New column day

Here, arguing that while Stephen Poloz is indeed thoroughly out of touch in suggesting that people entering the workforce should take on unpaid internships as matters stand now, we should in fact make sure that unpaid work (or study, or other activity) is a viable option for young workers.

For further reading...
- The CP reports on Poloz' comments here, while Tavia Grant expands on the story here. CBC follows up with a Saskatchewan perspective here. And Elizabeth Lane looks at the issue as one of the workers who's been unable to find a job despite ample training and effort. [Update: Alison's response is also well worth a read in linking Poloz' advice to Scotiabank's massive job cuts.]
- Miles Corak points out here (PDF) that a systemic lack of employment for young workers has been one of the defining labour trends over the past few years.
- Unifor and the Broadbent Institute (PDF) each make the case for a substantial jobs program as another means of ensuring there's a place for young workers to build experience without going hungry.
- But the principle behind the Globe and Mail's discussion of a guaranteed income seems particularly compelling to me in the case of unemployed or underemployed young workers. Given the choice between trusting employers (who have plenty of money to hire more workers if they wanted to) in planning for workers' long-term well-being in exchange for a tax credit or direct job funding or in the workers themselves to determine how best to plan their careers given a secure income, the latter seems far more likely to generate positive outcomes.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Robert Reich discusses the right's utter lack of - and aversion to - empathy as either a personal or political value. Bob Norman reports on a particularly galling example of that phenomenon, as Fort Lauderdale has begun arresting people for feeding the homeless. And CBC reports on one of the systemic effects of a government which couldn't care less about the people under its jurisdiction, as Saskatchewan is seeing a drastic increase in people having to rely on food banks.

- Speaking of the Saskatchewan Party's contempt for social issues, Simon Enoch highlights how its push to sell off Saskatchewan's liquor retailing system ignores the well-documented social consequences of increased alcohol consumption. And Duncan Cameron writes about the latest set of privatization schemes designed to extract public investments for corporate benefit, while Thomas Walkom laments how quick the Ontario Libs (among other governing parties) have been to follow that path even when it means both higher costs and worse services.

- Michal Rozworski argues that our tax system should not only ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share, but also limit anybody's ability to accumulate so much as to distort the distribution of power:

[It] turns out there are good reasons for taxing the rich beyond raising revenue, and these reasons have precisely to do with changing how things are done.

The Nation has an excellent explainer of a recent study on the drastic fall in top tax rates over the past few decades. The authors, including Thomas Piketty of Capital in the 21st Century fame, wanted to see why the share of pre-tax income going to the very richest rose at the same time as top tax rates fell.

In short, they found that the rapidly growing incomes of those at the top were not due to rising productivity as mainstream theory suggests, but resulted from a better bargaining position. When top tax rates are low, CEOs, financial managers and others are motivated to spend more time trying to raise their earnings — for instance, stacking corporate boards that set salaries or giving out bigger bonuses — because they’ll get to keep more of them. Across countries in recent years, growth rates were very similar regardless of whether the top tax rate was high or low; the pie grew more or less as fast everywhere. In the countries where top taxes were low, however, top earners were able to capture a much, much bigger piece of the pie for themselves.
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...We can raise top tax rates not only, maybe not even mostly, to fill public coffers but also to help restore bargaining power to the rank and file in workplaces, making top managers less willing to make out with all that they can for themselves — a top-down aid to those fighting inequality from the bottom up.

The lesson here is that taxes do much more than just redistribute income. They can also change institutions such as the family and the firm, redistributing power and changing how we relate to one another. The more pernicious tax cuts for the rich do more than leave money in well-heeled pockets. By the same token, the opposing call to “tax the rich!” can be a way to achieve more than padding the public purse.

- But Dennis Howlett points out that the Cons are instead looking to hand billions of dollars to the people who need the gift least, while Carol Goar notes that the calculated effect of income splitting is to redistribute income (and power) upward.

- Finally, Naomi Klein writes that big polluters are starting to receive some of the public opprobrium they deserve.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Angled cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Paul Krugman points out the chasm between the policies demanded by businesses to suit their corporate biases, and those which actually best serve the cause of a strong and fair economy. And Michael Konczal highlights the damage done to our broader economy by a narrow focus on financial interests.

- Lisa Pasolli discusses the history of child care in Canada to offer some context to the policy choice that figures to dominate the next federal election. Margot Young makes the case that a new facade can't fix the serious structural problems with income splitting. And the CP reports that Canada's food banks have weighed in on the child care vs. tax bauble debate with strong support for a real child care system along with other improvements to our social safety net:

Canadian food banks are wading into the hot political debate over how best the federal government can help families with kids: give them tax breaks, as the Conservatives are doing, or invest in regulated child care, as the NDP proposes.

In its annual HungerCount report, Food Banks Canada comes down squarely on the side of the NDP.

It says the use of food banks remains 25 per cent higher than it was before the devastating global recession in 2008 and that 37 per cent of those helped are children.

According to the report, almost half of the households helped are families with kids and nearly half of those are two-parent families.

Among other recommendations, the report says the federal government should replace "the current alphabet soup" of child tax benefits with a new child well-being benefit that targets the most vulnerable families.

And it calls on federal and provincial governments to invest in predictable, stable funding for affordable, regulated child care, enabling parents to enter or remain in the workforce.

...

The report says "existing welfare bureaucracies" should be dismantled and replaced with a guaranteed basic income system.

And it recommends expanding eligibility for education and training programs offered through the Employment Insurance program.

It also calls on the federal government to invest in affordable housing.

- Meanwhile, Jen St. Denis talks to Gary Bloch about the effects of poverty and other social determinants of health. Annalise Klingbeil offers some good news in the form of Medicine Hat's progress in eradicating chronic homelessness. And Yvonne Roberts discusses the UK's living wage movement, while Christine Berry reports on its all-party agreement on four crucial elements of an economic policy oriented toward well-being.

