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By Greg Fingas, on July 24, 2014, at 10:04 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Linda McQuaig criticizes the Cons’ use of the tax system to try to silence charities who don’t match their political message: PEN now joins Amnesty International, the David Suzuki Foundation, Canada Without Poverty, the United Church and other groups that, having criticized an array of Harper policies, have been obliged to devote precious resources to defending themselves from a special probe of charities ordered by the Harper government.
This beefing-up of tax audits of charities is particularly striking when compared to Harper’s laid-back approach to auditing the real bad guys: corporations and (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on July 19, 2014, at 11:44 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Joseph Stiglitz writes that while we should expect natural resources to result in broad-based prosperity, Australia (much like Canada) is now turning toward the U.S. model of instead directing as much shared wealth as possible toward the privileged few: There is something deeply ironic about Abbott’s reverence for the American model in defending many of his government’s proposed “reforms.” After all, America’s economic model has not been working for most Americans. Median income in the US is lower today than it was a quarter-century ago – not because productivity has been (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on July 16, 2014, at 1:50 pm Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- The New York Times editorial board chimes in on how Kansas serves as an ideal test case as to illusory benefits of top-end tax cuts: The 2012 cuts were among the largest ever enacted by a state, reducing the top tax bracket by 25 percent and eliminating all taxes on business profits that are reported on individual income returns. (No other state has ever eliminated all taxes on these pass-through businesses.) The cuts were arrogantly promoted by Mr. Brownback with the same disproven theory that Republicans have employed for decades: There will (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on July 11, 2014, at 11:17 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Linda McQuaig discusses how a renewed push for austerity runs directly contrary to the actual values of Canadians, who want to see their governments accomplish more rather than forcing the public to settle for less: Their formula for achieving small, disabled government is simple: slash taxes (particularly on corporations and upper-income folk), leaving government with no choice but to cut spending — or risk deficits and the wrath of Moody’s, Ivison, the National Post, etc.
The Harper government, deeply committed to this ideology, has followed the formula closely. It has slashed taxes (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on July 8, 2014, at 12:42 am Social movements in Spain – 15M.
From Revolution News
Many things have changed and we need to know how to read reality and celebrate our triumphs. The emergence of the 15M movement did not result in an organisation which currently has a significant number of members. The 15M movement is a social movement. This means, it has served as a catalyst for “moving” social collectives, associations, non-mobilized people, initiatives… and in this sense it still exists today, as another step in the spiral of social reactivation. It radically changed the country’s political climate. The most visible consequences have been the (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on July 7, 2014, at 11:16 am Assorted content to start your week.
- Stephen Hwang and Kwame McKenzie discuss the connection between affordable housing and public health and wellness: In 2009, researchers followed 1,200 people in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver who were homeless or at risk of homelessness. It was found that they experience a high burden of serious health problems like asthma, high blood pressure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. They are also at high risk for conditions like depression and anxiety, and of going hungry.
There’s more. We know that housing in disrepair can lead to accidents, fires and infestations. That overcrowding can lead (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on June 30, 2014, at 12:00 am Beyond the European elections, another left-wing force is growing in Europe | Red Pepper.
Pascoe Sabido
However you interpret them, the European elections have challenged the mainstream’s business-as-usual way of doing politics in Brussels. But while many commentators ignore progress on the left, focusing exclusively on the rise of the far right, another left-wing force was making its voice heard the week before people cast their votes. Not through the ballot box, but on the streets, in protest against the neoliberal austerity policies being forced on Europe’s population from above. In Madrid, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Athens and elsewhere, including here (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on June 22, 2014, at 11:14 am Dignity Marches In Spain Surround Parliaments.
Collective Marches with integrated platforms today under the banner of ‘Dignity’ have surrounded the headquarters of several regional parliaments to protest against cuts in public services, inequality and poverty that lead many citizens to despair.
Following the success of the marches that converged on Madrid on 22nd of March, the organizers have now explained that by surrounding regional parliaments they wanted to express that “the people are sovereign” and “remain vigilant” to the decisions taken in its name.
Filed under: Austerity Tagged: Anti-austerity protest, Spain
. . . → Read More: Parchment in the Fire: Dignity Marches In Spain Surround Parliaments
By geofftkennedy, on June 22, 2014, at 10:56 am Tens of thousands march in London against coalition’s austerity measures | Politics | theguardian.com.
