Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Ralph Surette highlights the dangers of a pollution-based economy which fails to account for the damage we're doing to our planet and its ability to provide food for people:

This is something to behold. A more-or-less hurricane in early July. Has anyone ever seen such a thing?

This is climate change, and it's getting worse. And whereas the news of the day is about people with the power out, the long-term story is about the hit to agriculture, now and in future, here and worldwide -- keeping in mind that farming is more than an "economic sector." It's the food supply.
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This is the story all over, as agriculture, always up and down, has become a wild, unpredictable ride through floods, droughts, storms, killing heatwaves, heat-related pest infestations and other hazards. In some places -- drought-ridden California being the prime example -- the scary question is whether agriculture there is simply finished for good.
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What to do? As with our pollution-based economy generally, the answer is one we and our established systems resist ferociously: to change our ways. The experts point out that a third to half of food is actually wasted and mere increased efficiency, especially energy efficiency, in the food system -- from the farm to us -- would work wonders. Only 43 per cent of the world's grains are consumed directly by humans. The same applies to the other part of the food system, fisheries. A staggering figure in that regard is this: of the 110 to 130 million tonnes of fish caught worldwide annually, 30 million tonnes is discarded at sea -- the same amount as goes to fishmeal to feed farmed fish. Is this as impossible to change as it seems?

- Meanwhile, Tavia Grant discusses the health effects of climate change.

- Laura Broadley reports that Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is now grudgingly admitting that its in situ oil extraction may be contributing to ongoing and still-unexplained oil spills. (As a friendly reminder, that's exactly the type of oil exploitation the Cons have declared to be immune from environmental assessment.) And Jessica McDiarmid writes about Windsor's fight to be able to protect its citizens from hazardous goods being shipped by rail.

- Gloria Galloway reports on the threat to Canada's national parks from unfettered resource development and a woeful lack of public investment.

- David Climenhaga points out that the Cons' latest spin on TFWs seems designed to allow low-pay zones wherever an employer wants to avoid offering a fair wage to Canadian workers.

- Finally, Shannon Gormley rightfully questions why equal pay for women is still projected to be a lifetime away:

Seventy-five years. According to an Oxfam report released Sunday, that’s how long it will take until women in G20 countries can earn, stow away and waste as much as the men who, right now, probably sign their paycheques. In no G20 country does women’s pay reach 80 per cent of men’s.

Before we get into how to save time (and money) — listen. That sound you hear is the sound of conservatives everywhere uttering a secret hope masked as insight: “Progress is slow,” these anti-progressives say, with a smugly wizened intonation peculiar to the type of man who smokes a pipe and has another man shave him with a straight razor.

Of course, 75 years isn’t slow. Turtles are slow; 75 years is an actual, honest-to-God lifetime. Seventy-five years is longer than it took a large chunk of Germany to go from being fascist to communist to capitalist. Longer than it took people to go from using typewriters to computers the size of living rooms to computers they wear on their eyeballs. Longer than it took Americans to go to the moon and then back again and then decide they didn’t feel like going to the moon anymore. Seventy-five years are about as many years as most of us will ever have.

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(W)omen who ask for raises, promotions and other career opportunities aren’t just denied what they want, they’re punished for asking: whether they ask “nicely” or assertively, whether they ask in writing or in person and, most remarkably, whether the person they ask is a man or another woman. Women’s bias against other women is a particularly clear indication that we can’t wait for our subconscious minds to change. We need to change systems and structures and let our minds catch up.

That’s Oxfam’s answer. In Canada, where “progress has stalled to a halt over the past two decades,” and only 57 per cent of women have been employed full-time over the past five years compared to 76 per cent of men, change has to mean national low-fee day care, which has given Quebec more money than it has cost, and no more public service cuts, which disproportionately affect women. Globally, it must mean equal pay legislation, non-discriminatory taxation, and paid parental leave.

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that to end your weekend.

- PressProgress takes a look at the OECD's long-term economic projections - which feature a combination of increasing inequality and slow growth across the developed world, with Canada do worse than almost anybody else on the inequality front unless we see a shift toward more progressive policies when it comes to unions, employment protections and fair taxes.

- Meanwhile, Derek Leahy discusses how much we have to lose by relying on the tar sands as our sole economic engine.

- David Cay Johnston points out that several of the largest forms of consumer debt in the U.S. - including student loans, car loans and credit card debt - could have been wiped out by the money instead handed to the wealthy through the Bush tax cuts. And David Atkins reminds us of the vicious circle of right-wing governments converting surpluses into tax cuts while nominally left-wing ones then cut services to compensate - even as the former somehow claim to be the more fiscally responsible parties:

Republicans still somehow have the brand of fiscal restraint even though Ronald Reagan dramatically increased the deficit, Bill Clinton balanced the budget, and George W. Bush blew the deficit sky-high again before ending his term with the greatest economic crash since the Great Depression. Like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama is doing his best to close the gap, even as Republicans try to blow it back open again with supply-side cuts that we already know don’t work.

But there’s a double absurdity at work here, which is that in a poor economy the country shouldn’t be trying to balance the budget at all. Paul Krugman and the Keynesians have been proven right on this question repeatedly, even as the austerity fetishists and the supply-siders have been proven wrong at every turn. We know now definitively what we should have known instinctually back in 1980: that supply-side economics is junk science and a proven failure. We also know from the European experience that austerity economics only sends countries further into recession—with the added effect of increasing deficits in the bargain, thus supposedly necessitating further cuts in a negative reinforcement loop.

Democrats are supposed to be the party of stimulus and fiscal laxity. Republicans are supposed to be the party of belt-tightening and fiscal austerity. Instead we see repeatedly that Republicans play fast and loose with the nation’s budget in order to deliver tax breaks to their wealthy friends, while Democrats spend their time closing the deficits Republicans create. But even more bizarrely, we see Democrats counterproductively pushing austerity economics when they should be pursuing Keynesian stimulus, even as Republicans ironically vote for stimulus—albeit in its weakest and worst-targeted guise—in the form of tax breaks for the rich.

When budget politics has gone this far into funhouse mirror land, it almost makes popular polling on budget issues irrelevant. How are voters even supposed to know which party represents what policies, or even which economic theory they’re working under? While Republicans are clearly more destructive and wildly irresponsible, both sides are operating in such self-contradictory opposition to their stated economic ideologies and branding that it’s a wonder voters can even make sense of it all.

- And in a prime example of how corporate-oriented policy tends to lead to our paying more for less, Alan Pyke offers an inside look into the disastrous results of Michigan's prison food service privatization scheme.

- Finally, Blake Bromley discusses the effect of Harper government's political chill on (a carefully-selected set of) Canadian charities - and how the Con-ordered attacks reflect wilful ignorance of the law:

Initially, the primary focus was on environmental groups. However it has extended to charities' activities such as protecting human rights and humanitarian aid.

