Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Keenan Sorokan reports on the unprecedented number of students out sick from school in the Saskatoon area, while Karen Bartko reports on a spike in respiratory illnesses among Edmonton students. And Andrew Potter writes about the concurrent drops in government capacity and trust in public services with reference to ArriveCAN - though it's particularly worth noting that the important public successes earlier in the pandemic have largely been written out of history, while a counternarrative claiming none of them should ever have been bothered with has spread among the anti-science fever swamps.

- Meanwhile, Mazen Maurice Guirguis highlights Danielle Smith's apparent intention to declare a constitutional right to harm others, while Medicine Hat News reports on her plans to invite Paul Alexander and his "let-'er-rip" approach to define Alberta's further pandemic response. 

- Doug Henwood writes that any response to temporary inflation needs to recognize and ameliorate the longstanding failure of the U.S. economy to generate benefits for any but the richest of people. Jake Johnson reports on Bernie Sanders' crucial end-of-campaign message that Republicans are itching to make matters even worse if given the chance, while David Rothkopf and Bernard Schwartz offer a reminder that right-wing politicians are bad for the economy even on their own terms of promoting growth at the expense of fairness and inclusiveness. Lawrence Martin discusses how conservative politics everywhere have become synonymous with fear and bigotry as a substitute for any attempt to produce positive outcomes by rationale measures. And Murray Mandryk tries to hold the Moe government to at least the standard of not actively promoting anti-science myths in publicly-funded schools.

- Charles Smith discusses how Doug Ford is taking the usual right-wing attack on workers to new extremes by invoking the notwithstanding clause to terminate collective bargaining, while Linda McQuaig calls out his choice to make public education generally into a combat zone rather than a system intended to promote learning and socialization. And David Bush offers a reminder that the labour rights workers enjoy today are the product of collective against against unjust laws.

- Finally, Brandon Gage reports on the World Meteorological Organization's findings that the last eight years have been the hottest in recorded history. And Conrad Swanson reports on the megadrought which is threatening to make the entire area of the U.S. which relies on the Colorado River unliveable.