New column day

Here, questioning why so many of our political leaders spend so much time talking about pipelines which are neither economically necessary nor environmentally sustainable.

For further reading...
- J. David Hughes' study cited in the column is here (PDF). And Bruce Cheadle reported on the federal government's internal analysis showing that Canada's current transport capacity is plenty until at least 2025.
- Jason Proctor reported on the Federal Court of Appeal's decision finding the Cons' approval of Northern Gateway to be unconstitutional due to the lack of dialogue with First Nations during the assessment process. 
- Don Pittis points out why we can't realistically expect oil prices to rise to any point which would make substantially greater production feasible.
- Finally, Peter Prebble argues that it's long past time for Saskatchewan to start taking climate change seriously.

Update: Or, to more concisely sum up the entire case for pipelines at this point:

The message, [said TransCanada CEO Russ Girling about Energy East], is "build it and we'll see what happens."

Your mileage may vary as to whether that should represent anybody's top public policy priority.

[Edit: updated link.]

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to start your new year.

- Paul Krugman points out that as tends to be the case, the U.S.' modest increase in high-end tax rates in 2013 managed to produce both more fair taxation and strong economic growth.

- But Michael Hudson notes that increasing inequality and wage suppression are still among the dominant economic forces in the U.S. And the New York Times' set of year-end charts features a stark example as to how the wealthiest Americans are still siphoning off more and more income at everybody else's expense.

- Lauren-Brooke Eisen and Inimai Chettiar study the costs of pointless mass incarceration, including its significant contribution to overall poverty.

- Finally, the Globe and Mail offers a list of laws calling for immediate rewrites by the federal government, with the extreme provisions of C-51 leading the way. And Bruce Cheadle notes that the cost of the Cons' bad judgment is still accumulating, as a challenge to their attempt to retroactively permit the illegal destruction of data is still making its way through the courts.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Andrew Nikiforuk offers his suggestions as to how Rachel Notley can improve Alberta's economy and political scene in her first term in office. And thwap comments on the right's more hysterical responses to Notley's victory.

- Meanwhile, Duncan Cameron writes that Albertans have joined the rest of Canada in rejecting a regressive tax system. And Louis-Philippe Rochon reminds us that there's still plenty more which needs to be done on that front at the federal level.

- Justin Ling discusses how C-51 fits into a wider pattern of intrusive surveillance plans - even as the U.S. reins in its own surveillance apparatus. And the Canadian Labour Congress laments the shredding of civil rights in the name of a secretive security state.

- Finally, the Star exposes the Cons' systematic purging of any watchdog who dares to live up to the title. Bruce Cheadle reports that the Cons' latest omnibus bill includes a retroactive prohibition against prosecution for what appear to have been gross violations of federal access to information legislation. And Lawrence Martin writes that the Cons can't survive an election campaign where integrity is a meaningful issue:

There was evidence beforehand that the PMO had interfered with a Deloitte audit on the expenses of Mike Duffy and other senators. But new court documents obtained by The Globe and Mail make the case stronger. In one, Corporal Benoit Jolette says the force’s investigation learned that the audit report “had made its way to the PMO, to their office and, I guess, revisions, what they wanted to have written in the report, was done.” In addition, e-mails from PMO officials speak of plans “to protect Senator Duffy.” Nigel Wright, then Stephen Harper’s chief of staff, writes of an intent to “put him in a different bucket.”

In terms of breach of the public trust, falsifying audits ranks high. The Harper Tories have been caught at it before. There was a case involving former cabinet minister Bev Oda altering a document for CIDA funding. In another they went so far as to distort a report by former auditor-general Sheila Fraser. They used her words to make it look like she was crediting their party with prudent financial management when in fact she was crediting the Liberals.

How much do they think they can get away with? Being caught once usually makes you think twice about being a repeat offender. Not these guys.

Last week’s revelations produced columns with headlines such as “The Duffy trial’s smoking gun just blew up in Harper’s face.” A telltale sign of the Tory troubles on the file is that they offered no rebuttal to pointed questioning in the Commons. Instead, they had backbencher Paul Calandra stand and issue a sheaf of non-answers. This was the same Mr. Calandra who some time ago gave a tear-drenched apology for making a mockery of Question Period with such answers. Rather than show any remorse, he was now doing it again.

...

The Duffy disclosures (there will be more to come) will likely turn out to be the most damaging. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair alleged in the House of Commons they constitute obstruction of justice. No such charges have been laid against PMO officials, but if they do not suffer legal consequences, there may well be political ones.