The problem is not that charities should be allowed to engage in political activities. The problem is that when conducting these audits, CRA gives a meaning to "political activities" that is designed to make its political masters happy.

One can only hope that CRA audits would be governed by the rule of law rather than a political agenda.

It has not been covered in the press in Canada, but just one day before this email from the Charities Directorate and this press coverage on political activities, an important legal decision was handed down in England. The First-Tier Tribunal released its decision in an appeal of The Human Dignity Trust against The Charity Commission for England and Wales.

This decision held that "promoting the sound administration of the law" was a "fourth head" charitable purpose under the common law. This was not an expansion of the law of charity, but was recognized in cases as early as 1876 and as recent as a House of Lords decision in 1972. These common law decisions from England are recognized by the courts and CRA as being determinative of the law of charity in Canada.

Most environmental and other charities under audit are simply "promoting the sound administration of the law." This is not a political activity except in the eyes of the Harper government, which treats any recourse to the courts of law or public opinion in support of laws that conflict with the government's political agenda to be "political activities."

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- PressProgress highlights how the Cons' stay in office has been marked by temporary rather than permanent jobs, while Kaylie Tiessen writes that precarious work is particularly prevalent in Ontario. And Erin Weir notes that more unemployed workers are now chasing after fewer job vacancies than even in the wake of the last recession.

- Kathleen Harris points out that the Cons' attempt to label refugees as "bogus" based solely on their country of origin bears no resemblance whatsoever to reality, as numerous claims from the U.S. and other countries labeled as "safe" have been found to be valid by the Immigration and Refugee Board. And she also finds the Cons applying a rather unusual definition of "protection" for refugees:

Alexis Pavlich, spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, said refugee reforms that include restricting health care means more protection for those in need and faster removal of those who don't.

That's right: the Cons are so callous as to claim that people in need get "more protection" by being denied essential health care.

- Meanwhile, Mike Palacek discusses the Cons' secret and deceptive plan to gut and privatize Canada Post - which of course was given a political push to replace the postal banking idea which would have resulted in better service and increased public returns.

- Tabatha Southey rightly observes that the Cons should want to distance themselves from Robert Goguen for grandstanding about a witness' gang rape. But the fact that they haven't seems to signal what seemed to me the most plausible explanation to begin with: is there any reason to think Goguen was doing anything but reading off his party's script to begin with?

- Finally, there are plenty of reasons to question Susan Delacourt's attempt to use relatively minor concerns about our current political system as a basis to eliminate political parties altogether - and Dale Smith neatly lays them out. But if we're looking for examples of the type of theory about political party operations which positively begs to be challenged, there are worse places to start than Jeffrey Simpson's insistence that leaders should hold the power to hand-pick their own pet candidates.

Musical interlude

Sandy Rivera - Changes

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Linda McQuaig discusses how a renewed push for austerity runs directly contrary to the actual values of Canadians, who want to see their governments accomplish more rather than forcing the public to settle for less:

Their formula for achieving small, disabled government is simple: slash taxes (particularly on corporations and upper-income folk), leaving government with no choice but to cut spending -- or risk deficits and the wrath of Moody's, Ivison, the National Post, etc.

The Harper government, deeply committed to this ideology, has followed the formula closely. It has slashed taxes to the point that Ottawa now collects less revenue (as a proportion of GDP) than it did in 1940 -- before we had national public programs for health care, pensions and unemployment insurance.
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The real problem right now isn't the deficit, but getting the economy back in shape -- a point even acknowledged by David Dodge, former governor of the Bank of Canada and former deputy minister of finance.
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Asked in an Environics poll to choose between two views of government, 68 per cent of Canadians selected "Governments are essential to finding solutions to important problems facing the country" while just 27 per cent chose "Governments are more often than not the cause of important problems facing the country."

While the conservative revolution and media deficit hysteria have left us with dwindling revenues, the dream of an activist government apparently lingers somewhere deep in the Canadian soul.

- CBC reports that the Cons' politically-ordered crackdown on public advocacy by charities now extends well beyond the environmental movement - but is still limited exclusively to groups which tend to disagree with their anti-social policies. And Gareth Kirkby looks in detail at how the policy of silencing opposition has affected the work of the charities affected.

- Julian Beltrame reports on Canada's latest job numbers - which show our unemployment rate now exceeding the U.S.', with particularly little employment available for young workers. And David Climenhaga details the absurdity of the businesses a right to indentured labour through the temporary foreign worker program - pointing out that the effect of the program is to suppress wages for everybody for the sole purpose of keeping fast-food outlets open past 3 AM.

- Alexander Ervin and David Woodhouse lament the corporatization of Canadian universities.

- And finally, Matthew Mendelsohn makes an effort to engage in a detailed, fact-based policy discussion with Joe Oliver. Which figures to end about as well as anybody's attempt to speak truth to a broken record.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

 - Joseph Heath responds to Andrew Coyne in noting that an while there's plenty of room (and need) to better tax high personal incomes, there's also a need to complement that with meaningful corporate taxes:

(A) crucial part of the Boadway and Tremblay proposal is to increase the personal income tax rate on dividends and capital gains. That’s where the “soak the rich” part comes in. The argument — and it is an interesting argument — is that dividends are currently taxed at a lower rate in the hands of individuals, in order to avoid “double taxation,” once in the hands of the firm, again in the hands of the beneficiary. However, if the corporation is able to shift the tax on profits to other constituencies, then the tax paid by corporations isn’t really being paid by shareholders. So by taxing corporations less, and taxing individual investment income more, the Boadway/Tremblay policy makes it more difficult for the rich to shift their tax liabilities onto others.

I can see the argument for this. However, there always the danger of equivocation when talking about “the rich” or “inequality.” There is broad-based economic inequality, of the sort captured by a GINI coefficient, and then there is the specific problem of the very rich (whom we can refer to, for simplicity, as the 1%). While it is true that most Canadians are already able to exempt the entirety of their investment income from taxation (through home ownership, RRSPs, TFSAs), this is manifestly not the case with the 1%, who continue to use corporate ownership as a vehicle for tax avoidance.

Shortly after writing about this, I came across the following working paper, by Michael Wolfson, Mike Veall and Neil Brooks, “Piercing the Veil – Private Corporations and the Income of the Affluent.” It seems to me that before we talk about “soaking the rich,” or about the distributive effect of corporate taxes generally, the issues raised by this paper need to be addressed.

