Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Gregg Gonsalves writes that rather than spurring the development of more effective public health mechanisms, the COVID-19 pandemic has instead seen massive backsliding as a culture of denial has overtaken even existing programs.  And Justin Ling points out the painful inability of the Canadian federal government to actually solve problems, rather than merely treating them as communications issues to be managed and ultimately suppressed. 

- Yet even that pattern is less pernicious than the pattern of right-wing governments actively exacerbating unfairness - including the Saskatchewan Party's choice to direct a fire hose of money toward private schools which consider themselves entitled to reject high-needs students (while slashing resources from the public system), and the UCP's decision to eliminate any type of support for people facing addictions in rural Alberta.  

- Andrea Bennett interviews Ricardo Tranjan about the housing crisis facing so many people - including the reality that it's being perpetuated because it's so profitable for a wealthy few. And Irina Wang writes about the problems with funding for a climate transition being directed toward glitzy consumer goods rather than systemic interventions. 

- Andrew King and Steven Sherwood discuss how we're pushing the Earth out of the "Goldilocks zone" of energy inputs and outputs. Craig Stanbury writes about Elizabeth Cripps' entirely-justified concerns that it's not possible to be a good parent without acting to ensure a viable future for one's children. Stefan Labbe reports on a new study documenting the lack of accurate emissions data from the logging sector. And Carl Meyer and Rianna Lim report on the dozens of MPs whose decision-making on climate policy is influence by substantial investments and family income from the oil and gas sector. 

- Michael Roberts makes the case for publicly-owned banks as a replacement for a financial system built on gambling with depositors' money for private profit (with the expectation that the government will step in if there's any trouble). And Noah Smith writes about the lessons governments are finally re-learning about the need for industrial strategy and policy beyond laissez-faire dogmatism. 

- Finally, Juliana Kaplan weighs in on the corporate greed at the root of the inflation hitting the American public.