markets, banks stopped lending, and when we could no longer spend beyond our means, the economy collapsed.

The most important thing to remember about the faux-prosperity of the last 30 years is that it was manufactured on the basis of paper profits. If my house was worth £3000 in 1973 and £1.5 million in 2012, it is still essentially the same house and gives me the same pleasure to live in. If we could manufacture demand by making bombs and if we could manufacture demand by making houses quadruple in price, then we can manufacture demand in other ways, perhaps more satisfying ways as well.

- Jim Stanford and Angella MacEwen both debunk the "jobs without people" myth being pushed by Jason Kenney, while Rebecca Lindell notes that the Cons are also operating outside the reality-based community when it comes to employers exploiting temporary foreign workers.

- And Paul Krugman highlights the real effect of the "flexibility" demanded by anti-worker groups - as applied universally, it creates lower wages and a more sluggish economy for everybody.

- Finally, Oliver Wright reports on private-sector operators gaming the system to make profits off of outsourced public services without actually meeting the needs of the programs involved. And we should have reason to doubt that any corporation with a similar chance to bilk the public would do differently when given the chance to skim the cream off the top.

Making a list, checking it twice

Not surprisingly, the revelation that the Cons have assembled official enemies lists has given rise to some call for those lists to be made public. But I'll take a quick look at why that process is bound to take at least some time - as well as the considerations involved in figuring out whether the Cons may choose or be required to reveal the names involved.

To start with, assuming the lists contain both individual and organization names, the federal Privacy Act actually prohibits the Cons from releasing the former (to anybody other than the subject individual) unless one of a set of specific criteria is met. See section 8 for the full list of permitted purposes for disclosure.

So as a starting point, the Cons are free to let the public know if the David Suzuki Foundation is on its enemies list. But before mentioning David Suzuki acting as an individual, they'd have to either get Suzuki's consent, or determine that the public interest in disclosure of his name outweighs his privacy interests. (In the latter case, a notification process might apply at the discretion of the Privacy Commissioner.)

The Privacy Act also allows for a right of individual access to personal information in the hands of a government institution. And so the fastest way for any individual to confirm or refute any possibility that they're on a departmental enemies list is to make a request for his or her own personal information in the hands of that department.

But then, we don't know exactly how many individuals might be named within the lists, and it's safe to say not everybody will make the effort to request their own personal information. Which leaves open the possibility of more general requests under the Access to Information Act which might produce some complete answers in relatively short order.

Once again, the personal information of a third party normally can't be released without either consent or a valid purpose. But the Access to Information Act also includes a formal appeal process which would allow the requester to challenge the government's actions. And as a matter of practice, an institution would normally ask the affected individuals for their consent.

In fact, on an access request to a particular department, we'd expect all of the individuals on that department's enemies list to receive formal notice at some point - either at the outset if the Cons properly seek their consent, or on review if access is flatly refused initially.

As for the more specific discussion of individuals involved, that could take somewhat longer if the Cons want to assert exemptions under the Access to Information Act. But I'd be skeptical as to whether any would ultimately be found to apply. And if the Cons try to delay matters now, they may only ensure that some highly damaging decisions and revelations surface just as the 2015 election approaches.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that to end your Thursday.

- The Huffington Post discusses a study showing how poor Canadians pay the highest marginal tax rates on income that pushes them over benefit thresholds. But it should be fairly obvious that the solution is to set up rational models for social programs which avoid counterproductive incentives - rather than following the C.D. Howe Institute's apparent preference to freeze them in place. And indeed, Jordon Cooper writes that strategies based on the principle of investing where it's needed most can go a long way in propelling citizens out of poverty for the long term.

- Alex Himelfarb sees inequality and detachment at the root of Canada's current lack of broad political engagement:

The research also shows that how governments design and deliver social and labour programs is key to achieving both greater trust and greater equality. In this age of austerity and tax cuts, many governments are doing exactly the wrong things, exacerbating inequality by undermining wages and weakening the programs that reduce inequality and alleviate its consequences, moving from universal to narrowly targeted approaches or starving the programs that the research shows make the biggest difference. What Rothstein’s work demonstrates is that universal programs – universal healthcare, childcare, education, income security, and access to justice, are the most effective by far in promoting equality and social trust. They are inclusive and not subject to arbitrary income cut offs and often degrading means-testing in which officials decide who’s in and who’s out. They bring people together across income and cultural differences. Because they belong to everyone, everyone has a stake in their quality.
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In countries where social trust is low and inequality high, it is awfully hard to reverse direction. Even when people know what’s needed, there’s not enough trust to get it done. This is the classic social trap. Absent trust, people are not willing to pay the necessary taxes; each worries that they’re being ripped off by the other, those at the top effectively secede from society and those at the bottom withdraw believing that the game is rigged. It is almost impossible in those cases to imagine big new social programs or even strengthening existing ones. And so inequality and distrust grow; solutions seem increasingly out of reach.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Rawnsley sees the need for the UK's political parties to do far more to build a genuine mass membership - a point which figures to apply in Canada as well.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk suspects that Stephen Harper has become his own worst enemy. And the NDP helpfully highlights the one and only way to stay off the Cons' enemies list.

New column day

Here, on what the Cons' response to the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion says about their wider concern (or lack thereof) for the safety of Canadians.

