Of rules and rulers

I'll readily agree with the Star's editorial board that we should expect our lawmakers to have some respect for the law. But while David Climenhaga draws one contrast between Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper, I'll point out what looks to be a more apt comparison - one which also involves sheer personal indulgence rather than any statement of principle:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper went ATVing today...on the runway at Tuktoyaktuk.

He took off, and left his RCMP detail in the dust. They then chased him. Two officers on ATVs, and some more in pickup trucks.

Harper roared up and down the Tuktoyaktuk airport runway. He was going very fast. His security detail continued to chase him.

When asked if he had a licence to drive an ATV, especially on a runway, Harper said, "I think I make the rules."

Of course, the correct answer to that is...no, no he doesn't, as discretionary executive power doesn't extend to exempting the Prime Minister from vehicle licensing laws and airport safety standards based on nothing more than his own whims. In fact, that's more the territory of tinpot dictators than democratic leaders.

But Harper, his security detail, the RCMP and his party are all perfectly fine with that modus operandi.

So, to sum up...

Bad: a leader who believes himself to be above the law (particularly while voting for strict mandatory sentences for those not so privileged).

Worse: a leader who believes himself to be the law. Which is what we're stuck with now.

And more importantly, better: a leader with respect for both the law and the people who enforce it. Which is hopefully what we'll have as a country once the next federal election is in the books.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne writes that it's long past time for Newfoundland and Labrador to boost its minimum wage:

Last year, a statutory review of minimum wage, conducted by a government-appointed panel, called for action to be taken on the minimum wage. The panel recommended an increase to restore any erosion to the wage since 2010 as well as a formula, tied to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which would see annual, incremental increases in the wage to ensure that it keeps pace with the increases in the cost of living.

The report and its recommendations sit on a shelf...

The lack of action denies thousands of workers a pay raise. Indeed, the lack of action results in a continued erosion of their wage - as time passes and the cost of living steadily increases, the minimum wage is worth less today than it was three years ago, the last time the wage was increased.

This inaction is a stunning reversal from a minimum-wage policy that had been aimed at making sure the province's lowest-paid were not left totally behind. In 2010, the government also said that minimum-wage increases proved the government's commitment to improving the quality of life of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians while making the province more competitive with respect to attracting workers.
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The Newfoundland and Labrador government's minimum-wage policy had been a success. Three years later, after all that hard work of playing catchup and making sure some of the prosperity is shared, the current government appears to have abandoned its commitment to helping the lowest-paid achieve "increased self-reliance."

The big question is, why?

- Meanwhile, the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario is pushing for that province's government to keep its promise to combat poverty.

- Martin Lukacs wonders whether the great pipeline swindle will succeed only in building a mass movement against petro-politics, while Mike de Souza tracks down briefing notes which nicely expose the Cons' anti-carbon pricing rhetoric as a sham. And Graham Thomson catches Alberta's PC government refusing to acknowledge an actual series of pipeline leaks in what was supposed to be a review of the province's regulatory system:

The review of the regulations does not dig into the spate of pipeline leaks that have plagued Alberta the past few years and it doesn’t delve into whether the Alberta Energy Regulator is properly enforcing the regulations.

It’s a bit like asking, after a rash of crimes, if the streets of Edmonton are safe and then investigating the regulations that govern the police rather than looking at the actual crime spree and how the police handled it.
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The pipeline safety review does not directly address any of the pipeline spills that prompted the government to call for the review. Those would include spills in 2012 such as the accidental dumping of 3,000 barrels of oil into the Red Deer River and the spillage of 5,000 barrels into Rainbow Lake.

And let’s not forget the Plains Midstream pipeline spill of 28,000 barrels in northwestern Alberta in 2011 — the largest spill in the province in 30 years. That spill warranted its very own public inquiry, or maybe an inquiry into pipeline safety in general.

Instead what we got was the Alberta Pipeline Safety Review.

It would seem to be a classic case of bait and switch. We walked into the store for an Apple MacBook Pro with retina display and left with a Commodore 64.

 - Finally, Paul Hanley and Christine Stark both discuss Canada's appalling (and all-too-rarely-acknowledged) abuse of First Nations people. But have no fear: the Cons are hard at work using public money to search for scapegoats.

Musical interlude

Lange - Destination Anywhere

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Polly Toynbee discusses how the UK's attacks on social programs are based on gross ignorance about what social spending does (and who it helps):

The Citizens Advice Bureau reports a rise of 78% in the last six months in people needing food banks to keep going. Many have jobs, but their pay doesn't see them to the end of the week. The CAB chief executive says millions of families face a "perfect storm" with benefit cuts, low wages, short hours and the high cost of living. Even in apparently well-to-do areas, community halls and churches are opening food banks so all can see those queuing for tins of beans and packets of pasta: basic calories, no treats and nothing fresh.
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YouGov's polling for the TUC found remarkable ignorance of the facts. People think 41% of the budget goes on unemployment – the real figure is 3%. They think fraud accounts for 27%: even Iain Duncan Smith's own figure is 0.7%. They think people have little incentive to work. In reality a parent working 30 hours on minimum pay gets £138 more than on the dole. Polling for the Institute for Public Policy Research similarly wildly mistakes who gets what. People think immigrants account for the biggest slice when pensioners take half. They say pensioners and the disabled are the most deserving, but if so, why is there no outcry about disability cuts and Atos tests where 1,300 people died last year after being found "fit for work"?
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The trouble with advocacy for the plight of the hard done-by is that we must always find "perfect" cases, people utterly blameless in every aspect of their life, judged by criteria none of us apply to ourselves, our family or friends. Mistakes, errors of judgment, bad habits, all too human in everyone else are unforgivable in anyone receiving benefits from the taxpayer: weed out smokers or drinkers or anyone too stupid, too lazy, too fat, too angry, too lacking in get-up-and-go or just too depressed to put on a good show.

How do you reconcile people's sugar-coated sympathy for imaginary unfortunates with their strong impulse to blame and punish real-life poor people? That's the conundrum that myriad think-tank reports and charities giving the true facts still fail to crack.

- Meanwhile, the CCPA and the Wellesley Institute wasted no time in debunking the Fraser Institute's pathetic assault on the well-being of families with children.

- In a similar vein, Toby Sanger neatly debunks the Conference Board of Canada's latest paean to P3s. And Simon Enoch and David Weir have responded to a few of the more ludicrous defences of turning public services into privatized profit centres when it comes to Regina's water treatment referendum.

- Stephen LaRose points out the level of diligence Michael Fougere and company are putting into the City of Regina's operations.

- And finally, pogge responds to Robert Decary's report on federal government surveillance by writing that we should expect our watchdogs to have at least some bite. But it seems to me that the problem goes even further than that.

There's certainly room for debate whether a watchdog should be able to make binding orders - i.e. whether it should be able to bite into activity as it happens, or merely bark out a warning. But I don't see how anybody can reasonably defend the position that a watchdog should be forced to wear blinders rather than getting a full picture - and the lack of any information whatsoever in response to Decary's inquiries looks to me to be the most damning part of his findings.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jenny Carson asks what governments are doing to lift poor workers out of poverty. (Spoiler alert: the Cons' answer is "why would we want to do that?").

