Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Emily Atkin writes about the importance of continuing to highlight the dangers of climate change even if - and indeed because - our political class refuses to fully engage with it. And Nature weighs in on the folly of planning to overshoot our planetary limits and trying to pull back only after the fact, while Discover points out that "deep warming" will continue to undermine habitability even if we're later able to zero out carbon emissions. 

- Arielle Samuelson discusses how Hurricane Milton became far more severe as a result of a warmed Gulf of Mexico. And Victoria Gill and Helen Briggs report on a jarring 73% drop in global wildlife populations over just the last half-century. 

- Michael Bachelard reports on the absolute fiction of Australia's largest source of carbon offsets. George Monbiot warns that UK Labour's plan to pour tens of billions of dollars into carbon capture and storage (while pleading poverty when it comes to anything that could actually help people) will inevitably turn into a similar fiasco in the making. And Jody MacPherson reports on a plea from Alberta's municipalities for the UCP to stop handing out money to oil companies while simultaneously relieving them of any responsibility for the costs of environmental degradation and cleanup. 

- Chris Hedges interviews Monbiot about the history and impact of neoliberalism as a means of undermining democracy:

- Ken Shirriff examines the continued concentration of wealth in the U.S., while Darren Major reports on the similar escalation of inequality in Canada. And David Olive discusses how workplace abuse is the norm in a society which treats workers as disposable commodities rather than people deserving of consideration and respect.

- Finally, Dale Smith calls out Danielle Smith's pitiful attempt to treat systemic denial and dehumanization of trans youth as being for their own good. 

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Elizabeth Kolbert discusses the immense damage and disruption which we can anticipate if Greenland's massive ice sheet melts due to global warming, while Monica Machicao and Daniel Ramos report on the unprecedented wildfires burning through Bolivia. And Brad Johnson points out that repeated hurricanes devastating their strongholds aren't making an iota of difference in getting Republican denialists to recognize the risks of a climate breakdown.  

- Oliver Milman reports on new research showing that the gas exports which are constantly pushed by the fossil fuel sector as a climate benefit are in fact more harmful in the medium term than coal power. Drew Anderson writes about a provincial election campaign featuring an unchallenged assumption that  Saskatchewan's economy should be defined solely in terms of non-renewable resource extraction. And Ross Belot writes that the delay tactic of demanding that China rein in its emissions before the rest of the world is running into the reality that it's succeeding - and setting itself up to dominate the world's renewable energy market - in doing so.

- Chris Hedges discusses the corporate class' core priorities of burning the planet and locking up anybody who would dare to challenge that plan. Joan Westenberg highlights how obscene wealth and power tend to lead to the evaporation of any sense of morality, while Tom Nichols discusses the phony populism wielded as a weapon to further entrench the control of the uber-rich. And Sidney Blumenthal calls out Donald Trump's deliberate adoption of Hitlerian eugenicist rhetoric, while Alex Nguyen reports on Elon Musk's funding of Stephen Miller's dehumanization of immigrants and minorities. 

- Jeremy Appel discusses how the corporate media has accepted and entrenched messages about mental health and drug policy which favour authoritarian responses. 

- Finally, Robert Reich points out the desperate need for health and safety laws and enforcement mechanisms which won't simply be ignored by employers - particularly bad actors who would rather threaten to close up shop than take steps to keep their employees safe.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Chris Hedges discusses how the end of empire-based colonialism has only given way to an even more exploitative corporate version. And Cory Doctorow points out how surveillance capitalism inevitably turns its resources toward defrauding the people being monitored and manipulated. 

- Matthew Rosza interviews Michael Mann about the need to pair accurate information about the threat posed by climate change with discussion of how it's possible to take positive action. 

- Kevin Drum graphs the connection between lead contamination and murder rates in Washington DC. And Mira Rojanasakul reports on the rise of saltwater levels in New Orleans, with the foreseeable results including the salination of drinking water sources and the release of lead and other matter from pipes.  

- Bob Weber reports on new polling showing a strong majority of Albertans opposed to the UCP's attacks on renewable energy. And Gary Mason calls out Danielle Smith's plan to use Albertans' retirement savings as a slush for for the oil industry as a Brexit-style calamity in the making. 

- Finally, Emily Leedham reports on the Manitoba PCs' choice to offer only meaningless guesswork in place of any plan to ensure people have access to health care. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Anne Sosin and Ranu Dhillon write that it's long past time to take the well-documented and devastating effects of long COVID into account as part of the measure of public health policy. And with a few provinces finally making second booster shots available, Prakash Nagarkatti and Mitzi Nagarkatti offer their take on the considerations to be taken into account in deciding whether to get boosted. 

