Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Andrew Nikiforuk discusses how the pandemic denial of Boris Johnson, Jason Kenney, Scott Moe and others is only ensuring that more people suffer avoidable illness and death. And Merlyna Lim and Brandon Rigato examine how Canada's far right has become a fertile breeding ground for anti-science conspiracies around COVID and climate change.  

- Polly Toynbee writes that the UK Cons need to be held responsible for the damage they've knowingly inflicted on their public health care system. 

- David Macdonald finds that a substantial portion of the inflation being used as an excuse for austerity and neglect is in fact directly traceable to corporate profiteering. 

- Ole Hendricksen calls out the joint effort between governments and the corporate sector to conceal health and safety risks in the name of maximizing the extraction of short-term profits. And Brian Mann highlights how corporations use bankruptcy laws selectively to shed the liabilities arising from their past abuses while otherwise continuing business as usual. 

- Finally, Rebecca Laibor and Umair Irfan discuss the IPCC's conclusion that new fossil fuel infrastructure can't be reconciled with averting a climate breakdown. And Yasmine Ghania reports that the Moe government's response to even the insufficient plans of the Trudeau Libs is to thumb its nose at any action whatsoever. 

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Laird Cronk and Sussanne Skidmore offer their take as to how to ensure everybody benefits from British Columbia's recovery plan. And Trish Hennessy discusses the need to build a more empathetic and inclusive society:

COVID-19 has exposed what many of us already knew: public health is the key driver of everything, from community wellbeing to a thriving economy. If ever there was a time to embrace a Health-in-All-Policies approach to government decision-making, it is now.

COVID-19 has exposed the short-sightedness of austerity budgeting, where governments prioritized tax cuts over needed investments in public services—in health and mental health, education, child care, social supports, affordable housing, public transit, long-term care, and more. Decades of government cuts removed the layers of protection that should have already been there for us to weather the COVID-19 storm. Governments that respond to re-emergence with more belt-tightening are doing more harm than good.

COVID-19 has exposed how profit should not be a motive for basic services, such as long-term care. It has also exposed weak links in the supply chain and the need to ensure domestic supply chains that are resilient and promote local inclusive economic initiatives. It is showing us that some services should be in public hands, not for profit.

The pandemic  has also exposed underlying structural inequities that have long existed but went ignored: inequities based on income, race, ethnicity, gender, disability, and postal code (where you live). Those inequities interconnect to create health inequities, to limit life chances for those who are marginalized, disadvantaged, and low-income. A crisis like COVID-19 only serves to magnify and deepend [sic] those inequalities.
...
There can be no going back to the old system, which failed to meet the needs of the modern labour market even before the arrival of the pandemic. Nor can we continue to ignore the need for a basic income standard, better support for people who work in the service, retail, accommodation, arts and culture, and caring sectors, and the regulation of “sharing economy” work.

Wellbeing. Equality. Inclusion. Resilience. Sustainability. People and planet before profits.

These are key principles that should guide us as we recover, reset, and rebuild.

- Better Dwelling points out how people have long been taking on increasing debt loads as the public sector has refused to invest in people's needs. And Jesse Snyder reports on the additional debt load COVID-19 is imposing on households (which, unlike governments, can't sustain them in the longer term).

- Polly Toynbee highlights the capital gains which are further distorting the distribution of wealth in favour of the ultra-rich. Luke Savage points out how tech giants have become the new robber barons, including by taking advantage of the crisis which has harmed the productive economy. Mark Harris discusses the cruel absurdity of pandemic disaster capitalism. And David Hillman makes the case for a Robin Hood tax to ensure the financial sector contributes its fair share toward the public good.

- The Canadian Press reports on the conditions attached to federal bailouts for large businesses, which properly include an equity stake for the public. But Canadians for Tax Fairness notes the need to do more to prevent tax dodging by corporate recipients of public aid.

- Finally, Jordan Leichnitz discusses the vital role the federal NDP is playing in ensuring that people aren't left behind by a federal government focused primarily on maintaining the capital-focused status quo.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Polly Toynbee writes that the coronavirus has highlighted how poverty kills - and how a concerted fight against inequality is a precondition to a healthier society:

This time the coronavirus epidemic touches everyone, as all can see who is harmed most. This time, double the death rate for the low-paid, their coffins soon piling up twice as fast in Blackpool or Middlesbrough as in the richest parts of the country, may deliver a shock on the political Richter scale rarely registered before.

Years of research show the social gradient of death is not a poverty cliff-edge but that it runs in a straight line from bottom to top: on the graph people get gradually healthier as they get richer...
...
What kills is inequality itself. Beyond the struggle to get by, it’s the stigma of disrespect, the lack of choice or agency. Disempowerment makes people ill and die young.

Marmot’s report in February measured the steep deterioration in health inequality in England since 2010: the rise in child poverty, insecure work, food banks, worsened living conditions “with insufficient money to lead a healthy life”, and the loss of children’s centres. “Austerity,” he warned, “will cast a long shadow over the lives of the children born and growing up under its effects.”

Is he surprised that Covid-19 is not a leveller, but has double the death rate in deprived districts? “It’s exactly what I expected,” he told me this week. “Most diseases follow the social gradient. The poor are most likely to suffer hypertension, COPD [a lung condition], obesity – all carrying a greater risk of fatal infection. The poor are older biologically, ageing faster.”
...
...Inequality is responsible for the longevity decline, and this government has no chance of reversing it without radically transforming life chances. Five more years of healthy life? We must hold the government’s feet to the fire on that promise. The virus has shone a light on the facts of British life and death.

- Meanwhile, both John Harris and Max Fawcett write that the need for a public income backstop in the wake of COVID-19 should help to make the case for a basic income more generally.