Russell Brand told the marchers there will be a ‘peaceful, effortless, joyful revolution’ against austerity in the UK. Photograph: Rex Features
Tens of thousands of people marched through central London on Saturday afternoon in protest at austerity measures introduced by the coalition government. The demonstrators gathered before the Houses of Parliament, where they were addressed by speakers, including comedians Russell Brand and Mark Steel.
An estimated 50,000 people marched from the BBC’s New Broadcasting House in central London to Westminster.
“The people of this building (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on June 21, 2014, at 11:44 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Andrew Jackson reviews the OECD’s economic recommendations for Canada – featuring a much-needed call for fair taxes on stock options: Special tax breaks for stock options primarily benefit senior corporate executives, especially CEOs of large public companies who are commonly given the right to buy shares in the future at heavily discounted prices. Options make up a big slice of the total compensation of senior corporate executives.
90% of the benefits of the stock options tax break go to the top 1% of taxpayers. The stock options tax break costs the federal government (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on June 20, 2014, at 2:43 am It’s Time To Stand Up To Troika Austerity Part II.
Thomas Fazi
In the first part of this article I looked at the mounting evidence against austerity by organisations as varied as Caritas, the ILO, the Council of Europe and the IMF. So why is the European establishment pushing for more of the same?
Social and economic misery and despair, growing inequality, dwindling public services, loss of hope and ballooning debts: this is austerity’s scorched-earth legacy. And yet, in a telling demonstration of the extent of their dangerous ideological fanaticism, Europe’s austerity zealots insist that Europe needs ‘more austerity’.
Take (Read more…)
By The Arbourist, on June 19, 2014, at 7:12 am The rights we enjoy today in Canada as workers and professionals were not given to us. It was through bloody at times, collective struggle that our rights as workers were imposed on the capitalist class. Power never makes concessions – struggles for basic working benefits must be fought for and taken. The price for humane working conditions can be as high as death or as in the case of Cleaning Workers Union in Greece, permanent disfigurement.
“Vassilis Kikilias, didn’t lose time. Less than an hour after he took office, riot police cracked down on a protest (Read more…)
By The Arbourist, on June 19, 2014, at 7:12 am The rights we enjoy today in Canada as workers and professionals were not given to us. It was through determined, bloody at times, never-say-die, collective struggle that our rights as workers were imposed on the capitalist class. Power never makes concessions – struggles for basic working benefits must be fought for and taken. The price for humane working conditions can be as high as death or as in the case of Cleaning Workers Union in Greece, permanent disfigurement.
“Vassilis Kikilias, didn’t lose time. Less than an hour after he took office, riot police cracked down on (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on June 16, 2014, at 12:26 pm Thomas Fazi: It’s Time To Stand Up To Troika Austerity Part I.
In my book, The Battle for Europe: How an Elite Hijacked a Continent – and How We Can Take It Back, published some months ago by Pluto Press, I argued that the austerity policies imposed on European member states (especially those of the periphery) by the Berlin-Brussels-Frankfurt ‘axis of rigour’ and by the troika were not only proving to be a colossal failure even by mainstream economic standards, but would also lead to – and in some cases were already leading to – nothing less than a (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on June 13, 2014, at 1:06 am Leader in Austerity Push Appointed Head of Greek Central Bank – NYTimes.com.
By NIKI KITSANTONISJUNE 11, 2014
The announcement on Wednesday, by the General Council of the Bank of Greece, followed a sweeping cabinet shuffle on Monday that installed Gikas Hardouvelis, another economist and former government adviser, as Greece’s new finance minister. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras overhauled his government to give it new momentum after a weak showing in European Parliament elections last month.
Although Mr. Stournaras, 57, was widely credited with guiding Greece’s return to international bond markets in April and paving the way for crucial debt (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on June 13, 2014, at 1:02 am
Greece Wars With Courts Over Ways to Slash Budget – NYTimes.com.
ATHENS — The Greek government has made a range of painful cuts to salaries, pensions and jobs for public workers over the last four years, saying they were needed to satisfy the demands of the international creditors that bailed the country out. But the Greeks hurt by those steps, and the nation’s courts, have a different idea.
Steadily, citizens groups — including police officers, university professors, cleaning workers and judges themselves — have challenged the cuts as illegal or unconstitutional. And in case after case, Greek courts have (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on June 7, 2014, at 3:45 pm Portugal indebted to Angola after economic reversal of fortune | World news | Guardian Weekly.