- And Eric Reguly discusses the role of executive pay and stock options in exacerbating inequality:

The rich and the super-rich are getting richer. We all know that. The question is why? Every economist on the planet has a theory. Some blame waning productivity gains or workers' losing their war with the robots. Others argue that the "offshoring" of jobs has suppressed wages, still others that lower taxes on capital gains have benefited the investing class. Thomas Piketty, the suddenly famous French economist whose bestselling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has fired up the wealth-gap debate around the world, argues that the inequalities in income distribution have risen sharply because of enormous corporate pay packages. He's generally right (even though the Financial Times found fault with some of his historical data) but what he does not do in any detail is break down those packages into their component parts. He and his research colleague, Emmanuel Saez, use U.S. Internal Revenue Service data, which lumps all pay together as "salaries." But salaries make up only a tiny portion of the haul for top executives. The biggest single component is stock-based pay: the realized gains from exercising stock options and the vesting of stock awards.

How did stock-based pay turn into a monster? The simple answer is that no one--not shareholders, not employees, not regulators--has been able to stop the executives from rigging the game in their favour. What seemingly started out as a reasonable idea--handing executives some shares so they would have an extra incentive to boost shareholder value--has tipped so far into the executives' favour that the richest bosses are gaining oligarch status. Through the repricing of options and ever-rising stock awards, many executives have been able to ratchet up their pay even when their company's share price falls.
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The executive pay system is so well organized, and so sublimely immoral, that it has taken on a racketeering flavour, all in the slick guise of aligning the interests of management and shareholders. Executives pad their boards with yes-men and -women who wouldn't dare suggest their boss is overpaid; compensation consultants are happy to recommend that the CEO's pay should fall in the peer group's top quartile; and the regulatory climate has been benign, thanks to the lobbying power of the companies.

- Alison highlights yet another set of foreign-funded corporate mercenaries complaining that we shouldn't listen to environmental and social groups because they might be foreign-funded. And Kayle Hatt calls out the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's attacks on humanities research and other evidence-based analysis.

- James Moore's latest push toward a national corporate-privilege agreement has apparently given up on identifying more than a single trade barrier in favour of labelling the fictitious as "extraordinarily stupid" in the hope that will make up for the lack of actual examples.

- Finally, Seumas Milne writes that a reversal of privatization is one of the essential building blocks of long-term growth and stability:

Privatisation isn't working. We were promised a shareholding democracy, competition, falling costs and better services. A generation on, most people's experience has been the opposite. From energy to water, rail to public services, the reality has been private monopolies, perverse subsidies, exorbitant prices, woeful under-investment, profiteering and corporate capture.

Private cartels run rings round the regulators. Consumers and politicians are bamboozled by commercial secrecy and contractual complexity. Workforces have their pay and conditions slashed. Control of essential services has not only passed to corporate giants based overseas, but those companies are themselves often state-owned – they're just owned by another state.

Report after report has shown privatised services to be more expensive and inefficient than their publicly owned counterparts. It's scarcely surprising that a large majority of the public, who have never supported a single privatisation, neither trust the privateers nor want them running their services.

New column day

Here, on the importance of coming together and putting people first in a time of crisis - contrasted against Stephen Harper and Brad Wall's apparent view that the real tragedy is that the oil sector might find it tougher to extract profits when it's causing humanitarian disasters.

For further reading...
- Harper's statement on the Lac-Mégantic oil-by-rail explosion is here. In addition to the callous focus on economic messaging, you'll also note a conspicuous lack of words like "oil", "rail" and "explosion".
- Similarly, here's Wall lamenting the fact that massive flooding might affect the accessibility of oil leases.
- Murray Mandryk points out that we should be planning for more extreme weather events based on both their increased frequency in the past few years, and the science of climate change. In contrast, Wall figures that if there isn't a perfect precedent for a type of disaster, then it's not his job to plan for it.
- Kim Mackrael and Justin Giovannetti report on MMA's latest statement that they'd have handed the oil shipped through Lac-Mégantic differently if they'd known how dangerous it was. Chalk this up as one more triumph for self-regulation.
- And finally, Katie Valentine maps out the at-risk areas for future rail disasters.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Anne Manne discusses how extreme wealth leads to narcissism and a lack of empathy, while pointing out that to merely recognizing the problem goes some way toward solving it:

Outside the lab, Piff found that the rich donated a smaller percentage of their wealth than poorer people. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans, those with earnings in the top 20%, contributed 1.3% of their income to charity, while those in the bottom 20% donated 3.2% of their income. The trend to meanness was worst in plush suburbs where everyone had a high income, and never laid eyes on a poor person. Insulation from people in need, Piff concluded, dampened charitable impulses.

Poorer people were also more likely to give to those charities servicing the genuinely needy. The rich gave to high-status institutions such as already well-endowed art galleries, museums and universities, while Feeding America, which deals with the nation’s poorest, got nothing.

These qualities are not set in concrete. "We’re not suggesting rich people are bad at all," said Piff, "but rather that psychological effects of wealth have these natural effects.’ It is, he said, a function of greater prosperity, rather than innate qualities of rich people.

Piff found that when shown images of children in poverty, the wealthy could behave more empathetically. Like the long campaign for the NDIS, which sensitised people to the plight of those with a disability or those caring for them, people can respond to good political leadership which primes them for generosity rather than meanness.

- And Darlena Kunha writes about the experience of poverty and income insecurity from the standpoint of a family which once believed itself to be beyond that risk:

The reality of poverty can spring quickly while the psychological effects take longer to surface. When you lose a job, your first thought isn’t, “Oh my God, I’m poor. I’d better sell all my nice stuff!” It’s “I need another job. Now.” When you’re scrambling, you hang on to the things that work, that bring you some comfort. That Mercedes was the one reliable, trustworthy thing in our lives.
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The most embarrassing part was how I felt about myself. How I had so internalized the message of what poor people should or should not have that I felt ashamed to be there, with that car, getting food. As if I were not allowed the food because of the car. As if I were a bad person.

We’ve now sold that house. My husband found a job that pays well, and we have enough left over for me to go to grad school. President Obama’s programs — from the extended unemployment benefits to the tax-free allowance for short-selling a home we couldn’t afford — allowed us to crawl our way out of the hole.

But what I learned there will never leave me. We didn’t deserve to be poor, any more than we deserved to be rich. Poverty is a circumstance, not a value judgment. I still have to remind myself sometimes that I was my harshest critic. That the judgment of the disadvantaged comes not just from conservative politicians and Internet trolls. It came from me, even as I was living it.

- Kaylie Tiessen argues that Ontario shouldn't let a change in its credit outlook be used as a means to further trash the province's economy through austerity and tax slashing. And Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew's report on the treatment of Canadian banks offers a compelling indication as to why we shouldn't take the ratings agencies seriously at all - as the same firms which consistently gave perfect ratings to what proved to be derivative time bombs are now downgrading the outlook for Canadian banks merely because they might have to stand on their own two feet.

- Meanwhile, Paul Krugman points out that inflation hysteria serves primarily to ensure that the wealthy benefit at the expense of everybody else.

