Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Laura Basu discusses the media's role in accepting and perpetuating the corporatist ideology behind privatization campaigns:

(R)esearch carried out by myself at Cardiff University has shown that while austerity has been controversial, trickle-down reforms like privatisation, deregulation and corporation tax cuts have been embraced by the media. In the sample of five UK mainstream media outlets, only one – the Guardian – took a more critical stance towards these reforms than a supportive one. Even that outlet contained almost as much favourable coverage as critical coverage. The right-wing sections of the press, which dominate the British media landscape, were unflinchingly supportive of these measures and urged the government to go even further.

The idea behind these policies is that what’s good for business is good for everyone. If businesses are handed more resources, freed from regulation and handed tax breaks, they will be encouraged to invest in the economy, creating jobs and growth. The rich are therefore ‘job creators’ and ‘wealth creators’. One exposé revealed that in the UK, business is handed £93 billion a year in this kind of corporate welfare. With a few notable exceptions, there has been a black hole around corporate welfare in public discourse.

This is despite the fact that these policies have an impressive fail rate. Business investment and productivity growth remain low, as corporations spend the savings not on training and innovation but on share buy-backs and shareholder dividends. Share buy-backs are when a company purchases its own shares, decreasing the number of its shares on the open market and thereby increasing their value. According to the Financial Times, in 2014, the top 500 US companies returned 95 per cent of their profits to shareholders in dividends and buybacks. Meanwhile, inequality is spiralling.
...
By the time of the 2008 crash, neoliberal ideology had become so dominant that other positions were virtually invisible. And so, the same people responsible for financial collapse were called upon to offer solutions.

In my study, business and finance representatives were the second biggest category of sources featured in the media coverage. The biggest category was politicians, who until the Corbyn shake-up have been pursuing a blindly pro-business agenda. These two groups got to set the news agenda and the terms of debate. Other voices – trade unions, campaign groups, activists and academics – were sidelined. These groups helped manufacture an amnesia that was taken up zealously by some sections of the media and passively reproduced by others.

It has taken the Grenfell fire tragedy costing the lives of at least 70 people and the collapse of Carillion for the political consensus to even begin to be questioned. If we are to build on this progress we will need to start having grown-up conversations about corporate welfare and the strengths and weaknesses of market capitalism.

- Meanwhile, Tom Wall exposes how UK landlords are exploiting the opportunity to extract millions of pounds by offering unsafe housing as publicly-funded temporary accommodation to people who can't find anywhere affordable to live on a permanent basis.

- Alex Matthews-King discusses new research on the connection between inequality and increased obesity among other health risks.

- Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin reveal the Trump administration's attitude toward climate change - with ignorance and deliberate undermining of scientific evidence both treated as viable options, while acting based on reality was left off the table. And Ellen Knickmeyer reports on the collusion between Trump's appointed environmental regulators and the climate change denial industry.

- Finally, Ben Choiniere reports on Rhode Island's proposal to offer employees the chance to turn layoffs or closures into a first step toward cooperative ownership.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Martin Lukacs offers a reminder that Doug Ford is nothing but a mercenary for his fellow children of privilege, while Andrea Horwath's NDP actually offers a platform which will benefit the 99%. And Michal Rozworski observes that Ontario's election is properly focusing on contrasting priorities rather than an obsession over deficit numbers. 

- David Climenhaga challenges Rachel Notley's attempt to scupper any discussion about pharmacare - even when it stands to save money for Alberta and the other provinces - in the name of putting pipelines first. And the Narwhal publishes an open letter challenging the approval of the Trans Mountain expansion in the absence of meaningful scientific support.

- Paul McKay notes that new rules governing sulphur content for shipping fuel may take a substantial bite out of the market for dilbit from the oil sands. And Damian Carrington reports on new research showing that the global cost of climate change will far exceed the price of reining in greenhouse gas emissions.

- Bridget Yard reports on the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission's survey of Saskatoon renters, including its finding of explicit discrimination against Indigenous people, single mothers and people receiving social assistance.

