BILL M 202 -- 2002: PETS IN RENTAL HOUSING ACT
The original written by me when I was an intern.
http://www.legis.gov.bc.ca/2000/1st_read/mem203-1.htm
2/27/04
Urban change requires vision
Toronto Star
February 26, 2004
Scarcity is a fact of life for many these days. Frustrations mount about
homelessness, poverty, ill health and environmental degradation — problems
whose solutions are often implemented too slowly or are too small in scope
for reasons of cost.
It is times like these, with new legislators and tight budgets, that we need
to consult with our visionaries — leaders with a holistic perspective who
have low-cost ways to overcome scarcity.
One visionary, Martin Liefhebber, recommends simple solutions that have the
potential for large-scale implementation — legislative changes that, if
enacted, would turn our politicians into heroes. Liefhebber, principal
architect of Breathe Architects, is the internationally recognized designer
of the Toronto "healthy houses" on Sparkhall Ave., and sustainable buildings
and technologies in Canada, including York University's Calumet College,
OCAD's Rosalie Sharp Pavilion and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
Liefhebber's solutions are based on the need to provide for our changing
population. More people are living alone, paying more to do so, and our
aging populace needs community supports for independence. "Employment
options are diminishing for a greater proportion of people," says
StatsCanada — one reason why more young adults are living with their
parents. Employment scarcity exacerbates the need for affordable housing.
Toronto's 2003 Report Card on Housing and Homelessness stated the crisis:
About one-quarter of our city's population is earning less than the low
income cut-off ($34,572 for a family of four, $18,371 for one person).
Approximately 885,000 Ontario families (250,000 in Toronto) are paying more
than 30 per cent of their income for shelter, and more than 71,000 Toronto
households are on the waiting list for affordable housing. Liefhebber's
answers to these issues stress the need for legislative changes and natural
systems "to create humane ways for people to live more affordably in
difficult economic times."
What do these natural systems and legislative changes include?
Mixed use: change land use zoning everywhere to include live/work
People should be able to start a business within their home but most land is
now zoned either residential or commercial. "Having retail operations at
street corners, even in the suburbs, would provide grocery stores at more
frequent intervals and negate the need for a car," Leifhebber says.
Intensification
Liefhebber states: "Traditional means of achieving affordability call for
large-scale apartment buildings." He suggests that instead we double our GTA
housing capacity by "rezoning to accommodate a doubling of families per
housing unit — a more cost effective use of road and public transit
infrastructure while slowing sprawl." Currently, municipal zoning does not
allow lots to contain more than one dwelling for a single family.
Rezoning could also facilitate converting laneways into ecological villages.
"This creates a huge supply of inexpensive housing for the elderly, for
grown children and for students," says Liefhebber. "Why do we have cars in
garages when we have people sleeping on the streets?"
Alternative technologies
In the buildings he designs, Liefhebber often opts for alternative
technologies found to be superior to standard (legislated) ones, which offer
an ecological solution to indoor and outdoor air quality concerns.
In his Clarkson co-housing home, straw bales create a breathing wall
technology that has been deemed to be superior to conventional walls by
building code specialists. Yet, its use must be applied for by special
permit each time, although buildings that can breathe instead of having a
tight seal are suitable for people with respiratory sensitivities and reduce
health-care costs.
Liefhebber adds: "Most buildings primarily are designed without any clue
about the sun and its ability to heat air and water, and they fail to
address our growing urgency to lower our energy consumption, use renewables,
and live more lightly on the planet."
Redesign residential streets and sewage systems
Liefhebber says, "We can redesign residential streets so pedestrians are
treated as more valuable than cars. Calming the traffic would promote a 3-C
neighbourhood — a commons of community and commerce similar to those in the
Netherlands."
Additionally, he notes, "Why continue to design a closed storm sewage
system — the pipe approach — depriving our water table of rainwater
penetration and causing it to deteriorate through dropped water levels?
Having an open storm water system would also help cool our city because we
would rely more on natural, grassy surfaces (rather than paved ones)." This
seepage principle "would water our drought-ridden urban trees."
People and markets are hungry for viable societal, health and ecological
alternatives. Given tighter government budgets, we need political leadership
to help us achieve these changes through legislation that is less
restrictive and which creates opportunities for an improved quality of life.
Toronto Star
February 26, 2004
Scarcity is a fact of life for many these days. Frustrations mount about
homelessness, poverty, ill health and environmental degradation — problems
whose solutions are often implemented too slowly or are too small in scope
for reasons of cost.