- Finally, PressProgress questions just how much further the Canadian Taxpayers Federation wants to go in eliminating employment insurance - though I'd suspect that zero social safety net for anybody would be just fine for one of the most extreme anti-social organizations in the country. And Andrew Stevens studies the abuse of temporary foreign workers (and resulting decline in service-sector wages) in Saskatchewan.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Surfacing cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Katrina vanden Heuvel criticizes the U.S. Democrats' move away from discussing inequality by in favour of platitudes about opportunity for the middle class. And while Matthew Yglesias may be correct in responding that the messaging change hasn't resulted in much difference in Democratic policy proposals, it's certainly significant when a political party makes the choice to take poverty and inequality off the table as a vital part of the argument for its policy consensus.

- Meanwhile, Stephen Elliott-Buckley reminds us that the 1% tends to get its way in policy debates in no small part because it exhibits solidarity often missing among other groups:

For centuries, the 1% were the nobility, the aristocrats, the old money, the patriarchy. Then Adam Smith pitched capitalism in his 1776 book Wealth of Nations, and liberated the entrepreneurs to join the blue bloods. Today, every January, corporate and government leaders from around the world – the people who literally rule the world – meet in the winter-wonderland of Davos, Switzerland, to launch the annual World Economic Forum. There, they plan the global agenda. This year’s sexy new idea was advancing “social entrepreneurialism.” That sounds so kumbaya, just like public-private partnerships, but it’s just spin for privatizing social services.

The World Economic Forum is just one of the most recent venues where the global elite show their solidarity with each other, and plan how to maximize shareholder wealth and minimize global social, economic and political equality. Beyond Davos, our rulers have also created a roadmap for undermining the democracy of nations through secret trade agreements like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and CETA (the Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement). These agreements are designed to give right-wing governments the excuse to deregulate industries, privatize public services, and elevate shareholders’ and investors’ “right” to profit above the needs of society.
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The member groups of progressive coalitions need to find ways of connecting their individual members to better support each other. And the coalitions themselves need to support each other. I believe such an effort at deepening and broadening solidarity has, so far, been lacking. Meanwhile, the 1% are deeply well-connected, from community chambers of commerce right up to the World Trade Organization. They’re all spouting the same spin and rhetoric on their members’ behalf, while we, the 99%, can often not get past “letterhead coalitions,” a term introduced to me by Amanda Tattersall, one of the founders of the Sydney Alliance in Australia. What good is it to have a coalition when the extent of union, or faith, or community organization activity is merely a letter of support?

- David Ball reports on this summer's Peoples' Social Forum - which looks like one promising effort to build connections and lay the foundation for ongoing activism.

- And in case there was much doubt there's still plenty to organize against, the CCCE lays bare its trade agenda - featuring its demand that the TPP be negotiated and implemented without public input in order to ensure closed-door "enforcement" of corporate priorities and at most "dialogue" for labour, the environment and anything else not profit-related.

- Finally, Jonathan Kay rightly criticizes the Cons' "punitive moral absolutism" when it comes to withholding needed health care from refugees. But as Emmett MacFarlane notes, the Cons always seem to find some way to sink even lower than their past precedents for callous inhumanity - and Robert Goguen did just that in lecturing a sex worker about her own gang rape.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Stephen Hwang and Kwame McKenzie discuss the connection between affordable housing and public health and wellness:

In 2009, researchers followed 1,200 people in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver who were homeless or at risk of homelessness. It was found that they experience a high burden of serious health problems like asthma, high blood pressure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. They are also at high risk for conditions like depression and anxiety, and of going hungry.

There’s more. We know that housing in disrepair can lead to accidents, fires and infestations. That overcrowding can lead to infections. We also know that, if you develop an illness, it is more difficult to get better if you are homeless or live in a substandard home.

Finally, we know the cost of housing deeply affects our health. When it takes up a large percentage of our income, it can cause profound stress and crowd out things that are important for health like recreational activities, nutritious food and prescription medication.
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We have international and Canadian research demonstrating the way forward. And if further help is needed, we are here along with many others, ready and able to work to implement solutions. The ingredients are all there. Now it’s time to demonstrate the vision and political leadership to make sure every single one of us has a decent place to call home. 

- Mariana Mazzucato challenges the theory that inequality correlates in any way to technological progress as a matter of economic theory rather than political choice. And David Pilling questions the use of GDP as a measure of economic development - with particular emphasis on the short-sighted picture it tends to produce.

- Meanwhile, Simon Tremblay-Pepin documents some of the direct effects of Quebec's gratuitous austerity. And Matt O'Brien highlights how austerity is turning what could have been a temporary crash into a permanent drag on development.

- And Paul Krugman traces that wilful economic destruction back to a theory insisting that interest rates should be set so as to "kept permanently depressed in order to curb the irrational exuberance of investors" - raising obvious questions as to why we would then set our economic policy based on the belief that the mood of those same investors is the primary goal to be pursued.

- Finally, we shouldn't be surprised to learn that the tar sands are poisoning Alberta wildlife and the First Nations who rely on it. But based on how petropoliticians have handled the health of tar sands victims in the past, we should be even less surprised if the only action that comes from the revelation is an end to Health Canada funding for exactly that type of research.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Mark Taliano highlights the distinction between corporate and public interests (while pointing out that both military and economic policy are all too often based on the former). And Jamie Doward discusses how the perception that government is either unwilling or unable to serve anybody besides corporate masters is turning the next generation of UK youth away from politics:

The picture that emerges from an Ipsos MORI questionnaire completed by almost 2,800 pupils aged 11 to 16 is of a generation that expects little help from politicians and which resolutely believes that it will not have the same life prospects as those enjoyed by the one before.

The poll, conducted for the National Children's Bureau and which will be published this week, is the first of its kind carried out by Ipsos MORI, and suggests that today's young people are turning away from conventional politics. Only two in five (39%) agreed with the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, that the voting age should be lowered to 16. And only 13% would be certain to vote in a general election if they had the chance, a figure that rises to 15% among 15- to 16-year-olds.

Of those who would be eligible to vote in next year's general election if the voting age were reduced, 17% say they associate themselves with Labour while 9% opt for the Tories.
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Growing disillusionment with Westminster politics may be linked to how Generation Next see their future. Fewer than two in five expect their lives to be better than it was for their parents (37%). In contrast, 70% of baby boomers believe they have had a better life than their parents. Ipsos MORI said the findings were consistent with a general downward shift in the proportion of people who feel their generation will have a better quality of life compared with their parents' generation.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given this trend, only 14% of Generation Next believes the government will do a good job in running the country in the year ahead. They also have a pessimistic view of how they are treated by the government, with less than half believing they are treated fairly.