For further reading...
- My earlier posts addressing Con-style arguments from Andrew Coyne are here and here.
- Andrew Griffith's book excerpt on the difference between political and official decision-making is here, and is discussed by Susan Delacourt here.
- CTV reports on growing frustration in Lac-Mégantic itself, while the ever-community-minded MMA is laying off staff and covering up the exact amount of oil it spilled.
- Finally, a couple of reports nicely highlight the distinction between a narrow response to Lac-Mégantic and broader questions about risk: while Kim Mackrael notes that rail operators including CN are making a public show of addressing their rules on unattended trains, the Province finds CN barging ahead with a plan to eliminate on-site staff from rail bridges.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Plenty more commentators are weighing in on the Harper Cons' enemy list, including the Star, the Globe and Mail, and Lawrence Martin. But Robyn Benson makes the most important comment about the Harper with-us-or-against-us mentality that's being applied to the federal government apparatus just as much as the Cons as a political party:

The common denominator here is a fundamental lack of trust in other people, approaching paranoia, combined with a mean authoritarian streak that defines anyone who thinks differently, not as a fellow-citizen, but as an enemy to be eliminated. Such people, once in power, display a cynical shrewdness and a fetish for secrecy. They instinctively prefer the dark to the light. And theirs is an iron rule, or at least as iron a rule as they are permitted to get away with.

Those of us who are fundamentally opposed to the values and philosophy of the current government, or even question them, are not “enemies.” We believe in the democratic process: spirited debate, the exercise of our Charter rights to dissent, strong and organized political opposition. A government that defines us as enemies is itself an enemy of democracy.

And democracy in Canada is fragile enough as it is. The Prime Minister is granted powers that a US President would envy—the unilateral right to appoint members of the Senate, judges, and members of various boards and commissions, for example. Or to shut down Parliament when it gets inconvenient. With the increasing concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office, the consequent lack of democratic accountability to the electorate becomes more and more a fact of Canadian political life. And when it reaches the point that the PMO becomes more or less an arm of a specific political party, running dirty tricks against opposition leaders, a line has been crossed, and it will not be easy to walk that one back.

- Meanwhile, CTV reports on the latest in the Cons' Clusterduff - an apparent refusal to provide central records to the RCMP. (And no, "you didn't ask for exactly the right document in exactly the right way with exactly the right secret password" isn't a valid excuse, especially from a PMO shouting from the rooftops that it's cooperating with the investigation.)

- Andrew Livingstone reveals the use of impoverished and hungry First Nations Canadians as lab rats to determine what food and health services people could do without. And Dr. Dawg diagnoses part of the problem as being the perception of people as objects for experimental purposes.

- Rafe Mair notes that in trashing B.C. Hydro, the Clark Liberals are destroying what should be a proud part of that province's legacy of responsive right-wing government.

- And finally, George Monbiot discusses how the tobacco lobby is merely channeling money and PR into other forms to evade restrictions on direct advertising and warp the political system in its favour.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Upworthy and the Equality Trust both provide fascinating examples of greed in action.


- Rank and File discusses the relentless wage-slashing that has led to a perpetually smaller number of workers with sole responsibility for dangerous cargo, while Leo Panitch makes a similar point. And in a guest post at Dawg's Blog, Brian Busby contrasts the public service and self-sacrifice of firefighters in Lac-Mégantic against the self-absorbed Randism of MMA and its leaders.

- Meanwhile, Colin Kenny points out that the Cons have eliminated federal funding for joint emergency preparedness. 

- Susan Delacourt reports (and follows up) on the Cons' Cabinet-level enemies lists. But if there's any surprise in the existence of the lists, it's the fact that they're bothering to make new ones for each minister's reference rather than having a common set of enemies recorded through CIMS.

- Finally, Canadians for Tax Fairness notes that Japan provides a prime example as to how to avoid offshore tax avoidance and evasion - meaning that there's no need for other countries to reinvent the wheel in ensuring that big business pays its fair share of the price of a civilized society.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Awash in cats.

Monday Morning 'Rider Blogging

Last week, I noted that even after a 2-0 start, the Saskatchewan Roughriders might be one injury away from some serious problems. And another impressive win later, that number may be down to zero.

But there are a few ways the 'Riders can handle the late-game injury to Darian Durant. And I wonder whether the best option may be the one which looks past the next game or two.

Once again, the 'Riders' success against the Argos (particularly early on) was based largely on superb interaction and timing between Durant and his receivers. And it's a wide open question whether Drew Willy can match the skill Durant has developed over the course of multiple years as a CFL starter.

Which means that if the 'Riders' priority is simply to win from week to week, they'll have a strong incentive to pursue one of two paths: playing Durant as soon as he's close to being ready, or alternatively playing Willy in a radically simplified offence better suited to a less experienced quarterback.

But if the 'Riders have decided that a conservative offensive style isn't good enough to get them through the playoffs with Durant at the controls, it seems highly unlikely that they can give the benefit of the doubt to Willy. And so now may be the time to take the training wheels off of Willy and see if he can run something close to the 'Riders' full offence - with the assurance that he'll get a full game at a time to try until Durant is fully healthy.

If he can, then all of the team's questions will resolve themselves fairly quickly. Durant will still be the obvious starter when healthy, but the 'Riders will be able to trust that a single injury won't torpedo their playoff hopes.

But what if he can't? Well, at least the team will know for later in the season, giving it the option of picking up some additional quarterback insurance if Durant's health is in serious question (or some more aggressive defenders to fit the '07 model if need be). And the 3-0 start means the 'Riders have at least a bit of room for error without losing a chance at home-field advantage and playoff positioning.