- Finally, Wendy Stueck reports on FSIN's newly-announced suicide prevention strategy - while noting the need for the provincial and federal governments to care enough about Indigenous people's lives to contribute.

Musical interlude

CHVRCHES - High Enough To Carry You Over

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Dru Oja Jay points out the connections between improved public services, decreased inequality and meaningful action to fight climate change.

- Adam Corlett challenges spin from the UK Conservatives intended to mislead voters about the relative tax contributions of the wealthy as opposed to everybody else. And Larry Elliott reports on the harm the Conservatives' austerity has done to an underfunded public health system.

- Meanwhile, Matt Taylor writes that the U.S. is setting up the next financial crisis by once again handing reckless banksters the ability to write their own rules. 

- Andrew Jackson calls for a new Canadian trade strategy aimed at establishing a fair playing field including protections for workers and the environment in any country seeking preferential access to Canadian consumers.

- Lois Ross highlights the need for migrant farm labourers to be offered the same protections which apply to other workers.

- Laurie Monsebraaten reports on a healthy drop in food bank use in Ontario due to a combination of an improved minimum wage and increased social benefits. And Seth Klein and Iglka Ivanova point out how British Columbia can and should put an end to deep poverty in the very near future.

- Finally, Jim Stanford argues that a minor complaint over a modest mistake in the Ontario NDP's fully-costed platform serves largely to highlight the utter lack of transparency or plausibility in the scattershot promises made by Doug Ford and the PCs.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Ian Millhiser writes that the Republican majority on the U.S.' Supreme Court is restoring the robber baron era:

The conceit of Gorsuch’s Epic Systems opinion is that workers and their bosses sit down like equal bargaining partners to hash out their terms of employment. “Should employees and employers be allowed to agree that any disputes between them will be resolved through one-on-one arbitration?” Gorsuch begins his opinion with a question framed as if it could only have one answer. “Or should employees always be permitted to bring their claims in class or collective actions, no matter what they agreed with their employers?”

In reality, the facts of Epic Systems bear little resemblance to the civilized negotiation presented by Gorsuch. Workers at one of the companies at issue in this case received an email one day informing them that they must give up their right to bring class actions. Employees who “continue[d] to work at Epic,” according to the email, would “be deemed to have accepted” this agreement. A similar email was sent to the employees of one of the other companies that prevailed in Epic Systems.

These employees, in other words, only “agreed” to the terms proposed by their bosses in the same sense that a person accosted by a gunman in a dark alley “agrees” to give up their wallet. Their choice was to give up their rights or to immediately lose their jobs.

This is not the first time the Supreme Court ignored the fairly basic fact that employers typically have far more bargaining power than their workers — and can use this greater share of power to exploit their employees.
...
[At the time of the similar decision in Lochner v. New York,] (b)akeries often had no windows and little ventilation, filling the air with irritating flour dust and fumes. Ovens heated the workplaces into infernos. Low ceilings required many workers to crouch, and the floors were typically either dirt or rotten wood filled with rat holes.

The average bakery worker labored at least 13 hours a day in these conditions, though some worked as much as 126-hours a week. Workers, moreover, were often required to sleep on the very same tables where they prepared the dough, and the cost of these makeshift beds were then deducted from their wages.

These were the sorts of conditions that the free market offered workers who, without the law to protect them, were forced to bargain alone with their employers. Perhaps, in some narrow sense, these workers “agreed” to work countless hours among the roaches, the heat, and the raw sewage. But only a judge blinded by their own ideology could conclude that these workers had any real choice in the matter.
...
[Gorsuch] ignored the way the law was originally understood, ignored the text of the National Labor Relations Act, ignored the law’s hard-won understanding that employees and employers do not have equal bargaining power, and ignored Congress’ explicit efforts to strike a different balance of power between workers and their bosses.

It is a great day for law firms that profit off the exploitation of workers. And it is an even greater day for their clients.

The rest of us can either sign away our rights or lose our jobs.