- Meanwhile, Kemal Dervis and Uri Dadush discuss the desperate need to rein in inequality in the U.S.:

As it turns out, high and rising levels of inequality may well be a cause of increased macroeconomic instability. But the negative spiral doesn’t end there: High inequality also contributes to a fraying of the political consensus, is associated with boom-bust credit cycles and may ultimately lead to a chronic weakness of economic demand.

The United States is now caught in a vicious cycle. The cycle starts with stagnant incomes and a biting credit constraint at the middle and low end of the income distribution. As dramatically exemplified by the large numbers of continuing and still unresolved home foreclosures, this has led to low expectations for effective demand growth – and therefore low business investment in the U.S. economy at large.
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(I)t is the rebalancing of the distribution of income within the United States that would play a key role in unlocking the U.S. economy’s growth potential in a sustainable way.
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Social balancing programs – such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, unemployment benefits and work-share – provide transfers to boost the incomes of low-income or unemployed groups.

These instruments are believed to be four to five times as effective in stimulating demand as policies that benefit high-income groups, such as tax cuts for those with high incomes, for corporations and in the capital gains arena.
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An economy such as that of the United States, where nearly all of the income growth accrues to the very rich, is unlikely to generate a corresponding growth in broad-based demand – especially after the Great Recession ravaged the credit scores of a large part of its middle class and poor.

- Pat Atkinson points out why Canadians should be nothing but skeptical about the Cons' economic branding:

When questioned about the advertising tender, Harper said: "Canadians understand and are very proud of the fact that Canada's economy has performed so much better than other developed countries during these challenging times." What's so galling about his response is that Australia and most Scandinavian countries have outperformed Canada's economy since 2009. Harper is sticking to the adage, "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."

What the government neglects to tell us is that Canada's national debt has ballooned under Harper's stewardship. When he took office in 2006, the debt stood at $481 billion. Today our collective debt is at its highest level in history, at more than $612 billion with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty projecting an additional $18.7-billion deficit this year.

It simply didn't have to get this bad had the government made some different choices.

 - Aaron Wherry argues that while the Cons' latest prorogation itself shouldn't be a source of as much outrage as their previous choices to padlock Parliament, the elimination of 20 sitting days of a House of Commons already being regularly strongarmed into rushing through legislation raises some serious questions. And Tim Harper calls out the Cons' efforts to turn a regulatory issue about wireless communications into a source of partisan bait.

- Alison offers a theory as to how the UK's raid of the Guardian may be little more than a piece of NSA-friendly surveillance theatre.

- Finally, Robin Russell-Jones draws a parallel between the current debate over fracking, and the longtime corporate effort to convince policy-makers that lead in our air and water wouldn't harm people in the slightest:

(W)hat lessons can we draw from the story of lead? First, that society will enthusiastically adopt new technology without considering the consequences. Second, that you cannot rely on industry to act in the public interest, even when their practices are going to pollute the entire planet. Third, that politicians are no more responsive to issues of public health than they were in the 18th century. Fourth, that remedial action only happens when individuals make their voices heard above the clamour of vested interest. And finally disinformation is a standard industry tactic whenever profits are under threat.

On factory families

Sure, some are responding to the Fraser Institute's "study" on the costs of child-rearing with mockery and/or outrage. But in fairness, let's acknowledge that the study's validity simply depends on the accuracy of its assumptions, which may well vary from parent to parent.

And given Christopher Sarlo's reliance on children costing precisely zero in housing and care expenses, it could be that he's found a highly profitable enterprise for anybody who sees this as a model for a happy and healthy family:

New column day

Here, on how the two Con appointees at the centre of Stephen Harper's Senate are exactly the two who should have known better than to abuse the public trust.

For further reading...
- Brian Bergman and Dale Eisler offer the background on the Saskatchewan PCs' scheme here, while CBC updated the amounts still owing to the public here.
- Those interested in the judiciary's take on the PC MLAs involved will want to see Lorne McLaren's sentencing, as well as these three decisions on Eric Berntson.
- Finally, the revelation of the Cons' "boot camp" instructing new Senate appointees in the use of public money for partisan ends is from Jordan Press' report.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Glenn Greenwald, David Atkins and Simon Jenkins all discuss the U.K.'s detention of David Miranda - with heavy emphasis on the Cameron government's apparent belief journalism and terrorism are synonymous. And Ian Welsh points out the need to fight back against a pervasive surveillance state before it's too late.

- Barbara Garson discusses how the U.S.' recession was used as an excuse to turn stable jobs into precarious ones. And Duncan Cameron takes a look at Stephen Harper's real economic record since he took power (with an assist from Citizens for Public Justice):

Anyone who believes what Conservative cabinet ministers have been repeating about job creation in Canada should read the CPJ fact sheets.

Carol Goar of the Toronto Star identified the CPJ report as explaining why many Canadians are still experiencing the recession. The Canadian employment rate is down: the number of jobs created (950,000) has not increased as fast as the population (1.8 million). Unemployment is stuck at 1.4 million. When talking about the unemployed, the government does not include discouraged workers, people with part-time jobs looking for full-time work, temporary jobs, or the under-employed. Add them to the total, and the real unemployment rate is one out of ten out of work.
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Conservatives believe the marketplace works fine, and any problems can be fixed by allowing prices to adjust. Unemployment is explained by the failure of rates of pay to fall, because of minimum wages, unions, employment insurance, welfare and other market imperfections, which need to be eliminated or reduced.

The problem with this view is that rates of pay are falling -- policies to reduce wages have been successful, increasing inequality as Stephen Gordon has shown in Maclean's. For the Harper government, business-funded think-tanks, and other supporters of the market view, this just means wages have not fallen enough.
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Stephen Harper does not expect Canadians to discover that job performance has been poor and that the economy is not improving, while the standard of living for most Canadians is declining. He has announced plans to prorogue Parliament, cutting the fall session short. This will limit the time for parliamentary debate and the subjects raised by the opposition.

If the economy is going to be the ballot question in the next election, as Stephen Harper suggests, Citizens for Public Justice have afforded parliamentarians and all Canadians with what is needed to examine his government's record.

- Meanwhile, Michael Harris suggests that it's time for Harper to leave the political scene. And Thomas Walkom recognizes that Harper's actions make more sense as comedy than governance.

- Finally, Robyn Benson catches a glaring example of anti-NDP bias in the Ottawa Citizen - which reported on Larry Rousseau's nomination run in the Bourassa by-election with union-bashing from Con and Lib sources and headline writers alike. And for those wanting some more reasonable coverage of the impending federal by-elections, Pundits' Guide is once again the place to go.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cats with toys.

Tuesday Morning 'Rider Blogging

Last week, I wrote this about the Saskatchewan Roughriders' upcoming schedule:

Of course, the next few games may seem to be ones where the 'Riders can afford to experiment somewhat. And hopefully the team can keep up enough focus against a few reeling opponents to stay in the win column even if the breaks don't mostly go Saskatchewan's way.