Again, the downside of that option is that it leaves the 'Riders on somewhat shakier ground as long as Durant is at less than full health. But it's the end of the season rather than the start that gets remembered - and the easiest path to a win next week may not be the best option for the 'Riders' chances of making and winning a home Grey Cup.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Murray Dobbin writes about the crisis of extreme capitalism:

(T)he "free economy" romanticized by Friedman and his ilk is anything but. Completely dominated by giant corporations whose wealth outstrips all but the richest nations, economic freedom does not exist for anyone else, including the vast majority of businesses who are at the mercy of financial institutions and mega-corporations. This is to say nothing of workers whose "freedom" to sell their labour now means they are free to compete with those who earn a few dollars a day thousands of miles away from their communities.

A free economy has always been a euphemism for liberated capital, and globalization is its obvious expression. While the behaviour of genuine markets as envisioned by Adam Smith was actually rooted in the customs, mores and culture of communities, this is less and less the case. Market behaviour is now typically that of Goldman Sachs or hedge funds. Their coldly calculated and amoral decisions affect every community on the planet and everyone living in them.
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One very concrete way of comparing the power of labour and capital is to examine the share of the proceeds of increased productivity each receives. This time capital took it all -- virtually every dime over a 25-year period. Had incomes grown at the same rate as productivity the median income would have been $56,826 in 2005 instead of  $41,401. But they didn't. Capital took it all because it could, because year by year democracy and its constraints on the "market" were steadily eroded.

In that missing $15,000 a year you can find the crisis of consumption, Canadian chapter. If millions of Canadian workers and families had actually kept pace with productivity the astonishing level of debt they now face would be much lower and they would be spending money in the economy. Last October the debt-to-income ratio of Canadian families hit a new record of 163.4 per cent. The comparable figure in the U.S. -- where it is also considered dangerously high -- is 110 per cent. As if that wasn't bad enough, money borrowed against home equity totals $206 billion, equal to 12 per cent of Canadian GDP (it's 4 per cent in the U.S.).
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This refusal of the federal government to collect adequate revenue to address this huge deficit in infrastructure is one of the best examples of just how perverse neo-liberal ideology has become. A modern economy cannot function efficiently with crumbling roads, bridges, mass transit systems and sewer and water systems, yet government policy continues to contribute to the crisis. And this is just one category of service that corporations rely on -- cuts to education and medicare, and the lack of investment in social housing and child care are equally irrational from a business perspective.

Yet the current management committee of capitalism will respond to its crisis based on the theory that got them here in the first place -- Milton Friedman's edict that democracy is the problem. The greater the crisis, the more democracy will have to constrained. If the medicine doesn't work, increase the dose. Inequality will not be addressed; it will be institutionalized.

- As a case in point, Dene Moore reports on Taseko's sheer glee at the prospect of a federal government willing to gut environmental assessment processes to facilitate the destruction of important lakes in the name of mining profits. And David Climenhaga points out the chutzpah of oil apologists who are willing to stand in front of a disaster scene and claim we should trust their judgment in how to avoid disasters.

- Joseph Stiglitz discusses how draconian intellectual property laws exacerbate inequality:

The Myriad case was an embodiment of three key messages in my book “The Price of Inequality.” First, I argued that societal inequality was a result not just of the laws of economics, but also of how we shape the economy — through politics, including through almost every aspect of our legal system. Here, it’s our intellectual property regime that contributes needlessly to the gravest form of inequality. The right to life should not be contingent on the ability to pay.

The second is that some of the most iniquitous aspects of inequality creation within our economic system are a result of “rent-seeking”: profits, and inequality, generated by manipulating social or political conditions to get a larger share of the economic pie, rather than increasing the size of that pie. And the most iniquitous aspect of this wealth appropriation arises when the wealth that goes to the top comes at the expense of the bottom. Myriad’s efforts satisfied both these conditions: the profits the company gained from charging for its test added nothing to the size and dynamism of the economy, and simultaneously decreased the welfare of those who could not afford it.

While all of the insured contributed to Myriad’s profits — premiums had to go up to offset its fees, and millions of uninsured middle-income Americans who had to pay Myriad’s monopoly prices were on the hook for even more if they chose to get the test — it was the uninsured at the bottom who paid the highest price. With the test unaffordable, they faced a higher risk of early death.
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When the legal regime governing intellectual property rights is designed poorly, it facilitates rent-seeking — and ours is poorly designed, though this and other recent Supreme Court decisions have led to one that is better than it otherwise would have been. And the result is that there is actually less innovation and more inequality.

Indeed, one of the important insights of Robert W. Fogel, a Nobel Prize-winning economic historian who died last month, was that a synergy between improved health and technology accounts for a good part of the explosive economic growth since the 19th century. So it stands to reason that intellectual property regimes that create monopoly rents that impede access to health both create inequality and hamper growth more generally.

- Paul Krugman comments on the Republicans' determination to ensure that less-wealthy Americans go hungry as further evidence of a political party genuinely dedicated to destruction for its own sake. And lest anybody consider the Cons any different, Lee Berthiaume finds that hundreds of millions of dollars budgeted for foreign aid have been held back for no apparent reason.

- Finally, Susan Delacourt discusses the relationship between the Harper Cons and the civil service - featuring an ideal case in point as to why we should be concerned about the Cons' short-sightedness:

Kenney, for instance, apparently told his officials that his political insights counted as much, if not more, than standard research and surveys. Griffith describes this tension as a challenge that needed to be overcome by the public servants — many of whom greeted the work-culture change with classic stages of grief: anger, sadness, denial and, finally, acceptance.
...
Griffith also notes that Kenney and the public service had different attitudes toward risk — while the public service was thinking in the long term, the minister was focused on the short-term, political calendar.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Robert Reich asks a few impertinent (but important) questions about plutocratic encroachment on the U.S.' political system.

- Catherine McKenna explains why it's important to try to make a difference in our political system. But Chris Cobb reports on what happens to those who try under the Cons' regime.