- David Dayen comments on the severed connection between economic growth and wages in the U.S., while Sarah Anderson notes that the appalling pay gap between CEOs and frontline employees is bad for business. And Terri Gerstein calls for stronger legal action against employers who steal wages from their workers.

- Noah Smith discusses the uneven effect of a university education - with already-privileged white males seeing far more income gains from a degree than their classmates. And Martin Armstrong charts the additional work performed by women compared to men.

- Corey Mintz offers a reminder of the importance of regulations to ensure that our food is safe to eat. And Jayme Poisson and David Brusser report on a new study showing the damage done to the residents of Grassy Narrows by industrial mercury poisoning.

- Finally, Vicky Mochama criticizes the inhumane use of indefinite detention in maximum-security facilities pending determination of an individual's immigration status.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Matt Taylor discusses how the U.S.' Supreme Court has stacked the deck against workers by allowing employers to evade all types of collective action, while the Economic Policy Institute points out that a majority of workers are required to sign away their ability to seek class action remedies against illegal actions. And Elizabeth Tippett reports on the use of distorted time-keeping technology to systematically require workers to put in extra time without pay.

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford comments on the importance of using the government's role in the economy to raise the bar for worker rights and employment standards:

Australia’s government sector is by far the largest single part of Australia’s economy.  The report documents the enormous fiscal dimensions of the economic footprint of government:

• Total expenditures of over $660 billion per year, equal to 36 percent of Australia’s GDP.
• Total “consumption” spending (that is, expenditures on current production of public goods and services) of over $330 billion per year (18.5 percent of GDP), and investment spending (on longer-lived capital projects) of over $85 billion (another 5 percent of GDP).
• Direct public sector employment of close to 2 million workers, with millions more jobs indirectly dependent on government injections of spending power into the economy.
• Fiscal and policy support for public and community service provision by arms-length non-profit agencies, worth at least another 4 percent of GDP.
• Goods and services procured from private-sector suppliers equivalent to around 10 percent of GDP (or about $175 billion per year).

This economic footprint, if wielded consistently to achieve higher wages and better jobs, could have a powerful impact on labour market outcomes.  Moreover, through a “demonstration effect,” improved wages and labour standards would “spill over” into better practices in businesses and sectors that have no direct connection to government spending at all. 

It is ironic that Treasurers always pray for stronger wage growth in every budget they prepare, because strong wages are essential to healthy government revenues and stronger economic growth.  But governments don’t pursue obvious opportunities to help achieve that growth, by tying their own expenditure programs to stronger wages and better working conditions.

- Erika Shaker argues that an increased reliance on fund-raising rather than public revenue is only exacerbating differences between wealthier and poorer schools. And Jen St. Denis reports on hundreds of millions of dollars of takes owed which are going unpaid in the real estate sector in Toronto and Vancouver.

- Catherine Griwkowsky interviews Siobhan Vipond about the importance of child care in narrowing the pay equity gap between men and women.

- Finally, Raymond Saint-Germain and Art Eggleton highlight the need for improved social supports and evidence-based criminal justice policy to reverse a sharp increase in the number of women incarcerated in Canada.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Clutching cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Tom Parkin discusses the distinction between giveaways to the rich which are perpetually seen as carrying no price, and the expansion of the commons which is treated as intolerably costly:

(O)ffer something that is actually free and things get downright snarky. In the currently Ontario election, the NDP platform includes a free drug plan, free dental benefits and free childcare for lower income households. There’s no fee, toll or service charge. It really is free to the user, paid for through our progressive tax system.

In Horwath’s plan, tax on income over $220,000 goes up one point, tax over $300,000 goes up a second. It’s all accounted for.

Now suddenly come a wave of objections—the service “isn’t really free,” say detractors as if there is some sort of deception.

But just stop. We use lots of great free public services everyday, paid by our progressive tax system.

Roads and bridges. Parks. Schools. Health care. Libraries. Police. Firefighters. Armed Forces. Coast Guard. It’s a long list.

And it we want we can add a free drug plan, dental benefits and child care. And just like our roads and health care, they will be paid through our progressive income tax. There’s no deception.