After Saturday's nail-biter against Montreal, it may be important to clarify that I saw that as a fallback position rather than a primary game plan.

Which isn't to say one can fault the 'Riders' defence at all. In fact, it performed as well as it has all season: Montreal scored a grand total of 8 points all game which were attributable in any meaningful way to the Als' offence, and the 'Riders were able to stop a number of drives starting deep in their own zone.

But Saskatchewan's strength through most of the 2013 season so far had been its ability to avoid putting the defence in those types of situations. Instead on Saturday, a series of four lost fumbles both kept the Als in the game - and nearly handed them the win before a late burst of effectiveness by Darian Durant's offence.

Hopefully the answer for now will involve mostly a return to the basics: the 'Riders have already shown they can take care of the ball earlier this season, and the most recent game should offer a helpful reminder of the consequences of failing in that effort. But most opponents won't offer the combination of internal chaos and injuries that kept Montreal from taking full advantage - and while the 'Riders once again have a narrow hold on first place in the West, it could slip away just as easily as the ball seemed to on Saturday.

On external forces

Leadnow's latest fund-raising pitch is attracting some well-deserved criticism for once again relying (at least in part) on strategic voting in the face of ample evidence showing its futility.

But I'll point out that there's also part of Leadnow's message which looks new - and which may go a long way toward organizing the type of broader movement some of us have been hoping to see for some time:

1. Find people who didn’t vote last time: To design the best election campaign, we need to reach out in campuses and communities across the country to listen to Canadians, especially people who did not vote in the last election.

2. Create a program for action: We’ll ask people who didn’t vote in the last election about their concerns and see how their answers connect with the Leadnow community’s big picture goals on democracy, climate and inequality. Together we’ll create a program for action that will motivate people across the country.
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4. Grow opposition to contain the damage: We’ve already stopped or delayed this government time and again. We’ll keep running campaigns to hold this government accountable on the issues that matter most to this community. Together, we’ll create a list of the worst damage done by this government and build a powerful campaign to get the NDP, Liberals and Greens to commit to undo that damage after the election.

5. Build support for crucial reforms: As we reach out to more and more Canadians and focus organizing in key ridings, will make sure the political parties respond to our community’s program for action on democracy, climate and inequality with strengthened commitments in their campaign platforms.
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8. Undo the worst damage: After the election, we’ll work with the new government to undo some of the worst damage that’s been done in the last few years.

9. Pass crucial reforms: Now the real work begins! We’ll work together to ensure the new government passes crucial reforms to fix our broken electoral system, make Canada a climate leader and build a fair economy that reduces inequality. 

So what's important about the above plan?

First, it reflects a direct effort to reach out to non-voters.

As plenty of us have pointed out before, assorted political parties have all too often figured it's easier to win power by limiting the number of voters and assembling a plurality only within that smaller group. And the result is that a group of citizens with the numbers to radically reshape our political system has instead tuned it out altogether.

But a strong outside push to bring disaffected voters into the system could radically change the math on that type of strategy - making it more difficult for politicians of all stripes to follow their worst impulses, while also improving the odds for parties whose message appeals to voters on the margins. 

Second, Leadnow's new message speaks to the possibility of a movement using its strength to pressure all political parties to respond to a strong set of progressive values.

Left to their own devices, political parties tend to drift toward the perceived path of least resistance. Which means that if we want to see our next federal government implement real progressive change, we need to ensure that it sees less risk in pursuing that option than in simply slapping a different face onto the corporatist policy we've seen from Cons and Libs alike over the past few decades. And a vocal and well-organized progressive movement would go a long way toward changing political incentives for the better on that front as well.

Of course, there's still reason for concern that Leadnow's positive plans remain intertwined with a misplaced commitment to gaming the next federal election. But I'd much rather see people get engaged and then examine the best way to achieve results than declare the effort futile.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- The Economist takes a look at the effect of a "lean in" philosophy toward work - and finds that we'd get better results encouraging creative development rather than needless busy work:

All this “leaning in” is producing an epidemic of overwork, particularly in the United States. Americans now toil for eight-and-a-half hours a week more than they did in 1979. A survey last year by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that almost a third of working adults get six hours or less of sleep a night. Another survey last year by Good Technology, a provider of secure mobile systems for businesses, found that more than 80% of respondents continue to work after leaving the office, 69% cannot go to bed without checking their inbox and 38% routinely check their work e-mails at the dinner table.

This activity is making it harder to focus on real work as opposed to make-work. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School, who has been conducting a huge study of work and creativity, reports that workers are generally more creative on low-pressure days than on high-pressure days when they are confronted with a flurry of unpredictable demands. In 2012 Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine, and two colleagues deprived 13 people in the IT business of e-mail for five days and studied them intensively. They found that people without it concentrated on tasks for longer and experienced less stress.

It is high time that we tried a different strategy—not “leaning in” but “leaning back”.

- Natalie Brender makes the case for an immigration system which recognizes the importance of family and community, rather than following the Cons' focus on short-term employer interests alone.

- John McKay hopes to see a greater emphasis on corporate social responsibility. But for those thinking our current business leaders have any interest in the concept, Theresa Riley interviews Chris Taylor to give us a look at the anti-social gluttony of the corporate-funded ALEC:

One guy I was talking to, who was from one of these right wing think tanks was saying we need to curb Obama’s reckless power with these administrative regulations, and he wanted a federal constitutional amendment saying Congress has to approve federal regulations. I said, I don’t think most people are going to want to amend the Constitution for that. I don’t think that ignites people. Maybe it does on the far right, but most people don’t really care about that. And he said, “Oh, well, you really don’t need people to do this. You just need control over the legislature and you need money, and we have both.”

That sentiment was underscored so many times to me, that they don’t want people involved in the political process, or in the policy process. And that seems to be the intent in a lot of ways: You have a think tank in every state and all they do is come up with these very, very regressive policies, you have corporations who are going to benefit so they fund it all, and then you have the legislators as your foot soldiers to carry out the tasks.

- Finally, Kenneth Thomas calculates the damage being done by European austerity:

We can see, then, that austerity is sinking all boats. Greece has passed Spain in unemployment and is producing barely 3/4 what it did in 2008. Ireland’s reduction in unemployment is a mirage based on emigration. The same is true in Latvia and Lithuania, by the way, which the Irish Times reports have lost 7.6% and 10.1% of their population between 2007 and 2012. As the paper notes, “If Spain and Italy had lost the same proportion, it would have been 11 million.”

Yet the drumbeat for austerity continues. The sequester goes on. And millions suffer needlessly.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Not surprisingly, this week's revelations about Pamela Wallin have set off plenty more discussion about what's wrong with the Senate and its current beneficiaries. Andrew Coyne recognizes that the problem lies in the design of an institution based on patronage and unaccountability rather than being merely an issue of who's getting appointed, while Andrea Hill discusses how the Senate breeds a sense of entitlement. Rosie DiManno sees Wallin as a prime example of that phenomenon in action, while Tim Harper writes about Stephen Harper's role in establishing his appointees' expectation that they'd be above any rules so long as they served his partisan interests. And Michael Bliss joins the chorus calling for abolition as the best way to end the abuse.

