Wednesday, November 20, 2024

How America became a 'Mafia State' — right under our noses

Thom Hartmann, AlterNet
November 20, 2024 

Donald Trump holds a baseball bat while looking at exhibits during a Spirit of America Showcase in the Entrance Hall of the White House July 02, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Alexander Hamilton thought he (and the others who wrote the Constitution) had it all figured out.

He and his colleagues never imagined that a group of billionaires would spend 43 years and billions of dollars to seize the US Supreme Court, which would then legalize political bribery.

They never conceived of a foreign billionaire family coming to American and building a nationwide media ecosystem that was capable of convincing Americans that up was down, wrong was right, and a convicted fraudster and rapist would be a noble president.

They would’ve laughed at you if you told them that the richest man in the world would come from apartheid South Africa to hook up with a grifter billionaire to become co-president.

ALSO READ: Trump's Cabinet of horrors exposes his totalitarian drift

In Federalist 68, Hamilton wrote:

“The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”

Indeed, while a knave or rogue or traitor may fool enough people to even ascend to the office of mayor of a major city or governor of a state, Hamilton told us, the people would ferret out such a con man or traitor and Congress and the Supreme Court would put a brake on such a man even if he were to slip past the voters and the Electoral College:
“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States.”

Hamilton’s pride in the system that he himself had helped create was hard for him to suppress.
He wrote, “It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue.”

He even bragged in Federalist 71 that presidents would be of such high character that they could easily avoid being seduced “by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it.”


He also believed that good elected officials in Congress, dependent on the voters for their own political futures, would serve as a check against a corrupt president bent on exploiting his position for his own enrichment, the demands of special interest groups (like billionaires), or the interests of a hostile foreign government:
“But however inclined we might be to insist upon an unbounded complaisance in the Executive [President] to the inclinations of the people, we can with no propriety contend for a like complaisance to the humors of the legislature.”

Turns out, Hamilton was wrong. His nightmare scenario tracks back to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court, starting with Lewis Powell authoring the 1978 Bellotti decision that says money is “free speech” and corporations are “persons.” It reached its fetid bottom with John Roberts’ and Clarence Thomas’ Citizens United blowing up almost all campaign contribution limits.

Without billionaire-controlled media (including billionaire-owned social media) and billions spent to carpet-bomb America with extraordinarily deceptive advertising, Donald Trump would never have had a chance.


By the late 19th century, we realized Hamilton was mistaken and put up guardrails to prevent this.

The Communications Act of 1934 established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and gave it authority to regulate “broadcasting in the public interest.” It also established the Equal Time Rule, requiring broadcast stations to give major candidates for public office roughly equal exposure to the public.

In 1941, the FCC introduced the first specific limits on media ownership with its “Report on Chain Broadcasting,” which restricted ownership of multiple radio stations. In 1946, the FCC established the “duopoly” rule, prohibiting ownership of more than one television station in a market. No Fox or Sinclair, in other words, would be allowed a national footprint to corrupt our democratic system.


In 1949, the FCC formally adopted the Fairness Doctrine as a rule, and in 1959 Congress amended the Communications Act of 1934 to codify the Fairness Doctrine into law. Specifically, they rewrote Section 315(a) to read:
"A broadcast licensee shall afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of conflicting views on matters of public importance."

The 1975 newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule prohibited ownership of both a daily newspaper and a full-power broadcast station in the same market.

Similarly, we once had hard and fast rules against billionaires and giant corporations corrupting our political process.


After the Industrial Revolution of the late 1880s brought mind-boggling levels of wealth to a small number of men, those Robber Barons predictably reached out for control of the politicians, state and federal, who might regulate their behavior.

In response, states and the US Congress began passing serious laws to limit the corrupting power of money in politics.

In 1905, for example, Wisconsin passed a law (Section 4489a, Sec. 1, ch. 492, 1905) that explicitly said:

“No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer, consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office.” (emphasis added)

The penalty included a substantial fine, up to five years in prison for individual executives and even the company’s lawyers, and the death sentence of the corporation itself being forbidden from doing business.

Two years later, efforts to control bad behavior by rich people and corporations went federal with the Tillman Act of 1907. That law explicitly forbade any corporation from making “money contributions in connection with any election to any [federal] political office.”

By 1925, the Tillman Act had been incorporated into the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, further limiting money in politics, and in 1938 we got the Hatch Act which limited contributions to $5000 per candidate and $3 million per party.

As a result, for most of the 20th century prior to the Reagan Revolution, politicians did what the citizens wanted. We got Social Security, the minimum wage, Medicare, unemployment insurance, Medicaid, food and housing support, new public schools, the right to unionize, high-quality education, nearly free college, nonprofit hospitals and health insurance companies, and tightly regulated banks.


Following the Agnew and Nixon bribery scandals we got another bunch of laws to regulate money in politics, including the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act, and the 1974 creation of the Federal Elections Commission, which then promulgated rules further limiting “dark money” and other forms of political bribery.