And these new public services are right. Working people are struggling. Families with two incomes need affordable childcare. Fewer workers get union dental and drug benefits. Wages are stagnant. But executive compensation is skyrocketing. It’s fair.

Boil it all down, here’s the basic point. In our society, free money for rich people requires no explanation. Free public services, even if fully paid for, are an outrage. Go get it at my supermarket.

- But on the bright side, David Climenhaga renews his prediction that the Horwath NDP's plan for a more caring and secure society will win out over Doug Ford's attempt to get the working class to vote for exploitation by the rich.

- Meanwhile, Patrick Greenfield and Sarah Marsh highlight how the UK is criminalizing homelessness. And Justin Wm. Moyer reports on the 7 million Americans who have lost their drivers' licences - and in many cases their ability to legally meet the availability demands of most employers - to punitive traffic debt.

- Finally, The Mound of Sound takes note of the grim milestone that's seen the Earth above its normal temperature for 400 consecutive months. And Damian Carrington offers a reminder that even as the worst effects of climate change loom in the future, humanity's track record involves the widespread destruction of plant and animal species.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

-The UK's Association of Directors of Public Health speaks out (PDF) about the importance of giving children the best possible start in life - including through security in the essentials of life.

- But Christina Gibson-Davis and Christine Perchenski write about the increased inequality that is leaving a large majority of families in the U.S. with no safety net. And Matthew Stewart breaks down the U.S.' income brackets into the .1% which is accumulating wealth faster than it can spend, the 90% which is falling behind, and the 9.9% between the two which has mostly held its position.

- Melissa Davey comments on the lack of investigation and punishment of wage theft in Australia. But David Marin-Guzman reports on one noteworthy example of an employer being sentenced to a meaningful jail term - if only for contempt of court after the employer breached an order to retain funds to pay workers. 

- Christian Breyer summarizes new research showing that a 100% renewable energy system is entirely feasible and affordable. And David Fickling notes that for that reason, the next key developments in energy figure to involve storing the product of intermittent renewable sources, not looking for excuses to keep extracting and burning fossil fuels.

- Meanwhile, Wal van Lierop calls for a reality check about the future of an oil-dependent economy (and the construction of pipelines intended to extend that dependence).

- Finally, Tabatha Southey examines the parallels between Doug Ford and Donald Trump as overgrown children of privilege trying to use populist language to further indulge the advantages they've held. And Paul Wells writes about Andrea Horwath's campaign as she offers Ontario a positie alternative.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Brian Wakamo notes that Kirsten Gillibrand is pushing for postal banking in the U.S. as an alternative to predatory lenders in underserved communities.

- Glen Hodgson discusses the rising fiscal costs of climate change - even as the Trudeau Libs plan to put public money into exacerbating it. And Damian Carrington examines the looming danger of severe destruction of insect habitat from even best-case climate change scenarios.

- Meanwhile, Yonatan Strauch points out that the threat of oil embargos being used to try to bully British Columbia into risking its environment for pipelines ultimately only highlights the need to stop depending on fossil fuels. And Gary Mason comments on the need for Alberta (among other jurisdictions pushing the Trans Mountain expansion) to pay attention to British Columbia's legitimate concerns.

- Murray Mandryk argues that Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party need to start doing something more productive than taking potshots at the federal government - even if it's obvious that they're desperate to distract from their own failings and scandals.

- Finally, Yves Engler discusses the Libs' Bill C-59 - which goes beyond authorizing surveillance to also allow for aggressive "disruption".

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Noah Smith writes that public resentment toward the U.S.' wealthiest few is based on a genuine (and justified) concern about an economic system rigged to exacerbate inequality across generations, not mere envy toward the people who have more:

(R)esentment of the super-rich is probably not simply envy. It likely has to do with notions of fairness. As economist N. Gregory Mankiw conjectured in a 2013 essay, people are more likely to begrudge vast fortunes if they feel the wealth wasn’t earned. Technology company founders may be rich, but they mostly got that way by creating new products or services that benefit many people’s lives — think PayPal or iPhones or Facebook. Similarly, rich athletes or entertainers used their talents to make life more enjoyable for millions of Americans.