- Finally, Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson write that the benefits of generosity include both personal and social gains.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Jim Stanford points out that the choice to leave drug development to the market resulted in a promising ebola vaccine going unused - and indeed untested - for years until the disease threatened a wealthy enough target population:

Canada’s outstanding work to invent one of the world’s most promising vaccines against Ebola perfectly epitomizes both the promise of public research, and the perverse incentives of the for-profit industry. Early this century Health Canada recognized the need for an Ebola vaccine, and assigned scientists with the Public Health Agency of Canada to find one. Almost a decade ago they patented a vaccine that prevents Ebola in monkeys. Canadian researchers should have been hailed as heroes.

Unfortunately, the government snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by handing over this important invention to the private sector – for a pittance. In 2010 Ottawa licensed the Ebola vaccine to a small U.S. firm called NewLink Genetics. I’ve been asking Health Canada to explain how the licensing was negotiated, and how much Canada was paid; I have yet to receive an answer. NewLink’s financial filings report it paid Canada an initial patent and signing fee, and a “milestone” payment of up to $205,000; “low single-digit” royalty fees will be payable on future commercial sales.

Most distressingly, guided by the profit-maximizing calculations of NewLink’s executives, the promising vaccine languished for years with no human testing – until this year’s outbreak. NewLink has suddenly rediscovered a sense of urgency, and is now accelerating human tests: but too late for thousands whose lives could have been saved if a vaccine was ready now. Even with the licence, Ottawa could have forced NewLink to move more quickly (or else revoke the licence altogether), but chose not to interfere. In the words of the University of Ottawa’s Amir Attaran, an expert on drug policy and public health, “This could have been a heroic Banting and Best moment for Canadian science, but instead it is a black comedy.”

Motivated by their government salaries and a desire to do good, smart Canadians can develop incredible medicines that significantly enhance human life. It’s only when the whole business becomes guided by profit, instead of human need, that this noble mission is lost.

- And Carol Goar exposes the use of Canada's public health care system for medical tourism, rather than to provide needed care to citizens.

- The Star weighs in on the Cons' latest income-splitting scheme and rightly concludes that a few tweaks around the edges can't justify a deliberate transfer of billions of dollars to disproportionately benefit wealthy families.

- Alan Tovey reports on KPMG's study showing that millions of workers in the UK are scraping by on less than a living wage. And Trish Hennessy looks at the numbers on our insufficient minimum wage levels in Canada.

- Mike De Souza reports on ExxonMobil's efforts to get him not to report on ALEC's shady dealings - including an ominous warning that other media have been entirely happy to fall in line with orders from their corporate overlords not to examine how big money is affecting policy debates. Andrew Prokop points out how the need for constant fund-raising makes it a challenge for U.S. political candidates to keep the public good in mind, while Democracy Now and Emily Atkin each document examples of the oil lobby flat-out buying municipal elections. And David Ball confirms that the Koch brothers have been funnelling money to the Fraser Institute's corporatist projects for decades, while Mark Eliesen explains his conclusion that the National Energy Board has joined the list of institutions which have been completely co-opted by corporate owners.

- Finally, Murray Dobbin has a few questions for Stephen Harper arising out of the tragic shootings in Ottawa. And Joan Bryden reports on Harper's refusal to discourage any anti-Muslim backlash.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Will Hutton rightly slams David Cameron for his antisocial view of taxes and public institutions - which should of course sound all too familiar in Canada:

Believe the prime minister and it is morality, rather than economics, which requires him to cut taxes. In an important article in the Times last week that was factually incorrect, philosophically incoherent and economically bonkers, David Cameron set out the Tory credo. He was wrong on all counts. Trying to argue why every reader should vote Conservative, he instead revealed the darkness of the blind alley into which modern Conservatism has stumbled.
...
The economy needs public agency. The long commutes that Mr Cameron so celebrated in his article are done in publicly provided railways with fat public grants for the private companies that operate them. The innovations that make offices and factory floors competitive come from publicly funded science and public grants that allow companies and entrepreneurs to lay off some of the enormous risk of being technological pioneers. No significant innovation or invention has ever happened anywhere without public initiative at some stage in the process.

Economies and societies grow out of an interdependence between public and private: they need each other and taxation is the financial connecting rod. To echo the IFS, there is no sense in which “every pound of public money is private earning”: private earning becomes as high as it is only because of public investment. Taxes are the means by which we furnish public agencies the wherewithal to provide us with the universities, research, roads, railways, networks and all the rest that allow private companies to flourish. It is why the IMF, considering the best way to get public finances back on track after a credit crunch, recommends that governments try to preserve as much of that enterprise-enhancing public spending as possible, increasing rather than lowering taxes as part of the programme. Mr Cameron’s boast is economically illiterate.

Taxes are socially indispensable as well. “Public services and safety nets” are not inconvenient social burdens that require immoral taxes. They are created as a collectively owned means of guarding against the hazards and risks that every human might confront – of a crippling illness or disability – and problems associated with ageing.

We do not deserve what will or could happen to us, but we pay our taxes to fund systems that protect not just ourselves but each other. Taxation, in this sense, is the most complete expression of our morality. Of course the Treasury should husband our resources, not because taxation is immoral but because it has a duty to make sure this social money does as much work as possible, giving us the biggest return for our moral taxes.

- And David Doorey both reminds us that more social countries tend to be far happier than those which adopt the Cameron/Harper beggar-thy-neighbour ethos, and offers an interesting explanation as to why:

Today, the United Nation’s released its second annual “World Happiness Index”. One thing that is striking about these studies is that the ‘most happy countries’ are always countries with the a long tradition of strong government social welfare programs, high overall tax levels, and of interest to a blog on work law, high levels of collective bargaining coverage. That is, in happy countries, unions and collective bargaining play a substantial role in the setting of conditions of work, which creates a strong middle class. Not surprisingly, therefore, the ‘happiest’ countries also tend to be the least unequal societies: they score well on measures of income inequality.
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Given what we know about the effects of collective bargaining, the relationship should not be surprising. Empirically, we know that collective bargaining raises incomes, contributes to a stronger middle class, results in better health benefits and pensions, and produces safer jobs and better job security than the alternative system, in which employers usually fix working conditions unilaterally, subject to certain regulatory minimum standards. We know that countries with high collective bargaining coverage have a broader distribution of wealth throughout society than countries with low collective bargaining coverage. My colleague Professor Michael Lynk has nicely summarized these outcomes in this paper.