- Jenny Uechl points out Robyn Allan's observation that just as the public is likely to pay most of the bill for MMA's destruction of Lac-Mégantic, we're all likely to be on the hook for the costs of pipeline failures based on how the corporate sector prefers to do business:

"Lac Mégantic  shows that companies are making money doing things that cause huge risks, and when they cause an accident, they don't have the money to pay for the damages, so the public is left on the hook," said Allan, commenting on liability regimes. 

"That's a reprehensible situation, and it's the standard --  it certainly has been with pipeline companies." 

Allan drew public attention to Enbridge's "limited liability partnership" structure during the Northern Gateway joint review panel hearings earlier this year. Among the many points covered in her study, she noted that Enbridge set up Northern Gateway so that revenues from the pipeline would go to Enbridge shareholders, but the liability responsibility stopped with Northern Gateway, leaving the parent company protected.

 - Which makes it all the more important that we have fair assessment processes which reflect the public interest rather than mere rubber-stamps - as the Star's editorial board notes. 

- The Washington Post reports on how the NSA's surveillance has led to thousands of breaches of U.S. law over the past few years, while Amy Minsky writes that the RCMP has simply taken to ignoring its legal obligations to provide access to information. And the trend of outlaw law enforcement regimes offers all the more reason to doubt that spending billions of dollars on dangerous drones represents an even faintly defensible use of public money.

- Finally, Erin Weir points out Chrystia Freeland's platitude-laden economic message. And Matt Fodor and Michael Laxer suggest that it's long past time to instead have an adult conversation about taxes and public services:

As Hugh Mackenzie notes: "Nations that have the most highly developed systems of public services pay for them with all kinds of taxes, including sales taxes and payroll taxes that everyone contributes to because everyone knows there is no such thing as a free lunch."

The Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway all have a Value Added Tax (VAT) of around 25%, far higher than the GST/HST, which finances the welfare state.  The Nordic model is notable for its reliance on transfers, which do the heavy lifting in terms of countering inequality.  While personal income taxes are higher than in Canada, they also pay much higher levels of consumption and payroll taxes.  Yet the net impact of the tax-and-transfer system is progressive. Rather massively so. In part, this is for the obvious reason that because the affluent spend more, the net impact of consumption taxes are progressive if they are spent on human need.

Indeed, the redistributive power of public spending – on healthcare, education, pensions and an array of other public services – should not be ignored.  A CCPA report, Canada’s Quiet Bargain, found that more than two thirds of Canadian households receive more than 50 percent of their income in public services, a far better deal than the market and far more than they pay in taxes. This was even more true before the tax-cutting mania of the past two decades.

The taxation of private consumption can fund the provision of public goods (such as parks, public transit, public housing, etc.) that are more ecological than private goods. Furthermore, public goods provision has the effect of decommodification which is as important as progressive taxation in terms of moving toward socialist relations in capitalist societies.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Mark Leiren-Young shares Corky Evans' perceptive take on how the B.C. NDP has lost its way - and the message is one which we should apply elsewhere as well:

I remember when one of the Leaders I worked for asked some guys many of us know to purge our Party of the troublemakers (that was not the word he used.) They did a good job. We got Slates so the people we didn’t like couldn’t serve in Executive positions. We got Mike Muffins (members with nothing to say who stand in the line at the microphone) at Convention so they couldn’t speak. Candidates got a Message Box and were told not to say what they thought and to stick strictly to only what they were given to say. The “troublemakers” were sidelined and we became an effective, and boring, machine. Leaders and Leaders staff tell MLAs what they can and cannot say and punish independent thinking Or, worse, speaking their mind. We are now a modern political machine, and we sound like one.

We are rarely, anymore, embarrassed. There is no blood on the floor at Convention. We have become a successful Institution and a failed Movement.

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I do not know how to fix this. I could not write a tract entitled ”What is to be done,” because I do not know. The thing I do know, though, is that discussion is medicine for screwed up situations. Self-criticism can heal. The message box, on the other hand, is not discourse. It is poison, like drinking the Kool-aid at Jonestown.

I’d like to see us cut everyone a little slack and see if we couldn’t be a bit of a movement again, a bit embarrassing at times but also interesting and current and vibrant and less controlled, less careful, less run by anybody in particular.

- Rosario Marchese points out how P3s are turning into thorough messes in Ontario, while David Sirota's example of privatized eduction turning into a source of corruption and inefficiency looks to apply to other sectors as well.

- Meanwhile, Brian Webb suggests that Regina's P3 referendum should be decided by citizens rather than a publicly-funded ad blitz.

- Pat Atkinson discusses the challenge of making sound long-term decisions in while basing public revenue on one-time resource royalties.

- Carol Goar notes that even Canada's already-uninspiring job numbers should be handled with caution, as they paper over the precarious and low-paying nature of the vast majority of the positions being created under a system intended to exploit resources and workers to the greatest extent possible.

- Finally, Navjeet Sidhu and Yvonne Kelly make the case for a higher minimum wage:

The minimum wage has been frozen since 2010, yet unemployment, especially youth unemployment, remains stubbornly high — contradicting the theory that corporations will invest and that jobs will only increase when wages are lower. The Canadian Labour Congress has reported that corporations are sitting atop nearly $500 billion in unused funds thanks to generous tax cuts (a.k.a. corporate subsidies), instead of investing in job creation.

Further, the price of gas, rent, groceries, hydro have all increased despite a minimum wage freeze.
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Still hesitant about possibly paying an extra 30 cents on a cup of coffee? Consider how taxpayers currently subsidize low-wage paycheques. Low-income families are at greater risk of health problems, driving up health-care costs. Community organizations experience increased caseloads requiring additional public funding and food banks are inundated with individuals and families that they cannot begin to provide food for.

A recent study in the U.S. found that a single Walmart Supercentre in Wisconsin can cost taxpayers up to $900,000 in government health, housing and food programs. Meanwhile, Walmart is one of the richest corporations in North America. Profits are trickling upward resulting in a rate of growing inequality in Canada that supersedes the U.S. From 1980 to 2012 Ontario experienced the largest change in income inequality of any province — the richest 10 per cent of Ontario families earned 27 times that of the poorest 10 per cent in 1976 and by 2004 the gap extended to 75 times.

We don’t hear about high-or middle-income workers turning down raises from their employer in fear that it may cause lower productivity, unemployment or a rise in costs of products and services. As a society we would never “guilt” them for wanting to earn more, as we do with low-income workers. Why are we so intent on denying the poorest workers an adequate standard of living? 

Musical interlude

Rah Rah - Art and a Wife

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Alison Bennett reports on the OECD's work on offshore tax avoidance, highlighting the "stateless income" that's shuffled around the globe so as to avoid contributing to social good anywhere:

Policymakers around the world are stepping up efforts to tighten rules because a growing slice of corporate profits isn’t taxed in any country.