It is times like these, with new legislators and tight budgets, that we need
to consult with our visionaries — leaders with a holistic perspective who
have low-cost ways to overcome scarcity.
One visionary, Martin Liefhebber, recommends simple solutions that have the
potential for large-scale implementation — legislative changes that, if
enacted, would turn our politicians into heroes. Liefhebber, principal
architect of Breathe Architects, is the internationally recognized designer
of the Toronto "healthy houses" on Sparkhall Ave., and sustainable buildings
and technologies in Canada, including York University's Calumet College,
OCAD's Rosalie Sharp Pavilion and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
Liefhebber's solutions are based on the need to provide for our changing
population. More people are living alone, paying more to do so, and our
aging populace needs community supports for independence. "Employment
options are diminishing for a greater proportion of people," says
StatsCanada — one reason why more young adults are living with their
parents. Employment scarcity exacerbates the need for affordable housing.
Toronto's 2003 Report Card on Housing and Homelessness stated the crisis:
About one-quarter of our city's population is earning less than the low
income cut-off ($34,572 for a family of four, $18,371 for one person).
Approximately 885,000 Ontario families (250,000 in Toronto) are paying more
than 30 per cent of their income for shelter, and more than 71,000 Toronto
households are on the waiting list for affordable housing. Liefhebber's
answers to these issues stress the need for legislative changes and natural
systems "to create humane ways for people to live more affordably in
difficult economic times."
What do these natural systems and legislative changes include?
Mixed use: change land use zoning everywhere to include live/work
People should be able to start a business within their home but most land is
now zoned either residential or commercial. "Having retail operations at
street corners, even in the suburbs, would provide grocery stores at more
frequent intervals and negate the need for a car," Leifhebber says.
Intensification
Liefhebber states: "Traditional means of achieving affordability call for
large-scale apartment buildings." He suggests that instead we double our GTA
housing capacity by "rezoning to accommodate a doubling of families per
housing unit — a more cost effective use of road and public transit
infrastructure while slowing sprawl." Currently, municipal zoning does not
allow lots to contain more than one dwelling for a single family.
Rezoning could also facilitate converting laneways into ecological villages.
"This creates a huge supply of inexpensive housing for the elderly, for
grown children and for students," says Liefhebber. "Why do we have cars in
garages when we have people sleeping on the streets?"
Alternative technologies
In the buildings he designs, Liefhebber often opts for alternative
technologies found to be superior to standard (legislated) ones, which offer
an ecological solution to indoor and outdoor air quality concerns.
In his Clarkson co-housing home, straw bales create a breathing wall
technology that has been deemed to be superior to conventional walls by
building code specialists. Yet, its use must be applied for by special
permit each time, although buildings that can breathe instead of having a
tight seal are suitable for people with respiratory sensitivities and reduce
health-care costs.
Liefhebber adds: "Most buildings primarily are designed without any clue
about the sun and its ability to heat air and water, and they fail to
address our growing urgency to lower our energy consumption, use renewables,
and live more lightly on the planet."
Redesign residential streets and sewage systems
Liefhebber says, "We can redesign residential streets so pedestrians are
treated as more valuable than cars. Calming the traffic would promote a 3-C
neighbourhood — a commons of community and commerce similar to those in the
Netherlands."
Additionally, he notes, "Why continue to design a closed storm sewage
system — the pipe approach — depriving our water table of rainwater
penetration and causing it to deteriorate through dropped water levels?
Having an open storm water system would also help cool our city because we
would rely more on natural, grassy surfaces (rather than paved ones)." This
seepage principle "would water our drought-ridden urban trees."
People and markets are hungry for viable societal, health and ecological
alternatives. Given tighter government budgets, we need political leadership
to help us achieve these changes through legislation that is less
restrictive and which creates opportunities for an improved quality of life.
2/26/04
2/20/04
2/19/04
The America will vote for Bush
THERE was a commercial that aired on Iowa television in which the-then front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Howard Dean, was blasted for being the choice of the cultural elites: a "tax hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left- wing freak show" who had no business trying to talk to the plain folk of Iowa.