That all began to end, however, when Richard Nixon swung the Supreme Court hard to the right with his appointment of Lewis Powell in 1972, as I lay out in detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America. This laid the foundation for the Reagan Revolution and today’s massive corruption across the GOP.

By 1978, Powell had authored the case of First National Bank of Boston v Bellotti, which blew up nearly all of those laws.


In 2010 five corrupt Republican appointees on the Court finished the perversion of American politics with their Citizens United decision, overturning hundreds of state and federal laws dating back more than a century.

Thus, big money now runs the show, and, to paraphrase Lord Acton, big money corrupts absolutely.
As FDR famously said, “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”

It’s gotten so bad since Clarence Thomas was the deciding vote on Citizens United that legislation Americans clearly want can’t even get a debate in the House or Senate when they’re controlled by Republicans on issues including:


— Reducing or ending student debt
— Free or low-cost college
— Dental, hearing and eyeglasses for seniors on Medicare
— Raising the cap on Social Security so it’s solvent for the next 75 years
— Getting the Post Office into postal banking for low-income people
— Stopping global warming
— Making pharmaceuticals affordable
— Medicare for all
— Taxing the rich
— Cutting back on fossil fuel emissions
— Breaking up the big monopolies to restore competition and lower prices

All of these positions, when polled as a single policy point rather than through a partisan frame, are overwhelmingly supported by the American people. None can get into law because billionaires or corporations have paid off enough politicians to stop them.

This corruption of the “rules of the game” by the Supreme Court has, in turn, attracted criminally disposed sociopaths into government at all levels, from state legislatures to the US Congress. It’s so bad that we can’t even stop members of Congress from trading stocks on insider information.

This is America becoming a Mafia State; with Trump and the corrupt toadies he’s inserting into our government, we’re all now stuck living in Alexander Hamilton’s nightmare.

It’ll be at least two years before we can do anything about it at the voting booth, but now is the time to get mobilized and start planning.

Show up for your local Democratic Party meeting and volunteer; precinct committee persons can have an amazing impact on the direction of the Party. Join a group like Indivisible. Become an evangelist for democracy. Support independent media and share newsletters and websites with everybody you know.

Now is not the time to check out or run away and hide. Get active: Tag, you’re it!

WWIII
US cites new Russian tactics for decision to supply landmines to Ukraine

Both Russia and the United States — neither of which are signatories to the UN Mine Ban Treaty 


By AFP
November 20, 2024

US President Joe Biden's decision to supply Ukraine with anti-personnel landmines is a major policy reversal 
- Copyright POOL/AFP ERIC LEE

The US decision to send anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine — in a major policy shift — was triggered by a change in Russian battlefield tactics favoring infantry over mechanized units, US Defense Secretary Loyd Austin said Wednesday.

“They don’t lead with their mechanized forces anymore,” Austin told reporters while on a visit to Laos. “They lead with dismounted forces who are able to close and do things to kind of pave the way for mechanized forces.”

The Ukrainians “have a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians.”

President Joe Biden’s reversal of his previous curbs on US landmines comes just days after Washington gave Ukraine the green light to use US-made long-range missiles on targets within Russia, as the outgoing administration aims to give Kyiv an upper hand before President-elect Donald Trump enters office.

Biden in 2022 said the United States would mostly ban its use of landmines, at the time specifically drawing a contrast with Russia’s use of the weapons in Ukraine.

The reversal comes amid concerns about the incoming Trump administration’s lack of support for Kyiv.

Trump is entering office having repeatedly criticized US assistance for Ukraine, claiming he could secure a ceasefire within hours — comments that have triggered fears in Kyiv and Europe about Ukraine’s ability to withstand the Russian attacks without American support.

Both Russia and the United States — neither of which are signatories to the UN Mine Ban Treaty — have been criticized for their past use of anti-personnel mines in the past. Ukraine is a signatory of the treaty.


– Battlefield tensions –


Austin said the US-supplied mines would be so-called “nonpersistent” mines that can self-destruct or render themselves inactive after losing battery charge — in theory limiting the risk to civilians.

But the decision was immediately slammed by rights groups.

Mary Wareham, deputy director at the crisis, conflict and arms division at Human Rights Watch, said Ukraine’s use of the mines would contravene the Mine Ban Treaty, and questioned safety of the aging stocks Washington would be supplying.

“From a clearance perspective, de-miners have to approach any type of explosive object with the knowledge that it may explode,” Wareham told AFP, adding that the self-deactivation feature is “not enough.”

Amnesty International called Washington’s decision “reckless” and “a deeply disappointing setback.”


The Biden administration was similarly criticized last year for supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions.

Both Moscow and Kyiv are jockeying to secure battlefield advantage before Trump assumes office next January.

This week, Kyiv fired US-supplied ATACMS missiles at Russian territory for the first time.

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree lowering the threshold for when Russia could use nuclear weapons.

Laos, where Austin made his comments, is still recovering from heavy US bombing during the Vietnam War.

More than 20,000 people have been killed or injured from unexploded ordnance in the half century since, according to The Halo Trust, a demining group.

