Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The OECD reports on the relationship between equality and growth, and concludes that rising inequality is as toxic for economic development as it is for our social fabric. And David Rider discusses how increasing inequality is manifesting itself in several Toronto neighbourhoods.

- Meanwhile, Daniel Tancer finds finds that Canada' workers receive a significantly lower share of income than in other developed countries:

Our modern economy is anything but egalitarian, and labour’s share of income has been shrinking for decades as business profits soar while wages stagnate.

On this measure, Canada is actually more unequal than the U.S.

According to the ILO's global wage report, released last week, Americans — by a small margin — take home more of the country’s national income than Canadians do.

Labour’s share of income in the U.S. was 56.4 per cent in 2013, compared to 56 per cent for Canada.

A small difference, but unexpected, given that most other measures (such as income distribution) show Canada is considerably more equal than the U.S. when it comes to wealth.

In fact Canadian labour's share of income is among the lowest of the developed G20 countries, with only Italian and Australian workers taking home a smaller share of the income pie.

Most developed countries have been seeing that number slide for years. The ILO’s chart going back to 1991 shows all of the developed G20 economies seeing labour’s share of the income pie shrinking over the years.

- But unfortunately, the trend is instead toward workers' efforts instead being siphoned off to further enrich our corporate overlords - as in the case of pension funds which are being handed over to the financial sector with no accountability whatsoever.

- Mike De Souza exposes the Cons' failure to bother hiring staff to ensure rail safety.

- Finally, Shawn McCarthy reports on Environment Canada's conclusion that Canada will miss by far even the new and modest targets set by the Cons after they took power. And Isaac Tamblyn proposes that it's time to start ignoring climate change deniers in making policy - though removing them from far too many seats of government would seem to be a necessary first step.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Will Hutton compares the alternative goals of either shrinking government to the point where it does nothing or harnessing it to meet everybody's basic needs, and explains why we should demand the latter:

A financial crisis has been allowed to morph into a crisis of public provision because the government of the day will not lift a finger to compensate for the haemorrhaging of the UK tax base. What the state does is not the subject of a collective decision with concerned weighing of options. Instead, it’s an afterthought, with the greater priorities a reduction in public borrowing and freezing or lowering tax rates.

All the state can spend is what is left after those two greater priorities are met, and if it has to shrink to pre-modern levels then so be it. The market will provide: charity will alleviate suffering; people will get by; the roof will not fall in. Lifting taxation can never be considered to close the gap. It is, it is alleged, both economically self-defeating and immoral.
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(T)here is never a weighing up of the benefits of raising taxes against a particular use for public spending, nor any strategic long-term programme of investment.

This is bad enough in ordinary times, but when a chancellor refuses to consider raising taxes as the tax base collapses it is a recipe for disaster. It results in a minimal state, with implications for prisons, schools, courts, policing, legal aid, care, security and defence that are profound. Some of this could be avoided if, as both Labour and the LibDems propose, capital investment was not lumped in with current spending so that virtuous borrowing could be separated out. The country may also get lucky: wages stop stagnating and income tax receipts rise.

But the bigger truth is that if Britain wants the scale of public activity congruent with a civilised society, it has to be paid for.
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There is a different future, and our politicians of the centre and left have to argue for it, but they must accept it has to be paid for. This has become an existential divide. Politics and political argument have never mattered more.

- Meanwhile, Bill Curry notes that the Harper Cons are matching their UK cousins by "balancing" a budget only based on unexplained and implausible assumptions which make it all too likely that we'll end up losing important public assets at fire-sale prices.

- Linda Tirado offers her observations on the high cost of being poor. And Adam Walsh discusses the difficulties faced by the people left behind in boom times.

- Tony Burke writes about the need for both more fair taxation and stronger collective bargaining to ensure that workers benefit from economic gains.

- Finally, Michael Harris highlights the Cons' cynical attempt to cling to power by replacing any expectation of effective government with a non-stop spin cycle.

Excuses, excuses

Shorter Leona Aglukkaq:

It's absolutely essential that we align our greenhouse gas emissions policies with the U.S. if that means delaying regulations which could limit pollution from the tar sands. Also, it's absolutely essential that we refuse to align our greenhouse gas emission policies with the U.S. if they're committing to targets which could limit pollution from the tar sands.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Walden Bello discusses the need for our political system to include constant citizen engagement, not merely periodic elections to determine who will be responsible to implement the wishes of the elite:

Even more than dictatorships, Western-style democracies are, we are forced to conclude, the natural system of governance of neoliberal capitalism, for they promote rather than restrain the savage forces of capital accumulation that lead to ever greater levels of inequality and poverty. In fact, liberal democratic systems are ideal for the economic elites, for they are programmed with periodic electoral exercises that promote the illusion of equality, thus granting the system an aura of legitimacy.
...
To reverse the process requires not just an alternative economic program based on justice, equity, and ecological stability, but a new democratic system to replace the liberal democratic regime that has become so vulnerable to elite and foreign capture.

First of all, representative institutions must be balanced by the formation of institutions of direct democracy.

Second, civil society must organize itself politically to act as a counterpoint and check to the dominant state institutions.

Third, citizens must keep in readiness a parliament of the streets, or “people power,” that can be brought at critical points to bear on the decision-making process: a system, if you will, of parallel power. People power must be institutionalized for periodic intervention, not abandoned once the insurrection has banished the old regime.

- As a prime example of the problems with the status quo, Eric Lipton exposes how U.S. Republican elected officials see their main job as repeating and amplifying the message of their oil-sector backers. Bronwen Tucker points out that the Harper Cons are likewise taking the side of the tar sands over people and the planet. And Dean Baker notes that the most recent set of international trade agreements goes far beyond even earlier versions in limiting health and environmental regulations.

- Meanwhile, Tyler Cowen offers some suggestions as to how technology could blunt the impacts of income inequality. But it's hard to see how those theoretical possibilities would accomplish much if not accompanied by a concerted effort to spread the benefit around - rather than merely being allowed to evolve in ways that favour the people in control of current capital and technology.