- Kim Stanley Robinson discusses both the ongoing risks arising from the disruption of the status quo ante, and the opportunity to plan out the society we want to build. And Ryan Meili points out the importance of ensuring that any reopening plan prioritizes people over corporate interests, while Katrina Miller sets out a test to determine whether any bailout proposal fits that bill. 

- Aaron Wherry writes about fundamental unfairness of the risks of COVID-19 being borne disproportionately by people already facing the challenges of low incomes and insecure work - particularly when conservative politicians are eager to push more and more people into that type of precarity. David Macdonald finds that over half a million low-income workers are effectively being threatened with the loss of their current income supports if they refuse unsafe work. Sujatha Gidla discusses how the workers continuing to provide services in the course of a pandemic are being treated as sacrificial rather than essential. And David Fairey makes the case for paid sick leave as one necessary boost to the security available to workers, while PressProgress calls out Cargill for instead creating deliberate incentives for workers to stay on the job while sick and contagious.

- Finally, David Sheppard argues that the collapse in demand and prices in the wake of the coronavirus is only a preview of what the future holds for the fossil fuel sector. And Mike Moffatt and John McNally discuss how to rebuild our economy while also ensuring that we do our utmost to avoid a climate calamity.

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Annie Lowrey writes about the long-term effects of the millennial generation facing a second economic shock in the years which would normally serve as the base for personal stability and growth.

- Polly Toynbee weighs in on the holes exposed in social safety nets by COVID-19, while recognizing that reality also raises the prospect of longstanding problems finally being remedied. And Amartya Sen likewise points out what lessons we should be taking for the development of access to food, health care and other necessities.

- But Morris Pearl and William Lazonick lament the U.S.' choice to funnel bailout money to the rich rather than offering any meaningful support to workers. And Patrick Falconer calls out Brian Pallister for taking a pandemic as an opportunity to inflict shock-doctrine cuts to non-profit service providers.

- Eric Grenier writes that a strong majority of Canadians recognize the need to ensure the coronavirus is under control, rather than having any interest in rushing back to the previous normal when lives are at stake. And Paul Krugman points out that the few voices demanding that we sacrifice lives to premature re-opening can be entirely ascribed to greed and misinformation.

- Sara Birrell comments on the emptiness of corporate declarations of friendship and social responsibility. And Tobias Klinge, Rodrigo Fernandez and Manuel Aalbers observe that we can't afford to let people's health be subordinated to pharmaceutical industry profiteering.

- Finally, David Webster discusses the Libs' choice to continue exporting violence and death to the Middle East. And Yves Engler criticizes the Trudeau government's willingness to again side with the Saudi regime against human rights.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Brendan Kennedy reports on the massive job losses being caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Andrew Jackson offers his suggestions to provide immediate help to workers facing that urgent crisis today, while also laying the groundwork for a transition to a clean economy once we're able to start rebuilding. And Angella MacEwen highlights the need for a rescue package to be based on both speed and responsiveness to gaps in coverage.

- Ricardo Tranjan examines the financial insecurity facing people who are being told their rent obligations and other expenses aren't going away even after their incomes have disappeared. And Heather Scoffield argues that the federal government needs to step up in ensuring that renters aren't left out in the cold. 

- Maureen Callahan discusses the class implications of COVID-19 in the Hamptons.  Polly Toynbee observes that an economic collapse is forcing the middle class to confront a decimated social safety net. And Nick Shaxson writes that tax justice needs to be taken into account in designing and funding our recovery. 

- Jerome Roos weighs in on the need to deal with the massive piles of debt accumulated even before the pandemic.

- Gillian Steward writes that Alberta's relative success in responding to the coronavirus can be traced to the public health care system which Jason Kenney is so determined to dismantle.

- Finally, Tammy Robert calls out Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party for delaying public information about the spread of COVID-19 in order to frame their partial budget announcement.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Alexandra Zannis discusses the need to treat the end of poverty as a core policy goal. Peter Gilmer highlights how voters motivated by Christian ethics should be particularly focused on improving the condition of marginalized people. And Lynn Giesbrecht reports on Cindy Blackstock's work to call needed attention to the continuing systemic discrimination against Indigenous people in Canada.

- Meanwhile, Toby Sanger comments on the glaring need to crack down on tax havens and the wealthy few who abuse them to avoid contributing to the social good.

- Jason Markusoff examines the glaring flaws in the attempts of tar sands operators to paint themselves as environmentally responsible even by the standards of oil producers. Fiona Harvey, Damian Carrington, Jonathan Watts and Patrick Greenfield offer some suggestions to rein in the fossil fuel industry. Bruce Wilson writes that energy sector workers are well aware of the life-and-death stakes involved in carbon pollution. And Don Pittis rightly questions whether anybody trying to invest for the long term should want to bet on a dying sector.

- Eric Beinhocker writes about the need for a carbon abolition movement. And Polly Toynbee discusses the change in culture already flowing from growing activism against the climate crisis.

- Finally, Derrick O'Keefe writes that a strong turnout among young voters could result in a massive change to Canada's political status quo. And Laird Cronk and Sussanne Skidmore argue that voters should support an NDP government to end economic insecurity and precarity.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Aditya Chakrabortty discusses the belated recognition among the world's most privileged few that they can't but their way out of the fundamental issues facing humankind. And Branko Milanovic highlights the Davos set's lip service to combating inequality as long as it does nothing to affect the imbalances in their favour.

- The London School of Economics points out Jonathan Mijs' work on the connection between social divisions and relative popular acceptance of inequality. And Polly Toynbee writes about the right's exploitation of that link:

Both rich and poor delude themselves that they are ordinary. But telling people the facts doesn’t change their attitudes: increasingly they cling to a moral belief that people rise by merit, sinking for lack of it. Spend time talking to people using food banks or in Citizens Advice offices knocked down by benefit sanctions, and too often you hear people absorbing the blame. “I should have tried harder at school,” is a frequent refrain, as if no other forces were at play. Talk to the mega-rich – I once conducted focus groups of earners up to £10m – and they are wilfully ignorant about their super-privilege, unshakable in believing their superior merit.