- Meanwhile, Michael Geist sees the negotiation of the TPP (like so many other trade agreements) behind closed doors as compelling evidence that it wouldn't hold up to public scrutiny. And Emily Atkin discusses the latest example of the oil industry buying silence when it comes to any questioning of its activities, as the price for TransCanada's donation of a single rescue truck to the town of Mattawa included the town's agreement never to publicly question or comment on any of its operations.

- Haroon Siddiqui points out that the very nature of the temporary foreign worker program is anathema to Canada's proud legacy of welcoming immigrants to build futures as part of our culture:

It hit me on Canada Day that even the name, temporary foreign worker program, is un-Canadian. “Temporary” and “foreign” are the antithesis of long-standing Canadian immigration policy, the bedrock principle of which is that immigrants are selected to be permanent residents and future fellow-citizens.

The formula has served us well by minimizing the “us vs. them” undercurrent that charges relations between new arrivals and the rest of society. In our native and adopted land, the old and the new are in it together.

Canada studiously avoided Europe’s guest worker program, under which hundreds of thousands were imported in the expectation that they’d leave at the end of their work. Few did, creating a permanent underclass in Germany, France and elsewhere — and all the resentments that go with it.

We were never like the oil-rich Persian Gulf nations that allow employers to import temporary foreign workers, but not their families, pay dirt-poor wages and hold them hostage as indentured labour tethered to their master.

Now our temporary foreign worker program allows employers to import cheap foreign labour, without families, mostly for low-end jobs for short periods. The temps are tied to their employer who may mistreat them.

- And Andrew Longhurst points out that the "temporary" element of work applies to an increasingly large proportion of Canadian jobs in general - and proposes a few policy ideas to give workers a better chance of moving part precarious employment.

- Finally, Partnership for Strong Communities takes a look at yet more research showing that the availability of affordable and accessible housing has a significant effect on spreading opportunity - in this case for the cognitive growth of children.

To dream fondly of the day when ads haunt our dreams

Heather Mallick's column about the public's willingness to sell out to the corporate sector for cheap unfortunately meanders off on a few too many tangents before reaching much of a point. But even if she'd connected with a truly incisive take, snark has nothing on Terence Corcoran - who goes to far as to whine that spam e-mails are "essential in a market economy", and to suggest that any legislation goes too far in regulating the digital equivalent of door-to-door sales.

Which leads to the question: exactly how many people - the marketing industry excepted - actually see the constant intrusion of advertisers as a net social good?

To be clear, there are some genuine reasons for concern about the anti-spam legislation in its present form. But it takes a truly fundamentalist consumerist to suggest that CASL's fundamental flaw is that it might allow people a moment's peace from the ever-expanding reach of the corporate sector.

And indeed, if anybody actually wants to test Corcoran's thesis as to the effect of advertising, surely the more likely conclusion is that we'd rather have less of it blasted at us - in person, on the phone, online and everywhere else - rather than succumbing to a future of an endless series of vacuum salesmen pounding on our doors forever.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Carol Linnitt observes that the Canadian public supports a shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy by a 76-24% margin - even as they overestimate Canada's economic returns from oil and gas.

- Meanwhile, Alison takes a look at the spread of (primarily oil-funded) advertorials in Canadian media.

- Kate Heartfield writes that even if the Cons' cuts to refugee health hadn't crossed the line into unconstitutionality, we should still consider them to be unconscionable from a policy-making perspective:

Even if you come away unconvinced of the soundness of the court’s conclusion, it is hard to come away sanguine about the effects of this policy.

A policy that “shocks the conscience and outrages our standards of decency” is not defensible, politically and morally, even if it is legal. It is hard to argue against the court’s opinion that the government “has intentionally set out to make the lives of these disadvantaged individuals even more difficult than they already are in an effort to force those who have sought the protection of this country to leave Canada more quickly, and to deter others from coming here.”

This judgment might not be the final word on the constitutionality of refugee health care, but it’s a damning critique not only of a particular policy, but also of the way our government makes policy in general.

- And Jay Monaco notes that the U.S. Supreme Court's latest set of appalling decisions serves as evidence that we shouldn't lean too heavily on the judiciary to compensate for the regressive legislation and policy choices we tend to see in the absence of a strong labour movement:

SCOTUS, in other words, is always going to be antagonistic when the law itself is the problem. Legal protections like the weekend, the minimum wage, the eight-hour workday, the 40-hour week, and prohibitions against discrimination are of incalculable value. Perpetually orienting ourselves solely toward gratitude for past victory, however, deludes us into a self-defeating reliance on the law as our protector. Much more consistently, it has played the opposite role.

It wasn’t so long ago that former union president Ronald Reagan used the cloak of law to break the air traffic controllers’ strike, an act often seen as the opening salvo in the 30-year war on workers that continues to this day. Yet Reagan’s heavy-handedness was not innovative so much as it was a return to time-honored tradition. Concessions like the eight-hour workday were not granted out of some inherent justice found in the golden hearts of enlightened politicians. They were only granted when the torches were at the gates and those in authority had no other choice – and only then after well over a century of fighting.

- Finally, Matt Bruenig suggests that we shouldn't rely on employers or other private-sector actors to make choices about social development. And Hilary Wainwright points to Public Service International's call for a stronger public sector.

Musical interlude

James Dymond - Siren's Song

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Robert Reich discusses how a reasonable balance of economic and political power is necessary to any protection of meaningful personal freedom:

In reality, corporate free speech drowns out the free speech of ordinary people who can’t flood the halls of Congress with campaign contributions.

Freedom is the one value conservatives place above all others, yet time and again their ideal of freedom ignores the growing imbalance of power in our society that’s eroding the freedoms of most people.
...
The so-called “free market” is not expanding options and opportunities for most people. It’s extending them for the few who are wealthy enough to influence how the market is organized.

Most of us remain “free” in limited sense of not being coerced into purchasing, say, the medications or Internet services that are unnecessarily expensive, or contraceptives they can no longer get under their employer’s insurance plan. We can just go without.

We’re likewise free not to be burdened with years of student debt payments; no one is required to attend college. And we’re free not to rent a place in a neighborhood with lousy schools and pot-holed roads; if we can’t afford better, we’re free to work harder so we can.

But this is a very parched view of freedom.

Conservatives who claim to be on the side of freedom while ignoring the growing imbalance of economic and political power in America are not in fact on the side of freedom. They are on the side of those with the power.

- But in fairness, it's probably true that our corporate overlords have reason to fear even the slightest scrutiny - as Joe Friesen reports that Manitoba's investigation into employers using temporary foreign workers found labour violations in nearly half of the workplaces involved.

- Meanwhile, PressProgress exposes internal Department of Finance documents discussing how the Cons' income-splitting scheme runs directly contrary to the basic principles of tax policy - most notably the principle of minimizing interference with personal choices. And Annie Bergeron-Oliver reports that the cruel, unusual and unconstitutional nature of the Cons' cuts to refugee health care has now been confirmed (PDF) by the Federal Court.

