This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- Jonathan Cohn discusses how arbitrariness is one of the key factors in Donald Trump's destruction of the U.S.' economic prospects. David Silver suggests that businesses should be willing to stand up to autocrats (particularly where they're influential enough to make a difference). Marc Jones reports on the Bank for International Settlements' warning that share prices don't seem to bear any relationship to economic fundamentals, while Jeff Cox reports on Trump's push to reduce public earnings reporting as yet another example of his desire to prevent reality from being known or acted upon. And Anna Sale talks to Megan Greenwell about how private equity has destroyed viable media and other businesses in the name of extracting short-term profits and fees.
- The Institute for Research on Public Policy examines how industrial policy is vital to Canada's economy and sovereignty in the face of looming corporate and political threats. And Kyle Briggs discusses the importance of actively working to convert research into products, rather than hoping that tax credits will incentivize businesses to do so.
- Asawin Suebsaeng, Nikki McCann Ramirez and Andrew Perez write that Stephen Miller's fear-based governance is the most consistent thread winding its way through the Trump administration's actions. And Ben Wieder and Shirsho Dasgupta report on the hundreds of people who have been disappeared after being snatched up into concentration camps.
- Sasha Fury calls out Mark Carney for embracing political violence, most recently by joining in the effort to whitewash Charlie Kirk's track record of inflammatory racism. Jared Wesley discusses how Danielle Smith's move to attach citizenship markers to basic IDs serves as a dangerous step toward excluding people from basic rights and essential services. And Teren Hazzard writes about the UCP's biased "consultation" which is plainly aimed at stoking separatism.
- Finally, John Clarke writes that the successes of Air Canada workers in defending their right to strike against government overreach have given rise to questions about what comes next.
I am suspicious of the Briggs article. It is a paean to the American Bayh-Dole act, which was a big factor in the corporate takeover of universities and the tendency for university research to become closed off as "intellectual property" rather than open and available to be built on. I don't think we should be emulating that.
ReplyDelete