Multinational companies can legally structure transactions so they don’t pay tax anywhere, creating “stateless income” that is coming under attack as countries seek to fill budget gaps. The Obama administration, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and tax officials from other countries want to reach a consensus on how to combat the issue, with more than a dozen proposals being weighed, Bloomberg BNA reported.

“Every country is revenue-hungry,” said Edward Kleinbard, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law who has written several papers and testified before Congress on the subject. “Countries see very large gaps in their corporate tax collections.”
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“Everything is up for grabs right now, including a substantial rewrite of the international tax rules,” Kleinbard said. “When the dust settles, U.S. multinationals will pay a higher effective tax rate tomorrow than they do today.” 

 - Dan Fumano reports that Nestle's efforts to turn public goods into private profits including draining the equivalent of a small lake away from British Columbia for bottling without paying a dime.

- David Dayen writes that the fraudulent documents used in rubber-stamp foreclosure proceedings over the past few years are just the tip of the iceberg - as high finance has been so busy repackaging and reselling mortgage interests that it's largely lost track as to who owns what.

- Laura Kane reports on a much-needed challenge to the Cons' efforts to silence most Canadians when it comes to discussing and analyzing new pipelines and other sources of massive environmental risk which affect us all:

Environmentalists have launched a court challenge attempting to strike down Harper government legislation that restricts public comment on energy proposals, including Enbridge’s proposed Line 9B Reversal, which runs in part through the Toronto region.

ForestEthics Advocacy and activist Donna Sinclair — represented by civil rights lawyer Clayton Ruby — filed the suit Tuesday in Federal Court. The application asks the court to throw out new rules created by the National Energy Board, on the grounds that they violate Charter rights and silence dissent.
...
Under the new rules, introduced in the federal government’s 2012 omnibus budget bill C-38, Canadians may no longer freely show up at public hearings on energy proposals and present their opinion or send a written statement to the energy board.

Instead they must fill out a nine-page application to the board justifying their right to speak on the issue. The board then decides which individuals or organizations get to comment, reserving the right to refuse anyone who isn’t “directly” affected by the matter.

Ruby pointed out that during the Enbridge Northern Gateway hearings that took place in British Columbia before the new rules came in, 1,544 people or entities gave testimony. This year, under the new rules, only 175 will be heard.

- Finally, Nick Fillmore observes that the Harper Cons' austerity policies are hitting Canada's most vulnerable residents the hardest.

New column day

Here, on the tendency of both political decision-makers and the general public to give too much credence to secret information - and the need for citizens to scrutinize leaders all the more closely if they rely on bare declarations that we'd agree with their actions if only we knew what they choose to hide.

For further reading...
- The White House's NSA review panel announcement is discussed here and clarified here.
- The study on public perceptions of classified information is discussed by Leaf Van Boven, Charles Judd and Mark Travers here.
- Joan McCarter's take on creeping secrecy in policymaking is well worth a read.
- Finally, Don Lenihan comments on how marketing and branding have replaced citizen and engagement and debate in Canada's political scene. And Saskboy documents Michael Fougere's latest contribution to that shift.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Joseph Stiglitz comments on the wider lessons we should take from Detroit's bankruptcy:

Detroit’s travails arise in part from a distinctive aspect of America’s divided economy and society. As the sociologists Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff have pointed out, our country is becoming vastly more economically segregated, which can be even more pernicious than being racially segregated. Detroit is the example par excellence of the seclusion of affluent (and mostly white) elites in suburban enclaves. There is a rationale for battening down the hatches: the rich thus ensure that they don’t have to pay any share of the local public goods and services of their less well-off neighbors, and that their children don’t have to mix with those of lower socioeconomic status.

The trend toward self-reinforcing inequality is especially apparent in education, an ever shrinking ladder for upward mobility. Schools in poorer districts get worse, parents with means move out to richer districts, and the divisions between the haves and the have-nots — not only in this generation, but also in the next — grow ever larger.
...
Adding to the problems that would inevitably arise from such poorly designed urban agglomerations is the fact that the Detroit metropolitan area is divided into separate political jurisdictions. The poor are thus not only geographically isolated, but politically ghettoized as well. The result is a separate, poorer inner city with a dearth of resources, made even worse because the industrial plants that had provided the core of the tax base are shut down.
...
The same skewed priorities that have gutted Detroit at the local level are echoed in a void at the level of national policy. Every country, every society, has regions and industries whose stars are rising, and others that are in decline. Silicon Valley has, for some time, been America’s rising star — just as the upper Midwest was a hundred years ago. With technological change and globalization, though, the Midwest’s comparative advantage as a global manufacturing hub has ebbed, for reasons too well known to list here. Markets, however, often don’t do a good job of self-rejuvenation.

Rather than deal purposefully with this changing economic landscape with useful policies encouraging the growth of other industries, our government spent decades papering over the growing weaknesses by allowing the financial sector to run amok, creating “growth” based on bubbles. We didn’t just let the market run its course. We made an active choice to embrace short-term profits and large-scale inefficiency.

There may be something inevitable about the structural changes that have made American manufacturing less central to our economy, but there is nothing inevitable about the waste, pain and human despair in cities that have accompanied that change.

- And Robert Reich points out how the same trends of increasing inequality and economic segregation feed into a wider sense of anger:

(F)or the last three and a half decades, the middle class has been losing ground. The median wage of male workers is now lower than it was in 1980, adjusted for inflation.

In addition, all the mechanisms we’ve used over the last three decades to minimize the effects of this descent — young mothers streaming into paid work in the late 1970s and 1980s, everyone working longer hours in the 1990s, and then borrowing against the rising values of our homes — are now exhausted. And wages are still dropping — the median is now 4 percent below what it was at the start of the so-called recovery.

Meanwhile, income, wealth, and power have become more concentrated at the top than they’ve been in ninety years.
...
The last time America was this bitterly divided was in the 1920s, which was the last time income, wealth, and power were this concentrated.

When average people feel the game is rigged, they get angry. And that anger can easily find its way into deep resentments — of the poor, of blacks, of immigrants, of unions, of the well-educated, of government.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Demagogues throughout history have used anger to target scapegoats — thereby dividing and conquering, and distracting people from the real sources of their frustrations. 

- But of course, it is worth pointing out when systems of privilege are in fact abused at the public's expense. On that front, CBC points out the surprises within the now-released audit of Pamela Wallin's Senate expenses. Tim Harper fills in a few details of his own, while Rosie DiManno traces Wallin's descent into ignominy. And the Star thoroughly misses the point in framing the issue as one of Stephen Harper's judgment of character in appointing Wallin and Mike Duffy to the Senate - rather than the culture of corruption and naked self-interest that he's used to define his party.

- Josh Eidelson writes about the expanding scope of fast food strikes as workers fight for fair wages and recognition. And Steven Greenhouse discusses the efforts of the Workers Defense Project to organize and assist those without union representation.

- Finally, Erin Weir calculates what corporate tax reductions have cost the Canadian public - with the final number for the Cons' tax slashing alone reaching upwards of ten billion dollars each year.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cats meeting friends.