We might also expect that countries that respect collective bargaining rights are also more likely to provide a strong bundle of social benefits that tend to make like more enjoyable, and easier, for its citizens. These countries operate under a different type of capitalism than prevails in countries, like the USA, where a belief in ‘market forces’ and ‘individual responsibility” borders on religious doctrine. In these ‘happy’ countries, the role of ‘social partners’, like unions, has long been accepted as a necessary counterbalance to capitalist forces. Critics of strong government and unions like to deride these systems as ‘socialist’. But whatever you want to call it, these systems consistently produce the happiest citizens in the world.
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The Happiness Index provides another insight into why collective bargaining coverage might be associated with happiness. In a very interesting segment of the report (pages 62-64), the authors explain that a significant factor affecting happiness is individual perceptions of ‘relative income’. People become less happy when they believe their income is lower relative to a comparator, such as coworkers or friends. This is something I’ve discussed before on this blog (see Why Do Workers Support Policies to Weaken Labour Rights?) A theory might be that where large segments of the population have their wage and benefits fixed by collective agreements, rather than at the whim of human resources policies, there will be fewer gaps in compensation that seem arbitrary or unfair to people. They can more easily understand differences in pay, because those differences are more likely to be transparent and explained in the collective agreements.

In contrast, in countries where union representation is lower, like the USA, unionized workers earn considerably more money and have better benefits and pensions. Nonunion workers become resentful (unhappy) of this privilege, because they are relatively worse off than their perceived comparators in the unionized workplaces. High collective agreement coverage reduces the potential for wage and benefit envy, which breeds unhappiness.

- But David Sirota notes that we're still a long way from giving effect to the principle of using collective power for the public good - and indeed the U.S. is seeing a new batch of candidates who seem nearly certain to turn hard-earned public pensions over to their financial-sector cronies at the expense of the workers who rely on them.

- Amanda Marcotte writes about the split between the progressive preference for real news and the conservative inclination to live in a fact-free echo chamber.

- And there are few issues where the divide is more stark than climate change and resource extraction. On the fact-based side, the BBC reports on the IPCC's eminently reasonable conclusion that we need to transition away from the fossil fuels which power much of the right-wing propaganda machine, while Tim McDonnell discusses the continued environmental damage done by BP's Gulf of Mexico blowout. But Eric Lipton exposes how oil barons are eager to play dirty in trying to silence anybody who questions their destruction of the planet.

- Finally, Amira Elghawaby interviews Glenn Greenwald about the Cons' plans for a more pervasive and intrusive surveillance state.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Chris Matthews takes note of the gross growth of inequality in the U.S. Dean Baker notes that much of the wealth built on what's branded as "innovation" reflects little more than successful attempts to evade health, safety and consumer protection laws. And Mike De Souza explores how the notorious ALEC pushes climate denial and other anti-social policies with an alarming amount of support from businesses who (once challenged) claim not to know who they're funding.

- Meanwhile, Digby points out that the corporatist right is downright eager to work people to the point where they have to focus on bare survival rather than improving their lot in life. And Lana Payne warns us that the Cons are turning retirement into a luxury good rather than a reasonable expectation for most workers:

More and more Canadians believe they will never be able to retire, giving whole new meaning to the phrase “work till you drop.”
...
(A) full 60 per cent (of Canadians) do not believe they have saved enough to retire in comfort. Not surprisingly, women and lower-income earners were even less likely to have saved enough.

Shockingly, one in five Canadians reported that they will never retire. In addition, nearly one-third of those surveyed said they didn’t know when they’d be able to retire. Stagnant wages are coming home to roost.

The survey also found that over 40 per cent of employers surveyed said their employees are overly optimistic with respect to their assessment of when they will be able to retire.

That is rather astonishing, considering the dreary outlook so many Canadians seem to hold about their ability to retire in comfort. Yet even Canadians’ low expectations about retirement are considered optimistic.
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CARP, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, also supports enhancing CPP and notes the majority of Canadians agree. Indeed, the vast majority of CARP members see it as a ballot box question.

“We need federal and provincial governments willing to work together on a national solution to the national retirement savings problem,” CARP said in a statement.

It is clear that this won’t happen as long as the Harper Conservatives are in power.

We may as well add retirement income crisis to their legacy of neglect. Harper has been quoted as saying we won’t recognize Canada when he is done.

But damage can be undone, just as a new federal government can address the looming retirement crisis.

- But of course, the Cons are instead more interested in handing free money to families wealthy enough that they can already afford to have a parent stay home voluntarily. And even the Cons aren't pretending that income splitting could possibly offer meaningful help to households without a high-income worker - using that fact as an excuse to avoid offering any similar advantage for single-parent families.

- Mitch Jones points out that privatized water markets figure to do nothing but damage as we try to ensure the continued availability of a vital (and increasingly scarce) resource.

- Andrew Jackson reminds us that commodity markets are inevitably boom-and-bust - while recognizing that the Cons' obsession with pushing an oil-only economy has exposed Canada to dangerous risks as prices drop. And Mychaylo Prystupa reports that Kinder Morgan is SLAPPing Burnaby residents concerned about the effect of a pipeline expansion on their community.

- Finally, the Telegram slams the Cons for their continued contempt for election law - as well as their refusal to take responsibility for what's now a consistent, multiple-election pattern of illegality in their party. And Gerald Caplan writes that we should distinguish between mere members of Parliament and those who earn the title of "parliamentarian".

Musical interlude

Watchmen - Boneyard Tree

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Natasha Luckhardt examines what we can expect from Burger King's takeover of Tim Hortons - and the news isn't good for Canadian workers and citizens alike. But Jim Stanford reminds us that we're not without some public policy options by following up on the employment effects of an increased minimum wage.