- Indeed, David Kynaston observes that a shift toward private education has only exacerbated inequality in the UK. And every bit of attention and funding directed toward corporatized education represents resources not put toward something more important - such as food for hungry children.

- And finally, the ILO reminds us that it's corporate decision-making rather than anything beyond employers' control that's led to the growing gap between the executive and shareholder classes and people working for a living.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Reviewing Darrell West's Billionaires, Michael Lewis discusses how extreme wealth doesn't make anybody better off - including the people fighting for position at the top of the wealth spectrum:

A team of researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute surveyed 43,000 Americans and found that, by some wide margin, the rich were more likely to shoplift than the poor. Another study, by a coalition of nonprofits called the Independent Sector, revealed that people with incomes below twenty-five grand give away, on average, 4.2 percent of their income, while those earning more than 150 grand a year give away only 2.7 percent. A UCLA neuroscientist named Keely Muscatell has published an interesting paper showing that wealth quiets the nerves in the brain associated with empathy: if you show rich people and poor people pictures of kids with cancer, the poor people’s brains exhibit a great deal more activity than the rich people’s. (An inability to empathize with others has just got to be a disadvantage for any rich person seeking political office, at least outside of New York City.) “As you move up the class ladder,” says Keltner, “you are more likely to violate the rules of the road, to lie, to cheat, to take candy from kids, to shoplift, and to be tightfisted in giving to others. Straightforward economic analyses have trouble making sense of this pattern of results.”

There is an obvious chicken-and-egg question to ask here. But it is beginning to seem that the problem isn’t that the kind of people who wind up on the pleasant side of inequality suffer from some moral disability that gives them a market edge. The problem is caused by the inequality itself: it triggers a chemical reaction in the privileged few. It tilts their brains. It causes them to be less likely to care about anyone but themselves or to experience the moral sentiments needed to be a decent citizen. 

Or even a happy one. Not long ago an enterprising professor at the Harvard Business School named Mike Norton persuaded a big investment bank to let him survey the bank’s rich clients. (The poor people in the survey were millionaires.) In a forthcoming paper, Norton and his colleagues track the effects of getting money on the happiness of people who already have a lot of it: a rich person getting even richer experiences zero gain in happiness. That’s not all that surprising; it’s what Norton asked next that led to an interesting insight. He asked these rich people how happy they were at any given moment. Then he asked them how much money they would need to be even happier. “All of them said they needed two to three times more than they had to feel happier,” says Norton. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that money, above a certain modest sum, does not have the power to buy happiness, and yet even very rich people continue to believe that it does: the happiness will come from the money they don’t yet have. To the general rule that money, above a certain low level, cannot buy happiness there is one exception. “While spending money upon oneself does nothing for one’s happiness,” says Norton, “spending it on others increases happiness.”

- Lucinda Platt discusses the devastating effects of poverty on childhood development - while noting that more than half of children experience poverty at some point.

- CBC News reports on the continued growth of food bank use in Saskatchewan - a fact which seems to be entirely in keeping with Brad Wall's plans. And Will Chabun reports on a new CCPA/Parkland Institute study showing that the Sask Party's determination to privatize liquor sales will make it far more difficult to fund adequate social programs or other public priorities in the future. 

- Meanwhile, thwap highlights how we face both constant demands to borrow for the sake of meeting consumer expectations, and severe punishments for giving in to that pressure.

- Kathleen Mogelgaard examines what's needed for a climate change summit to be successful. And the Cons' familiar distraction tactics (with the obvious goal of continuing to facilitate pollution from the tar sands) have absolutely no place in accomplishing anything useful - while their international lobbying to avoid having anybody else make up for the Cons' negligence may not be working out as planned.

- Finally, Ian Welsh writes that while it might seem obvious that police violence should be discouraged and punished, the complete lack of consequences for police officers killing civilians reflects an authoritarian culture working as intended rather than a failure of the system in its present form.

Deep thought

In general, we should be appalled by the idea of letting catastrophic climate change run amok and force people to abandon their homes and communities.

But for a few self-selected people, it's tough not to see some poetic justice in the possibility.

Musical interlude

Activa - Antimatter

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Manuel Perez-Rocha writes about the corrosive effect of allowing businesses to dictate public policy through trade agreements:

(C)orporations are increasingly using investment and trade agreements — specifically, the investor-state dispute settlement provisions in them — to bring opportunistic cases in arbitral courts, circumventing decisions states deem in their best interest. And now investor-state dispute settlement provisions may be enshrined in two new treaties: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and Trans-Pacific Partnership, currently under negotiation between, respectively, the United States and the European Union, and the United States and 11 Asia-Pacific nations. If the final agreements contain these mechanisms, we can expect a flood of cases like Pacific Rim v. El Salvador.

Investor-state dispute settlement provisions feature in many significant pacts, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, and nine U.S.-E.U. bilateral investment treaties. Foreign investors can sue over alleged violations of myriad “investor protections,” including public-interest regulations that would reduce their profits. But it doesn’t cut both ways: Governments or communities affected by foreign investors cannot bring claims. Equally troublesome, tribunal operations are often opaque.

...

The investor-state dispute settlement mechanism is like playing soccer on half the field. Corporations are free to sue, and nations must defend themselves at enormous cost — and the best a government can hope for is a scoreless game. As the T.T.I.P. and T.P.P. negotiations continue, Pacific Rim vs. El Salvador should remind us not to privilege foreign investors to the detriment of the national — or global — good.

- And that corporate privilege stands in particularly stark contrast to the limited rights of citizens - as evidenced by the Ontario Court of Appeal's recent decision that individuals can't even make out an arguable case for a Charter right to housing.

- Joseph Heath examines the reality that dirty and hard-to-extract oil reserves should be seen as stranded assets for the sake of our planet, rather than relied on as a source of future wealth.