Johnson & Johnson risks UK lawsuit over talc cancer claim


By AFP
November 20, 2024

Johnson & Johnson removed its talcum-based powder products from North American markets in 2020
 - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP JUSTIN SULLIVAN

UK claimants announced Wednesday legal action against US pharmaceutical and cosmetics giant Johnson & Johnson, alleging that women diagnosed with cancers were exposed to asbestos in the company’s talcum powder.

J&J risks UK court action for the first time over the allegations, having faced a series of similar lawsuits in North America.

KP Law, the firm representing about 2,000 claimants, said “women who have been diagnosed with life-changing and life-limiting cancers were exposed to asbestos contained within the company’s talcum powder”.

In response Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, said “Johnson & Johnson takes the issue of talc safety incredibly seriously and always has”.

Haas added that J&J’s own analysis found an absence of asbestos contamination in its products and said “independent science makes clear that talc is not associated with the risk of ovarian cancer nor mesothelioma”.

J&J has until the end of the year to respond to a letter sent on behalf of KP Law’s clients, following which documents will be filed in the UK’s High Court.

The law firm is representing predominantly women regarding the case, and says it has been contacted by thousands more, adding that some have died of their cancers.

Lawyers claim that the US-based corporation knew “as early as the 1970s that asbestos in its talc products was dangerous but failed to warn consumers and carried on producing and selling the products in the UK until as recently as 2022”.

J&J said that Kenvue, its former consumer-health division that it separated out in 2023, is responsible for “any alleged talc liability that arises outside the US or Canada”.

“Decades of testing by experts… demonstrates that the product is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer,” Kenvue said in a statement.



– Settled claims –



However, in September, J&J increased its offer to settle talc claims relating to ovarian cancer in the United States to around $8 billion to be paid over 25 years.

Earlier this year, the company agreed to pay $700 million to settle allegations it misled customers about the safety of its talcum-based powder products in North America.

The company did not admit wrongdoing in its settlement but withdrew the product from the North American market in 2020.

The World Health Organization’s cancer agency in July classified talc as “probably carcinogenic” for humans.

A summary of studies published in 2020 covering 250,000 women in the United States did not find a statistical link between the use of talc on the genitals and the risk of ovarian cancer.

Op-Ed: Maybe polarizing social media was an even dumber idea than it looks

By Paul Wallis
November 20, 2024
DIGITAL JOURNAL

Elon Musk's X. — © AFP

The hordes of people leaving X are a sort of statistical obituary to years of propaganda. X is in big trouble, mainly because of its policies and algorithms and a bizarre relationship with infuriated advertisers.

Like most of American media, X instantly demoted itself to half of its own market share with its politics. It also became a servant, like FOX, to one side only. That’s not working out too well.

You’ll also notice from media coverage that nobody’s questioning the self-decapitation and disembowelment of X. The other glaring problem is that somehow this situation is now seen as normal.

It isn’t normal. People and advertisers are voting with their dollars and clicks.

Disgruntled X users are now heading to Bluesky in vast numbers. Millions of people have basically abandoned X. Bluesky looks a bit like early Twitter. Seems quite OK as an environment. I haven’t seen a rabid lunatic yet.

The new and huge problem is the quality of information vs communication. This is now an abyss of opposing information.

Unless there’s some middle ground, and the medium isn’t hopelessly biased, social media has just machinegunned itself in the foot. Politics is not the sole interest of the world. Other things happen, too, y’know.

That’s where audience loss is likely to be fatal. What if you don’t want to read about The Adventures of Donny and Elon in Disneyland?

What if you want a broad and useful mix of your own interests, instead?

The sole and whole purpose of social media is communication. Reducing your content range to such a narrow focus means you inevitably lose users.

Nor is the Chicken Little approach to information exactly popular. Nobody listens to raving lunatics if they don’t have to.

The possible exception to that theory is screen-fed America. Markets and media businesses take a long time to change course. This market doesn’t eat solid food anymore. The child-psychology is pretty obvious. These sources will probably simply continue to produce pablum.

The total stagnation of American mass media was one thing. This social media situation is stagnation of real-time information as well. X has made itself useless to its users.

People obviously don’t like that. The move to Bluesky is self-defense. The social media market can blame itself for a newcomer just walking off with its customers.

Let’s talk “dumb”.

Billions of dollars of investment are now evaporating in a festering social media environment and those billions aren’t coming back.

The World’s Richest Sudden Instant Fan Boy doesn’t have the excuse of being geriatric or illiterate. He should have enough metrics to see the cliff coming.

The big money markets in the US are all blue. The black holes are all red, with the possible exception of Texas. Ignore those big blue markets at your peril. Lose those markets and you’re doing hillbilly scale dollars. These much smaller markets can’t deliver the same value. Advertisers and marketers know that.

The rest of the world is also reacting very negatively to the toxicity of social media. The hubris and hype are all American-generated. The rest of the world can easily ignore most of this garbage.

What if reality gets involved in this mess? Economic risks and social disintegration are circling like buzzards over America in huge numbers with dollar signs on them. All types of media should be building financial fallout shelters about now. Markets can evaporate overnight.