But about 38 percent of American billionaires inherited at least a substantial part of their fortunes. These heirs and heiresses tend to be less in the public eye, but they hold vast sums nonetheless. Taxing these unearned billions seems like a great way to allay public concerns about the super-rich.

Economics provides both empirical and theoretical support for the idea of taxing inheritances at much higher rates, and making the tax much harder to avoid. Surveys find that informing people about wealth inequality makes them much more likely to support higher estate taxes, but only slightly more likely to support other forms of taxation. And economic theory suggests that taxing wealthy inheritors can increase economic efficiency if many of them are bad investors.

So one idea to address popular anger over the dramatic success of a few super-rich individuals is to stop them from passing most of those fortunes on to their children. That won’t take the Elon Musks and the Mark Zuckerbergs out of the news, but it will reassure Americans that most of their crazy-rich countrymen made their own money through hard work and talent, not just the luck of having rich parents.

- George Eaton discusses the combination of popular support which is leading toward increasing public ownership of the UK's public services. And David Zarnett reports on the Wynne government's giveaway of a profitable casino for pennies on the dollar - representing just one more example of how the public loses out when neoliberal government focus on privatization over competent management.

- Adam Litwin, Ariel Avgar and Edmund Becker study (PDF) how the outsourcing of cleaning services in hospitals leads to the increased spread of infectious diseases.

- Bernard Goldstein comments on another of the Trump administration's moves to prevent regulators from doing their jobs, this time by making a policy of rejecting some of the best available environmental studies.

- Finally, following up on this week's column, Samir Shaheen-Hussain points out another policy choice which results in children being deprived of family support when it's needed most, as air ambulances refuse to allow parents to accompany Inuit children to receive care.

Musical interlude

Sloan - 500 Up

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- George Monbiot discusses the dangers of treating our natural environment solely as something to be priced and commodified.

- The Mound of Sound comments on Stephen Leahy's work in crunching the numbers on the climate change impact of a Trans Mountain expansion. And Matt Scuffham and Rod Nickel report on Bill Morneau's apparent plan to divert Canada Pension Plan funds into forcing through a pipeline which can't find private investors.

- Nora Loreto writes about Canada's criminalization of dissent on the left. And Nathan Robinson argues that the right's perpetual persecution complex serves mostly to distract from the suppression of anti-establishment speech:

I want to suggest a hypothesis that may sound outlandish: What if the whole narrative is backwards? What if people who think they are voicing suppressed dangerous ideas are actually the ones suppressing the truly dangerous ideas? What if this effort to condemn the irrational excesses of political correctness is in part a way of avoiding having to engage with its arguments and listen carefully to its advocates? What if people who seem to be “challenging” a dissent-stifling power structure are actually defending one? Now, I’m not saying this is the case; I’m just asking some questions. But let’s, for a moment, because we are rational and skeptical, consider the possibility that the conservative narrative is totally upside-down. Let’s picture a topsy-turvy world in which Donald Trump is the president and left ideas are actually marginal. 
...
...I’m just asking us to imagine a strange world in which the interests of the wealthy mattered far more than the interests of the poor, and in which the good people got left behind while the bad people were honored and celebrated. But let’s stick with the idea, just a moment longer. In this kind of world, what would we make of people like the members of the “Intellectual Dark Web,” who insist that their ideas pose a challenge to the mainstream consensus? Well, first we’d have to look at the ideas themselves. But if those ideas turned out to coincide remarkably well with the interests of those who are already wealthy and powerful, and if those ideas seemed to downplay, deny, and evade all of the contrary evidence, we might begin to suspect that these Dissident Intellectuals should not, in fact, rightfully be considered dissidents. In this kind of world, the real dissidents would be the ones whose names we didn’t know, the ones who were trying to dredge up the truths nobody wanted to listen to, rather than the people whose faces and opinions were constantly in the newspapers. The dangerous ideas would be the ones that weren’t spoken from the White House and on cable news, because they actually indicted those institutions rather than benefiting them.