- Gerald Caplan wonders whether anybody involved in the Clusterduff - including Stephen Harper, his chief of staff, his hand-picked senators and his core office staff - has ever told anything approaching the truth. But I think we've already established the answer to that one. 

- Shirley Muir argues that the business sector should see the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion as a wake-up call. But in reporting on the anti-regulation lobbying of the rail sector, Linda Gyulai finds little evidence that's about to happen.

- Finally, LowPayIsNotOK thoroughly critiques an attempt by McDonalds to "help" employees to survive on their McJobs:

And the most important takeaway is that even low-wage employers are well aware that nobody can get by on the meager wage levels they offer.

Whipped

For those who haven't yet seen Whipped, Sean Holman's documentary on party discipline in the B.C. legislature is now available through CPAC's website. And it's well worth a watch (particularly on a stormy Saturday).

But I will point out that there may be an important distinction between an elected representative speaking up about issues in a way which differs from a party's position, and actually voting against a party position on a specific bill. And we may be best served if parties and the media alike offer more leeway on the former in order to better determine when it is or isn't appropriate to limit the latter.

As Holman shows, political journalists may only serve to reinforce the perceived helplessness of individual legislators by always taking a public statement of disagreement with one's party as a sign of weak leadership.

Ideally, that could be addressed in part by a leader explicitly encouraging differences of opinion: after all, it's much harder to make the case that an action constitutes a challenge to the authority of a leader who's explicitly approved of it in advance. But either way, the media would seem to have an important role to play in treating independent thought as an expected attribute for an elected representative - not an opportunity for a gotcha moment.

Once it's time to vote on legislation, though, I can see the case for a different standard. In that respect, I have plenty of sympathy for Mike Harcourt's comments which are used as a foil to Holman's message - even if the need for solidarity on the points required to keep a party and a government functioning should be paired with a presumption of free votes on matters which aren't classified as core party policy issues or confidence votes.

In addition, I'd also see reason to address the relationship between a party's leadership and its membership - which surely has some valid role to play in setting the direction of a caucus elected under a party banner.

Ultimately, though, it's tough to disagree with Holman's conclusion that the line between party discipline and MLA independence has been drawn in the wrong place in British Columbia (among other legislative assemblies across Canada). And it'll take a shift in focus by the media, constituents and party membership alike to challenge the amount of power that's currently wielded by party leaders.

On selective endpoints

Shorter Andrew Coyne:

If you ignore the actual recent rail disaster that blew up a town, there's little apparent risk of rail disasters. So let's keep assuming the likelihood of future disasters is trivial.

Now, some observers might ask how consistent a particular event is with a set of assumptions about the probability of that event occurring, and at least question the "everything's fine, nothing to see here" thesis in light of an actual disaster resulting from the blatant neglect of what they themselves observed to be obvious risk factors. But apparently not Coyne.

And some of us might also point out that the purpose of a public safety regime - particularly one governing the transport of products with the ability to cause massive destruction - should be to establish policies which keep us a reasonable distance away from the borderline between safe operation and disaster, rather than to test the limits of what we can afford to abandon given the human consequences of getting the answer wrong. (In effect, this goes to the question of what "tests" we're willing to have carried out on an unsuspecting public in gathering evidence as to what is or isn't safe.) But once again, apparently not Coyne.

Fortunately, plenty of others are working not only on figuring out what happened in Lac-Mégantic, but also asking more fundamental questions as to what we expect from our regulatory authorities before the "actuality" of similar tragedies materializes. And if Coyne ends up alone alongside the Cons' know-nothing camp, then so be it.

Musical interlude

Paul van Dyk feat. Arty - The Ocean

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The Globe and Mail weighs in on the Lac-Mégantic tragedy by pointing out that we should be far more concerned about public safety than technical defences and excuses. Saskboy notes that as soon as a corporation's business choices lead to a massive public disaster, the result is a claim that it can't be responsible for anything. Julian Sher looks at the history of cost-cutting by railroads including MMA, while Heather Mallick focuses on the issue of single-engineer trains.

- Stuart Trew catches Jean Charest and the Fraser Institute actively encouraging increased Canadian prescription drug costs in the name of finishing off a trade deal of dubious value with the EU:

We learned recently that the Ontario government believes CETA could save provincial exporters up to $100 million as a result of tariff elimination in Europe. But provincial trade officials admitted this sum would be undercut or even eclipsed by the hundreds of millions of dollars more the province would have to pay annually for Brand Name versus cheaper generic drugs, as predicted by the federal government and other studies.

As I've said before, this trade-off, which the majority of countries negotiating the TPP are apparently not willing to make, essentially swaps potential corporate gains (e.g. if Ontario firms make use of the lower tariffs, and if brand name drug makers bother to invest more in Canada) for absolute and permanent real losses to public revenues. It would also hit individual pocket books since private drug plans would be effected by the patent extensions.

- And Lori Culbert reports on the destruction of British Columbia's Therapeutics Initiative, Canada's main source of independent information about prescription drugs, at the behest of big pharma.

- Peter O'Neil reports on the PBO's findings about funding for First Nations schools in British Columbia, with the less-than-surprising conclusion being that students on reserve are being thoroughly underfunded

- Paul Dechene discusses the City of Regina's pathetic attempts to retroactively rewrite the rules for a a petition drive which received more support than anybody holding public office in the city.