The commercial was sponsored by the Club for Growth, a Washington-based organisation dedicated to hooking up pro-business rich people with pro-business politicians. The organisation is made up of anti-government economists, prominent men of means, and big thinkers of the late New Economy, celebrated geniuses of the sort that spent the past 10 years describing the low-tax, deregulated economy as though it were the second coming of Christ. In other words, the people who thought they saw Jesus in the ever-ascending Nasdaq, the pundits who worked himself into a lather singing the praises of new billionaires, the economists who made a living by publicly insisting that privatisation and deregulation were the mandates of history itself, are now running television commercials denouncing the "elite".
That’s the mystery of the United States, circa 2004. Thanks to the rightward political shift of the past 30 years, wealth is today concentrated in fewer hands than it has been since the 1920s; workers have less power over the conditions under which they toil than ever before in our lifetimes; and the corporation has become the most powerful actor in our world. Yet that rightward shift - still going strong to this day - sells itself as a war against elites, a righteous uprising of the little guy against an obnoxious upper class.
THERE was a commercial that aired on Iowa television in which the-then front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Howard Dean, was blasted for being the choice of the cultural elites: a "tax hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left- wing freak show" who had no business trying to talk to the plain folk of Iowa.
The commercial was sponsored by the Club for Growth, a Washington-based organisation dedicated to hooking up pro-business rich people with pro-business politicians. The organisation is made up of anti-government economists, prominent men of means, and big thinkers of the late New Economy, celebrated geniuses of the sort that spent the past 10 years describing the low-tax, deregulated economy as though it were the second coming of Christ. In other words, the people who thought they saw Jesus in the ever-ascending Nasdaq, the pundits who worked himself into a lather singing the praises of new billionaires, the economists who made a living by publicly insisting that privatisation and deregulation were the mandates of history itself, are now running television commercials denouncing the "elite".
That’s the mystery of the United States, circa 2004. Thanks to the rightward political shift of the past 30 years, wealth is today concentrated in fewer hands than it has been since the 1920s; workers have less power over the conditions under which they toil than ever before in our lifetimes; and the corporation has become the most powerful actor in our world. Yet that rightward shift - still going strong to this day - sells itself as a war against elites, a righteous uprising of the little guy against an obnoxious upper class.
The Dominion: Canada's Grassroots National Newspaper
New to me. Should be interesting poking around and seeing what their take is.
New to me. Should be interesting poking around and seeing what their take is.
"Creative Class War" by Richard Florida
How the GOP's anti-elitism could ruin America's economy
Richard Florida is the Heinz professor of economic development at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of The Rise of the Creative Class.
How the GOP's anti-elitism could ruin America's economy
Richard Florida is the Heinz professor of economic development at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of The Rise of the Creative Class.
2/10/04
2003 Report of the Auditor General of Canada - November - Chapter 3
3.1 From 1997 until 31 August 2001, the federal government ran the Sponsorship Program in a way that showed little regard for Parliament, the Financial Administration Act, contracting rules and regulations, transparency, and value for money:
* Parliament was not informed of the program's objectives or the results it achieved and was misinformed as to how the program was being managed.
* Those responsible for managing the program broke the government's own rules in the way they selected communications agencies and awarded contracts to them.
* Partnership arrangements between government entities are not unusual in programs of mutual benefit. However, some sponsorship funds were transferred to Crown corporations using unusual methods that appear designed to provide significant commissions to communications agencies, while hiding the source of funds and the true nature of the transactions.
* Documentation was very poor and there was little evidence of analysis to support the expenditure of more than $250 million. Over $100 million of that was paid to communications agencies as production fees and commissions.
* Oversight mechanisms and essential controls at Public Works and Government Services Canada failed to detect, prevent, or report violations.
3.2 Since Communications Canada's creation in September 2001, there have been significant improvements in the program's management, including better documentation and more rigorous enforcement of contract requirements.
3.1 From 1997 until 31 August 2001, the federal government ran the Sponsorship Program in a way that showed little regard for Parliament, the Financial Administration Act, contracting rules and regulations, transparency, and value for money:
* Parliament was not informed of the program's objectives or the results it achieved and was misinformed as to how the program was being managed.
* Those responsible for managing the program broke the government's own rules in the way they selected communications agencies and awarded contracts to them.
* Partnership arrangements between government entities are not unusual in programs of mutual benefit. However, some sponsorship funds were transferred to Crown corporations using unusual methods that appear designed to provide significant commissions to communications agencies, while hiding the source of funds and the true nature of the transactions.
* Documentation was very poor and there was little evidence of analysis to support the expenditure of more than $250 million. Over $100 million of that was paid to communications agencies as production fees and commissions.