- Keith Neuman and Ian Bruce comment on the growing consensus that we need to take strong action to fight climate change. Martin Lukacs suggests that public ownership within the energy industry would go a long way toward getting greenhouse gas emissions in check. And the Fraser Institute helpfully points out that the alternative to mitigating climate change is to abandon cities built in locations which will suffer its most extreme effects.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom discusses the Cons' habit of cultivating foreign enemies in order to paper over their lack of interest in governing in the interest of Canadians.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Monica Pohlmann interviews Armine Yalnizyan about the undue influence of our corporate overlords in setting public policy:

What’s your sense of the state of our democracy?

We have a troubled relationship with our democratic institutions. We need to get over the idea that government is something and someone else. The government is us. The idea that governments are largely useless, that they’re more likely to make a mess than fix things, is exactly what corporations would like us to think. It gives them more freedom to use the enormous power of the state to their advantage.

We are becoming a corporatocracy, a state that serves the interests of corporations first and foremost. Business groups write legislation. lobby, use campaign finance to shape the public sphere – how big it is, what it does, who it serves. This is the biggest test democracy faces today.

- Meanwhile, Kelly Crowe reports that the Cons are dictating that Canadian health researchers won't receive any public support for their work unless they have private backing first - ensuring that the corporate sector gets to vet what research gets done.

- Robert Antonio examines Thomas Piketty's analysis of the seemingly inevitable concentration of capital and power (absent a major push to the contrary). But on the bright side, Joshua Holland notes that the U.S. has seen a rare debate over "tax extenders" which may signal some much-needed pushback against corporate giveaways and the erosion of the public sector.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh writes about the divisive effect of precarious work, along with the role of anti-union policymaking in suppressing wages and job security for the most vulnerable workers. Luisa D'Amato points out that some of Ontario's poorest citizens are bearing the brunt of an error-ridden computer system used to manage welfare and disability payments, reflecting an appalling choice to ensure that predictable system failures lead to the greatest possible amount of human suffering.

- Finally, Linda McQuaig writes that we should fully expect Robocon to be replicated in future elections, as the Cons have gone out of their way to ensure that future vote suppression will be more difficult to investigate:

(I)n the name of clamping down on “voter fraud,” the Conservatives have brought in election reforms that will actually make it easier for voter suppression to go undetected in the future.

That’s because the government’s controversial election reform package includes a section that prevents the Commissioner of Elections from revealing any details about investigations being conducted by Elections Canada.
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The robocalls came to light only because, after receiving complaints of electoral irregularities (primarily involving Guelph), the Commissioner of Elections began to investigate and filed a court application related to that investigation. After the details of the application were picked up by the media, there was a flood of complaints from citizens across the country reporting they received similar misleading phone calls on election day.

Had the new “muzzling” rule been in place, the application filed by the Commissioner would have been sealed, preventing the public from knowing about the initial investigation — the trigger that prompted the nationwide response, allowing the public to see a larger pattern of possible voter suppression.
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(T)he Conservatives don’t seem the slightest bit concerned that the party’s top-secret internal database was apparently used as part of an organized campaign of voter suppression.

Rather, as they gear up for the next election, the Harper crowd is focused on ensuring that not a single vote by an undocumented homeless person, student or senior will be allowed to contaminate our democracy.

New column day

Here, taking a quick look at Canada's options for electoral reform while arguing that an MMP system would create far better incentives for our political leaders than the alternatives.

For further reading...
- Alison wrote about our options in advance of yesterday's vote on the NDP's electoral reform proposal.
- Eric Grenier discusses the possible outcomes under the three main alternatives based on current polling. And I'd argue that the current party standings offer a useful litmus test as to one's weighting of representativeness versus defaulting toward majority government - as a preferential system would put the Libs within spitting distance of a majority with the first-choice support of under 35% of voters (and with two other parties within 12% of their support level).
- Finally, while "ramming through pipelines" is hardly the issue I'd want to see pursued as a top federal priority, Andrew Coyne does recognize that an improved electoral system would confer more legitimacy on our federal government.

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 Night Cat Blogging

Chin-up cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Martin O'Neill and Rick Pearce interview Thomas Piketty about possible policy responses to growing inequality:

[Martin O'Neill]...(D)o you think that the response to the increase in inequality might be one that explores the sorts of avenues that Meade opened up, and doesn’t just rely on mechanisms of redistribution through the tax system?
 
Thomas Piketty: Yes, I think that you are right – I am glad that you have asked this question. First I would like to pay tribute to James Meade and this long tradition of British economists, including Tony Atkinson, with whom we have been working with a lot and who is largely the godfather of historical studies of income and wealth. Tony wrote a great book in 1978 on the history of the inequality of wealth in this country – and this has been a source of inspiration to me along with others...

James Meade, just like me, believed that progressive taxation and the development of other forms of property relationships and of other forms of governance are complementary institutions. In the book I probably place too much emphasis on progressive taxation, but I do talk about the development of new forms of governance and property structure, but probably not sufficiently. So I agree with that – that can be for volume two!

Let me make the point that these are complementary institutions, because progressive taxation of wealth will always be necessary even if we manage to develop these other alternative forms of property. Also progressive taxation of wealth comes with increased financial transparency – transparency of assets and company accounts – and that is very important because, if you want workers to be involved in the management of their company and if you want people more generally to be involved in the management of the economy, then you want access to information. You want to know who earns what in the company, and you want to know who owns the shares. When you have financial opacity about property and shareholder structures of the company, and you don’t have access to proper accounts, then you don’t have the information that you need.

Financial opacity is the worst enemy of economic democracy; so you need transparency if you want to have economic democracy.

- Meanwhile, Kieran Healy suggests that people take a look at the seating arrangement on an Air Gini patterned after actual income inequality. And Trish Hennessy crunches the numbers on the billionaire class in Canada and around the world.

- Travis Gettys discusses Gregory Clark's findings that social mobility in the U.S. is no better than that in medieval England, meaning that the myth of being able to succeed merely by working hard is becoming less and less believable. And the Campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage debunks the claim that it's small businesses rather than corporate behemoths that seek to pay workers the bare minimum.

- The Canadian Youth Delegation exposes the embarrassing positions the Cons are taking at the Lima climate change talks, while Emily Chung reports that they've managed to make Canada irrelevant to any international conversation.