- Of course, that would require a government committed to ensuring that the benefits of public policy go where they're needed. And we plainly can't count on that as long as the Cons are in power - as Kathleen Lahey, Jennifer Robson, and Scott Clark and Peter DeVries all note in discussing the distortions created by income splitting. Per Clark and DeVries:

According to the Harper government, income-splitting will cost Ottawa $2.4 billion 2014-15 and $1.9 billion in 2015-16. That’s an awful lot of revenue to give up just to make a small group of well-heeled taxpayers happy. Why do these households deserve a deep tax break more than the vast majority of Canadian taxpayer? How can the government justify a re-distribution of income that benefits the wealthy?
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There is no justification whatsoever for introducing income-splitting on social or economic grounds — certainly not in the current economic environment. The argument that the government makes — that it did it for seniors and therefore it should be applied to other families — doesn’t make a particle of sense. The fact is that the Harper government gave income-splitting to seniors to make amends for its decision to tax income trusts.

Income-splitting is being done to placate a small part of the Conservative base at the expense of virtually everyone else.

- Meanwhile, Canada Without Poverty highlights the Cons' targeted attacks at those who most need help, this time through a budget which attacks benefits to refugees.

- But in case anybody thought that meant the general public is safe from the Cons' action, Scott Anderson and Vanmala Subramaniam report on the latest example of gross regulatory neglect - as Transport Canada let GM vehicles with a deadly flaw stay on the road after failing to follow up on an investigation. (And as an added bonus, Lisa Raitt lied to the public about her department's knowledge - though that seems to be the trend among Harper and his provincial puppet governments.)

- Finally, the CP reports on the NDP's work to pass an environmental bill of rights.

New column day

Here, asking what we can do to make sure that individuals who seek help for their mental health and addictions issues through the criminal justice system find more support than Michael Zehaf-Bibeau did - both for their own well-being, and for the safety of the Canadian public.

For further reading...
- CBC reported on Zehaf-Bibeau's interaction with the criminal justice system. And again, Ian Mulgrew also weighed in on the failure to offer any help to somebody who was crying out for it.
- Karl Nerenberg writes that the Cons' expected response to last week's shootings - consisting of increased power for a security apparatus focused on labelling people as threats - would have done nothing at all to prevent Zehaf-Bibeau's actions. - Linda McQuaig reminds us that the Cons have every political incentive to foster a culture of fear, even as Tom Henheffer recognizes how toxic that culture would be for Canada as a whole.
- But Frank Graves notes that public fear tends to fade fairly quickly after a single incident brings security to the forefront.
- And finally, Eric Adams writes that we can and should remember our best selves in the wake of a crisis rather than abandoning our values. 

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Oxfam studies the spread of extreme inequality around the globe, as well as the policies needed to combat it:

Oxfam’s decades of experience in the world’s poorest communities have taught us that poverty and inequality are not inevitable or accidental, but the result of deliberate policy choices. Inequality can be reversed. The world needs concerted action to build a fairer economic and political system that values everyone. The rules and systems that have led to today’s inequality explosion must change. Urgent action is needed to level the playing field by implementing policies that redistribute money and power from wealthy elites to the majority.
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Despite the fact that market fundamentalism played a strong role in causing the recent global economic crisis, it remains the dominant ideological world view and continues to drive inequality. It has been central to the conditions imposed on indebted European countries, forcing them to deregulate, privatize and cut their welfare provision for the poorest, while reducing taxes on the rich. There will be no cure for inequality while countries are forced to swallow this medicine.
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Elites, in rich and poor countries alike, use their heightened political influence to curry government favours – including tax exemptions, sweetheart contracts, land concessions and subsidies – while blocking policies that strengthen the rights of the many...This undermines investment in sectors, such as education, healthcare and small-scale agriculture, which can play a vital role in reducing inequality and poverty.

The massive lobbying power of rich corporations to bend the rules in their favour has increased the concentration of power and money in the hands of the few.

- Meanwhile, Jeremy Runnalls points out that North Dakota is ensuring some real public benefit from resource exploitation by using increased royalty income on both a public wealth fund, and investments in renewable energy.

- Joe Friesen reports that despite the Cons' bluster about reining in abuse of the temporary foreign worker program, they've continued to allow an increase in the number of low-skilled positions filled with workers treated as disposable. And Bill Curry notes that the Cons' latest dodge is to base enforcement on provincial employment laws - meaning that as long as understaffed provincial enforcement agencies can't expose wrongdoing, employers will be able to keep abusing their workers with the federal government's approval.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh discusses what universal child care means for working women. And Martin Regg Cohn slams the Cons for instead pushing an income splitting scheme which is unfair both to the families who actually need better access to child care, and to provinces who have tied themselves to the federal tax system.

- Finally, Alice Funke examines the nomination process now playing out within Canada's federal parties, and finds that a fixed election date seems to have resulted in a large number of contested nominations.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Sarah Lazare reports on UNICEF's research showing an appalling increase in child poverty in many of the world's richest countries:

"Many affluent countries have suffered a 'great leap backwards' in terms of household income, and the impact on children will have long-lasting repercussions for them and their communities," said Jeffrey O’Malley, UNICEF’s Head of Global Policy and Strategy.

In 23 of the 41 wealthy countries examined, the rate of child poverty has increased since 2008. In some countries, this rise was drastic: Ireland, Croatia, Latvia, Greece, and Iceland saw child poverty climb by more than 50 percent. The report notes that the young are hit harder than the elderly, and among children, the "poorest and most vulnerable... have suffered disproportionately."

The recession has created "a generation cast aside," where unemployment for people aged 15 to 24 has increased in 34 of the 41 countries, the report states.

The United States is no exception. In 2012, 24.2 million children were living in poverty in the U.S., an increase of 1.7 million since the 2008 recession. In 34 out of 50 states, child poverty has risen since 2008.

While the authors claimed the report was not intended as a "comment on austerity," their analysis finds that the decimation of public services has fueled the crisis.

"Extreme child poverty in the United States increased more during the Great Recession than it did in the recession of 1982, suggesting that, for the very poorest, the safety net affords less protection now than it did three decades ago," states the report.

- Meanwhile, the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness studies the costs of homelessness in Canada - and finds that we can easily afford to eliminate it with even a modicum of political will. 

- ThinkProgress discusses how U.S. Republicans are facing a justified backlash from voters for refusing to raise the minimum wage (or do anything else to combat income inequality). And Kate McInturff and Paul Tulloch highlight Canada's continued wage gaps based on gender and ethnicity - while also pointing out that the public sector compensates its workers far more fairly than the private sector.

