Why Fair Taxation Is Crucial

Now here is something everyone who wants to be well-informed should watch. Part of TVO's Big Ideas series, it is a talk entitled How Did Taxes Become a Bad Word? by Alex Himelfarb, Director of the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs at York University, former Clerk of the Privy Council, and fellow blogger.

Unlike the strident and largely irrational hysterics of the right who preach salvation through tax cuts, Himelfarb offers us a carefully reasoned argument about how to achieve greater equality and the kind of society that all of us, in our better moments, hope for.

I found him inspiring to watch.

The Folly of Corporate Tax Cuts

Part of the orthodoxy of right-wing ideology is that corporate tax-cuts are an unalloyed benefit to the economy. The argument goes that the lower the tax regime, the more jobs that are created.

While that ideology has been proven patently false in Canada, for those seeking some well-reasoned arguments the next time a 'true-believer' captures your ear, look no further than a fine series of letters published in today's Star, only one of which I am reproducing below:

Corporations optimize their operations to maximize after-tax profit. When corporate profits are heavily taxed, reinvesting in the business provides a tax write-off that has a powerful risk damping effect; simultaneously, cash hoarding is penalized. Companies have no choice but to reinvest their profits.

When corporate tax rates are unsustainably low, reinvestment risks are not counteracted by tax breaks and there is no penalty for hoarding. It becomes hard to justify new staff and equipment when the lower-risk, higher-profit approach is to simply hoard cash.

This is not ideology; it is the mathematically inevitable result of optimizing for maximum after-tax profit. That Flaherty has not made the connection between the last two decades of tax policy and the current hoarding problem is rather surprising.

Matthew B. Marsh, Kingston

What Do Politics And Education Have In Common?

With apologies for writing yet another post about education, I cannot escape the conviction that in considering the seamier side of education, with its sometimes immoral and concealed actions, its use of 'spin' and its willingness to overlook or minimize wrongdoing when it suits its purposes, there are many parallels to the kind of unethical, expedient and corrupt behaviour we often find among those we elect to public office.

The other reason for my preoccupation is that I have always detested the existence of double standards in the meting out of justice.

Two events involving two school boards, one current and one going back several years, suggest that justice is not only not done, but not seen to be done.

In today's Toronto Star, a story about a former Kingsville, Ont., principal, Wendy Lynn Liebing,

admitted misusing school board funds over three years and resigned from the association on June 14, the college said on its website. Her certificate of qualification and registration to teach were then cancelled. The case was detailed in the latest issue of the college’s magazine, Professionally Speaking.

“At the time of the resignation, a professional misconduct investigation was in progress wherein the member was alleged to have mismanaged and misappropriated school and board funds,” the website said.

Despite the College of Teacher's euphemistic reference to Liebling's having 'mismanaged and misappropriated' school money, the fact is that she embezzled over $50,000 from her employer, a crime that in most cases would result in criminal charges. I will offer my opionion on why that did not happen in a few moments.

The next case, which goes back several years, involves a former school principal named Glenn Crawford, who was employed by the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.

Like Liebling, Crawford 'misused' school funds and assets for personal reasons, as he admitted to during the investigation. Amongst the fraudulent acts he admitted to were the following:

a) receiving unauthorized personal advances;

b) receiving reimbursement for meal and hotel expenses that were personal;

c) falsifying receipts from Ontario Principals’ Council in order to be reimbursed by the
school;

d) billing both the Ontario Principals’ Council and the school for expense claims;

e) using school funds and assets for personal reasons;

f) authorizing payment of expenses by the school for expenses not related to school activities, such as expenses related to events involving his son including the International Children’s Games and the B’nai Brith Sports Dinner;

g) using the school van for personal reasons and submitting the expenses to the school;

h) receiving reimbursement for the purchase of tires claimed but not installed on the school
van;

i)obtaining the personal services of landscaping company, where his son is a landscape contractor, and billing the school; and

j)authorizing landscape expenses for the 2001/2002 fiscal year higher than those for similar size schools.