- And finally, Richard Blackwell makes it abundantly clear that the Cons' cheerleading for the oil industry has nothing at all to do with jobs, as a new Clean Energy Canada report shows that there are already more jobs being generated in green energy than in the tar sands.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Murray Dobbin writes about the damage caused after decades of allowing the corporate elite to dictate economic policy - and notes that the Cons are determined to make matters all the worse:

However you see it -- as separate from society or integral to it -- Canada's "economy" is increasingly at the mercy of a risk-averse, inept corporate elite addicted to government tax breaks and an ideologically addled government which more than anything else is simply incompetent. It is a deadly combination -- a sort of dumb and dumber team slowly dragging us backwards at a time when the world is just hoping there won't be another economic collapse.
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Is it even possible to change corporate culture or at least engage in a little behaviour modification? Do we -- that is the government -- have to treat our (ridiculously over-compensated) CEOs as adolescents to get them to deliver? After all, we have given them literally everything they have asked for, starting with the original free trade deal with the U.S., deliberately suppressed wages, a shredded safety net, and the gutting of regulations. None of it had any impact -- their performance has been getting worse for almost two decades.

So what does Stephen Harper do? He rewards corporate ineptness and irresponsibility by providing one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the 34-nation OECD. It doesn't matter that all this free money just goes into the cash reserves of the country's largest companies) now totalling over $600 billion). Why? Because Stephen Harper doesn't actually care if they invest in anything. The point of his tax cuts was never to stimulate investment -- it was to jettison government revenue in aid of dismantling the activist state and making it impossible for future governments to act.

- Meanwhile, Social Watch offers up an outline of the connection between tax fairness and gender equity. And Anna Chudnovsky discusses how poverty affects a child's development for a lifetime.

- Michael Geist notes that Canada was required to impose intellectual property laws opposed by the public before being allowed to participate in the TPP - raising the question as to how anybody can pretend we're not ceding massive amounts of sovereignty. And unfortunately, Barrie McKenna reports that Germany now seems set to meekly go along with the CETA despite its undue shift in power toward the corporate sector.

- Rick Salutin reminds us of the outsized role unaccountable state violence (particularly against minorities) has played in shaping U.S. culture. And Dan Leger writes that the Cons are following the path set by their cousins to the south in seeking to erode civil rights for political benefit.

- Finally, Michael Harris highlights Stephen Harper's deafening silence when it comes to the culture of corruption and law-breaking within his own party.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Mark Gongloff takes a look at social mobility research from multiple countries, and finds that there's every reason for concern that inheritance is far outweighing individual attributes in determining social status. And Left Futures notes that the problem may only get worse as our corporate overlords become more and more sophisticated at cannibalizing our commonwealth for profit.

- Speaking of which, Jake MacDonald offers an insightful (if maddening) review of how farmers are suffering from the demolition of the single-desk Canadian Wheat Board.

- Andrew Jackson comments on the Cons' glaring failure to do anything to combat child poverty. And Cameron Dearlove discusses why we shouldn't pretend that child welfare is merely a family matter:

Child poverty should be of concern not only to parents and those who work with children, it must be of concern to the whole community. The experience of poverty has detrimental impacts on any individual, but when it's experienced through childhood development, the impacts are even more acute. 

Not having enough to eat, or not being able to afford healthy foods, impacts a child's concentration in school and can lead to lower academic achievement, along with negative effects on physical health. The stresses of poverty affect psychosocial development, with higher rates of behavioural problems and emotional and mental health challenges. 

The connection between a poorer diet and poorer health are obvious, but research has shown an even larger association with poverty's impact on cognitive development. One study of children entering kindergarten found 72 per cent of the non-poor children were proficient in recognizing words, compared to only 19 per cent of children experiencing poverty. These differences are shown to compound throughout life into adulthood. 

The impacts of poverty on development are not equal across ages. The detrimental effects of poverty are most severe in early childhood brain development, when future cognitive, social, and emotional functions are being shaped. This makes early intervention in childhood poverty even more pressing.

- Theophilas Argitas reports on new polling showing that while the tar sands may be the Cons' one and only priority, Canadians on the balance would prefer that we not focus on developing them further. Bruce Johnstone links that public concern with the inherent dangers of resource reliance as reason for concern about our economic direction. And Jon Queally writes about Kinder Morgan's failed injunction against the people seeking to defend Burnaby Mountain.

- Finally, Haroon Siddiqui points out how the Cons' exploitative mindset fits with Canada's historic colonial attitude toward First Nations and the environment they rely on. And while Diane Francis is a bit too focused on profits, she too recognizes that it's long past time to stop shirking our responsibilities.

On inconsistent statements

Shorter Leona Aglukkaq:

It's libellous to suggest that I privately demanded that Sam Tutanuak apologize for exposing the fact that my constituents are going hungry. But while I have your attention, I may as well take the opportunity to publicly demand that Sam Tutanuak apologize for exposing the fact that my constituents are going hungry.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Thomas Walkom points out that with oil prices in free fall, we're now seeing the inevitable consequences of the Cons' plan to build an economy solely around unstable resource revenues:

Sensible countries try to lessen their dependence on volatile commodities. Canada, whose economy has been dominated by resource exports since the 16th century, spent much effort over the years trying to do break free from this dependence — usually by encouraging secondary manufacturing.

The aim was to diversify the economy so that offsetting forces were created. A fall in oil prices, for instance, might hurt Alberta’s petroleum sector. But the consequent cheap energy would aid Ontario manufacturers and the country could keep on an even keel.

For years, this was the unstated theory behind what was in effect a crude form of industrial strategy.

Much of the time, it more or less worked.
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Harper has his own unspoken industrial policy. It can be summed up in a word: pipelines.

The Conservatives have used federal government power to override or repeal any kind of environmental regulation that might interfere with the export of oil, by pipeline, from the tarsands.

Harper wants pipelines from Alberta to reach the Pacific coast, the Gulf of Mexico and New Brunswick — all to transport oil that, if prices continue their slump, will be uneconomic to ship.

The fall in oil prices does, on its own, create some countervailing offsets. Low oil prices mean a low Canadian dollar; a low dollar benefits Canadian manufacturers exporting to the U.S.