No amount of fake news hysteria and self-congratulation can make an impression on that situation. You need “Make America Solvent Again” to do that, and it looks like that’s not happening for the next four years.

How would you read a commercial market that is basically suicidal? Would you focus on customer retention in the afterlife? You might have to do that.

Social media needs a functional market to exist at all. If the money’s pulling out, the message couldn’t be clearer.

__________________________________________________
Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.


Social media users probably won’t read beyond this headline, researchers say



A new study of 35 million news links circulated on Facebook reports that more than 75% of the time they were shared without the link being clicked upon and read



Penn State




UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Congratulations. Reading this far into the story is a feat not many will accomplish, especially if shared on Facebook, according to a team led by Penn State researchers. In an analysis of more than 35 million public posts containing links that were shared extensively on the social media platform between 2017 and 2020, the researchers found that around 75% of the shares were made without the posters clicking the link first. Of these, political content from both ends of the spectrum was shared without clicking more often than politically neutral content.

The findings, which the researchers said suggest that social media users tend to merely read headlines and blurbs rather than fully engage with core content, appeared today (Nov. 19) in Nature Human Behavior. While the data were limited to Facebook, the researchers said the findings could likely map to other social media platforms and help explain why misinformation can spread so quickly online.

“It was a big surprise to find out that more than 75% of the time, the links shared on Facebook were shared without the user clicking through first,” said corresponding author S. Shyam Sundar, Evan Pugh University Professor and the James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects at Penn State. “I had assumed that if someone shared something, they read and thought about it, that they’re supporting or even championing the content. You might expect that maybe a few people would occasionally share content without thinking it through, but for most shares to be like this? That was a surprising, very scary finding.”

Access to the Facebook data was granted via Social Science One, a research consortium hosted by Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science focused on obtaining and sharing social and behavioral data responsibly and ethically. The data were provided in collaboration with Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and included user demographics and behaviors, such as a “political page affinity score.” This score was determined by external researchers identifying the pages users follow — like the accounts of media outlets and political figures. The researchers used the political page affinity score to assign users to one of five groups — very liberal, liberal, neutral, conservative and very conservative.

To determine the political content of shared links, the researchers in this study used machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to identify and classify political terms in the link content. They scored the content on a similar five-point political affinity scale, from very liberal to very conservative, based on how many times each affinity group shared the link.

"We created this new variable of political affinity of content based on 35 million Facebook posts during election season across four years. This is a meaningful period to understand macro-level patterns behind social media news sharing,” said co-author Eugene Cho Snyder, assistant professor of humanities and social sciences at New Jersey Institute of Technology

The team validated the political affinity of news domains, such as CNN or Fox, based on the media bias chart produced by AllSides, an independent company focused on helping people understand the biases of news content, and a ratings system developed by researchers at Northeastern University.

With these rating systems, the team manually sorted 8,000 links, first identifying them as political or non-political content. Then the researchers used this dataset to train an algorithm that assessed 35 million links shared more than 100 times on Facebook by users in the United States.

“A pattern emerged that was confirmed at the level of individual links,” Snyder said. “The closer the political alignment of the content to the user — both liberal and conservative — the more it was shared without clicks. … They are simply forwarding things that seem on the surface to agree with their political ideology, not realizing that they may sometimes be sharing false information.”

The findings support the theory that many users superficially read news stories based just on headlines and blurbs, Sundar said, explaining that Meta also provided data from its third-party fact-checking service — which identified that 2,969 of the shared URLs linked to false content.

The researchers found that these links were shared over 41 million times, without being clicked. Of these, 76.94% came from conservative users and 14.25% from liberal users. The researchers explained that the vast majority — up to 82% — of the links to false information in the dataset originated from conservative news domains.

To cut down on sharing without clicking, Sundar said that social media platforms could introduce “friction” to slow the share, such as requiring people to acknowledge that they have read the full content prior to sharing.

“Superficial processing of headlines and blurbs can be dangerous if false data are being shared and not investigated,” Sundar said, explaining that social media users may feel that content has already been vetted by those in their network sharing it, but this work shows that is unlikely. “If platforms implement a warning that the content might be false and make users acknowledge the danger in doing so, that might help people think before sharing.”

This wouldn’t stop intentional misinformation campaigns, Sundar said, and individuals still have a responsibility to vet the content they share.

“Disinformation or misinformation campaigns aim to sow the seeds of doubt or dissent in a democracy — the scope of these efforts came to light in the 2016 and 2020 elections,” Sundar said. “If people are sharing without clicking, they’re potentially playing into the disinformation and unwittingly contributing to these campaigns staged by hostile adversaries attempting to sow division and distrust.”

So, why do people share without clicking in the first place?

“The reason this happens may be because people are just bombarded with information and are not stopping to think through it,” Sundar said. “In such an environment, misinformation has more of a chance of going viral. Hopefully, people will learn from our study and become more media literate, digitally savvy and, ultimately, more aware of what they are sharing.”