Yet again we have the integrity of this government being called into question. For the Conservatives, there is now a real risk of it becoming the ballot question. If it does, they can kiss their chances of re-election goodbye.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- The Star points out what the Cons have destroyed - including public assets and program spending - in order to chip away at the federal deficit caused in the first place by their reckless tax slashing. And Thomas Walkom discusses how their latest "job" scheme does nothing but handing free money to businesses, while Angella MacEwen notes that Canada as a whole is hundreds of thousands of jobs short of reaching its pre-recession employment rate.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Cheadle writes that the Cons' attempt to build an economy solely around resource exploitation has proven to be an utter flop for everybody but their corporate backers.

- Joseph Stiglitz looks at new data on the U.S.' age of vulnerability and downward mobility. And Danielle Kurtzleben observes that people who recognize that risk have become increasingly willing to help others - while the detached rich are only becoming more selfish:

Even during the downturn and recovery, the poorest Americans upped their charitable giving. Meanwhile, the highest-income people gave less and less, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported this week.
 

The rich also give to charity differently than the poor: compared to lower-income Americans, the rich's charitable giving places a far lower emphasis on helping their disadvantaged peers. When the poor and rich are (figuratively and literally) moving farther apart, an empathy gap naturally opens up between the upper and lower classes — after all, if I can't see you, I'm less likely to help you.

Taken together, the trends paint a disturbing picture for the future of both the American economy and philanthropy: as the rich get richer and more removed from the daily lives of the poor, the bulk of charitable giving is also likely to become further removed from the needs of the poor.

- L. Hunter Lovins reminds us that we shouldn't confuse possessions with prosperity, while noting that a shift toward a sharing economy can drastically improve the latter while limiting how much effort we put into pursuing the former. And Ben Chu argues that a mansion tax makes for both a fair and efficient means of increasing public revenues.

 - Finally, Jeremy Brecher, Joe Uehlein and Ron Blackwell argue that now is the time for the labour movement to unite behind a strong plan to fight climate change:

(C)riticizing the weaknesses in mainstream climate policy proposals is not a strategy for combating climate change. Labor needs to propose a climate protection strategy of its own—one that realistically protects the livelihood and well-being of working people and helps reverse America’s trend toward greater inequality while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the speed scientists say is necessary to reduce climate catastrophe. A strategy designed to provide full employment and rising living standards by putting millions of people to work on the transition to a climate-safe economy could transform the politics of climate by shattering the “jobs versus the environment” frame. And it could provide a common platform around which climate protection advocates at every level of the labor movement could rally.
...
There are three main approaches to GHG reduction. The first, which has dominated climate legislation and treaty negotiation, consists of “putting a price on carbon emissions” to discourage GHGs through taxation, fees, cap-and-trade systems with markets for emission quotas, or similar means. The second, which is widely discussed and frequently implemented on a small scale, consists of local, often community-based initiatives designed to produce renewable energy and reduce energy consumption on a decentralized basis. The third, perhaps less often delineated by proponents than excoriated by opponents, consists of a government-led approach based on economic planning, public investment, resource mobilization, and direct government intervention in economic decisions. Although rapid reduction of GHG emissions will undoubtedly require all three, labor should lead the breakout from neoliberalism and propose a government-led plan—drawing on the example of mobilization during World War II—to put our people to work converting to a climate-safe economy.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Mitchell Anderson discusses Canada's woeful excuse for negotiations with the oil sector - particularly compared to the lasting social benefits secured by Norway in making the best of similar reserves:

Digging through the numbers, it seems Norway is considerably more skilled at negotiation. By charging higher taxes and investing equity ownership in their own production, the Norwegian taxpayer was paid $46.29 BOE in 2012. That same year, the U.K. taxpayer realized only $20.08 per BOE -- less than half as much.

What about Canada? Much of our production is bitumen, which admittedly is a lower value (and often unprocessed) product with higher extraction costs. That said, it seems the nicest nation on earth is being taken to the cleaners. In 2012, Canada produced more than two billion BOE and collected $18 billion in provincial and federal taxes and royalties. This means that the Canadian taxpayer realized a benefit of about $9 per BOE -- less than one-fifth what Norway collected in the same year.

Canada produces 45 per cent more petroleum than Norway. Imagine for the sake of argument that Canada collected what Norwegians did between 2009 and 2012. In those four years, Canada would have enjoyed revenues of $365 billion -- enough to pay off more than half of our national debt.
...
Every provincial jurisdiction is also in direct competition with each other in a race to the bottom to attract private petroleum investment. Internal government documents accessed by the Alberta Federation of Labour found that B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan charge lower royalty rates than any U.S. state. Bizarrely, this was framed as a public policy achievement.