- Fahad Razak et al. write that we can't begin to ameliorate a collapsing health care system without getting COVID-19 under control. And Kenyon Wallace reports on the warning from emergency room physicians about the crisis at the St. Joseph's Health Centre in Toronto, while Alexander Quon reports on the prospect that laboratory services disruptions in Saskatchewan are set to get even worse. 

- Isabella Weber and Mark Paul discuss how interest rate hikes will only exacerbate the difficulties faced by the working class as a result of corporate-driven inflation. Lana Payne writes that consumers should be angry at CEOs rather than workers for exploiting the opportunity to take windfall profits. And Adam King discusses how the left can find an opportunity in labour shortages. 

- Émile Boisseau-Bouvier and Laura Cameron highlight how the Libs are set to miss their deadline to end fossil fuel subsidies - and are hiding behind weasel wording to avoid any action at all. 

- Finally, Chris Hedges warns that the U.S. in particular is headed toward irreversible civilizational decline.  

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Kenyon Wallace reports on new modelling showing a real risk of yet another wave of COVID spread in Ontario - even as widespread immunity just a few months of remotely responsible government away. Julie Steenhuysen and Kate Kelland point out how an increasing number of variants is complicating the fight against COVID-19. And Marieke Walsh and Greg McArthur discuss how Canada's vaccination process has been set back due to our reliance on global supply chains.

- Chris Hedges writes about the multiple prominent examples of social murder in progress - with COVID-19 serving only as a particularly immediate and vivid example of the phenomenon which also defines the climate crisis and other avoidable crises of public health and welfare. And John Calvert discusses the people killed by Texas' reckless deregulation of vital infrastructure - along with the propensity of Canadian conservatives to push us in the same direction.  

- Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail's editorial board calls out Doug Ford for choosing to try to renormalize cash-for-access politics. And Darren Bernhardt reports on the Manitoba PCs' unprecedented power grab in seeking to ram a large number of dubious bills through the legislative process while keeping their contents secret from opposition parties and the public.

- Emmanuel Fulgence Drabo, Grace Eckel, Samuel Ross, Michael Brozic et al. are the latest to demonstrate that a Housing First system which provides residents with a secure home produces a substantial return on investment in social and economic terms.

- Finally, Richard Denniss writes that Australia's regulation of tech giants - which was met with an initial attempt at resistance followed by ultimate acceptance - demonstrates that we're not helpless in the face of the power of large corporations. And Adam Smith discusses the EU's latest move to empower the public by ensuring that consumer electronics are reasonably durable and can be repaired - rather than being part of a cycle of rapid planned obsolescence.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Chris Hedges writes about the damage oligarchs are doing to humanity and the planet. And Dominic Rushe points out how whiny the people who have rigged the economy toward their own concentration of obscene wealth become when they face the slightest hint of being asked to contribute to the common good. 

- David Roberts writes that Donald Trump's impeachment proceedings represent what may be the most important clash of truth against the Republican noise machine. And Drew Anderson discusses how any talk about Alberta separation mirrors the U.S. Republican instinct to try to choose an electorate willing to endorse policies which will never be supported on a national scale.

- Duncan Cameron calls out Jason Kenney's fake populism. And Scott Schmidt writes that Kenney's posturing against Ottawa is intended as a distraction from the harm he's doing to his own province.

- Speaking of which, Ali Hogg's discussion of how "religious freedom" laws serve as a cover for bigotry is entirely applicable to the UCP's introduction of Bill 207 to deny health care based on religious dogma.

- Finally, Andy Beckett writes that Labour's forceful progressive push is redefining what's possible in the UK. And Meagan Day points out that American voters have a much-needed option to vote for more freedom from bosses both in terms of work hours and personal control.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Sarmishta Subramanian writes that messages of exclusion and division tend to be amplified for political purposes rather than because they actually reflect broad public opinion. And Christopher Cheung discusses how the PPC in particular has chosen to use the language of selective inclusion to stoke xenophobia.

- Sheila Block makes the case for a wealth tax in Canada. And the Canadian Press reports on new data showing how the wealthiest few are not only increasing their income levels, but paying less tax on what they take in.

- Meanwhile, Dawn Foster writes about the much-needed ambition to improve the lives of workers embodied in UK Labour's plan for a four-day work week.

- Chris Hedges comments on the need to overcome corporate power in order to achieve a just transition to a sustainable society, while Brent Patterson writes that the growing climate strikes are only the beginning of the effort.

- Finally, Paul Adams points out the difficulty in adequately covering the a global climate crisis in the course of an election where it doesn't give rise to simple conflict narratives. And Derrick O'Keefe calls out Justin Trudeau's particularly galling choice to make a loud but content-free climate announcement in the shadow of the pipeline he bought to increase the burning of fossil fuels.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Damian Carrington reports on the Global Commission on Adaptation's research showing that we're woefully unprepared for catastrophic climate change - and that prevention today will far more than pay off in the future (except for those who consider climate apartheid to be an acceptable outcome). And PR Newswire points out the massive costs of the U.S.' existing air pollution (which Donald Trump and the Republicans of course want to exacerbate).

