Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Kurtis Alexander points out how climate change is exacerbating the gap between wealthy and poor countries. Megan Mayhew Bergman highlights the importance of discussing climate change even where it's all too often treated as a taboo topic, while Jeff Sparrow points out that politicians are largely lagging behind the public's interest in climate action. And Kyle Pope and Mark Hertsgaard note that we also need to see more and better coverage of the impact a collapsing climate has on our lives.

- Meanwhile, Zach Dubinsky reports on new research suggesting that the tar sands are producing even more carbon pollution than previously assumed.

- Peter Walker reports on new research from the UK showing how first-past-the-post politics may tend toward extreme positions and poor reflections of public values by forcing voters into one of two camps. And the Canadian Press reports on Prince Edward Island's election and referendum which may finally bring proportional representation to Canada.

- The Financial Post points out a new survey showing an increasing number of Canadians - now 48 per cent - saying they're $200 or less per month away from insolvency. And Melody Judilla writes about the need for the rich to start contributing their fair share to a functional society.

- Finally, Julian Borger reports on the U.S.' plans to block any resolution prohibiting the use of rape as a weapon of war if it's taken to include any access to support for victims.

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.
...
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 the impression that our votes for change don't produce the expected results can lead to the public putting up with a destructive alternative just to have an alternative at all.

For further reading...
- For background on Prince Edward Island's electoral reform plebiscite, see Susan Bradley's report on the results, Sara Fraser on the Liberal government's attempt to weasel its way out of enacting the voters' choice, and Kevin Yarr on Wade MacLauchlan's new announcement of a second vote in an effort to reverse the results of the first one.
- And while there are plenty of other sources on each of the other votes referenced in the column, I'll point out the BBC's report on Colombia's rejected peace deal to go with past links on Brexit and the U.S. election, respectively.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Doug Saunders discusses how corporate cash hoarding is limiting any economic recovery - and what we can do about it:

(T)his should be a great time for companies to invest: low prices, low interest rates, cheaper labour costs. A sensible company would build up cash during boom times – when investments are more expensive – and spend it during recessions, when consumer demand is weak and capital is cheap.
Yet this is the precise opposite of what actually happens. Companies look at the low consumer demand and become terrified, failing to recognize their own role in creating it.

This has become a public issue. There are some very important reasons why we need investment and spending now – and why chopping down the cash mountains should come before filling in the debt pits.

Unemployment is threatening to cripple an entire generation in many countries. The worldwide food crisis has returned, for no good reason; with more investment, the world could produce more than enough food. There are serious housing shortages in most Western countries. The drive to reduce carbon emissions has stalled, due to a shortage of investment in nuclear and alternative-energy power sources.

If the economy doesn’t start moving, there is something else we could do: start taxing those cash reserves – especially those held overseas. If we make hoarding expensive, companies will find it more desirable to use earnings to increase market share, improve products through research or expand into new markets.

- Sarah Schmidt reports on the Cons' choice to prioritize an unregulated junk food industry over the advice of health experts on trans-fat monitoring.

- Don Morgan helpfully responds to criticism of his government's attacks on a hundred years of labour progress by saying that his own consultation paper means nothing whatsoever. Meanwhile, Erin Weir points out that Saskatchewan residents are facing real cost-of-living increases which the Sask Party has gone out of its way to avoid ameliorating.

- The Guardian highlights that the NDP is making inroads in Prince Edward Island, both in terms of general organization and a provincial leadership race.

- Finally, Gerald Caplan suggests that the Cons' environmental and military debacles are doing the NDP's work as an official opposition for it:

The first was the huge hole blown in their single most significant economic initiative – unwavering support for Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific. The second was the blow to their vaunted managerial efficiency that was to be demonstrated by a modernized Canadian military machine, central to the warrior culture the government wants to make a cherished Canadian value.

In each case, the week’s bad news happened to be the fourth in a series of bad stories that have begun to undermine these two major projects. Oil pipelines received the most coverage, all of it damning. Enbridge’s very public humiliation at the hands of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, for a serious pipeline rupture in Michigan in 2010, reminded Canadians that no fewer than three large oil spills had taken place in Alberta itself just the previous month. That in turn evoked unwelcome memories of last year’s massive spill near Peace River, Alta., which then led to reminders that besides the Michigan disaster, 2010 also saw an average of two pipeline failures every day in Alberta. No one, it seems, had remembered this distressing record – until now.

Suddenly, the existing political equation was turned on its head. Instead of the Harper-led attacks on opponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline project as radicals, Canadian politicians and oil interests were now falling all over themselves to insist they put safety first. The villains had become, in the words of one American regulator, Enbridge’s “Keystone Kops.” And instead of Mr. Mulcair being characterized as the mindless arch-enemy of an ever-expanding energy sector, he seemed increasingly credible as a voice of elementary commonsense, as polls indicate.
...
So the competent Harper economic managers cannot properly supply the armed forces they’ve tried so hard to elevate as a symbol of conservative Canada. And their signature economic policy cannot advance without a guarantee that some time, somewhere, Canada will continue to pay massive environmental costs for it. It seems the Conservatives are graciously doing a good deal of Mr. Mulcair’s work for him.