Other collaborators on this paper include Junjun Yin and Guangqing Chi, Penn State; Mengqi Liao, University of Georgia; and Jinping Wang, University of Florida.

The Social Science Research Council, New York, supported this research.

High-paying jobs in Canadian tech, and the rise of pay transparency

By Abigail Gamble
DIGITAL JOURNAL
November 20, 2024

Liz Elliot, Product Market Leader at Mercer, speaks during Innovation Week in Calgary. - Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal

Yes, tech layoffs are continuing in 2024, but as Stephanie Hollingshead, CEO of TAP Network says, they’re more targeted than the mass layoffs we’ve seen over the last couple years.

Despite layoffs in the tech sector there’s still high demand for critical skills as tech employers and non-traditional tech companies vie for the same talent.

Hollingshead was speaking at Calgary Innovation Week where she shared current trends in tech compensation alongside Liz Elliot, Product Market Leader at Mercer.

The pair offered insights based on October research produced by Mercer on behalf of TAP Network on the evolving landscape of pay, perks and workplace practices in Canadian tech.

Another big-picture trend Hollingshead shared was that voluntary turnover (people choosing to leave their jobs) is down from 13% to 9% on average.

“This is the lowest I’ve seen in six or seven years,” she said, adding that this reflects a cautious workforce staying put amid fewer job opportunities and lingering economic uncertainty.

Despite these challenges, Calgary’s tech ecosystem is booming.

Between 2018 and 2023, Hollingshead said the city experienced a 78% growth in tech jobs, making it the fastest-growing tech market in North America.

Alberta also surpassed British Columbia for the first time in venture capital investment, “drawing a total of $383 million across 41 deals versus $288 million across 43 deals for BC,” she shared, highlighting the province’s increasing prominence in the Canadian tech landscape.Stephanie Hollingshead, CEO of TAP Network, speaks during Innovation Week in Calgary. – Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Emerging roles to keep an eye on

The job market in tech has shifted focus a little, with high-demand roles (as evidenced by their increase in pay) emerging in unexpected areas.

Elliot highlighted that mechanical engineers, particularly at entry and intermediate levels, have seen significant pay growth. Demand generation managers and growth marketing roles are also climbing in compensation as the industry emphasizes customer acquisition and market expansion.

Meanwhile, traditional roles like software developers are no longer at the forefront of pay growth but remain essential in the broader tech landscape, she said. Emerging roles like machine learning developers and research scientists have also grown in demand, reflecting the sector’s continued focus on innovation.
Calgary Innovation Week runs from Nov. 13-21, 2024. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Will pay transparency be a key part of the future of hiring in tech?

“We’re seeing tech companies really leading other industries in developing a global pay transparency strategy,” said Hollingshead.

She revealed that 52% of Canadian tech companies now voluntarily include salary ranges on job postings nationally.

Companies are taking a proactive approach because it simplifies hiring and improves transparency, she explained.

However, only 10% of companies disclose pay ranges internally, which Hollingshead flagged as a potential gap. Employees are increasingly aware of external market rates, making internal communication on pay more important than ever.

Liz Elliot, Product Market Leader at Mercer, speaks during Innovation Week in Calgary. – Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal

Pay differences and the remote work ripple effect

Remote work is affecting how companies approach pay, but regional differences remain. Toronto and Vancouver are Canada’s top-paying cities for tech roles, with Calgary following close behind in third place.

Elliot explained that Calgary’s competitive compensation is partially influenced by its energy sector, which raises pay rates across industries.

“When energy does well, so does everyone else,” she noted, pointing to how Calgary’s booming tech market benefits from its proximity to resource-driven industries.

The shift toward remote work has prompted many companies to rethink their compensation strategies.

According to Elliot, while 45% of organizations have adopted a national approach to pay — offering the same salaries regardless of where employees live — 26% use geographic pay differentials to balance costs and attract talent in high-demand regions.

She highlighted the challenges companies face in making these decisions, especially when hiring in areas with limited local talent data. It’s not just about the role; location and industry dynamics are big influences on how salaries are structured, Elliot explained.

Stephanie Hollingshead, CEO of TAP Network, speaks during Innovation Week in Calgary. – Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Incentives and benefits: More than just a paycheque

Incentives have become a critical tool for retaining talent in tech.

Elliot said 74% of tech companies now offer short-term incentives tied to performance, while 54% have long-term incentive programs, such as stock options.

These benefits, however, resonate differently across demographics.

Younger employees often prioritize immediate compensation over equity, while older professionals may value long-term rewards.

Perks are evolving as well.

Flexible work arrangements are now the norm (and expected), but Hollingshead pointed to the rising adoption of family leave top-up programs, which have increased by 9% this year.

RRSP matching has also gained traction, with 57% of companies now offering this benefit.

“We’re seeing the industry maturing,” Hollingshead noted, comparing today’s offerings to earlier years when such benefits were rare.
Hybrid work remains a competitive advantage

Finally, unsurprisingly, hybrid work continues to be a defining feature of tech workplaces.

