Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Abdullah Shihipar discusses why there's every reason to resist the pressure from self-serving politicians and business groups to succumb to COVID-19. Hannah Flynn discusses the long-term brain injuries traceable to long COVID in primates. And Steve Schering examines the hospitalization rates for children during the Omicron wave (with vaccinations offering some, but not bulletproof, protection). 

- Ian Welsh writes about the folly of the petrochemical age on a historical scale - even as so many of our politicians desperately try to avoid discussing how to shift to remotely sustainable forms of social and economic organization. And Deepa Shivaram notes that the U.S. has seen one important first, as wind power has exceeded that from coal and nuclear sources for the first time. 

- Nina Lakhani, Alvin Chang, Rita Liu and Andrew Witherspoon discuss how our food system is grossly unprepared for the effects of climate change. And Gisele Yasmeen notes that far too many people already face food shortages and insecurity - though due to inequality and war rather than a lack of sufficient production to feed everybody. 

- Jacqueline Best points out the problems with Pierre Poilievre's quack monetarism as an excuse to engage in austerity and economic self-sabotage in the name of fighting modest inflation. And Michael Roberts notes that most of the conversation around inflation ignores the reality of supply shocks which can be relieved through direct public investment in productive activity - with the added bonus of ensuring that what's produced best serves the needs of people. 

- Meanwhile, Umair Haque comments on the concentration of wealth and power that inevitable results when we allow - and even encourage - public goods to be put under private control. 

- Finally, Bill Blaikie highlights a few of the firsts in the supply and confidence agreement between the NDP and the Libs. And Aaron Wherry writes that the appropriate frame of reference in evaluating the deal is to assess whether and how it produces durable changes in policy. 

#Elxn44 Roundup

News and notes from Canada's election campaign.

- Mohy-Dean Tabbara and Garima Talwar Kapoor examine what the parties are offering to combat poverty, while noting the need for more ambition in the effort. 

- Alex Hemingway points out that while the NDP's platform offers a start, there's plenty of room to raise far more money by taxing the rich with somewhat more (if far from unlimited) zeal. 

- Zoe Yunker examines where the parties stand on renewable energy, noting in particular that the NDP is the only party committed to closing carbon pricing loopholes for fossil-fuel-fired power plants. 

- The Globe and Mail's editorial board contrasts the promise of actual child care spaces from each of the NDP and the Libs against the Cons' belated tax bauble. And Bill Blaikie writes that Erin O'Toole's weasel wording on health care is intended to distract from his plans for increased privatization. 

- Finally, David Beers interviews Chris Tenove about the often-toxic social media environment - and a few ways to try to move toward more positive and productive forms of discussion. 

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Bill Blaikie discusses how our growing inequality and precarity is the direct result of harmful policy choices:

By 1985 we were five years into the neo-liberal era brought on by the election of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the U.S.  They advocated policies like cutting taxes for the rich, cutting social assistance for the poor and the working poor, reducing the role of government in providing for the common good, reducing the power of unions to advocate for adequate wages, and basically letting the "market" decide.

Over the next forty years the " market" decided that the rich would get richer, the middle class would struggle, and the poor would get poorer. The current rate of economic inequality makes the seventies look like an egalitarian dream. CEOs that only made $500,000 back then might make 5 million or a lot more today.

Cutting taxes for the rich did not lead to economic investment that would cause economic benefits to " trickle-down". The only thing that trickled down was you know what, while power and income trickled up, and up, and the adequacy of wages shrunk, and shrunk.
Hence the fact that many who need and use food banks, and even some of the homeless are. people with jobs.

...

All this by way of explaining, in an obviously limited way, to younger people who surely must wonder why there are encampments of the homeless in their city, and in bus shelters, that it didn't have to be so, and it doesn't have to be so in the future. The current situation is a choice.  Our common responsibility, young or older, is to make our politicians make the right choices, and to support those who already advocate such choices.

- Thomas Walkom highlights how compulsory licensing would ensure that Canadians have access to COVID-19 vaccines (and other desperately-needed medical products), while Karl Nerenberg highlights how the NDP is looking to prioritize people over profits in both pharmaceutical production and long-term care. And John Miller notes in the wake of Bell's mental health whitewashing that the telecommunication sector represents another area where public needs and resources have been turned into a source of private profiteering.

- Ben Parfitt examines how British Columbia offer dirty industry the chance to use massive amounts of water at cut-rate prices. 

- Pam Palmater writes about Jason Kenney's litany of failures since taking power in Alberta. And Sara Birrell discusses the embarrassment that was Regina City Council's exercise in oil-worshipping self-flagellation.

