Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Paul Krugman writes that complaints by the U.S.' wealthiest few about Elizabeth Warren reflect their insistence that extreme wealth be coupled with absolute and unquestioned power:

The point is that many of the superrich aren’t satisfied with living like kings, which they will continue to do no matter who wins next year’s election. They also expect to be treated like kings, lionized as job creators and heroes of prosperity, and consider any criticism an unforgivable act of lèse-majesté.

And for such people, the prospect of a Warren presidency is a nightmarish threat — not to their wallets, but to their egos. They can try to brush off someone like Bernie Sanders as a rabble-rouser. But when Warren criticizes malefactors of great wealth and proposes reining in their excesses, her evident policy sophistication — has any previous candidate managed to turn wonkiness into a form of charisma? — makes her critique much harder to dismiss.

If Warren is the nominee, then, a significant number of tycoons will indeed go for Trump; better to put democracy at risk than to countenance a challenge to their imperial self-esteem.

- John Michael McGrath discusses how a combination of arbitrary privatization and governmental heel-dragging has resulted in it taking far more time and trouble than necessary to build public infrastructure. Bryan Eneas reports on the Regina schools which are far over capacity due to the Saskatchewan Party's poor planning and underfunding.

- Thomas Walkom puts the Libs' costly tax tinkering in perspective by comparing it to the puny sums on offer for major social priorities. And Jonathon Gatehouse notes that Andrew Scheer's bombast against foreign aid is as inaccurate as it is dehumanizing.

- Finally, Owen Jones writes that we shouldn't be fooled by calls for both-sides "civility" as a response to organized violence and hatred by the right.