The survey showed that 85% of tech companies operate hybrid models, while only 1% require employees to work in-office full-time (14% are fully remote).


Hollingshead noted that flexibility remains a significant draw for employees, with many companies leveraging it as a competitive advantage.

It’s a way to increase engagement and attract talent, she explained, contrasting the tech sector’s approach with recent mandates from larger corporations like Telus and Amazon to bring workers back to the office.

Rich nations under pressure over climate finance at COP29 talks


Pressure mounted on wealthy nations Wednesday to put a figure on the table as time runs out at COP29 to strike a deal on climate assistance for poorer countries.



Issued on: 20/11/2024 
By:  FRANCE 24
Developing nations say rich historic polluters have a duty to help them face the challenges caused by the climate crisis. © Laurent Thomet, AFP


At the UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, rich nations have still not revealed how much they are ready to provide the developing world to fight climate change. UN agencies have said that developing nations, not counting China, will need $1 trillion a year by the end of the decade to meet the challenges caused by the climate crisis.

"We need a figure," said Adonia Ayebare, chair of the G77+China group of developing nations.

"Then the rest will follow. But we need a headline," the Ugandan negotiator told reporters.

Developing nations, from islands imperilled by rising seas to drought-afflicted states, contribute the least to global warming but have called for $1.3 trillion annually to prepare for its impacts.


They say rich historic polluters have a duty to help, and are clamouring for an existing commitment of $100 billion a year to be increased many times over at COP29.
 
Read more  How lending-based climate finance is pushing poor countries deeper into debt

Talks have gone around in circles for over a week but a slimmed-down draft is expected to land in the early hours of Thursday, ensuring a sleepless night for negotiators.

"I'm sure we will have some long days and hours ahead of us ... This will be a very steep climb," EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters.

Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said it was difficult to speed things up "when there's nothing to negotiate".

"The concern is that at this moment, nobody is putting a figure on the table," Muhamad said.

Rich countries on the hook for climate finance, including the European Union and United States, say they cannot show their hand until they know what they are agreeing to.

"Otherwise ... you will have a shopping basket with a price, but you don't know exactly what is in there," said Hoekstra.

"We don't just want to pluck a number from the sky," echoed Germany's climate envoy Jennifer Morgan.
China role

Developing countries, excluding China, will need $1 trillion a year in foreign assistance by 2030 to wean off fossil fuels and adapt to worsening disasters.

This number rises to $1.3 trillion annually by 2035, according to an expert economic assessment commissioned by the United Nations.

But many of the nations obligated to pay face political and fiscal pressures, and insist they cannot cover this cost on their balance sheets alone.

Developing countries want public grants from governments – not loans or private capital – to make up the majority of the new finance goal under negotiation.

Three figures – $440 billion, $600 billion and $900 billion – had been floated, said Australian climate minister Chris Bowen, one of the envoys leading the finance negotiations.

Delegates from several countries told AFP these numbers were not proposed by developed nations themselves.

"Many parties told us they need to see certain building blocks in place before they can put forward their suggested number," Bowen told COP29 delegates.

Chief among these is a demand for emerging economies such as China and Saudi Arabia, which have grown wealthy yet remain classified as developing nations, to chip into the pot.

"There are countries out in the world that have an income level that is close to or above the poorest European countries, and we think that it's only fair to ask them to contribute," Danish climate minister Lars Aagaard told AFP.
'Receding hope'

Bowen said some countries had drawn a "red line" over the type of money that could be included in any deal, insisting it come "from a wide range of sources and instruments".

Bolivia's chief negotiator, Diego Pacheco, said there was a "steadily receding hope of getting an ambitious" deal and cited $200 billion as one number in circulation.

"Only 200 billion," he told the conference. "This is unfathomable, we cannot accept this."

The lead negotiator of COP29 hosts Azerbaijan, Yalchin Rafiyev, urged countries to "pick up the pace".

"Let us embrace the spirit of collaboration, compromise and determination to ensure that we leave this conference with outcomes that make a real difference," he said.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)



Thank You for Emitting: The Hypocrisies of COP29



COP29 was always going to be memorable, for no other reason than the hosting country, Azerbaijan, is a petrostate indifferent to the issue of emissions and scornful of ecological preachers.  It has seen its natural gas supply grow by 128% between 2000 and 2021.  Between 2006 and 2021, gas exports rose by a monumental 29,290%.  A dizzying 95% of the country’s exports are made up of oil and gas, with much of its wealth failing to trickle down to the rest of the populace.

The broadly described West, as stated by President Ilham Aliyev in his opening address to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was in no position to be lecturing his country about cutting back on the use of fossil fuels.  They were, he grandly claimed, “a gift from God”.  In this, he should have surprised no one.  In April 2024, he declared that, as a leader of a country “which is rich in fossil fuels, of course, we will defend the right of these countries to continue investments and to continue production.”