- J Mijin Cha and Jeremy Brecher recognize that climate action is entirely compatible with economic development and improved employment prospects. And Alex Balingall reports on the Assembly of First Nations' indication that it considers climate change to be the top priority in this fall's federal election.

- Allison Hanes writes about the harm Bill 21 is doing to Quebec's schools and other public institutions by implementing systematic religious discrimination as provincial policy. And Nicholas Keung discusses some of the community organizing being done to counteract the deliberate cultivation of bigotry and hate in the federal election campaign.

- And finally, Chris Hedges writes that longtime apologists for purely selfish capitalism are running scared in asking that they be allowed to determine for themselves what motives other than profit should be considered in the distribution of wealth.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Chris Hedges points out how the obscenely rich few are trying to distract from their accumulation of wealth in order to avoid what would stand to be a massive public backlash. Emily Peck discusses the question of why our economic system is set up to allow the concentration of billions of dollars in single individuals. And Bill McKibben writes about the importance of perseverance against entrenched interests in fighting for a just transition toward cleaner energy.

- Meanwhile, Marc Lee calls for expanded public transit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve accessibility and mobility for the people who need it most.

- Sebastien Jilke and Wouter Van Dooren comment on the dangers of trying to deliver veterans' benefits (and other public services) through privatized models which emphasize corporate profits over recipients' best interests.

- Nick Saul discusses how poverty is the most important barrier to healthy eating.

- Finally, Andre Picard weighs in on the need for improved public access to data in Canada, with particular emphasis on its importance in shaping health outcomes.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Rupert Neate reports on new research showing that the world's billionaires saw their wealth increase by 20% in 2017 alone.

- Pete Evans discusses the increasing debt facing most Canadians as ever more net wealth is diverted to the extremely privileged few. And Alex Hemingway comments on the role of a speculation tax in making housing more affordable while also funding social needs.

- Paul Summers reviews the UK's continued wage stagnation for most workers compared to soaring executive salaries. And Mike Crawley examines the evidence and finds that Doug Ford's excuse for repealing a minimum wage increase has no basis in reality, while Ricardo Tranjan points out that workers are nothing but worse off when fair wages are replaced with tax gimmicks.

- Meanwhile, Michael Coren writes that Ford's agenda is based on little more than punishing the poorest Ontarians:

(T)here is something deeper, darker, and more sinister going on. It’s an attack upon human dignity, a scapegoating of the “other,” which is a classic hard-right tactic. The ghost of capitalism past and the ghost of capitalism present, where decency and compassion are dismissed as mere humbug.

It’s surely no coincidence that the same week as the most powerless of workers were humiliated, the same government announced that plans to build three university campuses in the suburbs or outer towns of Toronto were cancelled. These are frontline colleges, providing young people with vocational training as much as academic excellence.

Because of the location of the central campuses, it’s expensive, extremely time-consuming, even impossible, for many to become students. These are often the less privileged and less wealthy kids, and as such it was a direct assault on equality of opportunity.

Earlier in the month, the Ford administration removed funding to the Roundtable on Violence Against Women, designed to help government support those escaping domestic violence. It also scrapped funding to a Toronto after-school program for at-risk young youth. And the list goes on.
...
...(T)he rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the call for justice and fairness is dismissed as extreme and unreasonable. Remember that cruelty, and remember that we will be judged by how we treat those less fortunate than ourselves.

- Finally, Dorothy Woodend interviews Chris Hedges about the precarious state of the U.S.' global hegemony.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Simon Wren-Lewis notes the importance of including the working class among the groups identified as part of a progressive movement. And Gary Younge writes about the importance of genuine identity politics (as opposed to the cynical right-wing counterpart) as a means of identifying and addressing structural inequality:

(N)ot all identities count as equal. The more power they carry, the less likely the carrier is to be aware of it as an identity at all. Nobody asks me: “When did you come out as straight?” or “How did you balance travelling as a foreign correspondent with raising children?” because straight men don’t get asked that. What is often dismissed as “identity politics” might be more accurately just called “politics” originating from the concerns of less advantaged groups.

It’s not difficult to see why the right has a problem with this. Their agenda is centred on preserving and extending privileges that already exist. Denigrating equal rights campaigners as “grievance politics” practitioners, the irony is that they practise the very methods they lampoon. Railing against liberal elites, feminists, migrants and Muslims, they have cornered the market in victimhood. Trump’s presidential campaign made an unvarnished appeal to white, Christian Americans – what is that if not an identity?

The left has always been more confused. Those with a crude notion of class contend that politics driven by identity divides people, dilutes solidarity, and diverts energy from addressing material concerns such as pay and conditions. This fundamentally misunderstands identity, politics and class.