The right captured the story, the emotions, the moral framing: social democrats need to seize it back with a narrative of immorality that is more compelling. The British Social Attitudes survey suggests a swing back towards empathy with the swelling numbers of poor people – including more than 4 million children. But still inheritance tax remains the most reviled of all taxes. The right forever tries to prove poor people are more stupid by nature than the rich, but Professor Steve Jones, a celebrated geneticist, when asked about the heritability of intelligence, replies deftly that the most important heritable trait, by miles, is wealth.

- David Sirota interviews Anand Giridharadas about the pitfalls of relying on elite philanthropy rather than democratic decision-making.

- The Australia Institute examines how tax giveaways to businesses accomplish nothing. And the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy discusses how a wealth tax can and should work south of the border.

- Finally, Sammy Hudes reports on a report prepared for Calgary's city council showing how the privatization of public services creates massive new risks to the public while only benefiting the corporations who are able to extract profits.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Robinson Meyer rightly criticizes the Trump administration for trying to bury a devastating national climate assessment on Black Friday.

- David Leonhardt discusses the U.S.' increasing corporate concentration and monopolization of nearly every major industry - and the resulting pressures on communities and workers in the face of shrinking choices.

- Meanwhile, Melanie McFarland writes that the tax evasion and offshoring reflected in the Panama Papers is far from a victimless crime, as everybody else ends up paying more for weaker public services as the wealthy stash their loot overseas. And Polly Toynbee points out that Britons have every reason to be unhappy with wealth inequality, but notes that the solution should be to seek economic justice rather than to withdraw from the world.

- The Economist makes the case for harm reduction rather than blanket prohibition as the best means of addressing the dangers of drug abuse.

- Finally, Christo Aivalis traces the Libs' history of trampling on collective bargaining rights from one Trudeau to another.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading...

- Thomas Torslov, Ludvig Wier and Gabriel Zucman examine the shifting of corporate profits to tax havens - and the false promise that corporate tax cuts will serve any purpose other than to undermine the collection of needed revenue by countries with real economies. And Liz Alderman notes that Portugal's rejection of austerity has led to better economic and social results than the alternative of cuts and suffering.

- Tom Saler writes about new archaeological research tracing inequality dating back thousands of years - and finding it to be a matter of choice rather than inevitability. And Meagan Day points out that inequality (particularly at the very top) continues to get worse by the year.

- Alex Finnis reports on the UK's largest jump in poverty since Margaret Thatcher was in power. Thiemo Fezter studies (PDF) the role the UK Cons' austerity played in fomenting support for the far-right UKIP as well as the disastrous Brexit vote. And Polly Toynbee writes about the added demands being placed on the UK's citizenry to plan for their government's irresponsibility out of already-limited resources:

Eight years of austerity has only cut debt by shifting a financial deficit on to a social deficit everywhere else. Philip Hammond, the chancellor and austerian-in-chief, has said taxes must rise to pay for the NHS, but he will return to his autumn budget besieged by needs in every threadbare service. Austerity was not accompanied by telling the public to expect less of everything for ever.
...
 or now, the Brexit crisis distracts from all its other failures. When the former attorney general Dominic Grieve tells Sky News that no deal will cast us into “a state of emergency – basic services we take for granted might not be available”, Cassandra-like, he is ignored as Project Fear mark two. But when Doug Gurr, the head of Amazon UK – no political player – warns of “civil unrest” within two weeks of a no-deal guillotine, we should all sit up and pay attention. He said that to Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, at a meeting with business chiefs last Friday: Amazon is making contingency plans.

Everyone will take fright at the government’s own warnings to businesses and households. John Manzoni, the head of the civil service, told MPs last week that a no-deal break would be “almost unimaginable”, and have “horrendous consequences”. Already the government warns that the M26 in Kent will be a “holding area” for 1,400 trucks to ease gridlock as 10,000 lorries a day are potentially delayed by new EU customs checks. Mazoni warns of the need to stockpile food and medicines: “We have to put contingencies in place.” Stockpiling food – that’s an order to panic! And why not – half our food is imported, of which 80% comes from Europe via Dover.
...
Conspiracy theorists claim a “deep state” really controls this country, a civil service and a dark establishment that prevent any radical change. That theory is now being tested to destruction. This has been the worst session of parliament in recent memory: the next may be worse. There is no deep state – nothing out there to save us from self-inflicted disaster. Only we can save us from ourselves.

- Samira Shackle discusses the value of viewing crime primarily as a condition to be treated, rather than an excuse to inflict punishment.

- Finally, Duncan Cameron makes the case for a national public bus service to more than fill the void left by Greyhound's disappearance.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Joseph Stiglitz discusses the apparent destructive belief among Davos' elites that irrational exuberance and top-heavy economic gains are remotely sustainable:

The world is plagued by almost intractable problems. Inequality is surging, especially in the advanced economies. The digital revolution, despite its potential, also carries serious risks for privacy, security, jobs, and democracy – challenges that are compounded by the rising monopoly power of a few American and Chinese data giants, including Facebook and Google. Climate change amounts to an existential threat to the entire global economy as we know it.

Perhaps more disheartening than such problems, however, are the responses. To be sure, here at Davos, CEOs from around the world begin most of their speeches by affirming the importance of values. Their activities, they proclaim, are aimed not just at maximizing profits for shareholders, but also at creating a better future for their workers, the communities in which they work, and the world more generally. They may even pay lip service to the risks posed by climate change and inequality.

But, by the end of their speeches this year, any remaining illusion about the values motivating Davos CEOs was shattered. The risk that these CEOs seemed most concerned about is the populist backlash against the kind of globalization that they have shaped – and from which they have benefited immensely.
...