* Oversight mechanisms and essential controls at Public Works and Government Services Canada failed to detect, prevent, or report violations.
3.2 Since Communications Canada's creation in September 2001, there have been significant improvements in the program's management, including better documentation and more rigorous enforcement of contract requirements.
2/6/04
From the Smart Growth Livable Communities Email List
Wal-Mart's Costs Can't Always Be Measured
If Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is famous for anything, it's
the ruthless way it wrings the last few pennies of cost
from every transaction.
So last week, when the Los Angeles County Economic
Development Corp. released a study finding that the
expansion of Wal-Mart's grocery business into Southern
California would be, on balance, a great thing, my
first reaction was that the company had purchased the
LAEDC's reputation cheaply for the $65,000 it paid for
the study.
But to be fair, LAEDC's team, headed by Gregory
Freeman, its director of policy consulting, did a
responsible job with what data it had, much of which
was provided by Wal-Mart, and not without a fair amount
of tugging.
One can even accept Freeman's claim to have identified
and rectified a flaw in other, alarmist studies of
Wal-Mart's impact on local economies: that while those
studies focus on how the downward pressure on retail
wages produced by Wal-Mart's arrival leads to job
losses, they don't explore the converse — whether the
increased purchasing power of shoppers at Wal-Mart and
its price-cutting rivals might pump enough money into a
local economy to stimulate employment. Freeman argues
that over time, the extra cash in Wal-Mart shoppers'
pockets will mean a net gain in Southern California of
tens of thousands of jobs. And if someone wants to
challenge his math, at least he lays out his
calculations in his report's 40 pages.
For all that, when it comes to gauging Wal-Mart's
influence on local communities, much of that influence
either can't be measured by standard economics or
hasn't yet generated enough data to allow economists to
work their mathematical magic.
It's hard to ignore the markers of this report's
provenance as the product of a commercial contract.
Plenty of it reads as though it was aimed for the ears
of Freeman's exacting client. For example: "Wal-Mart
makes a point of always listening to its customers, and
focuses on the consumer's bottom line," Freeman writes
at the close of an admiring section on the
corporation's devotion to frugality. Well, maybe. But
this sounds more like the language of PR flackery than
of objective economics.
Freeman says every word of the text is his own. He also
says he knew his conclusions would be controversial,
especially in light of the supermarket labor dispute,
and strove to be objective: "I'm not here to defend
Wal-Mart or disguise the issues," he told me.
The LAEDC says Wal-Mart reviewed the report before it
was issued to the public. That's conventional practice
with consulting clients, the organization says, whether
they're corporations like Wal-Mart or agencies like the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The idea is to
allow the client to ferret out factual inaccuracies
rather than cavil about wording. But it's also true
that Wal-Mart had the contractual right to veto the
report's public release if it didn't like its
conclusions.
Since the company OKd its publication, no one should be
surprised that it lauded the LAEDC's conclusion that
the arrival of Wal-Mart Supercenters, which sell
general merchandise along with groceries, would be a
net boon for the Southland. "This is a great day for
California consumers," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona
Williams, a statement that fills me with the same
gratitude I feel when my bank tells me it's raising its
fees in order to serve me better.
The fact is that while the LAEDC report may be fine as
far as it goes, it doesn't go far enough in analyzing
the Wal-Mart effect on a community. And by leaving out
a few perceptible but unquantifiable consequences of
Wal-Mart policies, it makes the overall effect look
more favorable than it really is.
Consider an alleged Wal-Mart habit currently being
scrutinized in a federal courthouse in San Francisco:
pervasive sex discrimination. Lawyers for the
plaintiffs in the case say that women in virtually
every job classification across the country are paid
less than men with the same responsibilities and
seniority; women make up two-thirds of the company's
hourly workforce but one-third of its management.
Calculating the economic impact of such a trend is
difficult, if not impossible, but the accusation hardly
portrays Wal-Mart as a force for social enlightenment.
(The company has denied that it discriminates, but also
says it is trying to make its pay and promotion system
less subjective than before.)
On employment practices and benefits in general, the
LAEDC report takes Wal-Mart at its word. The company
claims to provide such perquisites as profit sharing
and a 15% discount on company stock it presents without
comment, beyond saying "the value of these benefits
varies." Indeed, Wal-Mart's critics note that its
famously lean management structure means that as few as
10 workers in a store employing 300 to 500 might be
eligible for profit sharing, and its low wages mean
that few employees have the wherewithal to accumulate a
significant investment in its stock at any discount.