- Finally, David Dayen writes that less than five years after a global financial meltdown caused mostly by lax regulation, both U.S. parties seem fine leaving a massive loophole in the minimal effort to protect the public interest passed in response:

The Dodd-Frank financial reform law intended to end the practice of financial industry behemoths shifting away their riskiest practices from U.S. regulators’ prying eyes. But a rule that would subject the $630 trillion global derivatives market to the same regulations, no matter the location of the trades, is on life support, thanks to a combination of foreign regulators, bank allies at federal agencies and in Congress, and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who may have delivered the final blow last week. The complex battle over derivatives also reflects a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, between populist reformers and Wall Street-friendly shoe polishers. And while the situation is fluid in advance of a Friday deadline, as it stands now, the shoe polishers are winning.

Derivatives are those massive bets on bets that are only tangentially related to real-world assets, like a rise in home prices or the reduction of the dollar. They accelerated the financial crisis when the housing bubble collapsed, and until recently, they were totally unregulated. But Dodd-Frank included substantial derivatives reform, forcing the trades to run through transparent clearinghouses, and forcing the dealers to carry sufficient capital to cover losses. Most important, under the “cross-border” provision, all affiliates that trade more than $8 billion in derivatives would be subject to the same regulation, regardless of where they are based. That’s crucial, because the five biggest U.S. banks control 95 percent of the derivatives market, and they have thousands of overseas affiliates where they often park their trading desks (at least half of their trading takes place overseas, according to International Financing Review). This allows them to spread risk in unregulated areas, only to plead for federal assistance when it all blows up. “Doing derivatives rules without cross-border is like blocking the front door and leaving the back door wide open,” said Marcus Stanley of Americans for Financial Reform.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Martin Lukacs offers up the definitive response to the Lac-Mégantic rail tragedy:

The deeper evidence about this event won't be found in the train's black box, or by questioning the one engineer who left the train before it loosened and careened unmanned into the heart of this tiny town. For that you'll have to look at how Lac-Mégantic was hit by a perfect storm of greed, deregulation and an extreme energy rush driving companies to ever greater gambles with the environment and human life.

...

It's little wonder, then, that today's oil and rail barons have cut corners with ease. They've been using old rail cars to ship oil, despite the fact that regulators warned the federal government they were unsafe, as far back as 20 years ago. A more recent report by a federal agency reminded the government that the cars could be "subject to damage and catastrophic loss of hazardous materials." All were ignored. To top it off, the federal government gave the go-ahead last year to Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway to operate with just one engineer aboard their trains.

All of which means it will not suffice to find out if a brake malfunctioned the night of the disaster, or limit ourselves to pointing at the failings of lax regulation. The debate should be about the need for another kind of brake, over the mad pursuit of infinite resources, and the unshackling of reckless corporations, on a finite and fragile planet.

Canada's political class will not be pleased by the lessons to be drawn. The government needs to get back into the business of heavily regulating corporations – through incentives, through taxes, and through sanctions. And this will involve not just grappling with the dangers of the transport of oil – which will remain unsafe, whether by rail or by pipeline – but starting a rapid transition away from an extreme energy economy entirely. That will not happen as the result of any government inquiry, but a noisy social movement that puts it on the public agenda.

- And Mike de Souza finds the Cons characteristically lying about their responsibility for lax regulation.

- Rick Smith tries to take some solace in the expected replacement of Peter Kent as the federal environment minister. But while I fully agree with his criticisms of Kent, I'd see little evidence that any Con in the same role could be expected to produce better results. 

- Meanwhile, Jeffrey Simpson recognizes that the Cons won't take a single step to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the oil sector beyond what they're forced into by outside actors. Nick Fillmore writes that any such pressure is limited by corporate influence over some environmental groups. And Clare Demerse offers a look at what we should expect from a changing climate.

- Finally, Richard Wolff discusses how more sophisticated rent-seeking and tax-sheltering at the top is cutting off most of the U.S. from the promised benefits of economic development:

Capitalism's great relocation places a remarkable political question on history's agenda today: can the system survive its relocation?

Capitalism grew successfully in its old centers despite working-class oppositions, expressed by labor unions, socialist and communist parties, anti-capitalist intellectuals and artists and by the resistances of its colonized subordinates. Part of that success – a basis of its 200-year global hegemony – was the ability of its working classes to wrest rising wages and/or standards of living.

In sharp contrast, capitalism's great relocation now underway both presses and enables capitalists to cease raising wages and standards of living in its former, old centers (Europe, North America and Japan). Indeed, it is lowering them.

New column day

Here, on how the Cons' abuse of supporters' donations can only stoke cynicism about the value of participating in politics - but how the limited number of people currently involved in politics creates a huge opportunity to change the system.

For further reading...
- Samara's poll and analysis on public participation can be found here (PDF). 
- The finding that the Conservatives' voter database was used to commit election fraud was of course made by Judge Mosley as discussed here. And CBC's reporting on Greg Horton's affidavit mentions the Conservatives' willingness to lavish $32,000 in donations on Mike Duffy, while Alison documents where Clusterduff stands now.
- Finally, Chris Selley comments on his sympathy for non-participants in light of their current choices - though again, I do think the most important step is for those less involved to take a greater role in shaping who's on the ballot. And Suzanne Moore discusses similar public apathy in the UK.

On glibertarianism

One of the more obvious points of convergence in political thought over the past 70-80 years is the greater appreciation of systemic complexity - the recognition that different decisions by many types of actors may collide in unpredictable ways, with the results potentially far outweighing the perceived impact of any single action and reaching people who may have had no idea their interests were affected.

That recognition in turn gives rise to two broad public policy responses: to seek to have a government equipped to identify the risks posed by factors which no other party has the means or will to address, or to give up and leave ourselves at the mercy of forces which interact in ways which we don't even try to anticipate.