Since our country has an every-province-for-itself negotiating strategy, job strapped jurisdictions are not only contending with immensely powerful outside forces, but their own angry electorate every few years. It's hard to drive a hard bargain when voters can be maneuvered to take up industry's negotiating position. Nothing motivates a politician quite like the prospect of electoral defeat, and voters have become enlisted as unwitting allies in the billion-dollar brinksmanship of industry to access resources at ever-cheaper prices.

- Jane Gerster's report following up on David Macdonald's study of wealth inequality includes this apt observation from Erin Weir:

In many ways, the growing divide is more concerning than income inequality, said Erin Weir, economist for the United Steelworkers.

“Wealth matters because it also confers political power and social status,” Weir said, adding “wealth makes increasing inequality a self-reinforcing trend: invested wealth is a source of income, those who already have the most wealth have the greatest capacity to accumulate more wealth.”

- Update: And Alex Pareene responds to the latest U.S. Supreme Court ruling to further facilitate the flow of concentrated wealth into politics on by pointing out the possibility of reducing wealth inequality in the first place.

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford reviews the neoliberal policy choices which have exacerbated that inequality over the past few decades.

- Finally, Sheila Fraser rightly slams the Cons' cynical attack on Canadian voting rights. And Bruce Cheadle reports on how the Unfair Elections Act is set up to facilitate yet more Robocon-style schemes - even as Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor confirm the connection between the Cons' party database and the 2011 voter suppression fraud.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Robert Reich (via GlenInCA) points out the connection between a strong middle class and curbs on corporate excesses - with may go a long way toward explaining why the business lobby is working so hard to eliminate the concept of a secure livelihood for most workers:

Last week’s massive toxic chemical spill into West Virginia Elk River illustrates another benefit to the business class of high unemployment, economic insecurity, and a safety-net shot through with holes. Not only are employees docile, eager to accept whatever crumbs they can get. The public is also quiescent and unwilling to cause trouble.
...
For years political scientists have wondered why the citizens of West Virginia and other poorer states vote against their economic interests, hypothesizing it’s because economic issues have been preempted by others like guns, abortion, and race. But as wages keep sinking and economic security disappears, it’s also because people are so desperate for jobs they’ll vote whatever way industry wants them to. Bottom line: A strong and growing middle class is the best bulwark against corporate irresponsibility.

- And Jim Stanford wonders why the same economists looking on the bright side of a falling Canadian dollar now seem to have ignored the effects of a higher currency for the past decade.

- Bruce Cheadle reports that the Cons have been skimping on informing Canadians about health and issues - even as they've spent millions promoting nonexistent programs which involve nothing more than a giveaway to employers. 

- Kady O'Malley reports that Stephen Harper's already-sad attempt to put actual policy on hold for a gratuitous 2017 birthday bash may be running into another snag - as the country the Cons plan to celebrate bears little resemblance to Canada. And Jeremy Nuttall catches Stephen Harper trying to put one over on Vancouver's ethnic media - as the Prime Minister directly responsible for expanding and entrenching the use of temporary foreign workers pretended to disagree with his own party's policy of favouring temporary, work-based immigration in service of abusive employers over any long-term opportunity for newcomers to Canada.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk slams the Saskatchewan Party's back-benchers for gleefully voting down basic accounting principles which even their own leaders don't dare to oppose publicly.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Frances Russell makes the case for mandatory voting as an antidote to vote suppression:

At first glance, entrenched opposition to mandatory voting in all the English-speaking democracies - Australia excepted - is puzzling. Given all the obligations of citizenship in a democracy -- paying taxes, serving on juries, licencing vehicles and businesses, paying to educate the next generation of citizens -it seems odd to oppose obligatory participation in the most important "have-to-do" of all: electing those who run our municipal, provincial and national governments. Mandatory voting -- all citizens of voting age required to cast ballots enforced by a small fine -- creates a better-informed electorate and produces a more truly representative democracy, in sharp contrast to the first-past-the-post system in vogue mainly in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Mandatory voting would also render useless the widespread use of voter suppression tactics that apparently tried to pollute and skew the outcome of Canada's 2011 federal election; tactics like robocalls sending people to distant and wrong polling stations and telling lies about "high voter turnout." According to court documents filed in mid-August 2012 by the Commissioner of Elections Canada, these suppression tactics may have occurred in as many as 247 of Canada's 308 ridings and were recorded in all ten provinces and at least one territory.

- NDP MP Andrew Cash points out the need for public policy which recognizes and improves the conditions of workers facing precarious employment. But of course, the Cons are responding by ramming through one set of attacks on workers, and plotting out plenty more to come.