- Finally, Brian Platt examines what an effective response to COVID-19 would look like - in stark contrast to the murderous insistence on doing as little as possible (particularly among right-wing premiers). And Kirby Bourne reports that independent restauranteurs are among the people begging for a COVID-zero strategy to replace the expectation that businesses will stay open regardless of the cost to public health.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jerusalem Demsas discusses the strong popular support for affordable social housing even as governments continually fail to provide it. Daphne Bramham rightly asks why we haven't seen far more of a move toward the Housing First models (including both secure housing and the availability of associated supports) which have consistently proven effective at assisting people facing addictions and homelessness. And Richard Warnica weighs in on the death toll from Ontario's reliance on for-profit long-term care homes. 

- Moira Wyton reports on the outcome of British Columbia's panel on a basic income - which found that more targeted income and basic services would represent a better use of public resources. And Heather Scoffield offers her take on why a basic income isn't the right option to try to eliminate poverty. 

- Timothy Bond, Jillian Carr, Analisa Packham and Jonathan Smith study how the timing of food benefits directly affects students' scores on tests which affect their future.

- Bill Blaikie puts some of the forces behind the U.S.' Trumpist insurrection into historical context. And Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan write about the needed push from social movements for change as the Biden/Harris administration begins its tenure.

- Meanwhile, Scott Harold Payne wonders whether the relentless flow of corruption and incompetence from the UCP will lead to the end of Alberta conservatism as we know it.

- Finally, Kendall Latimer reports on Saskatchewan's long-overdue end to the use of birth alerts - while also noting the need to make up for the damage they've done already.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Paul Wells explores how extensive planning for foreseeable pandemics was discarded or forgotten just as it mattered most.

- Ryan Meili highlights the importance of putting people first in determining how to ease restrictions in the wake of the coronavirus, while Missy Johnson looks at a few of the options to ameliorate our current level of inequality in the wake of a pandemic which has shown how precarity weakens us all.
And Adam Tooze writes that we shouldn't be obsessing over deficits or debt, particularly when it's being raised primarily as an excuse to push cruel austerity measures.

- Nafeez Ahmed notes that the coronavirus may provide the economic system shock which permanently shifts us away from dirty fossil fuels. And Brendan Haley discusses the need for public investment in clean energy systems to ensure a durable and sustainable recovery, while James Wilt argues for decommodifying public transit.

- Andrew Nikiforuk points out that the meatpackers which have become some of Canada's most dangerous vectors for the spread of COVID-19 ignored plenty of warnings to reach that point.

- Bill Blaikie makes the case to fulfill the promise of complete universal health care by ensuring people have the medicine they need.

- Finally, Dominic Rushe and Mona Chalabi discuss how the wealthiest few are exploiting the pandemic to make themselves even richer. And Jo Snyder provides responses to the Koch-funded talking points being used to argue for reckless disregard for the continued dangers of COVID-19.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Linda McQuaig writes about the myth that we have no choice but to pursue privatization - and notes that electric vehicle production represents an ideal opportunity to build public economic capacity:

Is it feasible to save the once-vibrant Oshawa complex and transform it into a publicly owned plant producing environmentally essential products, as part of a Green New Deal?

Gindin notes that during the Second World War, GM facilities were converted to produce military vehicles. He insists that the Oshawa plant be expropriated today without compensation since Canadian taxpayers have already generously subsidized GM. While he acknowledges that the project is a long shot, he adds, “it seems criminal not to at least try.”

Indeed, what is needed is some bold, out-of-the-box thinking that takes us beyond the current dogma of privatization. Given that Canada’s historic auto-making centre is about to be shut down, we should consider creating a publicly owned facility that could potentially start a transformative industry here. If that idea is ultimately rejected, the rejection should be based on something more than the notion that such a project is too ambitious for public enterprise and is best left to the private sector.

In truth, the very ambitiousness of the project seems to call out for public enterprise. For most of our history, we’ve been mere "hewers of wood and drawers of water" and operators of branch plants. When we’ve risen above that, it’s usually been because we’ve created public enterprises that served a broader public purpose than what private interests were offering. We became the country we are today in part because, at key moments our past, some visionary Canadians had bold, ambitious ideas for public enterprises and weren’t deterred by the admonitions of the business elite.

There may be reasons not to turn the Oshawa plant into a green production facility, but let’s not succumb to the ill-informed notion that Canadians aren’t up to the task or that we don’t know how to do public enterprise in this country.