Suffice it to say that Andrew Coyne's response to the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion is staking out some rather extreme territory in the latter camp.

Here's Coyne trying to isolate the specific circumstances of the explosion in order to treat the issue as one which doesn't call for an immediate response:

Consider what a singular convergence of events was required to bring it about. A highly flammable cargo; an unattended train; parked on a hill; on the main track, not a siding; above a town; far enough from town to build up great speed; and, as a final piece, that fatal bend in the track as it entered town. If any one of those is not present, no disaster and no deaths. But even if all are, you still need two more: the failure (so it seems) of the air brakes; and the failure (so it is alleged) to lock the hand brakes.

Now, may be true that Coyne's list of factors is indeed extremely unusual. But I'm fairly sure the right answer to "how many towns could see the same type of disaster?" is "we don't know, and should probably find out" - not "one - and since it's already been blown to smithereens, let's not worry our pretty little heads about it."

And indeed, a closer look at those same factors reveals some rather important decisions not to consider possible public safety issues:

Consider what a singular convergence of events was required to bring it about. A highly flammable cargo whose transportation has never been subject to a specific regulatory evaluation; an unattended train which is permitted by regulation; parked on a hill which should presumably be known to the rail operator and regulators alike; on the main track, not a siding which should presumably be known to the rail operator and regulators alike; above a town which should presumably be known to the rail operator and regulators alike; far enough from town to build up great speed which should presumably be known to the rail operator and regulators alike; and, as a final piece, that fatal bend in the track as it entered town which had been pointed out by concerned residents. If any one of those is not present, no disaster and no deaths. But even if all are, you still need two more: the failure (so it seems) of the air brakes; and the failure (so it is alleged) to lock the hand brakes.

Again, this brings us back to the core question of how to deal with complexity. Should we simply ignore risks in the name of minimizing our own costs, presuming that somebody else (and in this case, a private operator devoted to shipping the most product for the least cost) will bother to identify what needs to be done in order to avoid public tragedies? Because the evidence from Lac-Mégantic (and an ongoing series of spills, derailments, explosions and other disasters) doesn't exactly support the "let somebody else do it" argument.

Moreover, it seems equally obvious that other "convergences of events" might come about elsewhere. And that's precisely why we need a regulatory structure equipped to evaluate the distinct threats facing all sorts of communities and ensure that they're being avoided to the extent possible - rather than one based on allowing private operators to self-report on standardized checklists as the primary precondition for carrying out dangerous activities.

But sadly, we have a government more interested in slashing public services than making them work - which is an issue we should be discussing regardless of whether a particular regulatory tweak would have been necessary or sufficient on its own within the complex array of factors which might have stopped the Lac-Mégantic tragedy. And yes, the aftermath of a preventable disaster is probably the best possible time to highlight the fact that we should be making some effort to prevent disasters.

Speaking of which, I haven't even reached the most galling part of Coyne's take:

There are things we could do, without a doubt, that would preclude another Lac-Mégantic altogether. We could make the cars out of titanium, or reroute the lines around towns, or take out the bends. But are the costs, potentially high, worth the risk: vanishingly small? We could ban carrying oil by train, but other methods, as I’ve mentioned, have their own risks — and what of the vast number of other hazardous materials that also travel by rail?

Put in its most charitable light, one might read this passage as referring solely to probabilities - to the exclusion of any talk about the cost imposed on innocent parties should the possibility materialize. But surely any rational calculation of risk includes some consideration of both. (Paging Dan Gardner on this one.)

And I'm far from willing to consider this...

...to be a vanishingly small cost incurred in the fulfillment of the apparent highest possible good of ripping carbon from the ground and burning it.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Ethan Cox discusses how the Lac-Mégantic tragedy was a predictable - if not inevitable - outcome of a self-regulated (or un-regulated) rail system:

Prior to, during, and after the process of deregulating railroads, there were strident warnings issued by the most credible and well-positioned experts and organizations in Canada. Their dire predictions fell on deaf ears, and yet not a single story in the mainstream media has made the link between the deregulation of the rail industry and its inevitable consequences.

Instead, those who dare make the commonsensical connection between deregulation, cuts to regulation and inspection, and an increased frequency of accidents, are pilloried for politicizing a tragedy.

I wonder, if now is not the time to discuss the reasons why this disaster occurred, when is?

- Bruce Campion-Smith reports that the Cons specifically approved some of the operating procedures which may have contributed to the explosion, while Bruce Cheadle notes that nobody seems to have seen a problem leaving a train unattended and unlocked in the absence of a regulation to the contrary. And Paul Schneiderfeit takes a more general look at some of the causes of the disaster, while Jennifer Delgado and Kim Geiger point out the rail operator's anti-union history.

- Meanwhile, the rubber-stamping of oil developments with disastrous effects on the environment continues at the Cons' usual breakneck pace.

- And while Jason Sattler hopes that the insurance industry's concern about climate change will serve to shift right-wing opinions, I'd worry the legislative response will simply be to absolve the corporate sector of responsibility for the damage caused by its actions.

- Corporate Europe Observatory highlights some of the areas for concern in an anticipated free trade agreement between the EU and the US. And in what should be a familiar theme in the establishment of separate, corporate-friendly legal systems, there seems to be precious little evidence of any need to impose strict limits on democratic action:

MEPs have repeatedly asked the Commission to provide evidence of access to local courts being denied in Canada. The Commission gave two weak examples where companies did not even try to go to local courts. Asked specifically about problems faced by European investors, it admitted: “There is little publicly available information available in this context”. Neither has the Commission given any proof of discrimination against foreign firms in US courts.