- Bruce Cheadle writes about the Cons' latest moves to shut down debate on controversial legislation. And Martin Regg Cohn notes that Ontario's Libs share the Harper Cons' preference for a culture of unaccountability - which became glaringly obvious as they deleted the documentation behind their gas plant cancellations in the belief it would prevent anybody from questioning the action.

- Finally, Chantal Hebert minimizes the long-term effect of Clusterduff. But at the very least, the aroma of scandal emanating from the Senate figures to affect the next campaign one way or another: either Senators will once again hit the campaign trail and remind voters of the scandal, or the Cons (and Libs) will be forced to make do without the artificial advantage of publicly-funded Senate spokesflacks. And Keith Beardsley for one sees the Cons as being significantly weakened by public confirmation that they don't believe they have to follow any rules.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Business Insider reports on a new study from the U.S.' Congressional Research Service showing that in addition to exacerbating inequality, top-heavy tax cuts rank somewhere between useless and downright harmful when it comes to overall economic growth:

According to a new study by the Congressional Research Service (non-partisan), there's no evidence that tax cuts spur growth.

In fact, although correlation is not causation, when you compare economic growth in periods with declining tax rates versus periods with high tax rates, there seems to be evidence that tax cuts might hurt growth. But we'll leave that possibility for another day.
... The following charts show the correlation between tax rates and economic growth over the periods above. The slope of the solid line in each chart is the key.

The lefthand chart shows that there is no correlation between GDP growth and the top marginal tax rates. The righthand chart shows that there might be a very modest tendency toward faster economic growth with higher capital gains rates.

- Plenty of commentators are continuing to point out the Cons' lies, hypocrisy and broken promises when it comes to cap-and-trade - with Bruce Cheadle, Paul Wells, Stephen Maher and Colin Horgan all blasting the Cons while worrying that their blatant disregard for reality might succeed as a matter of political strategy. But of course, it's worth recognizing that the latter message may turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy: if pundits want to encourage more reality-based politics, it helps not to declare new heights of dishonesty as victories.

- Meanwhile, David Pugliese reports on the Cons' latest effort to hide facts about their government from Canadian citizens, as the Department of National Defence is being instructed to look for excuses to keep accurate information out of the public eye.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom salutes Rob Ford for daring to embody the form of self-absorbed exceptionalism which the Harper Cons try to keep hidden:

Modern conservatives believe the rules don’t apply to them. Various loopholes in the U.S. system ensure that Romney pays little or no income tax. But that’s all right. He’s Mitt Romney.

Yet if poor people or seniors use the same rules to pay no income tax, they’re just grifters.

Until he was caught, Romney had the grace to try and keep his real views on the rich and poor private. Ford doesn’t bother with such niceties.
...
Not that I would get rid of Ford. He may be useless as mayor. But he does have a role — one similar to that of a medieval king’s royal fool.

Ford reminds us of the absurdity of the powerful in general and the political right in particular. He is a piece of walking self-satire. Long may he reign.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- No, there was never any doubt that any statement which could possibly be interpreted as insufficiently jingoistic in favour of the oil industry was going to give rise to a backlash from the Cons' oilpatch base. But it's well worth noting that Thomas Mulcair has had little trouble defending his argument that the cost of environmental damage needs to be priced into all industries - and the "polluter pay" principle looks to be one which can stand up to even the most well-orchestrated spokespuppet attack.

- Which stands in stark contrast to the Cons' brand of controversial policy proposal, where we've just learned that they've been suppressing facts for years in an effort to sell unjustified cuts to seniors' retirement security.

- Public Radio International discusses the fair tax movement in Canada, while Barbara Ehrenreich notes that the poor are all too often preyed upon as cash cows rather than human beings as part of corporate calculations.

- Impolitical highlights what looks to be one of the next frontiers in the Cons' oil obsession: offshore Arctic drilling, with all the environmental dangers that figures to create.

- Finally, Bruce Cheadle discusses a report released by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada on the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by political parties.

Telling it like it is

Kudos to the CP's Bruce Cheadle in meeting the Cons' attempt to turn the Canada Revenue Agency into part of their advertising structure with the right response:

In response to written questions about why tax changes from 2006 were linked to the 2009 budget for an ad running in 2011, the ostensibly non-partisan revenue agency provided bullet-point responses that began with boilerplate boosterism:

"The Government of Canada is focused on the economy and is putting the needs of Canadians first."

The agency said "a number of tax measures" were introduced in 2009, and provided a link to the action plan web site. Of the CRA ad campaign's several stated priorities, just one measure — a first-time homebuyers tax credit — came about as part of the recession-fighting budget.