The company's claim to provide health benefits also
deserves greater scrutiny. Although the LAEDC report
notes that Wal-Mart provides employees with health
insurance, it doesn't explore the implications of how
it does so. As this column has pointed out in the past,
not only do Wal-Mart workers pay a larger share of
their health insurance premiums than the average worker
nationwide, but the company also excludes coverage of
many routine medical services, such as contraceptives
and child vaccinations.
Instead, Wal-Mart focuses on covering such
"catastrophic" needs as cancer treatment and organ
transplants. This allows the company to release gaudy
numbers to make itself seem softhearted, such as by
noting that it pays for 60 transplants a year at more
than $1 million each. But these are obviously rare
events — 60 transplant patients would be the equivalent
of just over one-hundredth of 1% of Wal-Mart's 500,000
insured employees, for example.
What happens when the child of a Wal-Mart employee on
an hourly wage needs a shot for measles, chicken pox or
the flu? The worker faces the choice of shelling out,
say, $75 to get the shot at a private clinic (that's
more than a day's pay for many of the workers); or
going to a public, tax-supported clinic, which means we
all pay; or trusting to luck that the child won't get
sick, which would force the employee to stay home for a
couple of days, losing more pay.
Wal-Mart freely, even boastfully, acknowledges that as
many as 40% of its employees get their health coverage
elsewhere, such as from the employers of spouses or
parents or from programs like MediCal and Medicare.
This is community-mindedness the Wal-Mart way: Stick
the other guy with the responsibility for your own
workforce. Wal-Mart ruthlessly prices its health
coverage to discourage employees from placing their own
spouses and children on its plans, but it's not above
pushing its own workers on other companies. Then it
argues smugly that its competitors are only whining
because they don't know to cut costs as efficiently as
it does.
This sheds a different light on the LAEDC report's
contention that other studies have overestimated the
wage gap between Wal-Mart grocery employees and
unionized supermarket workers. The LAEDC estimates that
the overall average difference in Southern California
will amount to $2.50 to $3.50 an hour. But it doesn't
calculate the additional advantage the union members
have had from their comprehensive company-paid health
insurance coverage or, for that matter, from the
company-financed pension benefits they have long
enjoyed.
Neither benefit is matched by Wal-Mart. Both, as it
happens, are mortally threatened today, because the
supermarket chains engaged in the labor dispute are
determined to move their labor costs closer to the
Wal-Mart standard. The full import of this change,
Freeman told me, was "outside the scope" of his study,
if only because healthcare costs have become a national
issue and it's impossible to tell what company-paid
health insurance plans will look like in five or 10
years. That's true enough, but it looks like a fair bet
today that healthcare will be taking a bigger chunk out
of most workers' paychecks tomorrow. Wal-Mart's
influence on that trend can't be discounted.
Perhaps, then, we should defer applauding the
inevitable arrival of Wal-Mart Supercenters in
California. It may be, as the LAEDC concluded, that
we'll all benefit hugely from their relentless price
cutting. But we haven't even begun to learn how to
measure the supercenters' cost.
Bill Bronson
Wal-Mart's Costs Can't Always Be Measured
If Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is famous for anything, it's
the ruthless way it wrings the last few pennies of cost
from every transaction.
So last week, when the Los Angeles County Economic
Development Corp. released a study finding that the
expansion of Wal-Mart's grocery business into Southern
California would be, on balance, a great thing, my
first reaction was that the company had purchased the
LAEDC's reputation cheaply for the $65,000 it paid for
the study.
But to be fair, LAEDC's team, headed by Gregory
Freeman, its director of policy consulting, did a
responsible job with what data it had, much of which
was provided by Wal-Mart, and not without a fair amount
of tugging.
One can even accept Freeman's claim to have identified
and rectified a flaw in other, alarmist studies of
Wal-Mart's impact on local economies: that while those
studies focus on how the downward pressure on retail
wages produced by Wal-Mart's arrival leads to job
losses, they don't explore the converse — whether the
increased purchasing power of shoppers at Wal-Mart and
its price-cutting rivals might pump enough money into a
local economy to stimulate employment. Freeman argues
that over time, the extra cash in Wal-Mart shoppers'
pockets will mean a net gain in Southern California of
tens of thousands of jobs. And if someone wants to
challenge his math, at least he lays out his
calculations in his report's 40 pages.