- But Robyn Benson writes that the Cons are still focused on attacking the labour movement for having the audacity to try to encourage wage equality - this time by resurrecting Bill C-377 from the grave. And Brent Patterson warns us about the Cons' widespread and utterly unjustified surveillance of social movements.

- Finally, Tim Harper slams the Cons for recklessly (and selectively) throwing around the label of "terrorist" to suit their own political purposes. 

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Helpful cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman look into the spread of wealth inequality in the U.S., and find that it may be worse than we already knew. And Paul Krugman discusses how toxic anti-government ideology is preventing the U.S. from both getting its economy on track in the short term, and investing in infrastructure it will need down the road:

More than seven years have passed since the housing bubble burst, and ever since, America has been awash in savings — or more accurately, desired savings — with nowhere to go. Borrowing to buy homes has recovered a bit, but remains low. Corporations are earning huge profits, but are reluctant to invest in the face of weak consumer demand, so they’re accumulating cash or buying back their own stock. Banks are holding almost $2.7 trillion in excess reserves — funds they could lend out, but choose instead to leave idle.

And the mismatch between desired saving and the willingness to invest has kept the economy depressed. Remember, your spending is my income and my spending is your income, so if everyone tries to spend less at the same time, everyone’s income falls.

There’s an obvious policy response to this situation: public investment. We have huge infrastructure needs, especially in water and transportation, and the federal government can borrow incredibly cheaply — in fact, interest rates on inflation-protected bonds have been negative much of the time (they’re currently just 0.4 percent). So borrowing to build roads, repair sewers and more seems like a no-brainer.
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(T)he result...is that America has turned its back on its own history. We need public investment; at a time of very low interest rates, we could easily afford it. But build we won’t.

- Meanwhile, PressProgress highlights the Bank of Canada's alarming findings about the decay of Canada's manufacturing sector. And Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood finds that big oil's massive profits aren't producing anywhere near enough jobs to pick up the slack.

- Planet Experts reports on the UN's latest report which concludes that climate change is causing irreversible damage to our planet. But presumably the oil industry will simply pretend that inconvenient facts don't exist - as it typically does when people out the other ill environmental effects of resource exploitation.

- Colin Macleod weighs in on the ongoing child care debate with a strong case for a universal program rather than selective incentives and subsidies:

First, means testing, if it is to be fair and reasonably accurate, requires the creation of elaborate and expensive bureaucratic procedures through which eligible recipients can be distinguished from ineligible recipients. In practice, such systems are highly inefficient and frequently fail to correctly those who deserve assistance from those who do not. It is simpler and more efficient to provide the opportunity for cheap daycare available to all on an equal basis.

Second, means-testing draws invidious distinctions between citizens that jeopardize the social conditions of self-respect. In a society in which the default assumption is that citizens should bear the full cost of daycare costs, demonstrating that someone merits a subsidy often requires them to make ‘shameful revelations’. The fat cats do not have to worry about that. They are not in a position of being scrutinized by a government bureaucrat in order to determine whether they are worthy recipients of something to which all parents should have ready access to: good childcare.

I suspect that most of the people who are enthusiastic about means testing are those who are never likely to be subject to it. The rich might feel differently about means testing if say their health care cards were revoked upon determination that their income fell within the top 15% of earners and that in order to gain access to publicly provided health care they would have to complete a series of confusing forms and meet with an entitlements officer who would ask probing questions about whether they really needed to access the public system. It’s ironic that many right-wingers who are generally suspicious of the state think it’s ok to subject some citizens – usually the poor – to invasive inquiries of this sort by state officials.

Instead of treating access to affordable daycare as something that distinguishes the poor from the rich, we should treat it as an opportunity to which all have access in virtue of our common and equal citizenship. On this model, the appropriate way to ensure that the costs of providing the common good of access to daycare are fairly shared is through the background tax system. Those who worry about the regressive potential of daycare tend to neglect the overall malleability of the tax system. A properly structured arrangement for funding daycare through the tax system need not confer net benefits on the rich of the sort critics worry about. If the system for funding is made suitably fair then the concern that the rich are unfairly benefiting from a subsidy is adequately answered. Universality need not be regressive and we can have progressivity without means testing.

- Finally, Elizabeth Renzetti argues that we should take a hard line against fearmongering in light of last week's shootings in Ottawa, while Eric Wright criticizes Stephen Harper for instead looking to foment unjustified conflict.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Erika Shaker points out how condescending attitudes toward public benefits are both making it unduly difficult to develop new programs which would benefit everybody, and threatening existing social safety net. Sean McElwee writes that inequality only figures to grow as an issue as the wealthy try to disassociate themselves from everybody else. And Scott Santens discusses how the U.S.' social benefits are needlessly costly and difficult to access because they're designed more to exclude than to include:

As citizens, we are doing everything we can. Some of us are even tragically dying in our attempts to struggle on, while over 10,000 others have already grown too tired of the struggle to even continue living. As long as wages continue to not rise, and as long as jobs continue to be eliminated due to advances in technology, we have nowhere else to turn but our own safety nets. It is for this reason, it will only become ever more increasingly important for us to look with open eyes and minds at our system of public assistance and how it functions for all of us, poor and rich alike.

If so many of us are already driving on our spare tires, and we recognize the road ahead is only going to get bumpier and more dangerous, then we must together make sure that we either make it quick and painless for us all to get right back on the road when we need assistance, or finally guarantee that no matter what, there will always be another spare tire for all of us.

- Angella MacEwen debates Ben Eisen about the importance of public child care. Ron Waller takes a closer look at the numbers behind Quebec's universal daycare program to show how it produces strong progressive outcomes.

- Justine Hunter reports on how B.C. workers are suffering from the combination of underregulation which caused a sawmill explosion, and a compensation system which is punishing them for being injured. And lest there be any doubt, that's exactly the type of corporatist policy Brad Wall is looking to smuggle into Saskatchewan in the guise of "harmonizing" standards. (Though of course there's still far too much reason for concern about worker safety here even before that process plays out.)