For the CEOs of Davos, it seems that tax cuts for the rich and their corporations, along with deregulation, is the answer to every country’s problems. Trickle-down economics, they claim, will ensure that, ultimately, the entire population benefits economically. And the CEOs’ good hearts are apparently all that is needed to ensure that the environment is protected, even without relevant regulations.

Yet the lessons of history are clear. Trickle-down economics doesn’t work. And one of the key reasons why our environment is in such a precarious condition is that corporations have not, on their own, lived up to their social responsibilities. Without effective regulations and a real price to pay for polluting, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that they will behave differently than they have.

- And Arwa Mahdawi comments on the "class-passing" needed for anybody to try to break through increasingly rigid class barriers.

- Polly Toynbee writes about the link between privatization, pollution and poor health in the UK. And Julia Conley discusses how Donald Trump's latest giveaway to polluters will put water quality at risk for Americans.

- Finally, Hayley Peterson reports on Whole Foods' use of stringent "scorecards" to control and punish employees, while Ellen Tannam reports on Amazon's plans to take constant monitoring to new extremes with bracelets to track warehouse employees' whereabouts at all times. And Sara Mojtehedzadeh points out how Ontario is continuing to allow employers to use temporary workers as a means of avoiding responsibility for health and safety.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Larry Elliott is optimistic that the UK's election result will lead to an end of destructive austerity. James Downie comments on the example Jeremy Corbyn's campaign provides for progressives in the U.S. (and elsewhere). And Karl Nerenberg writes about the importance of youth turnout in boosting Labour's fortunes.

- But Polly Toynbee offers a reminder as to how a first-past-the-post electoral system prevents voters' interests from translating fully into government decision-making.

- Gareth Hutchins reports on a new study showing that in Australia like in many other countries, any economic growth has been more than skimmed off the top by a well-connected few. And Jordan Brennan offers this chart on the similar effect in Ontario:

- Lana Payne discusses how a $15 minimum wage (and a living wage generally) would change workers' lives for the better. Meagan Gilmore highlights how unions are leading the way in pursuing domestic violence leave to ensure that work demands don't trap people in abusive relationships. And Nora Loreto points out the importance of building social movements in order bring about political change.

- Finally, Ed Finn writes that the business lobby's knee-jerk anti-government position misses the vital role of a strong public sector in building a functional economy and society:

The public and private sectors have become so interdependent that one cannot be attacked or diminished without hurting the other. Public expenditures often stimulate private sector activities. Many industries could not get started or keep going without government services and infrastructure. And of course governments need a robust economy to boost employment and generate the revenue they need to provide social services.

Public funds spent on making workers healthier and better educated provide the private sector with a more efficient work force. Public funds spent on roads, airports, and other utilities are essential to the operation of private industry.
...
That's the absurdity of the neoliberal assault on the public sector. Somehow more private industrial development is supposed to flow from less public education and research. More private X-ray machines, MRIs, and other hardware is supposed to be made for fewer public hospitals. More private cars and trucks are supposed to be driven on fewer public highways. A smaller public police force is supposed to guard larger private fortunes.

What is more likely to happen -- and what in fact has happened in recent years -- is that restraints on growth in the public sector cause overall national production to be slowed down, rather than causing a shift in growth from the public to the private sector.

You would think that, by this time, our political leaders would realize just how illogical, inequitable, and impracticable this self-defeating business dogma really is. Instead, they submissively continue to aid and abet the corporate kingpins in their deranged attacks on the public sector and public employees.

As long as this ignorance of public and private sector interdependence prevails, so will the cancers of social and economic deprivation, inequality, poverty, deregulation, privatization, crumbling infrastructure, and environmental degradation.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Vincent Bevins interviews Branko Milanovic about the economic roots of the working-class revolt against neoliberalism, while pointing out that there's nothing inevitable about globalization harming large numbers of people in the developed world:

Let’s start with the obvious question. Does the elephant graph explain Brexit and Trump? 

Yes, I think that it largely does explain Brexit and Trump. Why? Because it shows in very stark terms that people in the lower parts of rich countries’ income distributions have seen fewer benefits of globalization compared both to the people in Asia against whom they often compete in global supply chains and compared to the people in their own countries’ tops of the distributions. You just cannot undo these two facts.
...
Rich world governments, in say the US and Western Europe, failed to “mop up” globalization’s mess. What could they have done differently?

Perhaps it is easy to say it with hindsight, but they could have argued for trade pacts that would pay more attention to workers’ standards rather than to the protection of intellectual property rights and patents.

Rich countries, and especially the US, could have paid more attention to the quality of education and tried to not only equalize access to the best schools but make public schools’ quality similar to the quality of private schools. You may say that it is a generally desirable policy that has little to do with globalization: I agree, but I also think that it would have reduced the number of “losers” because it would have enabled larger swaths of the population to successfully compete globally.

- George Monbiot discusses how celebrity culture has facilitated the corporate takeover of our social sphere. Katrina vanden Heuvel notes that Donald Trump's false populism has given way to pure plutocracy in the naming of nothing but corporate elites to his cabinet. And Polly Toynbee reflects on a miserable 2016 for far too many people, while highlighting the need to fight against the trends toward corporatism and austerity in the year to come.

- Malcolm Buchanan writes that the CETA is yet another bad trade deal being sold as an inevitability in the face of serious concerns.

- PressProgress points out that a million Canadian retail workers are making do with less than a living wage while catering to holiday shoppers.

- Finally, Heidi Garrett-Peltier discusses how renewable energy stands to create far more jobs than fossil fuels. And CBC reports that both Canada and the U.S. have taken some steps to rein in oil drilling in sensitive Arctic waters.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Duncan Cameron offers his take on the Paris climate change conference. Martin Lukacs notes that while the agreement reached there may not accomplish anywhere near what we need, the building climate movement should provide more hope than we've had to this point. Similarly, Thomas Walkom sees the summit as a useful fraud which should lead to something better. And Jonathan Sas argues that it's long past time for Canada's federal government to start acting - rather than merely spinning - on climate change.

- Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders points out the dangers of environmental journalism in the face of potential violence and corruption.

- Bob Mackin reports on David Loukidelis' criticism the B.C. Libs' delete, delete, delete attitude toward information. And Michael Smyth is skeptical as to whether matters will improve, while Travis Lupick finds particularly little reason to think anything will change given Christy Clark's aversion to putting anything in writing which might allow anybody to assess her actions later.

- CBC reports on Mike Simon's call for a focus on the social determinants of health in Atlantic Canada. And Jennifer Grahan discusses how Saskatchewan doctors are fighting back against putting MRIs up for sale.

- Finally, Polly Toynbee writes about the connection between the gender pay gap and the proper valuation of care work (whether paid or not):

Caring, cooking, cleaning, childminding and all the jobs servicing a society that would fall apart without women’s work are despised because these things are what women do, and women are despised for doing it and for being women.

At its most extreme, the horrendous domestic violence statistics reflect that abiding social control and contempt. Images of a few powerful women do nothing much to up-end that essential truth. One woman prime minister was remarkable, as are all manner of “role models”. But their exceptionalism makes the point: only 34% of managers, directors and senior officials are women. And these top women suffer a bigger pay gap than women at the bottom: the finance sector has the widest gap.

More women reaching the tree-tops doesn’t reflect most working women’s fraught dilemmas: caring is the obstacle, so a disproportionate number of high fliers don’t have children.
...
It would be astonishing if there wasn’t a huge pay gap with a downward pay spiral where underpaid women care for children and old people, taking in each other’s caring, unable to pay each other enough, causing the crisis in social care, in healthcare and in childcare. All that is despite women’s better educational results, despite 45 years of equality law.

MP Maria Miller, the Tory head of the committee, may not call for an equality revolution. But we could start with total pay transparency, so everyone knows who earns what and why. Make employers let in a trade union rep once a year to recruit, restoring some power to the workforce. As hospitals overflow for lack of home care, nursing homes close and the promised 30-hour free childcare can’t be delivered, we could reset the valuation on caring until as many men as women do it, at home and at work.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Polly Toynbee writes about the unfortunate agreement among the UK's major parties not to talk about the real effects of gratuitous cuts for fear that the public won't abide honesty in politics. And George Monbiot discusses how the UK's tax system favours rents over productive uses of capital:

The Westminster government claims to champion an entrepreneurial society of wealth creators and hardworking families, but the real rewards and incentives are for rent. The power and majesty of the state protects the patrimonial class. A looped and windowed democratic cloak barely covers the corrupt old body of the nation. Here peaceful protesters can still be arrested under the 1361 Justices of the Peace Act. Here the Royal Mines Act 1424 gives the crown the right to all the gold and silver in Scotland. Here the Remembrancer of the City of London sits behind the Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons to protect the entitlements of a corporation that pre-dates the Norman conquest. This is an essentially feudal nation.

It’s no coincidence that the two most regressive forms of taxation in the UK – council tax banding and the payment of farm subsidies – both favour major owners of property. The capping of council tax bands ensures that the owners of £100m flats in London pay less than the owners of £200,000 houses in Blackburn. Farm subsidies, which remain limitless as a result of the Westminster government’s lobbying, ensure that every household in Britain hands £245 a year to the richest people in the land. The single farm payment system, under which landowners are paid by the hectare, is a reinstatement of a medieval levy called feudal aid, a tax the vassals had to pay to their lords.

If this is the government of enterprise, not rent, ask yourself why capital gains tax (at 28%) is lower than the top rate of income tax. Ask yourself why principal residences, though their value may rise by millions, are altogether exempt. Ask yourself why rural landowners are typically excused capital gains tax, inheritance tax and the first five years of income tax. The enterprise society? It’s a con, designed to create an illusion of social mobility.

- Jen St. Denis reports on a few of our options to reduce inequality in Canada. Carol Goar follows up by observing that fair taxation needs to be a significant piece of the puzzle. And David Cay Johnston highlights how tax giveaways to the rich have proven to be an economic failure - while more fair taxes at the top have been a boon to California's economy.

- Monika Dutt makes the case for a national pharmacare program. And the Institute for Research in Public Policy concludes that in the absence of a federal government willing to take the lead, we'd be best of to have the provinces take the first step in making medication available to everybody who needs it.

- Naomi Klein points out why the tar sands are far from the source of indefinite economic growth they've been painted at by the Cons.

- Finally, Michael Geist discusses what tends to stay hidden in selective "open government" policies. And Jim Bronskill exposes the Cons' attempt to keep telecoms from offering any information at all about how the release of personal information to police and other governmental authorities.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- In the context of Scotland's referendum on independence, Polly Toynbee reminds us why fragmentation can only serve to exacerbate inequality - a lesson worth keeping in mind as the Cons look to devolve responsibility for taxation and public services in Canada:

What’s to be done? The answer from all sides is “localism”. Westminster’s monstrous hegemony must be broken up with devolution. If Scotland goes, rump UK will be bereft and depleted. But if Scotland stays, monumental home-rule promises made in the last week’s panic will offer Scotland immense tax, spending and borrowing powers that, says the London School of Economics’ Tony Travers, England will rightly resent. Already the Barnett formula gives the Scots more per capita, but look what happens now: under Osborne austerity, whatever extra Scotland spends or borrows will come out of the Treasury’s UK total – and that means less for the rest. Good to break Osborne’s unnecessarily extreme cuts planned for after the election, but cities, regions, counties, all will want equal freedom from Treasury handcuffs biting into local leaders’ wrists.