Accountability for thee, not for we

Marjory Lebreton makes clear that as far as she's concerned, accountability begins where partisan Con affiliation ends:

Senator Wallin is no longer a member of the Caucus and must be held accountable for her actions.

And needless to say the converse is also true as far as Lebreton and the rest of Stephen Harper's inner circle are concerned: for those within the Con caucus, accountability doesn't apply.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Jacob Goldstein discusses how one-time, no-strings-attached funding for the poor in developing countries can produce lasting improvements in their standard of living - while also highlighting the need for longer-term development:

A charity that gives away money, as opposed to, say, offering agricultural training or medicine, does seem a bit unusual. That’s partly because governments and philanthropists have emphasized solving long-term economic problems rather than urgent needs. But in the past decade it has become increasingly common to give money right to the very poor. After Mexico’s economic crisis in the mid-1990s, Santiago Levy, a government economist, proposed getting rid of subsidies for milk, tortillas and other staples, and replacing them with a program that just gave money to the very poor, as long as they sent their children to school and took them for regular health checkups.

Cabinet ministers worried that parents might use the money to buy alcohol and cigarettes rather than milk and tortillas, and that sending cash might lead to a rise in domestic violence as families fought over what to do with the money. So Levy commissioned studies that compared spending habits between the towns that received money and similar villages that didn’t. The results were promising; researchers found that children in the cash program were more likely to stay in school, families were less likely to get sick and people ate a more healthful diet. Recipients also didn’t tend to blow the money on booze or cigarettes, and many even invested a chunk of what they received. Today, more than six million Mexican families get cash transfers.

...

Lots of people [in a Kenyan study] used the money in productive ways. An inordinate number, it seemed, used it to replace their thatched roofs, which are not only lousy but also weirdly expensive, as they need to be patched every few months with a special kind of grass. A metal roof costs several hundred dollars, but lasts for 10 years, making it a much better investment. Omondi was among those who bought metal roofs. He also purchased a used Bajaj Boxer, an Indian-made motorcycle that he uses to ferry people around, for a small fee; he is also currently paying off a second motorcycle, which he rents out. Now Omondi makes about $6 to $9 a day in his taxi operation, several times his previous income, and he works almost every day. Several of his neighbors also used the money to start businesses­. One man bought a mill and charges villagers to grind their corn. Others became microretailers, buying goods like soap and oil at wholesale and reselling them at a markup.

But while Omondi and his neighbors have metal roofs, their houses still have dirt floors and no running water or electricity. And their prospects for making it to the middle class are pretty bleak. “You give people cash to start a business or expand their business, and in a lot of cases, they shoot forward,” Blattman says. “Then they start screeching to a halt when they hit the next constraint.” If Omondi wanted to further expand, he’d probably find it hard to get a small-business loan from a bank. The problems holding Omondi and his neighbors back — underdeveloped financial systems, bad infrastructure — are the generic but defining problems of the developing world, and they won’t be fixed by a one-time windfall. 

- Meanwhile, Michael Laxer highlights the avoidable mix of waste and want when it comes to food security in Canada. 

- Michael Woods and Mike de Souza report on the Cons' latest damage to Statistics Canada, which has been forced to delay the release of National Household Survey data at the last minute due to previously-unidentified errors. And Stephen Gordon writes that the NHS has lost the benefit of any doubt.

- Jennifer Hoelzer discusses the attempts of some U.S. legislators to be honest with the public about NSA surveillance - and the the flat refusal of anybody associated with the program to allow for public debate.

- Which leads to another answer to the question of "why don't we like politics?" - as more and more important decisions are removed from the realm of elections and party politics. But that can only signal the importance of making a statement when we have the chance - and Duncan Cameron makes the case for Linda McQuaig as a progressive activist voice.

Tuesday Morning 'Rider Blogging

Obviously Friday's result against Calgary wasn't what the Saskatchewan Roughriders hoped for - particularly since it means having only one game of separation from third place in the CFL's West Division. But it's worth noting that most of the problems against the Stampeders were simply a matter of the inevitable ebb and flow of luck during the course of the season - meaning that there isn't much the 'Riders figure to need to change.

On offence, the 'Riders started off rather pitifully - raising the question as to how an offence that's so effective capitalizing on halftime adjustments seems unable to find weaknesses at the start of any game. But they managed to score enough points to win most games - despite breaking their zero-turnover streak and watching more than a few plays fall apart due to dropped or bounced passes.

Darian Durant was effective stretching the field, as even the deep plays that got broken up managed to open up room for the 'Riders to operate inside. And the offensive line had another fairly strong game, allowing Durant enough time to make plays against a talented set of pass rushers and clearing enough space for Kory Sheets to dominate the second half.

The obvious area of concern came on defence, where Jon Cornish consistently shed tackles until the 'Riders could meet him with three defenders at once. About the only exception was Tyron Brackenridge, who did manage to make some impressive one-on-one tackles. But I have to wonder whether the 'Riders may need to shuffle their positions and assignments to let Brackenridge spy Cornish in future games, rather than counting on Craig Butler to keep a power rusher contained.


Of course, the next few games may seem to be ones where the 'Riders can afford to experiment somewhat. And hopefully the team can keep up enough focus against a few reeling opponents to stay in the win column even if the breaks don't mostly go Saskatchewan's way.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Dan Leger points to the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion as an all-too-vivid example of the intersection of privatized profits and socialized risks:

Are we tough enough on corporations that destroy, burn and kill? What’s happening at Lac-Mégantic suggests we aren’t. There’s a scramble on now to stop the company responsible for Canada’s worst rail disaster from walking away with little more than an aching bank account.

The infamous Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway filed for bankruptcy protection last week in Canada and the U.S. It’s a clear attempt to fade into the background while survivors, families and the shocked community of Lac-Mégantic face a lifetime of struggle and grief.

Years of litigation lie ahead, but the railway seems to think the victims and their neighbours should pay the bills; not shareholders or its bizarrely tone-deaf chairman, Ed Burkhardt. Taxpayers will share the recovery costs, which will run to the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Forty-seven people are dead, their families and their community permanently scarred. And the company gets to walk away? It seems impossibly wrong, but it could happen.

...
At the bankruptcy hearing, Justice Martin Castonguay said he was “not impressed” with what he called MM&A’s “lamentable behaviour.” He suggested MM&A’s directors should be held personally responsible.

And so they should. Lac-Mégantic has demonstrated that we need tougher laws in Canada, ones that will bring the pain of the next industrial disaster right back to the corporate boardroom.

- Meanwhile, Charles Pierce rightly notes the media's painfully short attention span when it comes to stories of high-risk corporate malfeasance - with the ongoing flow of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant (contrary to the false assurances of the operator) serving as an example.
 
- Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas survey a range of sources on the link between political inequality and economic inequality - including some evidence that the views of poorer constituents have precisely zero effect on the actions of elected representatives. And in that vein, Cathy Davis discusses how the UK's Con-led coalition is attacking the availability of housing for the people who need it most.