A few days later, Aliyev played the other side of the climate change divide, suggesting at a meeting with island leaders that France and the Netherlands had been responsible for “brutally” suppressing the “voices” of communities in such overseas territories as Mayotte and Curaçao concerned with climate change.  (Aliyev himself is no stranger to suppressing, with dedicated brutality, voices of dissent within his own country.)  This proved too much for France’s Ecological Transition Minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, who cancelled her planned attendance to the summit while attacking Baku for “instrumentalising the fight against climate change for its undignified personal agenda.”

On the second day of the summit, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, tried to turn the attention of delegates to the urgent matter at hand.  “The sound you hear is the ticking clock – we are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, and time is not on our side.”  Others, however, heard the sound of money changing hands, with the fossil fuel industry lurking, fangs and pens at the ready, presided over by the good offices of a petrostate.

In the background lie assessments of gloomy inevitability.  The Climate Change Tracker’s November 2024 briefing notes this year was one characterised by “minimal progress, with almost no new national climate change targets (NDCs) or net zero pledges even though government have agreed to (urgently) strengthen their 2030 targets and to align them with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.”

As easy as it is to rage against the opportunistic Aliyev, who crudely blends environmentalism with ethnic cleansing, few attending the summit in Baku come with clean hands.  As with previous COP events, Baku offers another enormous event of emitters and emission, featuring tens of thousands of officials, advisors and minders bloviating in conference.  That said, the 67,000 registrants at this conference is somewhat lower compared with the 83,000 who descended on Dubai at COP28.

The plane tracking website FlightRadar24 noted that 65 private jets landed in the Azerbaijani capital prior to the summit, prompting Alethea Warrington, the head of energy, aviation and heat at Possible, a climate action charity, to tut with heavy disapproval: “Travelling by private jet is a horrendous waste of the world’s scarce remaining carbon budget, with each journey producing more emissions in a few hours than the average person around the world emits in an entire year.”

COP29 is also another opportunity to strike deals that have little to do with reducing emissions and everything to do with advancing the interests of lobby groups and companies in the energy market, much of it of a fossil fuel nature.  In the spirit of Dubai, COP29 is set to follow in the footsteps of the wily Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who chaired COP28 in Dubai.  Prior to the arrival of the chatterati of climate change last year, the Sultan was shown in leaked briefing documents to the BBC and the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) to be an avid enthusiast for advancing the business of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc).  It was hard to avoid the glaring fact that Al Jaber is also the CEO of Adnoc.

The documents in question involve over 150 pages of briefings prepared by the COP28 team for meetings with Jaber and various interested parties held between July and October this year.  They point to plans to raise matters of commercial interest with as many as 30 countries.  The CCR confirms “that on at least one occasion a nation followed up on commercial discussions brought up in a meeting with Al Jaber; a source with knowledge of discussions also told CCR that Adnoc’s business interests were allegedly raised during a meeting with another country.”

The COP29 chairman, Samir Nuriyev, had already put out feelers as early as March this year that a “fair approach” was needed when approaching countries abundant with oil and natural gas, notably in light of their purported environmental policies.  He went so far as to argue that Azerbaijan was an ideal interlocutor between the Global South and Global North.  His colleague and chief executive of the COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, showed exactly how that process would work in a secret recording ahead of the conference in which he discusses “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company with a person posing as a potential investor.  (The person in question purported to be representing a fictitious Hong Kong investment firm with a sharp line in energy.)  “We have a lot of gas fields that are to be developed,” Soltanov insists.  “We will have a certain amount of oil and gas being produced, perhaps forever.”

In many ways, the Baku gathering has all the hallmarks of a criminal syndicate meeting, held under more open conditions.  Fair play, then, to the Azerbaijani hosts for working out the climate change racket, taking the lead from Dubai last year.  Aliyev and company noted months in advance that this was less a case of being a theatre of the absurd than a forum for business.  And so, it is proving to be.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.comRead other articles by Binoy.

 

The Planet Under Threat of Breakdown


There’s a new trend in the world that’s working against the planet, you know, the one you’re standing on. This new trend, over the past year or so, spells “thumbs down” for planet Earth. It’s a disheartening, and fraught with danger, change in attitude, dismissing commitments, left and right.

A figurative Planet Support Switch has been turned off by several key players. Proof of this agnostic attitude is found in every meeting of nations of the world over the past couple of years. They are turning their noses up on prior commitments. This is a new attitude. And it’s happening as climate change has turned into an ogre of destruction that’s impossible to ignore, featured on nightly news programs with automobiles tumbling as if children’s toys in torrential rivers of city streets (Paiporta).

Meanwhile, COP29, the UN Conference of the Parties on climate change, Nov 11th-22nd, is being held in oil-rich Azerbaijan. Such a strange coincidence: UN climate meetings have become an outgrowth of oil producer largess. After all, they do have spectacular venues, hmm. Gotta wonder what they’ll do to stave off all-time record heat, caused by fossil fuel emissions, Co2? The paradox is devastatingly inescapable.

A key data point exposes the challenge COP29 faces: Annual CO2 released into the atmosphere, 37.4 billion metric tons in 2023 vs. 9 billion metric tons in 1960.

