After offering free email since the 1990s, to start charging per email account is an absurd insult to customers and should probably be illegal. The problem is the provincial government who could potentially do something about it, is hoping to sell off the crown corp, so they won’t do something
Continue readingTag: sasktel
Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ben Cohen writes that we shouldn’t take a negative rapid test as license to stop taking every possible precaution to limit community spread. The Star’s editorial board asks whether people are ready to make vaccinations mandatory. Supreya Dwivedi laments the innumeracy and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On selloffs and sellouts
So far, there hasn’t been much follow-up since the revelation that the Saskatchewan Party set up (PDF) a committee, and arranged for sensitive operational details to be handed over to bidders in the process. But while there’s plenty left to be investigated about how both the secret committee and the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Steve Roth points out how extreme concentrations of wealth lead to poor economic and social outcomes: If wealth is consistently more widely dispersed — like it was after WW II — the extra spending that results causes more production. (Why, exactly, do you
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on what the Wall government means when it talks about entering into “partnerships” with the corporate sector – and why Saskatchewan’s citizens shouldn’t stand to be cut out of the Crown assets now owned for public benefit. For further reading…– Others have also noted the “partnership” phrasing used by
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Forget the Wall, We’ve Just Opened a Hell of a Door
Source: CBC News – Saskatchewan Government Passes Bill 40 Allowing Partial Sale of Crowns Let’s ignore the long absence, and just get right to it, shall we? We’ve talked about Bill 40 before on the blog, and how the government was making overtures towards moving the goal line on what
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – David Suzuki discusses the merits of a four-day work week in improving both working and living conditions: It’s absurd that so many people still work eight hours a day, five days a week — or more — with only a few weeks’
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on SaskTel’s response (PDF) to the Wall government’s attempt to make excuses to sell off one of Saskatchewan’s core Crowns – and how its position in dealing with federal regulators may in fact only be stronger after the selloff of MTS. For further reading…– I’ve written about SaskTel’s beneficial
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Jackson writes that the Libs’ fall economic statement represents a massive (and unjustified) shift away from promised infrastructure funding even while planning to privatize both existing operations and future developments. And Joie Warnock highlights why it would represent nothing short of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Deceptive by definition
The Saskatchewan Party’s introduction of new legislation (Bill 40, PDF) to define massive Crown sell-offs as not being “privatization” has received plenty of due attention. But it’s worth taking a close look at exactly what the Wall government is doing – and how it reflects an attempt to sneak the
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Moving the Goal Line
SOURCE: CBC News: Opposition Vows to Fight Government on What in Means to “Privatize” SOURCE: CJME News: Government of Sask. Changes Definition of “Privatize” when it Comes to Crown Corps. There’s going to be a fair amount of sources linked in the body of this post, and I do encourage
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Moving the Goal Line
SOURCE: CBC News: Opposition Vows to Fight Government on What in Means to “Privatize” SOURCE: CJME News: Government of Sask. Changes Definition of “Privatize” when it Comes to Crown Corps. There’s going to be a fair amount of sources linked in the body of this post, and I do encourage
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On cost comparisons
Following up on yesterday’s column, let’s take a moment to examine just how foolish the Wall government’s insistence on trying to sell off SaskTel is even as a matter of pure dollars and cents.Again, I’ve previously calculated the benefit to Saskatchew…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On cost comparisons
Following up on yesterday’s column, let’s take a moment to examine just how foolish the Wall government’s insistence on trying to sell off SaskTel is even as a matter of pure dollars and cents.Again, I’ve previously calculated the benefit to Saskatchew…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how we shouldn’t believe any of the unenforceable promises Brad Wall and his government will make to try to pitch a SaskTel selloff – and how citizens stand to lose out from a sale.For further reading…- CBC reported on Wall’s going out of hi…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how we shouldn’t believe any of the unenforceable promises Brad Wall and his government will make to try to pitch a SaskTel selloff – and how citizens stand to lose out from a sale.For further reading…- CBC reported on Wall’s going out of hi…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- David Dayen wonders whether the Obama administration’s decision to end the use of private prisons might represent the needed start of a movement away from relying on poor corporate services as a substi…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
– David Dayen wonders whether the Obama administration’s decision to end the use of private prisons might represent the needed start of a movement away from relying on poor corporate services as a substitute for public action:
Private prisons experienced more safety and security incidents. They had higher rates of assaults, inadequate medical checkups and compliance, eight times as many incidents of contraband cell-phone smuggling, and often housed new inmates in solitary confinement units, seemingly for lack of space. The report also detailed several grisly incidents since 2008: three riots in one Reeves County, Texas facility in two months; the death of a corrections officer in a riot in Natchez, Mississippi; and the closure of the Willacy County (Texas) Correctional Center, after inmates burned it to the ground.
It’s not hard to figure out why this happens. Private companies win contracts to manage federal prisons by undercutting the Bureau of Prisons’ operational costs. Unlike the government, private prison companies must also take their profit margins out of their budgets. The only way to make that work is to massively drop labor costs, corresponding to a severe degradation of the quality of prison management.
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That reflects the problem with privatization as a whole. Private companies must carry out a government function—be it water, parking meters, mass transit, or K-12 schools—at a lower cost than the government can provide it, while taking their profit off the top. Time and again, the results reveal that to be impossible, at least if you want to provide the same quality of service. Yet we keep privatizing. Whether it’s Republicans expanding Medicaid or cash-strapped cities handing over bus service to Uber and Lyft, eventually costs shift from taxpayers to the users of the services, oversight becomes impotent as officials grow reliant on outsourcing contracts, and attempts to maximize profits lead to service breakdowns.
– But CBC reports that the worst is yet to come in Saskatchewan as Brad Wall has publicly put SaskTel up for corporate raiding.
– Jacki Andre discusses the hidden costs of living with a disability – which make it particularly unconscionable for Wall’s Saskatchewan Party to be trying to squeeze pennies out of people who rely on already-inadequate disability benefits.
– Floyd Perras highlights the multiple factors that contribute to (and exacerbate) homelessness. And Rocca Perla comments on the need to include social determinants of health within medical treatment of patients.
– Pat Rich describes the Canadian Medical Association’s rude awakening in finding out that Lib Health Minister Jane Philpott has no interest in its key priorities for improved care. And Alison points out how the Libs are conspicuously trying to wriggle out of their promise to end the unfairness of first-past-the-post politics.
– Finally, Anna MacDonald makes the case for stronger transparency as a means of limiting the harm of global arms dealing. But if there was any doubt that the Trudeau Libs are firmly on the side of weapons proliferation, Helene Laverdiere points out their inexplicable decision to stand against nuclear disarmament.
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Premier Phonying It In, With Respect to SaskTel
“Will [the Act] be changed with respect to [SaskTel]? No.” – Wall (March 2016) “There’s something we signed on to called the Crown Corporation Protection Act, or to that effect. Basically, it protects Crowns from being privatized,” he said. “If elected, we will make one change to that: that’s to the liquor retailing in the province. And we’ve already announced that.” That […]
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- France St-Hilaire, David Green and Craig Riddell offer some needed policy prescriptions to fight inequality in Canada:As first steps toward expanding the share of the economic pie going to workers, the minimum wage …
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