- Paul Adams wonders whether a focus on inequality can help to reduce both gaps in Canada. And the Toronto Star offers its own call for Tom Mulcair to avoid falling into the anti-tax spin cycle:

(T)axes are not the prohibitive political taboo they were before the 2008 financial meltdown. A recent Environics survey showed that 64 per cent of Canadians say they would pay a bit more to fund health care, pensions and higher education, while 83 per cent favour a tax hike on the very rich. Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama and Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath both pushed through new taxes last year without suffering any apparent political injuries.

Politicians across the spectrum typically view taxation as a last resort. And that’s probably a good thing. But Mulcair can’t be certain of what, in perpetuity, we will collectively be willing to pay for. By taking possible tax increases off the table, we blinker our vision of what’s possible. The leader of the New Democrats, of all people, should know that.

- Finally, Michael Harris laments the spread of the surveillance state. And Stephen Spencer Davis reports on its use against peaceful Idle No More activists.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Simon Lewchuk makes the case for genuine participatory budgeting in contrast to the little-known and unduly-narrow means for Canadians to even make suggestions for our country's public spending priorities:

Operating under the guise of “consultation,” in June the federal finance committee announced its annual pre-budget process (don’t worry if you missed it, most Canadians did too). People were invited to “share their priorities for the 2014 budget” via an online form but, with an Aug. 5 deadline, it was unlikely that many Canadians were able to take the committee up on its offer (even if they were aware of it).

The parameters of the pre-budget consultation process are becoming increasingly narrow. In 2011, for example, respondents were asked to provide their views on how to “create quality, sustainable jobs, ensure relatively low rates of taxation and achieve a balanced budget.” To start from the premise that low taxes are non-negotiable doesn’t leave much room for an honest, frank discussion.
...
Not that the real decision-making power rests with the finance committee: our current government has been criticized for shrouding the budget process in secrecy, something they explicitly campaigned against in 2006. Budget decisions are being made behind closed doors and forced through the House of Commons as part of massive omnibus legislation.

It all leaves one seriously doubting the value and integrity of the current budget consultation process.

What we do with our money — as families, communities or countries — reflects our priorities, commitments and vision of the sort of world we want to live in. Budget decisions demand a broad, inclusive decision-making process.

- Sarah Frank highlights the consequences of a budgeting process utterly disconnected from representatives and citizens alike, finding Dean Del Mastro telling the City of Peterborough to apply for funding under a program which his own government eliminated last year. But considering the Cons' well-established practice of bombarding Canada's airwaves with advertising for programs past, future or outright imaginary, I'm only surprised their MPs haven't been caught more often doing the same in person.

- Susan Delacourt discusses housing as a matter of public policy - with particular reference to the Cons' lack of interest in acknowledging the importance of rental housing even as they make home ownership less affordable.

- Jody Porter reports that the Cons aren't the least bit sorry for the use of hungry First Nations children as involuntary test subjects.

- Meanwhile, the Hupacasath First Nation is rightly challenging the Cons' disregard for Canada's duty to consult in negotiating the FIPA.

- Finally, Graham Thomson discusses the effect the Cold Lake blowout is bound to have on attempts to greenwash the tar sands:

For the last three months, 7,300 barrels of bitumen have uncontrollably bubbled to the surface from deep underground and seeped into muskeg and water on four sites at the company’s operations, creating an ecological mess, killing wildlife and damaging the reputation of CNRL in particular and the oilsands industry in general.

The company has cut down trees, hauled away tons of oily muskeg and put containment booms on a contaminated lake. But the bitumen keeps coming, seeping out of the ground through long, narrow fissures. Not only has CNRL been unable to stop it, the company doesn’t know for sure why it keeps coming.

The Pembina Institute based in Calgary disturbingly describes the leak as an “uncontrolled blowout in an oil reservoir deep underground.”
...
There remains the possibility the problem was the result of a crack in the overlying cap rock created by the high-pressure steaming process. That would be a much larger problem for CNRL. It’s one thing for the company to plug up an old cracked well bore, but quite another to deal with cracks in a geological formation.

It would also be a much larger problem for the oilsands industry that is moving away from open pit mining to in situ methods designed to be less environmentally disruptive. The CNRL incident is raising troubling questions and providing ammunition for environmental groups to once again attack the industry.

Also troubling is the fact this is the second CNRL leak in the same area. In 2009, 5,600 barrels seeped into the environment. A cause was never conclusively reached, but the provincial regulator said “geological weakness, in combination with stress induced by high pressure steam injection” may have contributed to the incident.
...
It doesn’t matter if you call it a leak or a spill or an underground blowout — we need to know what caused it and what it means to the integrity of the oilsands industry.

And it's of course always worth a reminder that the Cons have gone out of their way to make sure that Cold Lake-style disasters can happen without any warning or mitigation strategies - having excluded in situ steam injection projects (geological implications and all) from any environmental assessment.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne comments on the biggest of the Cons' many lies about the role and capacity of the federal government:

Canada’s $18.7-billion deficit has (its) roots in failed economic policies, decisions made before the world financial crisis, including reckless corporate tax cuts.

Remember, because the Conservatives would like us to forget, that this is a government that inherited $13 billion in surpluses.

They quickly emptied the cupboard with one tax cut after another.

Harper’s deficit has become, in many ways, a manufactured and convenient bogeyman. Bogeymen are useful especially when your goal is to convince Canadians we can’t afford public services or a social safety net, including universal medicare which is currently under immense attack.

A deficit is also handy if you are looking for an excuse to sell Canadians on more austerity, more public service cuts.

But the federal Conservatives have a few problems with the narrative they are so desperately trying to tell.

On the one hand they preach about their ability to manage the economy, and yet, when examined closely, their economic record is anything but stellar.

And a dwindling number of Canadians are buying into the big lie.

- But for those thinking big dishonesty is limited to the Cons, Karen Howlett offers a devastating look behind the scenes of Dalton McGuinty's exit from the Ontario Libs - featuring specific discussion about creating a "salacious" story around an opponent's wife in order to distract from the deserved public-relations fallout from scandal and cover-ups.

- Emily Chong is the latest observer to point out that the supposed trade-off between wages and jobs is illusory - as an increased minimum wage which helps workers stay out of poverty doesn't significantly affect the number of jobs available.

- And Carlito Pablo reports on the exploitation of migrant workers who are tied to a single employer (and thus unable to point out its abuses).

- Finally, Ryan Meili weighs in on the CMA's report on the social determinants of health:

We've known for decades, through Dr Marmot's famous Whitehall study and many others that health care is only one element in determining health outcomes; a far less influential factor than income, education, housing, nutrition, and the wider environment. However, this information has had little impact on how medicine is practiced, and this can be frustrating for doctors, uncertain of how to translate this understanding from the conceptual to the clinical.

A paper released by the CMA at that Yellowknife meeting on the role of the physician in achieving health equity tackled the issue head on, and encouraged doctors to think differently about how they can address the social determinants of health in practice. 
...
Pharmacare, Housing First, a national food security program and guaranteed annual income: these are ideas that could be considered quite radical.