For all that, when it comes to gauging Wal-Mart's
influence on local communities, much of that influence
either can't be measured by standard economics or
hasn't yet generated enough data to allow economists to
work their mathematical magic.
It's hard to ignore the markers of this report's
provenance as the product of a commercial contract.
Plenty of it reads as though it was aimed for the ears
of Freeman's exacting client. For example: "Wal-Mart
makes a point of always listening to its customers, and
focuses on the consumer's bottom line," Freeman writes
at the close of an admiring section on the
corporation's devotion to frugality. Well, maybe. But
this sounds more like the language of PR flackery than
of objective economics.
Freeman says every word of the text is his own. He also
says he knew his conclusions would be controversial,
especially in light of the supermarket labor dispute,
and strove to be objective: "I'm not here to defend
Wal-Mart or disguise the issues," he told me.
The LAEDC says Wal-Mart reviewed the report before it
was issued to the public. That's conventional practice
with consulting clients, the organization says, whether
they're corporations like Wal-Mart or agencies like the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The idea is to
allow the client to ferret out factual inaccuracies
rather than cavil about wording. But it's also true
that Wal-Mart had the contractual right to veto the
report's public release if it didn't like its
conclusions.
Since the company OKd its publication, no one should be
surprised that it lauded the LAEDC's conclusion that
the arrival of Wal-Mart Supercenters, which sell
general merchandise along with groceries, would be a
net boon for the Southland. "This is a great day for
California consumers," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona
Williams, a statement that fills me with the same
gratitude I feel when my bank tells me it's raising its
fees in order to serve me better.
The fact is that while the LAEDC report may be fine as
far as it goes, it doesn't go far enough in analyzing
the Wal-Mart effect on a community. And by leaving out
a few perceptible but unquantifiable consequences of
Wal-Mart policies, it makes the overall effect look
more favorable than it really is.
Consider an alleged Wal-Mart habit currently being
scrutinized in a federal courthouse in San Francisco:
pervasive sex discrimination. Lawyers for the
plaintiffs in the case say that women in virtually
every job classification across the country are paid
less than men with the same responsibilities and
seniority; women make up two-thirds of the company's
hourly workforce but one-third of its management.
Calculating the economic impact of such a trend is
difficult, if not impossible, but the accusation hardly
portrays Wal-Mart as a force for social enlightenment.
(The company has denied that it discriminates, but also
says it is trying to make its pay and promotion system
less subjective than before.)
On employment practices and benefits in general, the
LAEDC report takes Wal-Mart at its word. The company
claims to provide such perquisites as profit sharing
and a 15% discount on company stock it presents without
comment, beyond saying "the value of these benefits
varies." Indeed, Wal-Mart's critics note that its
famously lean management structure means that as few as
10 workers in a store employing 300 to 500 might be
eligible for profit sharing, and its low wages mean
that few employees have the wherewithal to accumulate a
significant investment in its stock at any discount.
The company's claim to provide health benefits also
deserves greater scrutiny. Although the LAEDC report
notes that Wal-Mart provides employees with health
insurance, it doesn't explore the implications of how
it does so. As this column has pointed out in the past,
not only do Wal-Mart workers pay a larger share of
their health insurance premiums than the average worker
nationwide, but the company also excludes coverage of
many routine medical services, such as contraceptives
and child vaccinations.
Instead, Wal-Mart focuses on covering such
"catastrophic" needs as cancer treatment and organ
transplants. This allows the company to release gaudy
numbers to make itself seem softhearted, such as by
noting that it pays for 60 transplants a year at more
than $1 million each. But these are obviously rare
events — 60 transplant patients would be the equivalent
of just over one-hundredth of 1% of Wal-Mart's 500,000
insured employees, for example.
What happens when the child of a Wal-Mart employee on
an hourly wage needs a shot for measles, chicken pox or
the flu? The worker faces the choice of shelling out,
say, $75 to get the shot at a private clinic (that's
more than a day's pay for many of the workers); or
going to a public, tax-supported clinic, which means we
all pay; or trusting to luck that the child won't get
sick, which would force the employee to stay home for a
couple of days, losing more pay.
Wal-Mart freely, even boastfully, acknowledges that as
many as 40% of its employees get their health coverage
elsewhere, such as from the employers of spouses or
parents or from programs like MediCal and Medicare.