- Bryce Covert points out that contrary to the usual anti-wage spin, U.S. states with increasing minimum wages are actually generating more job growth. 

- Finally, Aaron Wherry rightly questions why the Prime Minister has the sole discretion to schedule by-elections. But I'd think that in the spirit of fixed general election dates as a means of allowing for greater certainty for parties in candidates, there's reason not to trigger by-elections immediately upon a vacancy either. Instead, wouldn't it make sense to have fixed by-election dates available at three- or six-month intervals since the previous general election, with all vacancies generated in that time period then filled at once?

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer respond to Joseph Stiglitz by pointing out that some of the inequality arising out of capitalism has nothing to do with rules further rigged in favour of the wealthy:

Although there is certainly significant substance to Stiglitz’s argument – policy decisions can have profound impacts on economic outcomes – nevertheless capitalism is far more responsible for economic inequality because of its inherent nature and its extended reach in the area of policy decisions than Stiglitz is willing to concede.

To begin with, in capitalist society it is much easier to make money if you already have money, and much more difficult if you are poor. So, for example, a rich person can buy up a number of foreclosed houses and rent them out to desperate tenants at ridiculously high rates. Then, each time rent is paid, the landlord becomes richer and the tenant becomes poorer, and inequalities in wealth grow.

More importantly, at the very heart of capitalism lies an incentive that leads to the increase of inequalities. Capitalism is based on the principle of competition, and businesses must compete with one another in order to survive. Each company, therefore, strives to maximize its profits in order to achieve a competitive advantage. For example, they can use extra profits to offset lowering the price of their product, undersell their opponents, and push them out of the market.

But in order to maximize profits, businesses must keep productive costs to a minimum. And a major portion of productive costs includes labor. Consequently, as a general rule, in order for a business to survive, it must push labor costs to a minimum.
...
Capitalism is a way of life, and for that reason it generates its own peculiar culture and world view that envelopes every other social sphere, a culture that includes competition, individualism, materialism in the form of consumerism, operating in one’s self-interest without consideration for the needs of others, and so on. This culture infects everyone to one degree or another; it is like an ether that all those in its proximity inhale. It encourages people to evaluate one another according to their degree of wealth and power. It rewards those who doggedly pursue their narrow self-interests at the expense of others.

The culture of capitalism, because of its hyper individualism, also produces an extraordinarily narrow vision of the world. Viewing the world from an isolated standpoint, individuals tend to assume that they are self-made persons, not the products of their surrounding culture and social relations. So the rich assume that their wealth has been acquired through their personal talents alone, while they see those mired in poverty as lacking the ambition and willingness to work hard. People are unable to see the complexities underlying human behavior because of the atomization of social life.
...
It is in this more subtle way that capitalism induces growing income inequalities. Because of their intensely competitive environment, politicians are more vulnerable to this capitalist culture than most. Capitalist culture engenders a mindset among politicians that leads them to craft public policies in favor of the good people, the rich and powerful, and turn their backs on the poor or punish them with mass incarceration.  They think it entirely natural to accept money from the wealthy in order to fund their re-election campaigns. And the more the inequalities in wealth grow, the more this mindset blinds politicians to the destructive implications of these “natural” decisions. 

- Meanwhile, Mark Serwotka discusses how privatized social services in the UK are predictably resulting in the public paying more to provide less service to recipients. And Stuart Trew and Scott Sinclair write that the next generation of trade deals will only further entrench corporate power at the expense of mere people.
 
- Jordan Press reports on Canada's ineffective response to tax evasion as a prime example of how the Cons are going easy on those who need and deserve it least - as a lack of CRA resources is resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars being moved offshore and costing the public billions in revenues.

- David Dayen warns that ineffective regulation is leading to yet another financial bubble, this time in capital markets.

- Finally, Humera Jabir writes that the Cons' tinkering with the temporary foreign worker program isn't doing anything to prevent the worst abuses of powerless employees. And the Alberta Federation of Labour points out that the TFWP is still being used to slash wages in half compared to the market rate for Canadian workers.

New column day

Here, contrasting the NDP's hard-fought Regina nomination elections against the stories of Paul Manly, Chris Rendell, and the apparent trend of federal and provincial NDP candidates being disqualified from seeking nominations for entirely insufficient reasons.

For further reading...
- The Leader-Post reported on the nomination victories by Erin Weir in Regina-Lewvan and Nial Kuyek in Regina-Qu'Appelle here. And for a couple of examples of Weir in particular making important points which don't entirely match the NDP's party line both provincially and federally, see his challenge to the cult of small business and his disclaimer-laden Commonwealth commentary on resource royalties and employment in Saskatchewan.
- Manly told his story here, while his past comments seeking the safe return of his father and challenging the NDP to do more in the effort are available here and here. [Update: And there's some response from party officials in Susana Mas' report, though the question of whether the NDP has rejected some candidates in the past on stronger grounds has little to do with whether it was justified in doing so with Manly.]
- Finally, CBC reports on Rendell's rejection alongside the recruitment of Bev Harrison here.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Atkins highlights Gallup's latest polling showing that U.S. trust in public institutions continues to erode. And Paul Krugman notes that there's reason for skepticism about the snake oil being peddled as economic policy in order to further enrich the already-wealthy:

Why, after all, should anyone believe at this late date in supply-side economics, which claims that tax cuts boost the economy so much that they largely if not entirely pay for themselves? The doctrine crashed and burned two decades ago, when just about everyone on the right — after claiming, speciously, that the economy’s performance under Ronald Reagan validated their doctrine — went on to predict that Bill Clinton’s tax hike on the wealthy would cause a recession if not an outright depression. What actually happened was a spectacular economic expansion.

Nor is it just liberals who have long considered supply-side economics and those promoting it to have been discredited by experience. In 1998, in the first edition of his best-selling economics textbook, Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw — very much a Republican, and later chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers — famously wrote about the damage done by “charlatans and cranks.” In particular, he highlighted the role of “a small group of economists” who “advised presidential candidate Ronald Reagan that an across-the-board cut in income tax rates would raise tax revenue.”
...
(H)ow can you justify enriching the already wealthy while making life harder for those struggling to get by? The answer is, you need an economic theory claiming that such a policy is the key to prosperity for all. So supply-side economics fills a need backed by lots of money, and the fact that it keeps failing doesn’t matter.

And the Kansas debacle won’t matter either. Oh, it will briefly give states considering similar policies pause. But the effect won’t last long, because faith in tax-cut magic isn’t about evidence; it’s about finding reasons to give powerful interests what they want.