- And finally, Rinaldo Wolcott and Naomi Klein discuss how Ontarians can prevent Trumpism from spreading into their provincial government by voting for the change they actually want.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Alex Boutilier discusses the glaring gap between hype and reality when it comes to tech sector jobs. And Virgina Eubanks writes about the futility of expecting miracles from algorithms in allocating grossly insufficient funding for social programs.

- Meanwhile, Dean Baker argues that if anybody should face the prospect of workfare, it's the financial-sector profiteers who enrich themselves while offering poor service managing public assets such as pensions.

- Geoffrey Stevens warns Ontario voters not to once again saddle their province with the mindset which brought them Walkerton and other avoidable tragedies. And Vjosa Isai's report on toxic chemicals in Canadian baby products should instead confirm the need for far stronger protection of the public against corporate irresponsibility.

- And Rachel Cohen discusses the findings of Alex Taborrok, a libertarian economist who wanted to prove a connection between regulations and economic stagnation - but instead demonstrated that one has nothing to do with the other:

(F)or the first time, economists could more confidently measure federal regulations over time and by industry. In theory, that would make it easier to build the case that regulations were hurting the economy.

For his first paper using the database, Tabarrok decided to analyze the effect of federal regulation on “economic dynamism”—a catch-all term referring to the rate at which new businesses launch and grow, and at which people switch jobs, lose jobs, or migrate for work. There has been a notable and somewhat mysterious decline in dynamism over the last few decades. The rate at which start-ups form is half of what it was forty years ago, the fraction of workers who bounce from one job to another—a sign of competitive labor markets—has plunged, productivity has slowed, and adult employment remains well below its early-2000 peak.

Armed with RegData, Tabarrok and Goldschlag set out to show that regulations were at least partly to blame. But they couldn’t. There was simply no correlation, they found, between the degree of federal regulation and the decline of business dynamism. The decline was seen across many different industries, including those that are heavily regulated and those that are not. They tried two other independent tests that didn’t rely on RegData, and came to the same conclusion: an increase in federal regulation just could not explain what was going on.
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Indeed, the new paper undermines one of the most deeply held convictions of the American right, one that unites libertarians like Tabarrok with mainstream conservatives: that regulations inevitably impose “deadweight loss” on the economy and are therefore an enemy of economic growth. This idea has been a mainstay of Republican politics since the Reagan era, and the Trump administration has taken to deregulation with missionary zeal. In fact, it’s probably the policy objective that the administration has pursued most successfully—rolling back the Clean Power Plan, repealing net neutrality, freezing the fiduciary rule, and on and on.

The premise that regulations come at the expense of economic activity—that we must always make trade-offs between safety and jobs—is so pervasive that even the American left tends to accept it, defending regulations as necessary evils to promote other social goods. Yet there has never been strong evidence that these trade-offs actually exist. To the contrary, federal regulations have often driven growth and innovation, whether it’s fuel standards spurring new electric cars and solar energy, or the Dodd-Frank law causing an entirely new industry—financial technology—to appear out of whole cloth.

- Finally, Marie Burge criticizes the P.E.I. Liberals' latest efforts to avoid a fair referendum on electoral reform.

New column day

Here, on how Canada continues to tear Indigenous children away from their families due to the lingering effects of discriminatory policies.

For further reading...
- Katie Hyslop has been reporting on the causes and consequences of a severe lack of attention to the welfare of Indigenous children.
- CBC News previewed last week's Federal Court hearing into the sixties scoop settlement, while Jason Warick reported on it afterward.
- Meanwhile, Jennifer Ackerman has reported on the continued delays in the work survivors are being forced to put in just to pursue an apology from Saskatchewan's provincial government.
- Finally, Doug Cuthand comments on the lingering effect of the sixties scoop. And the Star's editorial board has also highlighted the need to stop the cycle of family disruption.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- The CCPA offers some questions and answers on the problems with "social impact bonds" designed to turn the delivery of needed programming into a source of corporate profits. And Andy Blatchford reports on the Trudeau Libs' secretive attempt to undermine any prospect of prosecutions for corporate crimes.