On the other hand, the Commission remains completely silent on the rampant corporate bias and vested interests at play in private investment arbitration tribunals. Last year, our Profiting from Injustice report uncovered how a small club of lawyers riddled with conflicts of interest is securing investor-friendly interpretations of the law and sustains a continuous flow of multi-million dollar lawsuits.

So, while the Commission has yet to prove that there is anti-foreign-investor behaviour in US courts, there is an enormous weight of evidence of the corporate bias in the parallel legal system it is proposing instead.

...

In its factsheet, the Commission explains that the investor rights which it wants to incorporate in the EU’s future international investment agreements “are not necessarily incorporated into the domestic system” of the signatory states. The investor needs a parallel legal system – investment arbitration – to enforce these rights. Thus the need for investor state dispute settlement.

Finally some honesty! This is exactly what the Commission’s corporate agenda is about: granting multinationals far greater property rights than any domestic firm, any community, any individual is granted by any constitution in the world. And creating an overreaching legal system by which these superior rights can be enforced.

- Finally, Jared Milne's series of posts about Canadian First Nations and the "reserve paradox" is well worth a read.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Wrapped-up cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- George Monbiot rightly challenges the attempt of corporate interests and their political sock-puppets to demonize anybody concerned about our planet's future:

Exotic invasive species are a straightforward ecological problem, wearily familiar to anyone trying to protect biodiversity. Some introduced creatures – such as brown hare, little owl, field poppy, corncockle and pheasant's eye in Britain – do no harm to their new homes, and are cherished and defended by nature lovers. Others, such as cane toads, mink, rats, rhododendron, kudzu vine or tree-killing fungi, can quickly simplify a complex ecosystem, wiping out many of its endemic animals and plants. They have characteristics (for example, being omnivorous, light-excluding, toxic or inedible to any native carnivore or herbivore) that allow them to tear an ecosystem to shreds. These aren't cultural constructions. They are biological facts.

Comparing those who describe this process to racists is the intellectual equivalent of stating that evolution through natural selection is a coded attack on the welfare state, or that the first law of thermodynamics was hatched by green campaigners intent on conserving energy. It is to see the words but not to understand the science they describe.
...
Unlike most art, the wonders of nature often stand in the way of attempts to extract resources or to build airports or shopping centres. Corporate attacks on people who love and seek to defend the natural world have seeped into every pore. Culturally hegemonic, the developers' view finds expression in the most unlikely places.

So those of us whose love of the natural world is a source of constant joy and constant despair, who wish to immerse ourselves in nature as others immerse themselves in art, who try to defend the marvels that enthrall us, find ourselves labelled – from the Mail to the Guardian – as romantics, escapists and fascists. That, I suppose, is the price of confronting the power of money.

- But unfortunately, it's the people most determined to destroy all they can in the name of profit who are largely responsible for making their own rules. On that front, CBC reports on the miserable failure of self-regulation in Canada's rail sector (particularly when it comes to the transportation of oil), while Steve Horn points out that the U.S. government isn't even being informed of the actual location of the Keystone XL pipeline it's being asked to approve as safe.

- Rich Clarke makes the case for a guaranteed annual income among other steps to alleviate poverty and inequality:

Ask how to attack poverty and guaranteed annual income often comes up as the response or solution. While it has many positive facets, it alone is not the single answer. We do not believe there is one solution, but there is one goal — guaranteed income security.
...
It is recognized that more than one-third of working Canadians do not have permanent, full-time paid jobs. Many, often referred to as the precariously employed, fall below the poverty line due to low hourly wages and low hours of work, and/or not enough weeks of work in a year.

The working poor and near-poor — who move in and out of low-paid jobs but often fail to attain a decent standard of living — is disproportionately made up of recent immigrants — especially those belonging to racial minorities — persons with disabilities, female single parents, the single near-elderly, aboriginal Canadians and young people trying to get into secure employment.
...
There is no one solution to alleviating poverty. The concept of a guaranteed annual income is a reminder that we need to raise the bar for all; and the best way to do this is to strengthen the foundation of income security for all.

- Finally, Michael Harris sees the Harper Cons as running out of (however implausible and meaningless) stories to tell to distract from their own corruption and cover-ups. And Crawford Kilian offers a primer on the RCMP's investigation into Mike Duffy and his Conservative Party benefactors.

The unengaged majority

Samara has released a study on the sadly limited level of public participation in Canadian politics and community activities. And Susan Delacourt and Misty Harris both follow up - with Harris catching what looks to me like the most important point:

Sixty per cent of Canadians say they haven’t discussed a political or societal issue face-to-face or over the phone even once in the past 12 months, according to a striking new study by Samara. And it’s not that those conversations have simply moved online, either.

Just 17 per cent of Canadians say they have shared political content via social media in the last year; 15 per cent blogged about a political issue; 30 per cent used email or instant messaging to talk politics; and 25 per cent participated in an online discussion group for such purposes.

“Politics is viewed as a dirty word – something that isn’t appropriate or that should be celebrated,” said Alison Loat, Samara’s executive director. “But it’s through politics that we decide how we’re going to live together, how we shape laws, how we allocate billions of dollars of tax money. . . . It’s the process by which we build our country every day.”

Now, it's particularly striking that the poll question about political or societal issues wasn't limited to the partisan politics which are so often seen as the problem. Instead, the problem extends to a lack of discussion of any issues at all - whether or not they reflect the priorities of political parties.

And I'd think that finding leads to an obvious need for change: to the extent there is a taboo against talking about political issues in a wide variety of settings, that restriction on the scope of expected discussion has gone too far.