- Finally, Kjell Anderson commits some sociology in exploring how individuals come to be "radicalized". Michael Harris and Glenn Greenwald both weigh in on the Cons' immediate inclination to respond to last week's shootings with an all-out assault on civil rights. And Chris Selley asks that we at least stop short of trying to exile Canadians, while Michael Spratt and Chelsea Moore modestly suggest that policing thoughts might not be the best idea either.

On taboos

Regular readers will know that I've spent plenty of time discussing all kinds of plans for multi-party pre-electoral cooperation - and that I've been highly skeptical about whether the ones we've seen in Canadian politics can be either justified in principle, or made effective in practice. And I'll readily acknowledge that those questions are worth some serious attention any time somebody raises the issue.

But can we at least agree that the mere act of talking about cooperation across party lines shouldn't be treated as a scandal?

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Tony Burman comments on the increasing recognition of the dangers of inequality even among corporate and financial elites:

(I)t is significant that the policy debate among many decision-makers seems to be changing. Rather than the nonsense about “the makers versus the takers,” there is increasing focus on the notion that income inequality could be a key factor in why overall economic growth has been sluggish in recent years.

There has always been a “common sense’ element to this argument. The wealthy tend to save a larger percentage of their income because they are able to. In contrast, middle- and lower-income people spend virtually all of what they earn because they have to. If the rich have more to save and the rest have less to spend, is it surprising that the current economy has remain stalled?

But a glimmer of hope can be seen in these latest appeals from Yellen and Carney. Their message to the business and political class was not only that the increase of inequality was morally wrong. But, perhaps more convincing with this crowd, they are arguing that it is dumb economics.

If the vaunted rulers of our flawed economic system can finally get their heads around this simple truth, the world may miraculously escape another recession.

- And the Observer weighs in on the desperate need for the corporate sector to start paying its fair share rather than evading any social responsibility:

Companies such as Facebook and Google earn enormous sums of money from UK consumers – and then avoid paying tax on that revenue by processing the sale in Ireland.

They benefit in myriad ways from the UK’s infrastructure, culture and rule of law and yet do everything in their considerable power to cheat the British exchequer out of monies that would help sustain those virtues of British life. It is no wonder that the cool and edgy ambience that once surrounded tech companies has dulled. And not content with the Irish tax swerve, many technology companies that do business in the UK also drive down their tax rate further – below 5% in some cases – by holding key intellectual property in tax havens such as Luxembourg.  Royalty payments for the use of intellectual property (IP) are sent to a company that is in Ireland but has its headquarters in a tax haven.

Tax avoidance that allows multinationals to grow ever richer also damages the fabric of democracy. In the US, as the midterm elections approach, the tech companies are spending billions of dollars to protect their interests, exercising undue influence on legislators. Last year, Google spent more money on political donations in America than Goldman Sachs. There was a time when we believed that the cultures of a Google differed considerably from that of a Goldman Sachs. Not any more. Don’t be evil? Don’t be gullible, more like.

But there is a wider, more fundamental point. The perception, particularly in America, that Congress is overly influenced by major business interests that can bend legislation in their favour, erodes trust in an already enfeebled political institution.
...
Taxes matter.  They build schools, hospitals and roads and finance public services.  They also indicate a  society’s commitment to fairness. As Sandel writes in What Money Can’t Buy: “Democracy does not require perfect equality but it does require that citizens share in a common life… for this is how we come to care for the common good.”

- Meanwhile, Murray Mandryk notes that Brad Wall's obsession with forcing a corporate mindset on Saskatchewan's public health care system is proving disastrous.

- Ian Mulgrew writes about how Michael Zehaf-Bibeau's known mental health issues - and the lack of treatment even when they were pointed out - contributed to last week's tragic shootings:

Wednesday’s tragedy exposed not so much a failure of our security forces as the gaping holes in our appallingly frayed social safety net.

Homeless and troubled, Montreal-born Michael Zehaf-Bibeau knew he wasn’t coping, sought assistance, begged from the sounds of it; no one listened closely enough.

During his adult life, we spent a small fortune in two provinces providing the 32-year-old with plenty of “due process” and stretches of free room and board at Her Majesty’s motels.

But we didn’t help him and, if anything, the legal system only exacerbated his frustrations.

The vast amount of tax money devoted to his petty crimes would have been far better spent providing him with appropriate psychiatric and social care.
...
We can change our approach and begin to help [people like Zehaf-Bibeau] or we can curtail civil liberties and invest in more cops, metal detectors, fences and listening equipment.

I know which approach would make me feel safer, what I would call real security measures: a social safety net that caught those in obvious need before they went postal, people like Zehaf-Bibeau.

- Mitchell Anderson expands on the same point. Doug Saunders discusses the interplay between ideology (of whatever origin) and pathology in cases like Zehaf-Bibeau's. And Stephen Walt proposes what would make for the most reasonable response to the tragedy - while worrying that Stephen Harper is pushing in exactly the wrong direction by looking to meet futile and misdirected violence with futile and misdirected violence.

- Finally, digby highlights yet another step in the right's attempt to demonize participatory politics, as even simple encouragement to get people out to the polls is now being labeled as "fraud" by a Republican party which prefers to see as few people as possible having a say in elections.

New column day

Here, on how precarity is a serious concern in far more areas than the workplace alone - and how we should think about public policy as a means of eliminating precarity (whether it be in work, housing, food or other necessities of life) wherever possible.

For further reading...
- Once again, there's been plenty of discussion about the hazards of precarious work. But for a few examples see pieces from Emily Fister (interviewing Andrew Longhurst), Margaret Simms, and Nora Loreto.
- And it's also been well documented that other aspects of poverty also cause enormous and avoidable personal stress - with the commentary linked here offering some examples.
- But Janelle Vandergrift observes that food banks and other supposed charitable stopgaps have instead turned into permanent fixtures due to our failure to address the root causes of poverty. And the Housing First program looks to be a far-too-rare case of our starting to change that pattern.
- Finally, Joan Bryden reports that rather than trying to develop more stable lives for Canadians (and particularly those who need it most), the Cons are instead continuing to punch down at Canada's most vulnerable residents - this time by eliminating social supports for refugees.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Geoff Stiles writes that instead of providing massive subsidies to dirty energy industries which don't need them (and which will only have more incentive to cause environmental damage as a result), we should be investing in a sustainable renewable energy plan:

(W)hereas countries such as Norway have gradually reduced...subsidies as their oil industry matured, at the same time maintaining one of the highest royalty rates in the world, Canada has allowed its subsidies to remain at a relatively high level while many provinces have actually decreased royalties on oil company profits.