But for this low dollar to work effectively there must be enough Canadian manufacturers willing to take advantage of it.

Thanks in part to globalization and in part to the actions of this particular government, there aren’t.

- Meanwhile, Bill Curry points out how a drop in resource prices will affect the Cons' budgeting in the short term. And Raphael Lopoukhine notes that there's reason for doubt that investors will want to be involved in Harper's planned petro-state as increased costs of production meet lowered revenues for the dirtiest tar sands projects.

- Seth Klein challenges the business lobby's constant griping about even the most basic steps to offer workers a reasonable standard of living - such as a fair minimum wage.

- Dylan Robertson reports on the Parliamentary Budget Officer's latest recognition that the Cons aren't willing to provide accurate information about the costs of their plans to anybody - even the office created specifically to ensure transparency in budgeting.

 - And finally, the Star's editorial board makes the case for a national pharmacare program.

On corporate takeovers

CTV reports on the funnelling of money from SNC-Lavalin into the Cons' coffers. And we shouldn't be surprised to see that connection in light of the Cons' attitude toward corporate wrongdoing.

But it's especially worth noting what's missing from the Cons' denials of involvement:

Elections Canada records reveal that 10 top SNC-Lavalin managers and their wives wrote personal cheques in 2009 to two federal Conservative riding associations that showed little chance of winning.

A total of $25,000 was funnelled to the ridings of Laurier-Sainte-Marie and Portneuf-Jacques-Cartier.

Approximately $30,000 was then transferred out to Megantic-L’Erable, the riding of then-public works minister Christian Paradis...

...

In a statement on Friday, the Conservative Party said: “Neither Minister Paradis nor his riding association had any reason to believe these donations were anything other than the lawful, individual donations they were. It appears SNC deliberately concealed the alleged wrongdoing from the targets of their actions, including from Minister Paradis.”

One might be able to paint the Megantic-L'Erable riding association as merely a recipient of a windfall which simply didn't turn down money being made available from within its own party.  (Though there's reason for skepticism on that front too until the scheme is investigated.)

But what about the two ridings which received the donations in the first place then passed the money along - and who are left out of the Cons' list of people who didn't have reason for concern about the donations? 

Are the Cons acknowledging that they don't have any basis to defend either how the money showed up on their doorstep in the first place, or how it was then directed to Paradis? Or is the Cons' claim that SNC-Lavalin took over their riding associations to the point of being able to "deliberately conceal" major donations from, and transfers within, their own party?

Musical interlude

Matthew Good Band - Indestructible

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jeremy Warren reports on the latest Canadians for Tax Fairness events working to ensure that Cameco and other megacorporations pay at least their fair share. And Sheila Block and Kaylie Tiessen point out that Ontario could do plenty to reduce its deficit by reining in regressive tax giveaways.

- APTN documents the devastating reality that people who can't afford overpriced food in Northern communities are having to forage through garbage dumps in order to scrape by. And naturally, Leona Aglukkaq and the Cons are concerned...that anybody's finding out about that fact, leading them to try to gag the officials speaking up.

- Which is to say that if the Cons were to apply the standard proposed by Michael Harris - taking the simple step of removing each cabinet minister who can reasonably be seen as the last person fit for the job - they'd be left with no cabinet at all.

- Gary Mason observes that there's ample reason for an increasing number of political leaders to raise red flags about pipelines - as that stance merely reflects the public's concern about climate change and other environmental damage:

Despite conditional approval from the National Energy Board, most believe the Northern Gateway pipeline will never get built because of opposition to it. The courts have given First Nations new powers to fight developments that encroach on their land. Outside of aboriginal communities, public opinion regarding pipelines is at best divided – although there seems to be a growing societal angst about climate change that is palpable.

Kinder Morgan, which also wants to add a pipeline to the West Coast, is encountering that sentiment now. Protests at Burnaby Mountain, where the company is trying to do some exploratory work, have become daily events and have spawned arrests and ugly international headlines. Once upon a time, the odds of the Kinder Morgan pipeline going ahead were considered extremely good. Not any more.

 - And CBC reports on Kinder Morgan's failed attempt to criminalize opposition to its pipeline expansion.

- Finally, the new chair of the Transportation Safety Board argues that Canada is well short of having appropriate regulations in place to be able to count on the safe shipment of oil by rail.

New column day

Here, on the growing (and increasingly interconnected) movement to save our local and global environment alike from fossil fuel extraction.

For further reading...
- The latest pipeline under discussion is of course TransCanada's Energy East. And it's worth countering the message from Brad Wall (amplified by Murray Mandryk here) that our only choices are to approve one pipeline to facilitate tar sands extraction, or to use even more dangerous means to do just as much damage to our planet.
- Meanwhile, Mitchell Anderson discusses how public resources are being used to favour Kinder Morgan's interests over those of the public on Burnaby Mountain.
- PressProgress points out how the Cons have made pipelines into a toxic issue with many Canadians. And West Coast Native News examines the history of oil spills in Saskatchewan.
- Finally Linda McQuaig comments on the vital role of government in moving us to a cleaner economy - as well as the sad reality that the Cons are instead pushing us backwards.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood discusses the close connection between the energy sector and inequality in Canada - with the obvious implication that policies dedicated to unduly favouring the former will inevitably produce the latter: 

(T)he real story from last week’s Stats Can report isn’t that Canada is turning the tide on inequality, but that the energy sector is a key driver of income inequality in Canada. Massive investment in the oil sands has benefited the wealthiest earners to the exclusion of most other Canadians, and those immense gains have simply been slightly reduced from their 2006 high.

The long-term trend in Canada is still towards greater inequality, as a new TD Bank report explains (PDF), and Alberta is still the most unequal province, which is exacerbated by new oil sands investments.

In other words, what’s good for the oil sands is good for Canada’s wealthy—and vice versa. However, no such connection exists with the incomes of the bottom 99%, even in cities like Calgary. Does that really justify such incredible investment in the oil sands? It’s a debate we should be having.