There was no doubt about the firm handshake, but the smile looked a bit forced. The date was 17 November 2011, the place Luanda. Pedro Passos Coelho, the Portuguese premier, had just completed talks with the president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, sealing an agreement that was both a boon for Portugal and deeply humiliating.
Six months earlier, Portugal, verging on bankruptcy, received a €78bn ($100bn) bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. In exchange Lisbon agreed (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on June 3, 2014, at 11:25 am After The Elections The Real Battle For Europe Begins.
by Thomas Fazi
Taking stock of the results of the recent European elections is not an easy task. Many commentators have described the outcome as an ‘earthquake’, citing the surge in ‘anti-establishment’ parties, with voters supposedly lured by two ‘extremes’: the ultra-right and the extreme left. But this is a gross simplification of reality. As the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis put to me in a recent interview, ‘Europeans were not lured by the two extremes. They drifted to one extreme: that of the misanthropic, racist, xenophobic, anti-European right’.
In total, (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on June 3, 2014, at 9:40 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- Gary Engler explores Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century from the perspective of a reader who’s far more skeptical than Piketty about the prospect of tinkering around the edges of our current corporatist economic system. And Seth Ackerman writes that Piketty’s observations look like compelling evidence challenging the doctrine of marginal productivity theory which is taken as an article of faith by laissez-faire fundamentalists.
- Meanwhile, Bill Moyers interviews Joseph Stiglitz about corporate tax evasion. And Michael Madowitz points out what we should have learned about austerity economics by now: There (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on May 23, 2014, at 1:26 am The Next Portuguese Revolution | Jacobin.
By Mark Bergfeld
The poster for this year’s official celebrations of the Portuguese Revolution features a large question mark against a red background. It’s a fitting symbol for an event open to many interpretations. Does Portugal again stand at a crossroads? Or has the revolutionary legacy been co-opted once and for all? Does the poster highlight the revolution’s unfinished business, or put into question the wider gains it made?
The Portuguese Revolution of 1974-5, also known as the Carnation Revolution, was the hottest topic of the post-1968 left. At the time, thousands of international (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on May 19, 2014, at 12:27 am Thousands across Europe rally against EU policies (VIDEOS) — RT News.
Filed under: Austerity Tagged: Austerity, Eurozone Crisis, Protest
By geofftkennedy, on May 18, 2014, at 11:23 pm Europe’s Brutal Discipline » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.
The European utopia is turning into a system for delivering punishment. As Europe’s regime gets tougher, there is a growing sense that interchangeable elites are taking advantage of each crisis to tighten their austerity policies and impose their federal fantasy (1). This twin objective has the support of boardrooms and newsrooms. But even if you boost their ranks with German rentiers, a few Luxembourgers specialising in tax evasion and most of France’s Socialist leaders, popular backing for the present “European project” isn’t much greater.
The European Union does not stop chiding states (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on May 16, 2014, at 11:12 am Why The European Commission Is Wrong: The Case Of Spain – Social Europe Journal.
The Vice President of the European Commission, Olli Rehn, in charge of Economic and Monetary Affairs is becoming the most unpopular EU Commissioner in Spain. He emphasizes over and over again that labor market rigidities are causing the high unemployment in Spain. “Labor rigidities” is a polite way of accusing the Spanish trade unions for the high rate of unemployment that exists in Spain. Indeed, labor rigidities are supposed to mean that, because the unions have been able to get job security for some workers, employers (Read more…)
By geofftkennedy, on May 16, 2014, at 2:53 am EU officials plotted IMF attack to bring rebellious Italy to its knees – Telegraph Blogs.
The revelations about EMU skulduggery are coming thick and fast. Tim Geithner recounts in his book Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises just how far the EU elites are willing to go to save the euro, even if it means toppling elected leaders and eviscerating Europe’s sovereign parliaments.
Filed under: Austerity, Crisis, Democracy, Europe Tagged: Democracy, Eurozone Crisis, Italy, neoliberalism
By Greg Fingas, on May 12, 2014, at 4:38 pm Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.
- Alyssa Battistoni writes that a universal basic income could go a long way toward solving environmental and economic problems alike by placing a focus on sustainable quality of life rather than increasing consumer consumption: If overconsumption is actually the problem, we can’t fix it by consuming more, however eco-certified the products. Indeed, the very idea that green jobs will drive economic recovery is closely tied to notions of continued American hegemony: green tech is the next big thing, the rhetoric goes, and America needs to get ahead in the global race to innovate. (Read more…)
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