There is a clear need to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. But this is only the first step. A second step is to develop comparable subsidies and incentive programs for renewable energy and energy efficiency, to stimulate development of innovative green technologies.
...
There are relatively few examples of true subsidies for green technologies or industries in Canada at the federal level. There is an accelerated capital cost allowance (ACCA), which in addition to covering fossil fuel technologies, also covers “investments that produce heat for use in an industrial process or electricity by using fossil fuel efficiently or by using renewable energy sources”; and there is a tax benefit enabling use of flow-through shares, by which expenses incurred during the development and start-up of renewable energy and energy conservation projects can be fully deducted or financed. Current federal policy, however, is to gradually phase out ACCA for all energy forms.

Several federal subsidy programs that supported clean energy investments have actually been discontinued by the Harper government. The popular ecoENERGY program that provided grants to homeowners towards energy efficient retrofits was discontinued in 2011, and the EcoEnergy for Renewable Power program that provided per kWh supplements for wind energy systems was ended in 2013.

Restoring these subsidies is crucial if producers of low-carbon technologies and energy are to compete in a nascent market and offer consumers a fair choice of energy sources.

There are plenty of ways to incentivize a green transition. Increasing innovation-focused grants to research institutions, universities and manufacturers in the green technology field through Sustainable Technology Development Canada for example; or expanding the use of green technologies and green power in government buildings, using weighted scoring systems which favour green options over conventional fossil fuel options in government supply contracts.

What we are short on is not ideas of how to transition to a green economy, but the political will to make it happen.

- Carlo Fanelli points out how Ontario's provincial government - like many others - has forced municipalities into costly and ineffective privatization schemes. And Ryan Meili contrasts the availability of MRIs in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and questions why Brad Wall would be eager to triple the wait times patients currently face in Saskatchewan just to allow profiteers to make more money.

- James Baxter and Rick Salutin both have serious doubts about the claim that Canada lost any innocence based on this week's tragic shootings in Ottawa.

- Meanwhile, CBC highlights the role that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau's mental health issues played in the shootings. And Jon Woodward reports on Zehaf-Bibeau's own confused - and rebuffed - attempts to get treatment.

- Finally, Ricochet and Stuart Trew both comment on on the importance of taking a reasoned and thorough look at what can be done to prevent future incidents. But to nobody's surprise, the Cons are refusing to let our security policy be shaped by anything other than Stephen Harper's political whims. And Stephen Maher is rightly concerned about what that means:

(T)here is little reason to have confidence that the Harper government will strike the right balance between our safety and our freedom.

It’s likely that Harper, Blaney and the people around them want to find that balance, but we’re left to guess at that, because the government’s recent record — in particular with the online surveillance bill — is of misdirection and stealth, hiding behind a smokescreen of disingenuous talking points.

There is reason to worry about this lack of forthrightness, the government’s mixed feelings about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, its attacks on the courts and its flirtation with anti-Muslim messaging.

It would be comforting if new powers are coupled with new oversight, as they should be.
...
But the record of this government is of moving in the other direction, toward less oversight, not more.

Musical interlude

Black Box - Everybody Everybody

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Paul Krugman writes that the ultra-wealthy's contempt for anybody short of their own class is becoming more and more explicit around the globe - even when it comes to basic rights like the ability to vote:

It’s always good when leaders tell the truth, especially if that wasn’t their intention. So we should be grateful to Leung Chun-ying, the Beijing-backed leader of Hong Kong, for blurting out the real reason pro-democracy demonstrators can’t get what they want: With open voting, “You would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month. Then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies” — policies, presumably, that would make the rich less rich and provide more aid to those with lower incomes.
...
(T)he political right has always been uncomfortable with democracy. No matter how well conservatives do in elections, no matter how thoroughly free-market ideology dominates discourse, there is always an undercurrent of fear that the great unwashed will vote in left-wingers who will tax the rich, hand out largess to the poor, and destroy the economy.
...
(T)hese strategies for protecting plutocrats from the mob are indirect and imperfect. The obvious answer is Mr. Leung’s: Don’t let the bottom half, or maybe even the bottom 90 percent, vote.

And now you understand why there’s so much furor on the right over the alleged but actually almost nonexistent problem of voter fraud, and so much support for voter ID laws that make it hard for the poor and even the working class to cast ballots. American politicians don’t dare say outright that only the wealthy should have political rights — at least not yet. But if you follow the currents of thought now prevalent on the political right to their logical conclusion, that’s where you end up.

- Meanwhile, Heather Digby Parton discusses the latest in Republican anti-voting hysteria. And Don Davies points out that a free trade agreement with Honduras represents yet another blow for business against democratic governance and human rights.

- But on the bright side, Poverty Costs highlights the fact that Saskatchewan has finally (if belatedly) joined its provincial counterparts in announcing an outline of a poverty reduction plan.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne notes that this week's tragic shootings in Ottawa resulted in a brief moment of the type of measured political discussion we should expect more often. But Thomas Walkom and Linda McQuaig are rightly concerned about the Cons' easily-anticipated pivot toward fomenting panic for their own partisan gain. And Alison reminds us just how many important causes figure to fall within the Cons' selective definition of dissent to be suppressed.

On opportunism

Shorter Harper Cons:

In our language, the word for "crisis" is the same as the word for "opportunity to trash civil rights".

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Stephanie Levitz reports on the Broadbent Institute's study showing that Con-friendly charities haven't been facing any of the strict scrutiny being used to silence anybody who dares to speak up for environmental or social causes. And Jeremy Nuttall notes that the problem is probably worse than it seems from the outside, as charities are clamming up for fear of calling more attention to themselves:

Tom Henheffer is the executive director of Toronto-based Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, an organization with board members including journalists for the Toronto Star and CBC.