At first sight, how attractive it looks for each locality to raise tax and spend its share of national income as best suits local circumstance. Localism sounds comforting. It is indeed high time to give back powers Margaret Thatcher stripped out and replace the millions of council homes she sold. Labour would give local health and wellbeing boards some NHS powers. Schools and further education should be returned too. Borrowing to build, councils should sell bonds.

But alarm bells ring when groupthink grips all parties. For social democrats there are as many dangers as opportunities. Unlike more equal federal countries, England is so grotesquely unequal in geography and class that London and the south-east make all the money, the rest take it. Redistribution from the south must limit the scope for local tax-raising.
...
I don’t know the answers to these conundrums, but dashing for devo is dangerous. The deepest recession of our lifetime was bound to rouse anti-politics wrath. The idea of Britain is hollowed out by 30 years of selling everything national (with even Royal Mail gone), trashing the public service ethos, sacking public staff, letting predatory capitalism rip while wages fall, pricing everything and valuing nothing. The logic of localism risks leading in the end to less national identity and less fair distribution of wealth. Good politics will revive if strong ideas hold the imagination, keeping enough people together with common goals.

- Meanwhile, Elizabeth Lee Ford-Jones writes about the emergency of a million Canadian children living in low-income homes - signalling that there's an awful lot of work to be done to fight poverty on a national scale.

- Trish Hennessy looks at the positive spillover effects of a $15 federal minimum wage. And Angella MacEwen discusses how greater bargaining power for workers is ultimately a must if we want to build a more fair society:

Workers' bargaining power has been restricted in two ways. First, workers employed through the Temporary Foreign Worker program are tied to a single employer. Second, many are not allowed to unionize. If a worker is unhappy with the wages or working conditions of their job, they can neither band together to demand better, nor walk across the street to a better employer.

The result is that employers do not have to raise wages to attract and keep workers. If there is a sufficient supply of vulnerable labourers, then current non-TFWP workers may be easily disciplined with the treat of being replaced by a willing temporary worker.

Limiting the pool of workers whose bargaining power is restricted may improve the situation of non-TFWP workers somewhat, if it means that they are less likely to believe the threat of being replaced. But it does nothing to improve the situation for temporary workers.

If there is a need for more low-skilled workers in Alberta, then Alberta should open up temporary and permanent immigration for low-skilled workers. But all workers should be allowed to move between employers, and to bargain wages and working conditions through the union of their choice. The best way to enforce employment standards is by giving workers the power to stand up for themselves.

- Nick Cohen observes that more and more of our political and social culture carries an entry fee which most families can't afford - turning the arts, journalism and politics into domains of privilege rather than public participation. And Paul Krugman laments that a top-down push for austerity is leading much of the developed world back toward stagnation or recession.

- Finally, Mike De Souza reports that the Cons have given up on even the facade of consulting about greenhouse gas emissions for the tar sands - signalling that a change in government is an absolute must if Canada is to become anything other than a climate scofflaw.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Polly Toynbee looks at how the UK is now treating children in need as investment opportunities to be exploited by investors, rather than people to be assisted. And Mark Taliano writes that privatization is a problem rather than a solution when it comes to providing public services.

- Geoff Leo uncovers still more stories about the abuse of temporary foreign workers. And David Climenhaga looks behind the business lobby's insistence on being granted a low-wage, no-rights pool of disposable foreign labour to replace Canadians who may expect to have lives outside of work rather than devoting their every moment and thought to serving a corporate master:

(W)hen they feel comfortable enough to slip outside their message box, a great many of them disparage their fellow Canadians, especially the young people who traditionally fill food service jobs in this country, because Canadian workers sometimes stand up for their rights and demand fair treatment.

Consider this unguarded commentary by a restaurant owner in my community, St. Albert, Alberta, sympathetically reported by the local bi-weekly.

"After years of struggling to retain full-time staff," the paper's reporter wrote, the local fast-food restaurant operator "resorted to hiring two foreign workers…" The reason, the reporter uncritically explained, was that the restaurateur found Canadian employees didn't show up for work, "showed a lack of commitment" or -- quelle horreur! -- wanted to change their schedules.
...
(T)alking points notwithstanding, the alleged labour shortage, the claimed skills shortage, the purported high cost of foreign workers and the desire to protect Canadian jobs aren't any of them the real issue -- it's the attitude of Canadian employees.

And remember, the Canadian employees were talking about are people like our own children!

This is a dirty little secret of many small businesses in communities all over Canada. All the government, Chamber of Commerce and trade association talking points in the world can't disguise it: The reason so many Canadian fast food employers love temporary foreign workers is not because Canadians are lousy workers, and certainly not because there's a genuine shortage of Canadians who could do the work, but because TFWs have no rights and are easy to exploit.

Uppity Canadians too readily stand up for their rights.

 - Meanwhile, Jacqueline Nelson reports on the latest protests among fast food workers (this time spanning the globe).

- Rick Salutin rightly slams Tim Hudak's fear-based economic policy. And Josh Mandryk offers some reason for hope in making the case for a stronger fair wage policy on government contracts.

- Finally, Seumas Milne looks at the state of European politics and concludes that a strong populist movement on the left is needed not only for its own sake, but also to ensure that genuine frustrations about the status quo can find some other outlet besides the prejudice and xenophobia of the far right:

(T)he council of ministers and commission will go on calling the shots in cahoots with the corporate interests that wield the real power at the heart of the EU. It is the ever-growing grip of banks and corporations on the Brussels machinery – reflected in the 30,000 lobbyists who feed off its work – that has shaped each new regulation, commission proposal and court ruling.

The result is a system that has given a failed economic model the force of treaty, entrenching deregulation and privatisation while corporate power is privileged over employment and social rights. It's an approach being played out in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal being negotiated between the EU and US – that would allow companies to bypass the courts to enforce business-drafted regulations over elected public authorities.