This is community-mindedness the Wal-Mart way: Stick
the other guy with the responsibility for your own
workforce. Wal-Mart ruthlessly prices its health
coverage to discourage employees from placing their own
spouses and children on its plans, but it's not above
pushing its own workers on other companies. Then it
argues smugly that its competitors are only whining
because they don't know to cut costs as efficiently as
it does.
This sheds a different light on the LAEDC report's
contention that other studies have overestimated the
wage gap between Wal-Mart grocery employees and
unionized supermarket workers. The LAEDC estimates that
the overall average difference in Southern California
will amount to $2.50 to $3.50 an hour. But it doesn't
calculate the additional advantage the union members
have had from their comprehensive company-paid health
insurance coverage or, for that matter, from the
company-financed pension benefits they have long
enjoyed.
Neither benefit is matched by Wal-Mart. Both, as it
happens, are mortally threatened today, because the
supermarket chains engaged in the labor dispute are
determined to move their labor costs closer to the
Wal-Mart standard. The full import of this change,
Freeman told me, was "outside the scope" of his study,
if only because healthcare costs have become a national
issue and it's impossible to tell what company-paid
health insurance plans will look like in five or 10
years. That's true enough, but it looks like a fair bet
today that healthcare will be taking a bigger chunk out
of most workers' paychecks tomorrow. Wal-Mart's
influence on that trend can't be discounted.
Perhaps, then, we should defer applauding the
inevitable arrival of Wal-Mart Supercenters in
California. It may be, as the LAEDC concluded, that
we'll all benefit hugely from their relentless price
cutting. But we haven't even begun to learn how to
measure the supercenters' cost.
Bill Bronson
Ed Broadbent - NDP Candidate for Ottawa Centre: "Moving into the Campaign Office It was somewhere around –35 degrees Celsius, I was stranded beside a 20 year old pickup truck loaded with campaign office furniture, and all I could think of was “where’s Shirley Douglas when you need her?” Let me begin by saying that I know nothing about trucks. Except that driving around this old beat up borrowed one-ton helped me get in touch with the big butch of a man’s man that lives somewhere under my yuppie Glebe demeanor. Something about that big roaring engine that lurches into gear like a rodeo bull, and the satisfaction of being able to throw anything in the back and haul ‘er away. Except when it doesn’t start. That’s when the big butch of a man’s man shrinks back into the yuppie Glebe shell."
2/5/04
2/4/04
BBC NEWS | Technology | Spooks turn to hi-tech geography
Falls under, just because your not paranoid it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Falls under, just because your not paranoid it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
The SWIPE Toolkit
The SWIPE Toolkit is a collection of web-based tools that sheds light on personal data collection and usage practices in the United States. The tools demonstrate the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver's license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses.
The SWIPE Toolkit is a collection of web-based tools that sheds light on personal data collection and usage practices in the United States. The tools demonstrate the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver's license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses.
2/3/04
Took baby to the pediatrician today and he calmed most of our fears. Then had to take baby for a blood test and felt I earned by daddy spurs as she gripped my finger as she got poked. Hard to watch but had to be done.
Calm lunch afterwords and then when we got home a message from the doctor that daughters head has increased in size from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile and could we bring her in for an ultrasound on thursday. Probably just big heads run in the family but stress level through the roof. I think my head is going to blow off. Keep telling myself the baby is thriving. Talking, gurgling, growing, interacting. Could this week get any more stressful. Too much time at hospitals.
Calm lunch afterwords and then when we got home a message from the doctor that daughters head has increased in size from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile and could we bring her in for an ultrasound on thursday. Probably just big heads run in the family but stress level through the roof. I think my head is going to blow off. Keep telling myself the baby is thriving. Talking, gurgling, growing, interacting. Could this week get any more stressful. Too much time at hospitals.
2/2/04
The New 'Great Game'
The article discusses U.S. involvement in central asia and comments on the geo-political issues surrounding providing oil to world markets. I found the article more nuanced than most on the discussion of the interaction between U.S. military actions and the oil industry. An interesting stream of thought that democracy is the way to defeat terror and that in propping up dictators for stability the U.S. is creating the conditions that contribute to ongoing resentment and anti-americanism.
The article discusses U.S. involvement in central asia and comments on the geo-political issues surrounding providing oil to world markets. I found the article more nuanced than most on the discussion of the interaction between U.S. military actions and the oil industry. An interesting stream of thought that democracy is the way to defeat terror and that in propping up dictators for stability the U.S. is creating the conditions that contribute to ongoing resentment and anti-americanism.
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