But I will caution that the Cons have offered plenty of examples of their own incompetence before which weren't enough to cause voters to turf them from office. And the NDP's real work likely lies in making sure that these types of stories stay at the forefront of Canadian political discussion, rather than allowing the Cons to deflect attention elsewhere.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Both Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page and Interim Auditor General John Wiersema are rightly ripping the Cons for their complete unwillingness to be honest about how they're wasting public money. But then, the Cons see a complete lack of accountability as a feature rather than a bug.

- Statistics Canada notes that major changes to the census are a bad idea even on a ten-year time frame. Which makes the Cons' last-minute evisceration of the long form look even more insane.

- Paul McLeod points out that the Cons' attempts to rewrite the outcome of provincial elections went far beyond mere endorsements and spin:

On Prince Edward Island, Liberals are quietly seething despite Robert Ghiz’s re-election with a majority government. They accuse the federal Tories, in particular Senator Mike Duffy and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, of trying to steal the election for the Tories.

The dispute centres on Kenney calling in the RCMP in the middle of the election campaign to investigate allegations of fraud and bribery around a provincial immigration program. The story was concurrently leaked to the Globe and Mail, which ran the piece on its front page.

The charges came from three former government bureaucrats. It was later revealed they were driven to a news conference by a Mike Duffy staffer.

- Finally, we'll have to hope that the workers injured in an explosion at Regina's CCRL refinery. But it's also worth noting that between the refinery fire and the death of a worker at an asphalt plant near Glaslyn, this week's news doesn't exactly speak well of the Sask Party's emphasis on voluntary safety in the workplace.

On regional effects

The NDP's provincial surges in Canada's Atlantic provinces has received some attention already. But it's particularly worth noting how the provincial numbers figure to relate to the recent federal election results.

On the one hand, it does seem that the federal campaign managed to catch the attention some voters who otherwise weren't considering the NDP as a possibility - with at least some of those voters now expressing their support.

But perhaps more noteworthy is the fact that the NDP's provincial results in each province other than Nova Scotia still have a ways to go to catch up to the party's federal vote share. And if a higher profile nationally can make those numbers converge, then it looks entirely possible that the NDP could emerge as the leading challenger for government throughout a region that's historically been almost entirely barren territory.

On mismanagement

This weekend's news about Deceivin' Stephen's gaffe on sales tax harmonization is an important enough story in showing that the Cons are sorely lacking in managerial competence. But the picture gets even worse when one looks at the Cons' subsequent "apology".

Here's the main part of the story so far:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Office has apologized to the government of Prince Edward Island for praising the Island for considering harmonizing its provincial sales tax with the GST.

Mr. Harper gave the speech Friday during a luncheon of the Economic Club of Toronto.

But provincial officials called off negotiations two weeks ago, saying they could not reach a deal with Ottawa that was acceptable to the Island government.

It appears nobody told the Prime Minister that negotiations had ended.

"I'm pleased to see Prince Edward Island looking at harmonizing its sales tax with the GST," Mr. Harper said in the speech...

Erin Mitchell, director of communications for Premier Robert Ghiz, said she was at a loss to explain Mr. Harper's comments.

But late Friday night, she said the Island government received a call from the Prime Minister's Office apologizing for the inaccuracy.

"The PMO is now aware that negotiations regarding HST have concluded with the province," she said.

In sum, the Cons tried to push harmonization on PEI, which said it wasn't interested and cut off negotiations. And the Cons were forced to apologize after claiming credit for continued negotiations long after the province had indicated it wasn't interested in what the Cons had to offer.

Which leads to the Cons' public statement for the article:

Carolyn Stewart Olsen, a spokeswoman for Mr. Harper, said they had set aside money in the budget to woo Prince Edward Island into joining the harmonized sales tax.

"We have been in talks," she said. "There is no agreement to date. But we remain hopeful."

She later said that the Prime Minister was told discussions had taken place, but that "we understand there are no discussions at the present time."

In other words, even while trying to explain their own failure to recognize that PEI wasn't interested in harmonization, the Cons still couldn't take "no" for an answer. Instead, they seem to want to use their own gaffe to pressure PEI back to the table for more of the negotiations which the Cons wrongfully pretended were going on already. And even the Cons' subsequent correction to their first explanation would only admit that nothing was going on "at the present time".

Not that it should be much of a surprise that the Cons are once again practicing their distinct brand of strong-arm federalism. But it's still remarkable that Harper can't even acknowledge a mistake without using it as an excuse to try to impose his party's will on an unwilling province. And both the initial mismanagement and the Cons' subsequent spin offer even more reasons why the provinces should be eagerly anticipating the end of the Cons' stay in power.