The Good News About Canada’s Death Panels

The Article: Canada Has Death Panels by Adam Goldberg in Slate.

The Text: Last week Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.

In other words: Canada has death panels.

I use that term advisedly. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made it famous in the summer of 2009, when Congress was fighting over whether to pass Obamacare. As Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over health care, we should pause to wonder why millions of Canadians have come to accept the functional equivalent of an idea that almost sank health care reform even though, in this country, it was imaginary.

Continue Reading

The Earnings Of An Average Wall Streeter Versus An Average New Yorker

The Article: Here’s How Much the Average Wall Streeter Makes Compared to the Average New Yorker by Linette Lopez in Business Insider.

The Text: Every year the Office of the New York State Comptroller does a deep dive into Wall Street employment and compensation. The office released its report for 2012 this morning, and as usual, Wall Street salaries trounced those of average New Yorkers. From these stats, you’ll understand how healthy the industry is and how it’s contributing to city and state’s finances. Plus, two words: income gap.

Here are highlights from the full report:

Continue Reading

Who Stands To Profit From Keystone? The Koch Bros, Of Course

The Article: Study: Koch Brothers Could Make $100 Billion if Keystone XL Pipeline Approved by Kevin Grandia in The Contributor.

The Text: A new study concludes that Koch Industries and its subsidiaries stand to make as much as $100 billion in profits if the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is granted a presidential permit from U.S. President Barack Obama.

The report, titled Billionaires’ Carbon Bomb, produced by the think tank International Forum on Globalization (IFG), finds that David and Charles Koch and their privately owned company, Koch Industries, own more than 2 million acres of land in Northern Alberta, the source of the tar sands bitumen that would be pumped to the United States via the Keystone XL pipeline.

Continue Reading

A $13 Billion JP Morgan Settlement Is Fine, But Let’s Put ‘Em In Jail

The Article: The $13 Billion JPMorgan Settlement Is a Good Start—Now Someone Should Go to Jail by William Greider in The Nation.

The Text: JPMorgan Chase, the star of mega-banks, is up against the wall at the Justice Department, trying to settle its myriad crimes for $13 billion. That’s real money, even for a trillion-dollar bank. So this is progress. After years of scandalous indifference, the Obama administration appears to have found its backbone.

Better late than never, grumpy citizens can say. But that doesn’t settle the matter. Four years ago, Senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware crisply described the more fundamental problem posed by the wantonly reckless behemoths of Wall Street.

“People know that if they rob a bank they will go to jail,” Kaufman said. “Bankers should know that if they rob people they will go to jail too.” Can we hear an amen on that? Not yet. But the complaint Kaufman voiced repeatedly is now on the table. “At the end of the day,” the senator warned, “This is a test of whether we have one justice system in this country or two. If we do not treat a Wall Street firm that defrauded investors of millions of dollars the same way we treat someone who stole $500 from a cash register, then how can we expect our citizens to have any faith in the rule of law?”

Continue Reading

OMG: Is Toms Shoes Finally Helping The Poor?

The Article: Is TOMS Shoes Listening to its Critics? by Joshua Keating in Slate.

The Text: TOMS comes in for a lot more criticism from academics and international development types than your average trendy footwear purveyor thanks to its trademark BOGO—“buy-one-give-one”—model: for every pair of shoes you buy, TOMS donates a similar pair to someone in a developing country. (The company recently expanded into eyewear using a similar model.)

The feel-good marketing of TOMS has been one of the keys to its success, but many critics charge that in-kind donation programs are an inefficient way of helping people in need compared to simply donating money to dedicated antipoverty programs, and that dumping donated clothing in poor countries can actually hinder economic growth by undercutting local producers. (TOMS shoes are donated to over 50 countries but produced only in China, Argentina, and Ethiopia.)

Moreover, TOMS shoes reportedly often simply turn up for sale in markets in the countries where they are donated. (TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie has also taken flack for working with the controversial Christian group Focus on the Family.)

But there are some recent signs that TOMS is starting to get the message. The company announced recently that it will open a factory in Haiti, paying what it says will be “competitive” wages to 50 Haitian workers. According to Public Radio International, Mycoskie has also pledged that by 2015, the company will produce one-third of its shoes in the countries where they are being donated.

There are still good questions to be raised about whether clothing donations are a helpful form of aid at all. One 2008 study, for instance, found that used clothing imports accounted for 50 percent decline in employment in the African apparel sector. Employing apparel workers in developing countries could simply be counteracting a problem that TOMS is itself contributing to.

To give credit where it’s due, the company does seem to be starting to think about its impact more seriously. But compared to, say, donating $50 to a reputable charity, buying a $50 pair of canvas sneakers probably still won’t be the most effective way to help people in need.