- But then, as Frances Russell writes, attacking the poor to benefit the rich is par for the course for the Cons. And Bruce Cheadle reports that Stephen Harper has chosen to make reckless cuts to the public service with full knowledge as to how they undermine desperately needed programs.

- Evan Radford reports on the appalling state of child poverty in Saskatchewan, with over a quarter of the province's children living below the poverty line. And Sara Mojtehedzadeh points out that child poverty is common even in households with one or more working parents.

- Tom Sullivan notes that at least a few U.S. governments are trying to keep employers from exploiting precarious workers, only to face a predictably self-absorbed response from the corporate sector. And Michelle Chen examines the $1 billion in tax loopholes exploited every year by Wal-Mart alone.

- Both Ryan Meili and Vivek Goel discuss the absurdity of trying sever public health from broader public policy.

- And finally, Brent Patterson looks at one of the more novel abuses of free trade agreements, as corporate Canada is warning the federal government against cracking down on corruption lest it interfere with profit-making opportunities.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cat sitters.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Daniel Tencer reports on a couple of important recent warnings that Canada is in danger of following the U.S. down the path of extreme corporatism and inequality:

Speaking at a fundraiser for the left-leaning Broadbent Institute, Reich said Canada is facing the same inequality-growing “structural problems” that the rest of the developed world is facing. Those two structural problems are globalization and automation, he said.

He noted that businesses in the digital era require far fewer employees, citing the example of WhatsApp, the messaging app bought by Facebook. At the time it was purchased for $19 billion, it had 450 million users and just 55 employees.

“This is the new economy,” Reich said.

A new report from TD Bank cites the same two factors as being causes of growing inequality, but also notes that Canada used to do a better job of equalization through taxation.

“Although Canadians take pride in the country’s more equitable outcomes [than the U.S.], Canada does less income redistribution than many think. Canada’s ranking on income equality falls from 9th place in the OECD on the basis of [income before taxes] to 19th place on the basis of after-tax and transfer income.”

- Meanwhile, Tim Harper follows up on Stephen Lewis' blistering criticism of the state of Canadian politics under the Harper Cons. And they've only added to the list of jaw-droppingly callous actions lately by refusing consent on the NDP's renewed motion to end child poverty, as well as by voting against a UN motion against glorifying Nazism and neo-Nazism.

- Barrie McKenna finds that the Cons' own supposed priorities are once again all spin and no action, as a much-ballyhooed manufacturing fund has funded exactly zero projects since it was introduced a year and a half ago.

- Diane Cardwell reports on the falling cost of solar and wind energy, as renewables have reached a price level similar to that of dirty fossil fuels. And Geoff Dembick reports on Unifor's work in highlighting the fact that environmentally responsible development and good jobs are entirely compatible goals.

- Finally, Paul Rosenberg interviews George Lakoff about the lessons progressives still need to learn in framing public policy debates.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Ed Broadbent laments Canada's failure to meet its commitment to end child poverty - and notes that the Harper Cons in particular are headed in exactly the wrong direction:

This child poverty rate is a national disgrace. It jumped from 15.8 per cent in 1989 to 19.2 per cent in 2012, according to a Statistics Canada custom tabulation for Campaign 2000.

The Harper Conservatives have continued to let down the country’s poor children and their parents. They have not increased targeted income supports for low-income families. Instead, they are expanding flat rate benefits, similar to the old family allowance program abolished as regressive by Mr. Mulroney’s government. These taxable payments are too low to have a real impact on poverty. They don’t come close to paying the costs of child care; they don’t create a single child-care space.

While failing the poor, the Conservatives are proposing new measures that disproportionately favour affluent families. Income-splitting will cost $2-billion a year and deliver no benefit at all to single parents or to two-parent families with both earners in the lowest tax bracket.

The maximum benefit of $2,000 will go mainly to very high-income traditional families with a single earner. The late Jim Flaherty appropriately rejected such unfairness while serving as minister of finance.

The growing gap between the poor and the middle-class, let alone the top 1 per cent, flies in the face of the democratic ideal that all children should have equal opportunities to develop their talents and capacities to the full.

- David Climenhaga discusses how the Cons' obsession with income-splitting is based on their desire to preserve gender inequality. James Fitz-Morris reports that the Cons have long been aware of the obvious regressive effects of tax-free savings accounts - particularly since they may allow a special class of wealthy retirees to take in money from means-tested programs because their investment income isn't counted.

- Tavia Grant writes about a new report confirming that we need our tax system to actively combat inequality in order to avoid having it get worse by default. And Michael Babad points out that the ranks and wealth of the uber-rich are growing faster in Canada than in other comparable countries.

- Meanwhile, Robert Devet highlights how arbitrary benefit cutoffs can be disastrous for people actually living in poverty. And Jesse Ferreras finds that a lopsided market (coupled with a lack of public policy action) is leaving single women and mothers in particular without adequate housing.

- Finally, Michael Harris notes that a culture of fear seems to be about the only factor the Cons still have in their favour among an otherwise unfriendly Canadian public - and that Stephen Harper has been highly selective in deciding which supposed threats to emphasize for political benefit.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

 - Lynn Stuart Parramore writes about our increasingly traumatic social and political culture, along with the response which can help to overcome it:

A 2012 study of hospital patients in Atlanta’s inner-city communities showed that rates of post-traumatic stress are now on par with those of veterans returning from war zones. At least 1 out of 3 surveyed said they had experienced stress responses like flashbacks, persistent fear, a sense of alienation, and aggressive behavior. All across the country, in Detroit, New Orleans, and in what historian Louis Ferleger describes as economic “dead zones” — places where people have simply given up and sunk into “involuntary idleness” — the pain is written on slumped bodies and faces that have become masks of despair.

We are starting to break down.