- And on the subject of corporate capture, Alan Pyke reports that Michigan's idea of making prison food services more efficient has involved hiring a private contractor which doesn't seem interested in actually feeding anybody. And Jenny Uechl points out Kinder Morgan's sweetheart deal from the National Energy Board which is allowing it to force the public and to foot the bill for a nine-figure pipeline application - from which it would of course claim the profits.

- Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett document (PDF) the role of unions in working toward greater equality (h/t to James Bloodworth), while reminding us what role we should expect unions, workers and corporations to play in a healthy society:

Companies have two functions. One is to produce the goods and services which we all need, but the other is to concentrate wealth and power among top executives and generate profits for shareholders. We need the first of these, but not the second. The second has been the mainspring of rising inequality and has provided powerful perverse incentives to top management.

Increasing employee representation on company boards and expanding the share of the economy made up of mutual, cooperative and employee owned companies would begin to tackle growing inequality and the concentration of wealth at the top. More democratic companies tend to have much smaller pay ratios among their staff.
...
As well as smaller income differences and good economic performance, cooperatives, employee owned companies and others in the stakeholder business sector have other advantages. Community life has weakened substantially in rich countries over the last generation but, as Oakeshott remarks, an employee buyout can turn a company from being a piece of property into a community¹. Perhaps a stronger sense of community at work could replace the sense of community that has declined in residential areas.  It is also likely that less hierarchical structures at work could begin to change the experience of work – making it possible for more people to gain a sense of self-worth and of being valued from their employment. Certainly, a sense that you don’t have control over your work, of unfairness, or an ‘effort-reward imbalance’, have each been linked to worse health and wellbeing.

The scales of top pay and of tax avoidance are two indications of how problematic the mismatch between profit seeking and the public interest can be. Other indicators include corporate-funded opposition to scientific evidence of harm associated with company products, such as the role of fossil fuel companies opposing climate science, the manipulation of regulatory bodies set up to safeguard the public interest, and the purchase of political influence on a scale which threatens the effective functioning of democratic institutions.

- Finally, Denis Campbell interviews John Ashton about the importance of greater equality as a matter of public health. And Faiza Shaheen writes that we can't have sustainable development without challenging inequality.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Playtime cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Jessica McDiarmid reports on the hazardous materials being shipped by rail across North America - and it's particularly sad that Canadians can only learn about the risks being imposed on us through a U.S. guide. But lest we be under any illusions that our neighbours have an enviable record in managing their own risks, Claire Moser reports that even identified high-risk oil and gas wells in the U.S. aren't being inspected.

- And of course, that figures to have much to do with the fossil fuel industry's domination of politics on both sides of the border. Which brings us to Murray Dobbin's take on the need to challenge petropolitics and the oil barons who control them:

One of the major political factors preventing serious consideration of major and rapid policy changes is the sheer power of the fossil fuel industry. Unimaginable wealth translates into unimaginable power worldwide. To imagine bringing the industry to heel in a serious effort to slow climate change, we have to imagine treating the industry like we eventually treated the tobacco industry: as an existential threat to human health. For decades the tobacco giants exerted so much political influence they were virtually untouchable. To the extent that this changed (it is obviously still a health scourge especially in the developing world), it changed because the notion of corporate "rights" was successfully challenged.

Multiply the impact of the tobacco industry by 1,000 and you have some idea of how difficult it will be to escape the political and social conventional thinking that protects the oil "industry" from rational policy. Indeed part of that conventional thinking is seeing the giant corporations involved as just another industry. This actually serves to protect this sociopathic monster because we have rules governing industries and the individual companies that make them up. Companies are "citizens" with rights (thanks to our Charter) and they live forever. They have literally unlimited money to lobby governments for continued subsidies ($2 billion yearly from Ottawa), and tax breaks against subsidies for renewables which could save the planet. Even though 97 per cent of climate scientists agree about climate change, these corporations have the power to trash science and sow doubts about global warming.

The energy giants are protected by rogue governments like those in Alberta and Ottawa. They are permitted to take as much of the stuff out of the ground as fast as they can ship it and sell it, regardless of the global consequences. Like no other sector of the economy (except perhaps nuclear power) they are allowed to externalize hundreds of billions -- possibly trillions -- in costs they should be paying: air and water pollution costs, health costs, the costs associated with distorting the rest of the economy, the cost of new roads and bridges and freeways and paved-over farm land. We refuse to tax it to cover those costs, and that means ridiculously low prices and little incentive to wean ourselves from its pernicious and deadly effects.

- And in keeping with Dobbin's proposal for public ownership in the resource sector, Paul Krugman recognizes the absurdity of criticizing ideas merely because they've existed for some time. (Which of course goes doubly for ideas which have proven to be smashing successes when implemented in full.)

- John Oliver suggests that corporations should bear the burdens facing individuals if they expect to share in the rights that properly apply to people:



- Finally, Rick Salutin sees Canada Day as the perfect time to reflect on the importance of citizenship - and to question why the Cons are so eager to grant themselves power to take it away.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Benjamin Shingler reports on the push for a basic annual income in Canada. And Christopher Blattman notes that cash serves as a valuable treatment for poverty wherever one diagnoses the disease:

The poor do not waste grants. Recently, two World Bank economists looked at 19 cash transfer studies in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Almost all showed alcohol and tobacco spending fell or stayed the same. Only two showed any significant increase, and even there the evidence was mixed.

You might worry handouts encourage idleness. But in most experiments, people worked more after they received grants.

You might also worry that the poorest of New York are different. The average person in Uganda is impoverished; it’s easy to believe he would make good decisions with cash. But a homeless person in New York is not average. Substance abuse is pervasive. Maybe panhandlers here are different from the global poor.

I used to believe this. Now I’m not sure. A few years ago, I started working in Liberia’s urban slums. My colleagues and I sought out men who were homeless or made their living dealing drugs or stealing. Many abused alcohol and drugs. We tested different programs in a randomized trial of a thousand men. One thing we tried was giving out $200 in cash.

Almost no men wasted it. In the months after they got the cash, most dressed, ate and lived better. Unlike the Ugandans, however, whose new businesses kept growing, the Liberian men were back where they started a year later. Two hundred dollars was not enough to turn them into businessmen. But it brought them a better life for a while, which is the fundamental goal of any welfare program. We also tested a counseling program to reduce crime and violence. It worked a little on its own, but had the largest impact when combined with cash.

- Mark Esposito writes about the connection between growing inequality and the loss of opportunity for young workers who don't come from privileged backgrounds:

(W)hatever the main factor underpinning high youth unemployment, income inequality undoubtedly exacerbates the problem. Simply put, many jobs – particularly the most lucrative ones – are available almost exclusively to young people from wealthy backgrounds.

In the UK, for example, only 7% percent of children attend private schools. But roughly half of the country’s chief executives, and two-thirds of its doctors, have been privately educated . This trend is expected to persist, with the next generation of doctors likely to be born into families that rank among the wealthiest 20% of the population.