- Jon Milton discusses the importance of treating housing and transit as social goods rather than profit or revenue centres as part of any viable climate plan. And Bill Blaikie writes that we should be far more concerned about a long-term environmental deficit - the extreme damage we're inflicting on our planet - than about incremental differences in budget expectations.

- Erika Shaker compares how Canada's federal parties are addressing the increasing unaffordability of post-secondary education. And Anne Gaviola examines the numerous positive spinoff effects of forgiving student debt.

- John Geddes points out the minimal differences between the tax tinkering of the Libs and Cons (at a galling cost to the federal government's fiscal capacity).

- Finally, Michal Rozworski writes that it should be a no-brainer to bring in more revenue from Canada's wealthiest few, both to fund needed programs and to try to reduce the inequality in power which comes from the concentration of wealth. And Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman write that the U.S. too should be determining how to tax its way toward increased social justice.

Book Review: The Blaikie Report

Among other highlights of the Saskatchewan NDP's leadership convention this month, I was able to meet and chat with longtime NDP MP (and later MLA) Bill Blaikie, who attended in large part to introduce party members to The Blaikie Report. And I appreciate the opportunity to review the book - particularly given that others have already had their say since its release.

Blaikie's book reads in part as autobiography, in part as polemic. And on both fronts, he nicely highlights how little Canadian politics have changed over the past several decades, with the appropriation of religious messaging by the far right serving as one of the few genuinely radical developments.

Blaikie starts by tracing his own social gospel views back to the CCF-NDP's early leaders and beyond, describing the social gospel as reflecting a religious critique of capitalism (which itself gets treated by far too many political actors as an infallible matter of faith).

Blaikie then applies the social gospel lens to his dizzying range of political experience - from culture wars to constitutional wrangling to the passage of the Canada Health Act. And whatever the source of one's concern about corporatist government, the themes found in Blaikie's book will be highly familiar to anybody involved in social democratic circles - from countering astroturfed "taxpayer" outrage by pointing out the preferential treatment granted to corporations, to the meaning and importance of sustainable development.

That said, a few chapters particularly stand out not merely as reflections on Blaikie's experience, but as arguments worth expanding on when it comes to issues which are still central to Canadian political debate. Chapter 8 makes a strong case as to the longstanding difference in political cultures between the NDP and the Libs - and how issue advocates can't expect to succeed in changing the terms of policy discussion without clearly articulating which party best reflects their underlying goals. And Chapters 15-16 offer both blistering criticism of the "chosen powerlessness" associated with free trade agreements, and a reminder that citizens' movements have been able to effectively counter the supposedly inexorable movement toward ever more corporate power.

But of course, any public movement depends on rallying together as many citizens as possible. And the NDP at all levels will do well to keep in mind Blaikie's core argument that a social democratic movement and party can only succeed by reaching out to voters and communities who share our values - whether or not those values are rooted in faith.

Incidentally...

...those looking to impose an NDP litmus test in favour of the federal gun registry may want to take a look at the history behind its implementation. The "yea" votes for Bill C-68 included a grand total of one NDP MP (Svend Robinson), while the "nay" votes when the registry first passed included the rest of the NDP caucus - including such familiar names as Audrey McLaughlin, Bill Blaikie and Simon de Jong.

Which isn't to say that the party couldn't rightfully change its mind in the interim. But surely there would be some significant explanation needed as to how the position held by all but one NDP member when a measure passed initially would be grounds for punishment when it comes to reversing course.

Stalwart

I fear I may have jinxed the NDP by pointing out its then-perfect record of current MPs not planning to step down for the next federal election, as word came out today that Bill Blaikie's distinguished tenure in the House of Commons will end with the current Parliament:

Bill Blaikie, Member of Parliament for Elmwood-Transcona and presently Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, will not be seeking re-election whenever the current minority parliament comes to an end.

“I have advised the executive of the Elmwood-Transcona NDP Association that I will not seek re-nomination, and urged them to begin the search for candidates to run for the NDP nomination in this very winnable riding for our party,” said Blaikie.

Blaikie, the longest serving member of the current parliament, is Dean of the House of Commons. He was elected almost 28 years ago, on May 22, 1979, and has served in many capacities, most recently as NDP House Leader, NDP Parliamentary Leader, NDP Deputy Leader, and currently Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons.

We'll presumably find out before long who will earn the NDP's nod to try to succeed Blaikie. But whoever wins that role will have some massive shoes to fill - and the House of Commons will be worse off for the loss of its current Dean once Blaikie is gone.