- Mike De Souza exposes the existence of a "mystery safety gap" in the Trans Mountain expansion which the Libs are concealing from the public. Mitchell Anderson examines the environmental time bomb of unfunded oil sands tailings ponds. And Bess Levin writes about the Trump administration's suppression of a report on chemical threats to drinking water - based on its being far more concerned about public relations fallout than the lives of people with unsafe water supplies.

- Murray Mandryk points out that Saskatchewan's grim job numbers show weakness going far beyond immediate trends in the resource sector - and that indeed, the damage inflicted by the Saskatchewan Party is lasting even as oil prices rebound.

- And Adam Hunter reports on Scott Moe's strategy of contrived cluelessness in response to important questions about his facilitation of Bill Boyd's environmental violations.

- Finally, Annalisa Merelli highlights the high cost of motherhood in the U.S. And Gabriel Arsenault, Olivier Jacques and Antonia Maioni examine why other provinces haven't yet matched Quebec's success in developing a comprehensive affordable child care program - with a lack of emphasis on building a program to include the middle class serving as the main obstacle so far.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Floored cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Joel French discusses the need for Alberta to implement a more thorough and progressive tax system in order to ensure it has the revenue to support its residents. 

- Meagan Day highlights how Bernie Sanders' new labour bill would empower workers and enhance workplace democracy:

The bipartisan neoliberal attack on unions, which began in earnest in the 1970s, has been enormously effective in undermining the power of the United States labor movement. As a result, the percentage of US workers who currently belong to a union is about 10 percent, down from its peak of nearly 28 percent in 1970.

Again this problem is fundamentally political, stemming from the balance of power in our society and not from a natural or inevitable economic process. The solution, too, has to be political — and it’s in that spirit that Bernie Sanders has introduced a new bill called the Workplace Democracy Act, which aims to clear obstacles to the labor movement’s growth, and ultimately increase collective worker control over the economy. The chances of such a bill passing in a GOP-controlled legislature (or even in a Democrat-controlled legislature; a weaker bill was opposed by moderate Democrats during the Obama administration) are basically nil, but Sanders’s bill is a strong political move anyway. It signals an uncompromising commitment to unions and invites other politicians to support an ambitious vision of a revitalized movement for worker power — or oppose that vision at their own risk.

The Workplace Democracy Act makes three crucial interventions. First, it would overturn a provision in the 1947 Taft-Hartley law that replaced card check — a system where employers have to recognize a union if more than 50 percent of employees in a particular bargaining unit say they want one — with an elaborate secret-ballot election process overseen by the National Labor Relations Board...A national card check system would allow workers to unionize by simple majority, avoiding the messy electioneering process that’s tilted in favor of employers, who inevitably have more resources.

Second, Sanders’s bill would repeal so-called “right to work.” Also a legacy of the Taft-Hartley Act, right to work prevents unions from negotiating contracts with employers that require all employees to join or pay a bargaining fee to the union...

Third, according to some reports, Sanders will seek to increase financial penalties on employers who fire workers for union organizing, a practice that is illegal but ubiquitous, due in part to the lack of consequences. The Center for Economic and Policy Research estimates that “one-in-five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign.” The share of union drives that saw illegal firings of workplace activists rose steadily from the the mid-seventies to the mid-2000s. The paper’s authors note that employers “are unlikely to fire workers randomly, or simply for expressing pro-union views. Employers maximize the return to illegal firing by focusing on union activists.” The result is a climate of fear and a chilling effect on union activism, especially organic leadership among the rank-and-file, who are the least likely to take risks regarding their job security. Corporations are not currently forced to pay penalties when they’re caught retaliating against labor activists — all they need to do is make up lost income, which is not sufficient to distance them from the practice.

- Paul Barrett writes that contrary to the trumped-up complaints of the bigoted right, the only real threat to free speech on campus is the precarious work environment which prevents far too many part-time instructions from speaking up. And PressProgress notes that right-wing astroturf operations are still flouting Canada's income tax laws by pretending not to be involved in political activity.