Samara's poll actually found more people actually involved in participating within civil society groups, signing petitions or boycotting products than talking about issues. Which means that a substantial number of respondents with enough interest to act on political issues couldn't think of a single time when those same issues were discussed.

That set of respondents raises one challenge: a political culture which to a great extent treats the majority of citizens as passive rather than active participants seems to be reflected in their actions. But it's hard to believe that people signing petitions or engaging in boycotts don't have at least some interest in talking about why they engage in those actions. Which means that the main issue may be a lack of opportunity to get involved - a problem which any political party or activist group should be eager to remedy.

Meanwhile, the survey also includes a substantial number of respondents who aren't involved in any way. But there too, some public affirmation that there's value in discussing political and social issues (along with a greater number of opportunities to participate) would have the potential to make a significant difference - and hopefully create an expectation that everybody will at least think and talk about the issues that affect their lives.

Monday Morning 'Rider Blogging

Two games into the Saskatchewan Roughriders' regular season, the "experienced team starting quickly" theory is looking fairly solid. But let's take a look at what's gone better than expected - as well as where there may be room for concern.

To start with, a couple of areas which looked like possible weaknesses have proven to be anything but. The 'Riders' special teams were a major question mark as the season started, but have been nothing but steady through the first two games. And the relative newcomers in the 'Riders' secondary have developed in a hurry, as Saturday's game against Calgary saw relatively newcomers Macho Harris and Prince Miller make a number of big plays to shut down the Stamps' quick-strike offence in the second half.

More importantly, though, the 'Riders offence has taken a major step forward. And the main question for the rest of the season will be whether it can keep up the pace.

Under most circumstances, I see the easiest path to success in football involving an opportunistic offence and strong units elsewhere. But alongside some cap and personnel-replacement considerations, that preference is largely a matter of practicality.

The problem with a precision offence is that it can be stopped in its tracks by a single misfire or dropped pass. And until this season, the 'Riders' personnel has been better suited to seeking out big plays than stringing together long drives - as Darian Durant has sometimes been erratic as a passer, and Chris Getzlaf has alternated between spectacular catches and cringe-inducing drops.

But two games into 2013, the 'Riders' key skill players (including Durant, Getzlaf, Weston Dressler and Kory Sheets) have looked like they can piece together a touchdown drive six yards at a time almost at will. And that style worked to perfection against the Stamps, as a methodical offence both kept the Stamps' playmakers off the field most of the second half and made up for an early deficit.

What's more, there's even some prospect for improvement. After all, Geroy Simon is still waiting to get back onto the field, and Taj Smith continues to show that he can make jaw-dropping catches when given the chance (even if they didn't translate into numbers against the Stamps).

Of course, there is a downside to fine-tuning an offensive machine around a single quarterback: while it may be possible to plug in new parts elsewhere, it's rare for an inexperienced backup to be able to find the small openings exploited by a more comfortable starter. Which means that the 'Riders' offensive line may be under even more pressure to keep heat away from Durant.

But if the greatest risk for the 'Riders is that their ruthlessly efficient offence relies on the skills of a quarterback who looks to be reaching his prime, that's hardly a bad sign. And while any football season is bound to involve some ups and downs, we haven't seen much of the latter from the 'Riders yet.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Lest anybody think the Harper Cons' combination of dishonesty and secrecy is limited to political payoffs, Blacklock's reveals (PDF) that they subsidized the shipment of corporate jobs out of Canada - and didn't deign to inform the public that the program existed until seven years after the fact.

- And APTN reports on the Cons' suppression of tens of thousands of pages of documents detailing the causes and effects of underfunding of First Nations child welfare.

- But then, both stories also serve as important examples of the value of detailed research into government activity. And Nicky Woolf credits the Guardian for taking up that cause around the globe - making it an increasingly valuable journalistic resource even in the U.S.:

Figures given exclusively to The Atlantic show that -- according to internal analytics -- June 10, the day after Snowden revealed his identity on The Guardian's website, was the biggest traffic day in their history, with an astonishing 6.97 million unique browsers. Within a week of publishing the NSA files, The Guardian website has seen a 41 percent increase in U.S. desktop unique visitors (IP addresses loading the desktop site) and a 66 percent rise in mobile traffic. On June 10, for the first time in the paper's history, their U.S. traffic was higher than their UK traffic.
...
The Guardian also has a reputation for solid investigative journalism. The NSA story isn't their first rodeo. They were one of three publications to work closely with WikiLeaks to process the mountains of data leaed by Bradley Manning in 2010. When Rupert Murdoch's vast tabloid the News of the World was finally caught phone-hacking, it was The Guardian that brought it down, doggedly fighting for the story for two years against a storm of legal threats and denials from News International. Before that, the paper was known for having faced down a storm of litigation to prove that the former MP Jonathan Aitken had lied before a court, giving them probably their best-known front page, featuring the headline "He Lied And Lied And Lied".

I ask Gibson what's coming up for Guardian US, when the Snowden dust finally settles. "We will add commentators, we will add reporting, we will add verticals, we will continue to grow, and we'll work with commercial partners and do tech and business and all the things that we want to be," she says. The publication is doubling down on its investigative presence in the States as well: Investigative journalist Paul Lewis is joining the paper's Washington bureau from the London office this month, and Nick Davies, the reporter whose two years of digging brought about the phone-hacking scandal, is joining the New York team later in the year.

- John Ahni Schertow offers a look at the process being used to push a nuclear waste depository on the community of Pinehouse - and the rightful response from community members.

- Finally, Kathleen Rodgers and Darcy Ingram criticize the Cons' lack of interest in any youth involvement in politics other than as paid flacks and trained seals.