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…
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Accidental 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: New column day
Here (via PressReader), on how Brad Wall is preaching neglect and delay as a response to violent racism (even as he’s fully prepared to use as much political capital as he can muster pitching the idea of a SaskTel selloff). For further reading…- Wall…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how Brad Wall is preaching neglect and delay as a response to violent racism (even as he’s fully prepared to use as much political capital as he can muster pitching the idea of a SaskTel selloff). For further reading…- Wall’s comments which …
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 readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week.- Martin Jacques writes about the inescapable failings of neoliberalism, along with the question of what alternative will come next: (B)y historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a particularly goo…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the Saskatchewan Party’s decision to try to make up for its gross mismanagement by squeezing benefits out of people with disabilities.For further reading…- This year’s provincial budget spin from the Ministry of Social Services is here, feat…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Norman Farrell highlights how following the reversal of the HST transition, B.C. businesses haven’t given up on their goal of making sure that only individuals pay consumption taxes. – Jordan Press and…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Thomas Walkom discusses Mel Hurtig’s philosophy of economic nationalism, while noting that Canada stands out as an exception in lacking a strong movement toward greater internal planning and economic control. …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Melisa Foster points out why millennials should be strongly interested in a national pharmacare program:Today, young Canadians are searching for jobs in an economy with high levels of precarious employment, unemploym…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Mariana Mazzucato discusses (JPG) the importance of an intelligent industrial strategy. And David Kotz argues that neoliberal capitalism has reached the point where there’s no plausible path toward sustainable …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Atrios offers a reminder as to how means-testing tends to make social programs more vulnerable to attack without making our overall tax system more progressive:We already means test through the tax cod…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Bjarke Skærlund Risager interviews David Harvey about the history and effect of neoliberalism: I’ve always treated neoliberalism as a political project carried out by the corporate capitalist class as they felt i…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here (via PressReader), on how the North Saskatchewan River oil spill may not lead directly to a needed reevaluation of the risks of pipelines – but a public expectation that we’ll shift away from dirty energy may be more significant in the long run.Fo…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brad Wall: a day late and a dollar short on Husky’s Prince Albert pipeline rupture
PHOTOS: Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall speaking with reporters in the halls of Saskatchewan Legislative Building in Regina yesterday (screen grab from the CBC’s feed). Below: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and the city of Prince Albert on the bank of …
Continue readingAlberta Politics: NDP moves to end secret Klein-era scheme to offload corporate losses on the public – the opposition, predictably, screams
PHOTOS: Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman, a photo that wasn’t taken yesterday, obviously, but has the advantage of having been taken by your blogger. Below: Wildrose electricity and renewables critic Don MacIntyre, Progressive Conservative interim Leader…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Polluted by crimes, but torn by no remorse
Shorter Brad Wall on what’s truly important as an oil spill pollutes drinking water along the North Saskatchewan River:I only hope this monster running amok doesn’t make it harder to sell new reanimation technologies.Or in graphic form…
Continue readingMontreal Simon: The Continuing Adventures of the Annoying Oil Pimp Brad Wall
Canada's premiers have made more progress in the last few months than they made in the almost ten years Stephen Harper ruled this country.And they do have good reason to celebrate.But there is always one party pooper, and it would have to be Brad …
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