The penalty for this malfeasance?

Essentially, Crawford was permitted to resign and had his teaching certificate suspended for one year.

You can read the full decision here.

So why were neither Liebling nor Crawford charged with a crime, something that usually happens to those who embezzle from their employers? The most benign explanation is that the board, being heavily influenced by institutional behaviour, wanted to minimize the publicity surrounding these odious deeds, publicity that would both diminish the institution's reputation and seriously damage the career advancement to the many who put their own fortunes above the good of education.

The second possibility, and admittedly a much more sinister one, is that people who commit crimes but are dealt with softly often have knowledge of things within the organization that no one wants exposed to public scrutiny.

While the latter explanation may seem rather paranoid and conspiratorial, my own years in education were witness to some very questionable things which, while I am not prepared to discuss them here, would never have passed 'the smell test'.

An Update On Lynden Dorval, A Teacher With Integrity

A few months ago I wrote a post about Lynden Dorval, the Edmonton physics teacher who was suspended for giving zeroes on uncompleted assignments or exams in contravention of his school's (Ross Sheppard High School) 'no-zero' policy that was designed to avoid discouraging students.

The public outcry of support for this teacher who dared to say that the emperor has no clothes, a defiance that few career-driven school administrators would tolerate, has apparently not deterred the board from beginning proceedings for his termination:

...on Tuesday, the letter from the superintendent of Edmonton Public Schools informed him his principal, Ron Bradley, requested his termination for “his obvious neglect of duty as a professional teacher, his repeated insubordination and his continued refusal to obey lawful orders.”

As is often the case with politicians who masquerade as school principals, Ron Bradley is attempting to conceal his vendetta against a teacher with professional integrity by claiming other reasons for calling for Dorval's termination:

...the principal said Mr. Dorval was repeatedly absence in staff meetings — a claim Mr. Dorval says is untrue.

The veteran teacher also sent a staff-wide email condemning the no zero policy, Mr. Bradley said.

“I advised Mr. Dorval that I was not disputing his professional right to express his opinion but … I found his tone and method of communication insubordinate,” Mr. Bradley wrote.

Following the suspension, the principal reported that Mr. Dorval entered the school without requesting permission — part of the terms of his suspension — twice to return unmarked quizzes and assignments, and once to voice concerns about his replacement teacher, Mr. Bradley wrote.

While politics is a fundamental part of our society, it is truly regrettable that its seamier side cannot be kept out of education.

Fact-Checkers Be Damned

It would be comforting to think that the disdain for facts apparent in the current U.S. Presidential campaign ads were confined to that country. Unfortunately, experience with the Harper propaganda machine suggests otherwise.

H/t Ryan McGreal

A Sage Observation

Paul Kahnert of Markham has an uncommonly apt observation in this morning's Star, one that I'm sure the ideologues leading us both federally and provincially will choose to ignore:

Re: Canada’s idle threat, Business Aug. 25

It’s time to reverse corporate tax cuts. David Olive’s article was proof positive that tax cuts don’t work. Weren’t tax cuts for corporations supposed to make them “competitive” and create lots of job for Canadians? We’ve been conned. The only thing tax cuts created was massive wealth for corporations and the top 1 per cent.

Corporate tax cuts have been one of the main contributors to the $526 billion of profits sitting idle in their bank accounts. Right now provincial and federal deficits are running at about $65 billion a year. All governments are crying poor and say they can’t afford to pay for public services like health care, education and infrastructure like water, sewage roads and bridges. Baloney.

We don’t have a deficit problem. We have a distribution of wealth problem. Governments need to tax that money back and get on with the job of building this country with good jobs.

And all of us need to stop voting foolishly for politicians who keep promising us tax cuts.

Is Oil Our Economic Salvation?

Interesting, isn't it, that despite the propaganda coming out of both Alberta and the Prime Minister's Office about oil being the economic engine and saviour of Canada, that our Western friends are finding themselves experiencing some economic malaise?