- Finally, Robert Bea notes that Canada's environmental assessment process has approved BP to conduct offshore drilling based on the same assertions which were rejected by Australia. And Rob Antle reports on Husky's attempt to suppress information about a near-miss incident off of the coast of Newfoundland.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- The Equality Trust highlights the perpetual concentration of wealth among an extremely privileged few in the UK. LOLGOP points out how U.S. Republicans would rather let people die than see them adequately sustained by a fair minimum wage and secure social supports. And Paul Solman writes about the effects of poverty on cognitive function in light of research showing how a lack of income consumes mental resources. 

- Tom Parkin warns that both Doug Ford and Jason Kenney similarly want to similarly take away from nearly everybody to further enrich the wealthy, while holding out hope that Ontarians will instead vote for change for the better:

About 10 days ago, Jason Kenney, Alberta’s United Conservative Party Leader, pledged a $900 million tax cut for Albertans earning over $129,000 — the top 10%.

Yes, that’s $900 million for people who already have the most, taken from everyone else. It’s $900 million in cuts to health care and education and other services Canadians rely on.

And last week, in Ontario, PC Leader Doug Ford joined this exclusive club of Canadian politicians who help those in exclusive clubs. Not to be outdone by Kenney, Ford promised to give away $2.3 billion in public money, with the maximum benefit going to those in the top tax bracket.
...
Ford won’t say what he’d cut and privatize. He just waves it away with one word — “efficiencies.” Just a $20 billion cut — it won’t hurt a bit. Believe me, folks.

Canadians have been on this cut and privatize journey for a couple of decades now. But maybe something is changing.
...
Canadians are on a treadmill. The Conservatives cut — so we throw them out and put in the Liberals. Then the Liberals cut — so we toss them out and vote the Conservative back in. And nothing changes.

[Andrea] Horwath’s early success suggests Canadians may want off the treadmill. I’ll wager even many people who get these tax cuts would rather have it invested in a better society.

Cynical politicians have been crushing Canadians’ hopes by turning politics into a competition between bad and worse, selfishness and greed. But maybe they underestimate Canadians.

- Meanwhile, Chris York reports on a growing activist movement demanding a new deal for UK workers.

- Bethany Lindsey discusses the dangers of trying to base a province's standard of living on constantly increasing real estate values rather than actual economic development. And Sean McElwee and Henry Kraemer write about the need for housing policy based on making rent more affordable.

- Kevin Taft points out a few key facts about the oil industry's domination of Alberta politics. And Christopher Guly comments on the collective insanity driving the push for the Trans Mountain expansion.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk notes that a continued refusal to be honest about the Global Transportation Hub scandal represents just one more way in which nothing has changed for the Saskatchewan Party under Scott Moe.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Dana Brown and Thomas Hanna discuss the possibility of a public option for access to medication in the U.S. And while the Winnipeg Free Press warns that Brian Pallister might want to stand in the way of a national pharmacare program, that hardly seems a reasonable excuse to discard the possibility.

- Elaine Povich reports on the unexpectedly high revenue from Seattle's soda tax.

- Michael Geist is duly skeptical of the latest attempt to excuse the gouging of Canadian consumers by the telecommunications sector, while Bill Curry reports on Jim Balsillie's warnings about the spread of surveillance capitalism. And Yves Engler reminds us that rather than reining in the excesses of Stephen Harper's surveillance state, the Trudeau Libs are pouring more money and power into extending it.

- Ivan Ascher points out why corporate thinking patterns won't lead to the action we need to combat climate change, while Chantelle Bellrichard reports on Kinder Morgan's willingness to accommodate Nestle and other business interests even as it ignores the needs of people who stand to be affected by any Trans Mountain expansion. And Tom Embury-Dennis notes that Costa Rica's government leadership has led it toward becoming the world's first decarbonized society.

- Finally, Drew Brown rightly slams the plans of Jason Kenney and Alberta's UCP to forcibly out LGBT children to their parents.