There are several possible reasons for this pattern. For starters, the highest-status positions require the most prestigious educational background – and that costs money. Moreover, many internships – a prerequisite for the most attractive jobs – are unpaid, making them unfeasible for graduates whose families cannot afford to support them.

But money is not the only requirement. In many cases, sought-after jobs and internships – and even admission to top educational institutions – are far more accessible to those who are within the employers’ personal or professional network. When the job market rewards whom you know more than what you know, young people with well-connected parents have an obvious advantage.

...

With financial status serving as the key determinant of opportunities, young people from poorer backgrounds are becoming increasingly discouraged – a situation that can lead to social unrest. Unless all young people have legitimate prospects of improving their social and economic status, the gap between rich and poor will continue to widen, creating a vicious cycle that will be increasingly difficult to escape.

The good news is that efforts to alleviate youth unemployment will reduce income inequality, and vice versa. The society that emerges will be more stable, unified, and prosperous – an outcome in which everyone, rich or poor, has a stake.

- Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer discuss the need for unions to build and maintain a strong political movement which goes beyond the boundaries of any one political party. And Josh Israel highlights a few of the U.S. labour groups who are moving beyond traditional organizational models.

- Finally, Michael Harris summarizes Stephen Harper's legacy, while raising important questions about whether Canadians want to be defined by tyranny:

The new prime minister ushered in his majority government with a performance that both confirmed and contradicted some of his earlier pronouncements. It was true, as he once predicted, that the country was becoming unrecognizable through fundamental changes pushed through in his majority. Many of them had to do with the effective deconstruction of Canada’s democratic institutions. It was untrue — outrageously so — that he would be the prime minister of all Canadians, as he claimed after his election in 2011.

As the country quickly discovered, Harper was the Great Divider, pitting one group of citizens against another, a tactic singled out and criticized by former prime minister Joe Clark. He was the champion of a voracious corporate sector, the practitioner of bully-boy diplomacy, and the generous patron of the police and security establishment.
...
It is no accident that Canadian politics has been infected with Republican tactics, from vicious attack ads to the stealthy and illegal use of robocalls to undermine democracy. It is no mystery that Canadians have seen their pensions diminished, have lost mail delivery, veterans offices and libraries, and after 2017, face cuts in support of medicare. Society is not Harper’s client — corporations and business elites are. In the interest of those groups, he has even used the country’s security establishment to spy on Canadians for the high crime of opposing his policies.

Harper once advised people to not listen to what a politician says, but to watch what he does. Beyond the clouds of spin and public relations thrown up by his government’s communications machine sits a truth very different from the image of ‘strong and stable government’.

The lasting impact of Stephen Harper’s time in public life will be a diminished Parliament, toxic politics, and a compromised electoral system that will make every citizen smaller … the legacy of tyrants.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Thomas Frank interviews Barry Lynn about the U.S.' alarming concentration of wealth and power. Henry Blodget thoroughly rebuts the myth that "rich people create jobs". And David Atkins goes a step further in discussing how hoarded wealth hurts the economy in general - with a particularly apt observation about how inequality erodes our social connections:

It is not an accident that trust in major institutions has declined on a linear track with rising inequality. Study after study has shown that trust in our fellow citizens and in institutions at large are dependent on the level of inequality and corruption in society. This stands to reason: people know when they're getting the short end of the stick, even if they can't agree on why. Conservatives wrongly blame government spending and regulation. Liberals rightly blame disproportionate rewards going to the very wealthy. Not surprisingly, then, high levels of inequality also create strong partisanship within society as politicians and pundits alike ratchet up the rhetoric of blame. As both secular and religious institutions seem equally powerless to address increasing economic and social insecurity, the social fabric begins to fray and people tend to self-segregate in many ways, including politically. Economic tension and social tension tend to go hand in hand.

- And David Sirota writes about the effect of corruption on policy-making - with some all-too-familiar priorities looking like the more sure sign that political decisions are being made based on cronyism rather than the public interest:

One analysis comes from researchers at Indiana University and University of Hong Kong. They compared data from 25,000 convictions in public corruption cases with state spending data. As Governing magazine reports, the researchers document that the most corrupt states like Tennessee “tended to spend money on construction, highways, and police protection programs, which provide more opportunity for corrupt officials to use public money for their own gain.” Governing adds that those “states spend less on health, education, and welfare, which provide less opportunity for officials to collect bribes.”

- Meanwhile, Eric Bombicino wonders whether we're letting our public sector get slashed precisely because it does its job effectively:

(A)pathy, like happiness or love or suicide, is a complex thing with many sources, but based on my highly scientific process of talking to people at parties and coffee shops over the last two weeks, I’ve noticed a particular sort of apathy emerge:

 

I call it, “things are working” apathy.

 

“Look man, democracy is working for me, my garbage gets picked up, roads are in decent repair, and I can walk into a hospital and get an operation in a relatively short period of time: things are working.” Fair point, and an interesting one: the success of democracy has afforded some the luxury of apathy.

...

Over the weekend, an old high school buddy, after notifying me of his apathy because “things are working,” took me through a lengthy diatribe on the one political viewpoint he does hold: how much his small business pays in taxes. After this riveting session on payroll taxes and deductibles explained in mind-numbingly unnecessary detail, I asked him what level of taxation he would find fair. 

 

He repeated his earlier point: it needs to be lower, the government “takes” (read: confiscates) too much of his money. I then pointed out that since he wanted lower taxation across the board, he would want less government and government services. A perfectly defensible position…if you want less government.

 

He said he loves those things the Canadian government provides: healthcare, education, infrastructure, the social safety net. (In fact, they all play a role in the foundation of his apathy: that “things are working.”) 

 

We then stared at each other for a long time. He took a sip of his drink. And then repeated he was paying too much in taxes.

 

I found this fascinating. He didn’t want less government; he didn’t see small government as equaling a bigger economy. He simply wanted lower taxes. Full stop. No belief system or ideology is at play here; just a void of ignorance.

 

The irony here is plainly cruel. This void of ignorance created by his contentment with how “things are working” motivates him to want to destroy those very things.

- But Stephen Pimpare notes that upwards of a third of U.S. households have faced poverty in just a three-year span from 2009 to 2011, meaning that there isn't much distance between a large number of people and the worst effects of corporatist policy. Which makes it all the more inexplicable that policy based on hatred of the poor still seems to be the norm - as Kim Redigan points out in response to Detroit's mass disconnections of people from their municipal water source.

- Finally, Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob rightly lambaste the Harper Cons for their nonsensical crime and justice policies. And Hannah Spray's story on Trevor Machiskinic offers a compelling example where mandatory punishments and inflexible precedents lead to an obviously flawed result based on the background to an offence.