When our alarm systems are set off too often, they start to malfunction, and we can end up in a state of hyper-vigilance, unable to properly assess the threats. It’s easy for the powerful to manipulate this tense condition and present an array of bogeymen to distract our attention, from immigrants to the unemployed, so that we focus our energy on the wrong enemy.
...
Unfortunately, the cycle doesn’t end with you: trauma comes with a very high rate of interest. The children of traumatized people carry the legacy of pain forward in their brains and bodies, becoming more vulnerable to disease, mental breakdown, addiction, and violence. Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, an expert on trauma, emphasizes that it’s not just personal. Trauma occupies a space much bigger than our individual neurons: it’s political. If your parents lost their jobs, their home or their sense of security in the wake of the financial crisis, you will carry those wounds with you, even if conditions improve. Budget cuts to education and the social safety net produce trauma. Falling income produces trauma. Job insecurity produces trauma.
...
When I do something as simple as nurture a friend in need, or let myself be drawn in by an artistic creation, or meet the eyes of a stranger with kindness, or plant a living tree, I’m intervening in the trauma and rewriting its trajectory — perhaps only a paragraph, but many paragraphs can make a page, and many pages, a volume.

The etymology of the word “trauma” is associated with the Greek word “wound.” To be human is to be wounded, and the ability to cope with our wounds is the essence of life’s journey. Without wounds, we can’t know our own strength and competence, and we can’t develop empathy for our fellow creatures. Moving from the static place of trauma to something fluid and transformative is the key. The trauma doesn’t go away, but it’s possible to bring it along in a way that helps us witness each other, hear each other, and help each other.

- And Monica Pohlmann interviews Armine Yalnizyan about the need to move past self-defeating policies:

Pohlmann: What keeps you up at night?

Yalnizyan: The way we are transforming our views about immigration in Canada. In the coming decades, nation states will be competing to attract people, not just capital. Population aging is occurring in all advanced industrialized nations. Without newcomers, the Canadian labour force would start to shrink in the next year or two. An unsettling trend has emerged in Canada. Public policy now favours a rise in temporary foreign workers over permanent economic immigrants. When companies say they face a skills shortage, all too often the solution is bringing in a foreign worker temporarily for what is often not a temporary shortage. These workers are tied to their employer, and can get deported if they complain about anything.

In such a workplace environment, it’s hard for any worker to ask for anything better. People are constantly looking over their shoulder, wondering, “Will they find a cheaper me?” It’s a recipe for growing friction between “us” and “them.”

The problem arises from a common view that low wages and low taxes are “good for business.” What may be good for an individual business is a dead-end path for society and the economy as a whole. Wages and taxes are never low enough for businesses. Their job is to maximize profits. But the continuous drive to lower wages and taxes erodes the economic heft of a country. The message to workers is “expect less,” even when companies grow and profits rise. The idea that labour is simply a cost, rather than the essential building block of performance, is destructive nonsense.

Middle-class jobs are being cut, replaced by more low-paid and some higher-paid work. Wages aren’t keeping up with costs for most people, and savings rates are falling. A rising proportion of Canadian households don’t have enough funds to last a month should they lose their pay cheques. We pay tribute to a large and resilient middle class as the mark of a flourishing economy around the world, but our own middle class is being squeezed in every way, ironically in the name of economic growth.

- In a similar vein, Robert Reich reminds us where jobs and economic development come from - and that funneling ever more wealth to the privileged few does nothing to help:



- Alison examines the "rejectionist" model of politics which has done plenty to eliminate the belief that it's possible to accomplish anything positive through our elected governments. And Jim Day discusses Stephen Lewis' sharp - but entirely justified - criticism of Canada's social breakdown.

- Finally, Carol Linnitt examines the Burnaby Mountain pipeline protest as an all-too-clear example of petro-politics taking precedence over all else.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Tom Sullivan's advice for Democrats south of the border that it's essential to reach out to dispossessed voters of all types of backgrounds with a compelling alternative to the status quo is equally relevant to progressives in Canada.

- But the good news is that here, somebody's actually applying it. And we're also hearing plenty about how our local reactionaries are ignoring the vast majority of families - with Ashley Splawinski offering this look at the Cons' income splitting scheme compared to the obvious alternative: 

About 86 per cent of all families including single parents would gain nothing from income splitting. Being heavily circulated due to its sudden relevance, a research paper titled, "Why income splitting for two parent families does more harm than good" published by the C.D. Howe Institute outlines that 40 per cent of total benefits would go to families with an annual income above $125,000 a year.

When we account for the large revenue cost of these new policies, it is the families that see a modest gain or no gain at all that will ultimately be paying the price through means such as public service cuts.
...
To stay within a higher tax bracket, the partner who isn't working (who is overwhelmingly likely to be a woman) is discouraged from going to work, lest she wants to pay a more taxes. It seems as though the Harper government is using these policies as a means of subtly favouring wealthy nuclear families.

This has members of the public questioning: If the Conservative government wanted to shed light on issues affecting families, why not increase access to universal child care?

We don't need to look far to find access to affordable child care. Quebec invests $2.2 billion dollars annually into its child care plan. Therefore, a family in Quebec may pay $140 monthly for childcare, yet in Ontario that same family could be paying $900.

Nationally, Canada only has regulated spots for approximately 22 per cent of youth under five years old. Quebec houses half of these spots. Child care costs nationally account for about 30 per cent of the average wage.

The Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC) conducted a study in 2009 which found that affordable child care was not only essential to long-term poverty reduction, but by improving access to affordable child care, it supports stable labour force participation, which is vital for an increase in economic independence -- especially for women. It also found that supporting quality affordable child care would positively support a child's development, leading to improved educational outcomes.

- Fred Hahn rightly suggests that Ontario start investing in future economic development rather than pleading poverty while letting corporate giants hoard profits they can't put to any discernible use.

- Phil Tank reports on the potential for massive growth of solar energy in Saskatoon. But it remains to be seen how long it takes for us to see the assault on distributed renewable energy that's materialized elsewhere.

- Finally, Karl Nerenberg writes about the Cons' attacks on the welfare of refugees in Canada. And Susana Mas reports on the Cons' "express entry" system for immigrant workers which has been designed solely at the behest of - and for the benefit of - employers looking for new pools of workers to exploit.

On targets

Shorter Chantal Hebert:

And just think how much more successful Jack Layton could have been as the NDP's leader if only the Cons had spent years attacking him rather than Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff!