Henheffer said the Broadbent Institute's study confirms what has been suspected since the audits began.

"They want to bully people into not speaking out against them, that's the entire point of the audit," he said. "And it's working, that's the really sad thing."

While investigating the story The Tyee has had charities decline to comment or divulge information about those conducting the charity audits, saying they fear retribution from the government.

Henheffer said he's heard the same sentiments, adding organizations are "terrified" and checking with their lawyers.

- Meanwhile, the climate of fear is now spreading toward the Cons' treatment of individuals, as Tim Harper discusses how irrational fearmongering about terrorism figures to be used as an excuse to attack privacy rights. And Paul Adams writes that the Cons have plainly decided to make that fearmongering a central part of their next election campaign.

- But then, it's not only state actors who are working on suppressing individual freedoms, as Rosa Marchitelli reports on the growing list of corporations who are bullying people into silence about their bad business practices. (Clearly nobody could have foreseen such a development.)

- Joe Friesen and Renata D'Aliesio point out that the lack of accurate information about First Nations employment is allowing employers to hire temporary foreign workers rather than do anything to develop the pool of indigenous Canadians who would be able to do the work.

- Finally, Marc Lee rightly slams the B.C. Libs for yet another giveaway to the resource sector, this time a new set of gratuitous royalty and tax cuts for the liquified natural gas developers who were supposed to offer an economic panacea.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Martha Friendly highlights how families at all income levels can benefit from a strong child care system:

Isn’t it the Canadian way to include people from diverse groups and social classes in community institutions like public schools, community recreation facilities, public colleges and universities so all can learn to live, play and work together? Indeed, research shows that early childhood is the ideal time for beginning to learn to respect differences and diversity by engaging with and getting to know children and adults of all varieties.

Childcare as an inclusive community institution is great for families, as well as children. Childcare that’s responsive to the community can unite families from diverse origins through participation in common activities related to their children. This can demonstrate to adults and children that co-operation among social classes and ethnic groups is possible and valued. Thus, the idea of good childcare as an agent of social change that fosters social inclusion is an important aspect of a vision of Canadian childcare in the future, and one that is already embraced by many quality childcare programs.

- Meanwhile, Jordan Brennan and Jim Stanford examine the effect of increasing the minimum wage - which improves equality without affecting employment growth. And for good measure, Danny Vinik highlights a new U.S. study confirming the same point. 

- Murray Dobbin writes about the Harper Cons' Orwellian foreign policy:

Harper's amoral political calculations about who and when to bomb people has little to do with any genuine consideration of the geopolitical situation or what role Canada might usefully play -- or even in what Canada's "interests" are. So long as he is prime minister it will be the same: every calculation will be made with the single-minded goal of staying in power long enough to dismantle the post-war activist state. The nurturing of his core constituency includes appeals to a thinly disguised pseudo-crusade against Islamic infidels, a phony appeal to national security (preceded by fear-mongering) and in the case of Ukraine, a crude appeal to ethnic votes.

Reinforcing this legacy is a mainstream media that lets him get away with it, and in particular, refuses to do its homework while the bombing -- or posturing -- is taking place and then refuses to expose the negative consequences of the reckless adventures. The result is what cultural critic Henry Giroux calls "the fog of historical and social amnesia."

- And Frank Graves' issues chart likely explains the Cons' obsession with spreading fear at home and abroad, as "national security" and "crime" are the only issues where they seem to have any meaningful advantage over the other federal parties. But the good news is thatfewer and fewer Canadians are showing any interest in settling for what the Cons are offering.

- Finally, Ryan Meili and Danyaal Raza make the case to make health impacts a central consideration in developing all kinds of public policies.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Meesha Nehru reminds us of the importance of fair taxes (and tax authorities capable of ensuring they're paid). And Fair Tax Mark notes that for the first time, a company on the U.K.'s main stock exchange has made the effort to be accredited as paying its taxes fairly.

- But in less pleasant news, Chris Rose exposes the hundreds of millions of dollars the fossil fuel industry spent lobbying and influencing U.S. politicians last year - and the multi-trillion dollar reward they received for exploiting resources and the public alike. And Gabriel Nadeau-Dubious discusses the similarly incestuous connections between the oil industry and the Couillard Liberals.

- Meanwhile, the Star reports on Ontario's gross environmental neglect in allowing contaminated soil to be dumped where it can do the most damage.

- Kathleen Lahey slams the Cons' income-splitting scheme as "upside-down" in giving far larger benefits to precisely the families who least need help.

- Finally, Charles Plante and Keisha Sharp take a detailed look (PDF) at the costs of poverty in Saskatchewan - and the corresponding benefits of ensuring that nobody has to live with needless deprivation:

Poverty is costing Saskatchewan $3.8 billion in heightened service use and missed opportunities. The costs associated with treating the symptoms of poverty amount to over $1 billion a year in increased use of health services, expenses in the criminal justice system and social assistance payments.

The costs of poverty go well beyond the dollars and cents spent providing a modicum of social security for people that have fallen through the cracks. Those living in poverty face significant barriers, preventing them from taking advantage of opportunities people not living in poverty often take for granted. These are opportunities like seeking an education, gainful employment, and participating in civic life. Over time, these missed opportunities contribute to vicious cycles that affect people living in poverty for years to come. Immediate missed opportunities cost our province more than $2.5 billion a year in missing contributions to GDP and taxes. Long-term intergenerational missed opportunities cost us upwards of $200 million a year.

All too often poverty prevention and alleviation efforts are presented as all cost and no benefit. By better understanding the costs of poverty in our province we are able to make informed decisions about how much money and resources we should invest in acting to prevent and alleviate it.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dig faster!!!

Shorter Greg Rickford:

It has come to my attention that after eight years of propagandizing for pipelines and demonizing anybody who points out environmental concerns, nobody considers Conservatives to be even faintly credible in protecting the public interest. But I'm sure we can win people over with my bold new strategy: another year of propagandizing for pipelines while demonizing anybody who points out environmental concerns.