They would certainly be outside of what most Canadian politicians would openly discuss as options. And yet, here they are, coming from what is thought to be one of the most conservative professional organizations in the country. Why? Because whatever self interest may influence physician politics, the purpose of the profession is still, at its heart, to work for the best health outcomes for patients. The weight of the evidence for the social determinants of health, and the need for creative, system-wide policy changes to address them, is simply too great to ignore.

On efficiencies

Nick Falvo offers one response to Tom Mulcair's latest comments on taxes. And I certainly won't argue with the position that it's utterly bizarre to see the leader of a progressive party declare that he's perfectly happy with the restrictive revenue streams (and associated lack of social programs) set up by an anti-tax zealot. 

But I'll point out that even if Mulcair himself doesn't share the view that there's reason to look for more revenue than the federal government currently takes in, he should still revisit the "never" language he's using at the moment. And I'll turn to no less an authority than...Tom Mulcair, from the same interview, discussing public administration and the delivery of programs:

He said the NDP would spend money on different things, and the NDP would make cuts, but they would be better cuts.

“Yes, you can order your priorities differently...” he said. “This is the type of thing that has to be done with a scalpel. They’re hacking away with a rusty machete. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re lousy managers, and the NDP will provide really competent public administration.”

That take is generally consistent with what we've heard from Mulcair on public administration all along: that his primary interest is in making sure public services are delivered efficiently and effectively, and that he'd want to ensure that public money is both invested where needed, and cut where it can be.

Or in other words, that there's a need to consistently review government operations for efficiencies (without attaching the Cons' expectation that those efficiencies will be turned into cuts or diverted to ad spending).

Which is all well and good. But it also raises a rather obvious question: why wouldn't the same principle apply to our revenue system? Why shouldn't we consider whether new tax structures might better fit the model of both raising revenue and being publicly acceptable, rather than assuming that what we have now is carved in stone?

If it's possible to raise more revenue equally efficiently in a way which involves some increase in personal taxes, then surely the same principle has to apply: the public interest should come first. And likewise, if it's possible to raise roughly the same revenue more efficiently, surely it's worth looking at how to do that rather than adhering to the type of dogma that even Republicans are starting to abandon.

And the issue goes beyond the consistency of Mulcair's own message. It seems fairly clear now that the NDP's contrast against the Libs for 2015 will include a heavy dose of rightful concern over Justin Trudeau's policy depth (or lack thereof). But the more Mulcair himself relies on sweeping oversimplifications which don't stand up to scrutiny, the harder he'll make it to criticize Trudeau for doing the same.

In sum, Tom Mulcair is smarter than he's apparently willing to sound when it comes to tax policy. And the more he pretends otherwise, the more he'll contribute to irresponsible government - no matter who's Prime Minister after the 2015 election.

Musical interlude

Olive - You're Not Alone

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Henry Blodget recognizes that the systematic corporate squeeze on mere workers represents a deliberate choice rather than an inevitability:

One of the big reasons the U.S. economy is so lousy is the American companies are hoarding cash and “maximizing profits” instead of investing in their people and future projects.

This behavior is contributing to record income inequality in the country and starving the primary engine of U.S. economic growth–the vast American middle class–of purchasing power. (See charts below).

If average Americans don’t get paid living wages, they can’t spend much money buying products and services. And when average Americans can’t buy products and services, the companies that sell products and services to average Americans can’t grow. So the profit obsession of America’s big companies is, ironically, hurting their ability to accelerate revenue growth.

One obvious solution to this problem is to encourage companies to pay their people more — to share more of the vast wealth that they create with the people who create it.

The companies have record profit margins, so they can certainly afford to do this.

But, unfortunately, over the past three decades, what began as a healthy and necessary effort to make our companies more efficient after the malaise of the 1970s has evolved into a warped consensus that the only value that companies should create is financial value (cash) and that the only thing managers and owners should ever worry about it making more of it.

This view is an insult to anyone who has ever dreamed of having a job that is about more than money. And it is a short-sighted and destructive view of an economic system...

- And Kendra Coulter makes the case for a retail revolution to ensure that the employment of the future provides a reasonable standard of living for workers:

Most retail jobs epitomize the scourge of precarious work. Retail jobs usually mean poverty-level wages and income insecurity. Schedules are erratic, volatile and provided at the last minute. Retail workers are often disrespected and dismissed as lacking skill, education or value. In other words, retail does not simply reflect inequities. Retail contributes to increasing inequality. This needs to change.
...

More retail workers are joining a growing movement of low-wage service workers who recognize the need to transform lousy jobs into better jobs. Workers at Sirens in Brampton have just chosen unionization as a way to raise the standards at work, for example. These young workers believe retail jobs can and should be good jobs, regardless of who shops in the stores and which brands are sold. Notably, Holt Renfrew workers have repeatedly told me that high prices do not automatically translate into high quality jobs. 

Undoubtedly, the retail terrain will change, but retail jobs are here to stay. It is high time to look beyond the brands and the boardrooms, to how retailers of all kinds treat us. We are not numbers, nor are we disposable. We are workers, citizens, and people who matter.

- Sum Of Us is rightly challenging Eli Lilly's attempt to sue Canada for following an unbiased patent approval process rather than simply handing over half a billion dollars in public and patient money.

- Don Lenihan discusses the difference between the "political" and "policy" types of politicians - and I'll readily approve of his implied view that we should encourage more of the latter. But I do think it's worth noting that the few Cons who have ever ventured into that territory have faced more reprisals than just being denied cabinet positions, while having no apparent role in shaping legislation - meaning that there's only so much power to be taken back by individual MPs without some more concerted push.

- And finally, Glen McGregor's story on Stephen Harper's continued refusal to allow repairs at 24 Sussex Drive might serve to perfectly sum up the Cons' philosophy: Harper and company are perfectly happy with their current life of luxury, and aren't about to let trifles like the public interest interfere.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Stephen Beer argues that the UK's Labour Party should take the lead in arguing for a financial transactions tax oriented toward reducing inequality:

The banking sector is incorrigible. It cannot alone reform itself or repair its relationship with the rest of society. For example, just before his retirement, Bank of England governor Mervyn King reported that banks were lobbying government ministers against action by regulators. It is almost as if the financial crisis never happened; banks are still lobbying for lighter touch regulation.

There has been little remorse from the sector during a time when living standards have been falling and the country has been stuck in an economic depression for more than half a decade.

Moreover...if we are going to talk about remorse, we should also look for repentance. Repentance is more than saying sorry. It is about turning away from the old way of doing things and going in a new direction.

- Uniglobal discusses a recognition strike by Amazon's employees in Germany.

- Chris Severson-Baker considers the Cold Lake blowout to be the first real test for Alberta's new industry-operated regulatory system. Needless to say, the results so far aren't encouraging.

- Meanwhile, having extracted as many profits as it could by operating unsafely, MMA has managed to cloak itself in court protection to avoid liability for blowing up much of Lac-Mégantic.

- Finally, Michael Geist comments on the U.S.' continued attempts to force ever more draconian copyright laws on Canada and other countries - primarily to preserve cash cows for Disney and other corporate conglomerates.