Of course, it's true enough that Canada's political scene has changed - and indeed for the better in terms of the NDP's position. But if the NDP can engage its supporters, keep itself in the consideration set of potential governments and build further support for an already-popular leader in relative peace, I'm at a loss as to why Hebert thinks it should envy the party in the crosshairs of the Cons' misfiring smear machine.

Musical interlude

Markus Schulz - Perception

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Dennis Raphael and Toba Bryant write about the devastating health effects of income inequality in Canada:

Imagine the response, from industry, government and the public, if a plane was crashing every day. If there were something that killed as many people in a day as this kind of disaster, you’d expect it to provoke a similarly concentrated response.

A recent report by Statistics Canada highlights a preventable cause of premature death that is having exactly that kind of impact. This study demonstrates that income inequality is associated with the premature death of 40,000 Canadians a year. That’s equal to 110 Canadians dying prematurely each day. To put that into context, imagine a Bombardier CS-100 jet airplane full of passengers falling out of the sky every day for a year.
...
The Statistics Canada report also makes clear that these differences in health outcomes are primarily due to the material living circumstances and the associated psychosocial stresses associated with not being as well off as the wealthiest 20% of Canadians: “Income influences health most directly through access to material resources such as better quality food and shelter.” Income inequality is not only bad for our quality of life and economic productivity, it is directly related to the deaths of Canadians on an almost unimaginable scale.

Canadians are increasingly concerned about growing income inequality and are becoming more aware of its health effects. It’s time for a serious response from policy-makers, media and the public. Otherwise we’ll simply continue to watch 110 Canadians falling out of the sky every day, each day, 365 days a year.

- Meanwhile, Seumas Milne notes that the UK Cons are continuing to push pointless austerity even as its damage to the economy becomes inescapable.

- And we shouldn't be suckered into believing that austerity happens only through relatively transparent budgeting processes. In fact, recent reports show that the Cons have simply chosen not to bother with approved funding both for veterans at home, and for the world's poorest people abroad - imposing massive cuts from the amounts approved by our elected representatives without any debate.

- Carol Goar discusses how Canada is losing allies around the world due to the Cons' obstinate refusal to do anything - or even allow anything to be done - to meaningfully fight climate change.

- And finally, Michael Den Tandt comments on the Cons' disreputable politics - with Michael Sona's sentence (and the Cons' refusal to acknowledge jail-worthy wrongdoing within their own ranks) serving as just the latest example.

New column day

Here, on how the City of Regina has learned a painful lesson about the Saskatchewan Party's habit of accepting credit but not responsibility on P3 projects.

For further reading...
- Emma Graney reports on how the province forced the City to foot the bill for immediate site development costs here.
- For background on how decisions about education have been taken out of the hands of elected school boards, Joseph Garcea and Dustin Monroe examine the history of education funding in Saskatchewan (and other provinces) here (PDF).
- And finally, I'll point back to my earlier columns as to how public interests can diverge from those of both P3 proponents and higher levels of government seeking to avoid the bill for new developments.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- George Monbiot comments on the far more important values we're endangering in the name of constant financial and material growth:

To try to stabilise this system, governments behave like soldiers billeted in an ancient manor, burning the furniture, the paintings and the stairs to keep themselves warm for a night. They are breaking up the postwar settlement, our public health services and social safety nets, above all the living world, to produce ephemeral spurts of growth. Magnificent habitats, the benign and fragile climate in which we have prospered, species that have lived on earth for millions of years – all are being stacked on to the fire, their protection characterised as an impediment to growth.

Cameron boasted on Monday that he will revive the economy by “scrapping red tape”. This “red tape” consists in many cases of the safeguards defending both people and places from predatory corporations. The small business, enterprise and employment bill is now passing through the House of Commons – spinelessly supported, as ever, by Labour. The bill seeks to pull down our protective rules to “reduce costs for business”, even if that means increasing costs for everyone else, while threatening our health and happiness. But why? As the government boasted last week, the UK already has “the least restrictive product market regulation and the most supportive regulatory and institutional environment for business across the G20.” And it still doesn’t work. So let’s burn what remains.
...
Why are we wrecking the natural world and public services to generate growth, when that growth is not delivering contentment, security or even, for most of us, greater prosperity? Why have we enthroned growth, regardless of its utility, above all other outcomes? Why, despite failures so great and so frequent, have we not changed the model? When the next crash comes, these questions will be inescapable.

- Meanwhile, Michelle Butterfield writes about increased income inequality in Canada - particularly in resource-rich provinces where nominal growth is being efficiently funneled only into the pockets of those who already have the most. And Nick Hanauer points out that the loss of historical overtime pay has made a huge difference in the lives of American workers (who are now working the same extended hours without being compensated accordingly).

- Katrina vanden Heuvel discusses how citizens end up paying the price for corporate tax giveaways. But Andrew Prokop documents how ALEC is putting a well-funded thumb on the scale to make sure that public policy serves only select private interests. And Lindsay Abrams highlights one example of government power being used to undermine public interests, as Republicans have passed a bill to prohibit any scientists other than industry shills from informing environmental decision-making.

- Andy Blatchford reports that the Cons are just like their Republican cousins in abandoning any pretense of doing anything more than rubber-stamping the policy preferences of corporate lobby groups - this time pushing a tax credit based on nothing more than the CFIB's spin. And PressProgress notes that the Cons' definition of an "extremist" - which is of course their threshold for the wholesale elimination of any civil rights - includes people who advocate for renewable energy.

- Jeremy Warren reports on Saskatoon's homeless population and (unsurprisingly) finds that while Jerry Peequaquat may have received more public notice than most, his death was far from an isolated case.

- Joshua Shaw proposes that we recognize collective health as an enforceable right.

- And finally, Rick Mercer offers the definitive response to Stephen Harper's crisis management:

Slavery is freedom

Shorter Brianna Heinrichs:

Oh sure, you soft-hearted progressives think you're helping workers with your "employment standards" and your "occupational health and safety". But have you ever considered some people might prefer to have serfdom as an option?