The result has been an erosion of the modest social protections built into the single market: growing restrictions on public intervention and investment in the name of competition, and the exploitation of migrant workers to undercut existing employees in the name of free movement of services.
...
So long as Europe's establishment remains locked in this Brussels orthodoxy, the only antidote to the growth of the far right is a populism of the left: one that targets class and corporate power instead of foreigners. In different ways, that has been the approach of Syriza, now leading the polls in Greece, and the Dutch Socialist party, expected to overtake Labour for the first time. Without it the rise of the racists and xenophobes will go on.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Polly Toynbee writes about the continued spread of privatization based solely on corporatist dogma even in the face of obvious examples of its harm to the public:

In the Royal Mail debacle, shares sold at £1.7bn rose to £2.7bn. The 16 investors chosen as "long-term" custodians included the most wolfish hedge funds, who sold the shares at once. Let's hope that ends any pretence that shareholders look after companies. What's more, the investment arm of Lazards, key adviser to Vince Cable, was also given "priority" status. But Lazard Asset Management sold its entire stake within a week at a profit of £8m. Likewise Goldman Sachs, employed to facilitate the sale, told its investors share prices would hit 610p a month after advising the government to float at 330p. How well these companies deserved their tongue-lashing from Margaret Hodge: "You all know each other. You work together. You trade with each other. You are part of this little clique and we the ordinary taxpayer lose out on it." This is a case of caveat vendor.

We should beware the inherent asymmetry when the state sells contracts and assets. On the government side, this is negotiating with a political gun at the head, conducted by inexperienced civil servants told to secure complex objectives, unable to walk away from already announced sell-offs. On the market side is rat-like native cunning impelled by profit, willingness to give mendacious assurances with one easy objective – to make money. Governments will always need to deal with markets for procurement and regulation – but that needs a strong, experienced civil service with equal cunning, not one cut by 30%, losing memory of past errors.
...
There is no evidence about how well contracting and privatising work: the best experts can find is 1980s assessments of early contracts for simple local services. At the very least, there should always be a state comparator. NHS contracting is galloping ahead, with no centrally gathered monitoring for comparison. Other privatisations rush on – probation and the court fines collection service – while companies built by cashing in from the state, such as G4S, A4E and Serco, are in disgrace. While Serco is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office after overcharging on tagging, it emerges that its finance director sold £2.7m shares two months before the share price tanked on a profits warning.

This is the world David Cameron assumes always does better than public service, as a matter of unproven conviction. Laying out his Open Public Services policy, he said everything was up for sale, with "a new presumption" that "public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service". When he said: "The old narrow, closed state monopoly is dead," he forgot to say that services sold or contracted would become private monopolies making handsome profits at our expense. The dogma driving these privatisations wilfully ignores past experience.

- David Dayen contrasts the IRS' public message about cracking down on tax cheats against its actions in giving tax evaders two more years to keep free-riding.

- Amber Hildebrandt discusses how Canadian employers became addicted to temporary foreign workers - though as Tim Harper notes, the Cons' consistent pushing of cheap labour at the expense of Canadian youth has played a major role. And Mike Moffatt wonders why there's been an explosion of temporary foreign workers in southwestern Ontario (among other regions with plenty of available workers).

- Diana Ziomislic reports on the manifestation of inequality through differences in Ontario children's dental health - while pointing out that a universal dental care system would represent an obvious means of closing that particular health gap.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne muses about Stephen Harper's degeneration and lack of impulse control - visible most recently in his choice to gratuitously pick a fight with Chief Justice of Canada Beverley McLachlin. But Lawrence Martin observes that there's nothing new either in Harper focusing maniacally on his enemies list, and including public servants on that list for absolutely no justifiable reason:

(T)hese Conservatives constitute what might be called Ottawa’s first real wedge government. Other governments, including Tory ones, have sought to be more representative. With this one, it’s divide and conquer. It’s less about broadening the tent than hardening the attitudes of those within. Others are seen as enemies at the gate.

But the antagonism is fuelled by more than strategic political imperatives. I recall interviewing David Emerson, who had a unique perspective because he served in both the cabinets of Paul Martin and Stephen Harper. There were things he preferred about the Harper operation. But one difference that alarmed Mr. Emerson was the degree of visceral contempt he saw from Mr. Harper and his top lieutenants toward those opposed to their beliefs. He’d never seen anything like it. How could they harbour, he wondered, so much venom?

The combination – a wedge government driven by such a degree of animosity – makes for a potent mix. It’s why the enemies list has kept growing. It’s why a woman as honourable as the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court is now on it.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Polly Toynbee discusses how the public shares in the responsibility for a political class oriented toward easily-discarded talking points rather than honest discussion:

Intense mistrust of parties is growing dangerously with each generation: with fewer than 1% of the population members of a political party, people understand less about the necessary compromises. Our poll's "angry" voters say they want politicians to say what they believe, not mouth the party line-to-take. Too many MPs are pitifully thin on vocabulary and imagery, short on wit, warmth, passion or imagination. Some exceptions – the TUC's Frances O'Grady, Kenneth Clark, Shirley Williams – have the gift of sounding like themselves, as if they believe what they say. Put the journalist Owen Jones on a platform and he blows your socks off. The public trusts Margaret Hodge's authentic passion on tax-dodging companies, though Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage suggest verbal felicity can be an actor's knack, not proof of honesty. Authenticity – or a semblance of it – is rare political gold dust.

But don't forget that politicians speak robotically for a reason – and voters share the blame. Voters say they dislike party discipline, wanting MPs to speak their consciences, yet as every original thought becomes a newsworthy "gaffe" and "split", voters also punish parties severely for any sign of disunity. Voters are contrary. If they want more electoral choice, why did they reject a small improvement in the AV referendum? They say they want honesty, but they don't always reward it.
...
On the doorstep, no candidate dare wag a finger to remind these angry citizens that they have duties too. No one tells them they should inform themselves better on things they care about, with reliable facts at a click of a mouse. Who dares tell them that complaining is no use if they take no part in the democracy that rules their life? Russell Brand nihilism is not OK – and where is he now? Is he out there doing something – anything at all, protesting, rioting – organising or still not arsed? In the end it's the arsed who keep any kind of democracy going – and the rest should zip their lip unless they are ready to get off their arses now and then. Don't get angry, get even. But brave would be the vote-wooing politician who dared give voters back a bit of their own medicine on the doorstep.