According to Dr. Patrick McGuire, of the University of Reading and National Centre for Atmospheric Science: “The new Global Carbon Budget reveals a disturbing reality – global fossil CO2 emissions continue to climb, reaching 37.4 billion tonnes in 2024. Despite clear evidence of accelerating climate impacts, we’re still moving in the wrong direction. The need for rapid decarbonization has never been more urgent.” (Source: “Fossil Fuel Co2 Emissions Increase Again in 2024,” University of Reading, November 13, 2024)

Also, of more than passing interest at COP29, according to Victoria Cuming, head of global policy at BloombergNEF: “Donald Trump’s dramatic victory in the US election will drip poison into the climate talks.” (Source: Bloomberg Green Daily: COP29 Climate Money Fight)

The planet is losing key support. Yet, it doesn’t take a climate scientist to figure out the planet has already gone ballistic with (1) rampant wildfires (2) torrential rains (3) massive destructive floods (4) brutal scorching droughts (5) pounding hailstorms (6) frightening thunder/lighting all unprecedented and all on a regular schedule nowadays. There are no more once-in-100-year storms; they’re every other year.

Recent talks on protecting nature at the UN Biodiversity Conference d/d October 21-November 1st in Colombia collapsed when nations could not agree on key goals. This was the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. It was a disaster: “Talks were overshadowed by a lack of progress on implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the landmark ‘Paris Agreement for nature’ deal made at COP15 in Montreal in 2022.” (Source: Carbon Brief Nov. 2, 2024) By summit’s end, only 44 out of 196 parties had come up with a new biodiversity plan. This is pitiful.

As for Net Zero prospects to halt global warming, forget it!

At the G20 summit September 9-10 countries demanded rolling back promises to cut back burning oil, coal, and gas (Source: “G20 Countries Turning Backs on Fossil Fuel Pledge, Say Campaigners,” The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2024).

“Over the last few months, we’ve seen everyone from major corporations to countries backpedaling on climate commitments made in the recent months and years. Despite growing, urgent evidence that climate change continues to accelerate, this is no real surprise.” (Source: Countries Are Rolling Back Their Climate Commitments, Climatebase, October 7, 2024)

Global corporations from Ford to J.P. Morgan Chase are all rolling back their commitments to climate change, which is all deeply intertwined with what played out ahead of COP29, now playing before bemused Middle Eastern oligarchs.

“Instead of indicating that the money required to green the economy is ready to flow, industry leaders now say their first priority is delivering financial returns for clients—and that means energy-transition investments will only be undertaken if they’re considered profitable,” (Source: “Wall Street Wants You to Know Profit Comes Before Net Zero,” Bloomberg, September 18, 2024.)

The bankers are pointing their fingers at the politicians and governments, who have been largely unwilling to make significant headway in fighting climate change globally.

Meanwhile, stating the obvious, which cannot be emphasized enough, climate warning signs have never been stronger than this year. Just for starters, a 2–3-foot sea level rise hangs by a cryosphere thread at the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. If it goes down for the count, and there’s reason to think it’ll happen during current generations, all bets are off for 8 of the world’s 10 largest megacities, nestled along coastlines. This is but one of several tipping points at the edge, and tipping. The protagonist is fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide (CO2) which makes up around 76% of total greenhouse gas emissions, making it the primary greenhouse gas responsible for the majority of climate change impacts.

And it is a fool’s errand that carbon capture/sequester will save the day; it’s too slow too unwieldy too expensive too inefficient takes too long and overwhelmed by the task at hand, sans super-duper-effective technology. “Despite its long history, carbon capture is a problematic technology. A new IEEFA study reviewed the capacity and performance of 13 flagship projects and found that 10 of the 13 failed or underperformed against their designed capacities, mostly by large margins.” (Source: “Carbon Capture Has a Long History of Failure,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 1, 2022)

Losing key support for the planet couldn’t come at a worse time. According to Perilous Times on Planet Earth: 2024 The State of the Climate Report, 25 of 35 planetary vital signs are at record extremes. Two-thirds with record-extremes is viewed by climate scientists as a clear mandate for a planet “on the edge.”

Alas, losing key support because of “concern over profits” is nonsensical and trivial at best, thinking small, not big. A report by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research contradicts that notion and exposes the silliness behind focus on “profit over planet,” to wit: “The analysis of data from 1,500 regions over the past 30 years showed that 30 percent have managed to lower their carbon emissions while continuing to thrive economically.” (Source: Green Growth: 30 percent of regions worldwide achieve economic growth while reducing carbon emissions, Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research, Oct. 29, 2024)

Beyond the insanity of profits at the expense of mitigation efforts for the planet, which exposes the underbelly of high-end capitalism, some good news: According to some climate experts, Trump’s re-election and his statements that green energy is a scam, and the likelihood that he withdraws the US from UN Climate agreements might drive a new sense of unity, even building a coalition that actually does something positive to stop fossil fuel emissions to support a parched planet. It’s possible, but here in America Wall Street prefers profits over planet. Umm, honestly, shouldn’t that be reversed?

Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.comRead other articles by Robert.