Daily Musings -- January 28th

 Pete Seeger died this morning.  I guess we should have expected it -- he was 94, but it still makes me sad -- he lived through almost the entire twentieth century -- born in 1919 he missed the great war -- and always seemed to be on the right side.  I wonder if overall he thought things got worse or better?  Rolling Stone piece with links to other articles about Pete Seeger, with pics etc. can be found here.  Certainly the 60's and 70's improved the lot of many people in the northern world,  especially through the civil rights movement, women's liberation and gay rights --  all successful to a certain extent.   Turns out that legislating rights doesn't mean that you live without     discrimination day to day. . . but hard to fault improvements in legislation!     True - economically things improved from the 1940's - 1970's for North American workers, but it has been all downhill from there.   In other parts of the world, severe poverty has been reduced from the 1970's, BUT 80% of the world still lives on $10 a day (US) or less so we are not really doing very well! Pete also worked on the environment and yet 5% of the world's population consumes 13 of its resources and makes nearly half the waste on the planet -- that 5% is unfortunately. . . us.   You can though hear Jian Gonmeshi's tribute to Pete Seeger from Q on CBC radio this morning, by clicking on the  link or by playing the audio clip at the top of the page.     _________________________________________________ What else?    Hmmm. .  . A written piece on cbc.ca is very interesting. . .   it talks about how federal cabinet Ministers are no longer "responsible" for their departments or the "screw-ups" in their departments and how this is a change.  In fact they say: 

Somewhere between the first Conservative election victory and the last election, the rules on ministerial responsibility changed without any fanfare or public discussion.

The 2007 guide for ministers, written by the PCO, explained ministerial responsibility this way: "Ministers are individually responsible to Parliament and the prime minister for their own actions and those of their department, including the actions of all officials under their management and direction, whether or not the Ministers had prior knowledge."

By 2011, there had been a shift in thinking.

"Ministerial accountability to Parliament does not mean that a minister is presumed to have knowledge of every matter that occurs within his or her department or portfolio, nor that the minister is necessarily required to accept blame for every matter," wrote PCO in an updated version of the pamphlet.

Well, that's a problem - and Nigel Wright and more fall under this -- just a stroke of a policy pen and parliamentary accountability is eroded. The article goes on to say: 

"Accountability means accepting responsibility (a) for the action, and (b) for the correction. PCO/PMO guidelines suggest only the latter responsibility."

Turnbull put an even sharper point on it than that.

While these guidelines are written down, they are just guidelines, she said. The idea of ministerial responsibility is a convention. It is an unwritten constitutional rule.

"It's easier to ignore an unwritten convention than it is to ignore a written part of the constitution," she pointed out.

"It becomes a test of what the government can get away with if they want to start playing with conventions. And that's a huge problem," she added.

"These guidelines do not gel with the rest of our system."

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CCPA has published a new study targeting the Harper government plan to allow income splitting.   There is a massive potential tax loss and it is entirely beneficial to the rich!  (Of course) it feels like once people get elected, they are lobbied only by the rich and powerful in any meaningful way and just forget about the rest of us . . . though of course in the case of the Cons, they are Harper's friends and his ideological allies. 

According to the report, about 86 per cent of all Canadian families would gain no benefit from the proposed tax loophole, while it would cost taxpayers as a whole almost $5 billion.  

This study examines the cost and the distributional impact of three income splitting scenarios: pension income splitting; income splitting for families with children under 18, as the Conservatives have pledged; and income splitting for all families. The study finds that the impact of income splitting in all scenarios is very unequal and the lost revenue for Canadian governments would be substantial. - See more at: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/income-splitting-canada#sthash.xTsEKqxE.dpuf

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I spend quite a bit of time mulling over why people behave the way they do politically.  Why don't they vote in their own self-interest?  Why don't they demand better? - why don't they pay attention to the people controlling much of their lives municipally, provincially and federally?  I have  this vague, sneaking suspicion that  people don't because too often things are difficult to understand and things have gone the way of corporations and the rich for so long that people just assume that "government" is there just to screw them.   

But among all my musings in this area, I had begun to think that the "left" always deals in greys -- that we have a sophisticated understanding of the world and often debate how to achieve something, like the greatest good for the greatest number, or, which policy will be better, or, should we vote for the NDP or are we just encouraging another neo-liberal party?  ANd the right deals in/promotes these eaqsy statements -- vote for us and reduce your taxes (but they don't tell you it is the rich who will pay less) - etc.     Anyway this article on Rabble started me thinking about that again.  It is about Harper on Israel,  but basically it is about communicating a message, and gives examples,  suggesting that people will vote for a clear message over muddle even if they do not like the clear message.  I am starting to think that there is something to that logic.