- Joe Mihevc writes that outsourcing and privatization may have seriously impeded the City of Toronto's response to its recent ice storm. And In the Public Interest reviews the damage done to the U.S.' public services by out-of-control privatization.

- Jody Heymann and Douglas Barthold remind us of Canada's advantage over the U.S. in health outcomes, while noting that there's plenty more we should be doing to boost the social determinants of health:

Beyond medical care, we need to address further how social conditions shape health. The countries outperforming us make effective social investments to promote health and well-being among children and adults alike. Just to name two: they provide job protected paid leave from work to meet health needs, and overwhelmingly, they ensure children receive early childhood education.

While Canada is far ahead of the U.S. in measures to promote population health, this work remains uneven and lags behind many competitors. Some provinces, like Quebec, have invested heavily in universal access to early childhood care while others provinces have done very little on this front.

The same can be said for basic working conditions like job protected sick leave, which remains spotty across the country. Affordable housing has become scarce in most of Canada’s urban centres.
Poverty rates in Canada, while lower than the U.S., have been on the rise – and poverty is one of the leading determinants of poor health.

If Canadians are going to continue to increase life expectancy, we’ll need to invest in preventing disease and promoting health, while ensuring that we learn the most efficient ways to spend health care dollars for those who do become sick.

- PressProgress takes a look at the Cons' false spin about income splitting - as well as the realities of a policy designed to funnel money toward wealthy two-parent families which can afford to have an adult out of work.

- Finally, CBC reports on the latest oil-by-rail disaster in Casselton, North Dakota. And while it's for the best that luck was on the side of Casselton's residents as a massive fire led to no casualties, that fortune shouldn't stop us from look at both the causes of the incident, and the overall dangers of relying on shipping explosive substances with questionable regulation.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Polly Toynbee writes that there's no magic involved in collecting fair tax rates from the rich - only a need for the political will to fund public priorities:

Cutting the 50% top rate suggests no great enthusiasm for rigorous taxing. Last week's ONS figures revealed gigantic avoidance of the 50% top rate. It could have been collected but George Osborne needed to prove it didn't work. The Treasury estimated raising the rate to 50% should bring in £6.2bn, but the actual return was a puny £100m.

In year one, before its official start date, high earners gamed the tax by rushing to take dividends and bonuses early. They paid more into pensions, gaining undeserved higher tax relief. Or they used trusts, or took income as capital gains. (That can be stopped, by fixing capital gains, as Nigel Lawson did, at the same rate as income tax, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies advocates.) Once Osborne announced the top rate would fall to 45%, high earners gamed it again. Incomes Data Services reports a massive delay in bonuses until after 6 April, when they leapt up by 107% in the finance sector to catch the new 45% rate. That could have been forestalled.

To Osborne it proved there's no point in taxing the rich. But the IFS says Denmark successfully collects its high top rate because it has no dodges: the rich can be taxed if reliefs are blocked. But this government never worried over income being sucked up from middle to top, with the share of national income taken by the top 1% now having risen to 14%, as GDP shifts from pay to profits. Osborne redistributes taxes the wrong way. Even raising tax thresholds sees most gain go to the top half, not to low earners.
...
Tax cheating should be Labour's chance to tell honest political truths: you get what you pay for, you can't have Swedish services on US tax ideology. Tax is the price we pay for civilisation. At elections, all parties promise the impossible, more with less and cuts in "bureaucracy" to pay for everything. Treating the public like children on tax does nothing for trust in politics. The door has opened for that conversation.

- Meanwhile, Miles Corak notes that we can't make any strides toward equality of opportunity without treating more equal distribution of wealth as a priority:

Relatively less upward mobility of the least advantaged is one reason why intergenerational mobility is lower in the United States than in other countries to which Americans are often compared. But it is not the only reason. Intergenerational mobility is also lower because children of top-earning parents are more likely to become top earners in their turn. An era of rising inequality is more likely to heighten these differences than to diminish them.

Inequality lowers mobility because it shapes opportunity. It heightens the income consequences of innate differences between individuals; it also changes opportunities, incentives, and institutions that form, develop, and transmit characteristics and skills valued in the labor market; and it shifts the balance of power so that some groups are in a position to structure policies or otherwise support their children’s achievement independent of talent.

Thus, those who are concerned about equality of opportunity should also care about inequality of outcomes.

- The CP reports on Canada's role in spying on allies through CSEC's electronic surveillance.

- Frances Russell comments on how both the federal ethics commissioner and the RCMP have all too willingly functioned as servants of the Harper Cons rather than the public interest.

- Finally, Sean Holman writes about the corrosive effect of excessive party discipline on Canadian democracy:

(I)t’s reasonable to assume “there’s got to be times, random chance if nothing else, that some of us disagree with what we’re voting on.”

But the fear of talking about what happens in caucus and cabinet – the private spaces where MLAs, MPPs and MPs are allowed to voice dissenting opinions about public issues – means that Canadians have little understanding of why their representatives make such compromises.

An example of that fear: during a background interview, one politician told me that, as a first-time provincial candidate, “I knew I was part of a larger franchise and I would only be able to sell drinks in the same size cup as everyone else. But I did think I would be able to at least decorate my store the way I wanted and have my own customer service approach.”

But when we sat down for what became a sweaty, two-hour on-camera interview, the politician talked about being a supporter (of) party discipline.

The politician later told me about suffering “sleepless nights” contemplating what may have been said during that interview, which I left on the cutting room floor.