When British women are being paid 18% less than men, gender is a material concern; when for every $100 in wealth a white person has in the US an African-American has just $5, race is a material issue. Likewise, if there is no lift and you’re disabled. If you can’t get married to the person you love and can’t leave them your pension, sexual orientation is a material issue. If you can’t walk down the street without fear of the police stopping, searching or shooting you, or if you cannot control decisions about your own fertility, those are material issues. Acknowledging diversity does not undermine solidarity. Indeed by rendering it more inclusive and better informed, it should make that solidarity more effective. “Labour in the white skin,” wrote that flaky identity hipster, Karl Marx, “can never free itself as long as labour in the black skin is branded.”

- Meanwhile, Jacky Habib reports on the spread of right-wing hate in Canada - including a particularly drastic increase in violent hate crimes. And Alex Boutilier reports on the need for law enforcement to respond before hatred turns to violence.

- Travis Lupick discusses Chris Hedges' latest book on the causes and effects of the U.S.' crumbling democracy.

- CBC News reports on new research showing that the effects of childhood abuse include lasting alterations to a victim's DNA.

- Finally, Auden Schendler and Andrew Jones write about the need to respond to yet another damning report about climate inaction by demanding and making change rather than accepting defeat. But the CP reports that the Libs' plan is to continue to do nothing more.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Scott Clark and Peter DeVries point out that with interest rates still at historically low levels, Canada would be far better off funding infrastructure for itself rather than locking itself into privatized structures:

But that is not true at all at the federal level.  The federal government funds its infrastructure projects by issuing 30 or 50-year bonds, which it currently can do at historically low interest rates.  The costs are amortized over the service life of the project.  The impact on the budgetary balance is spread over the lifetime of the investment, perhaps as long as fifty years.  If it loans these funds, without concessions and covers its borrowing costs, there is no direct impact on the budgetary balance.

In other words, the government currently has access to unlimited and cheaper funding for public sector infrastructure investments than the private sector.
...
(W)hy does the Finance Minister want to create an independent CIB that will focus only on “National Economic Development projects such as toll highways and bridges, high-speed rail, port and airport expansions, smart city infrastructure, national broadband infrastructure, power transmission and natural resource infrastructure?  Projects considered by the Bank should generally have an all-in cost in excess of $100 million to meet the minimum to attract institutional investment”.

In other words, the Council wants an independent CIB that will concern itself with only about 2 per cent of the “national” infrastructure gap.  The remaining 98 per cent that is provincial and local is too small to attract large investors.

Perhaps the Finance Minister should concern himself more with the 98 per cent of infrastructure needs and less with the 2 percent.  It is at the provincial and local level where there are in fact revenue and borrowing constraints that could inhibit infrastructure investments.

- Meanwhile, Brent Patterson questions why the Libs are also pushing "development finance" aimed toward allowing the corporate sector to exploit the developing world, rather than toward improving conditions for people. And Chris Hedges discusses the Trump kleptocracy.

- Alex Ballingall reports on a new Environmental Canada projection showing that Canada is expected miss even the watered-down greenhouse gas emissions targets set by the Harper Conservatives.

- Emma Gilchrist notes that subsidies for the fossil fuel sector - such as the B.C. Libs' power giveaways - lead to disastrous economic consequences as well as environmental destruction. And Judith Lavoie points out how Imperial Metals' corporate political donations fed into Christy Clark's choice to saddle the public with a $40 million cleanup bill.

- Finally, Paul Taylor examines how unnecessary medical testing can do more harm than good - both in terms of the use of medical resources, and in terms of the health of the individual patient. And Andre Picard points out the example of tuberculosis in the North in showing how vital it is to have care available when and where it's actually needed.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Karl Nerenberg weighs in on the Libs' choice to direct billions of dollars toward higher-income individuals, rather than working to help Canadians who need it:

The Liberals are now in power, and have just brought in a tax change that will give the most generous benefit to an elite, wealthy group.

You can call six-figure earners middle class if you like, but that would be stretching the definition. They are certainly not middle income. They are near the top. And they are definitely not the most in need.

A few, such as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and the now third party NDP, have called the Liberals on this choice.

The CCPA has even proposed alternatives. One is to use a tax credit, which can be more precisely targeted, rather than a tax cut for the middle bracket.

So far, its odd and unfair fiscal choice has not had much political impact on the honeymooning Trudeau government.

There is still time, however.

Let's see what happens around tax time when Canadians start to pay closer attention to how much they, and others, actually do or do not get from this much-touted middle class tax cut.

- CBC reports on Statistics Canada's latest figures showing the continued rise of personal debt compared to Canadian incomes. And Erika Shaker highlights the juggling act facing parents trying to bear the cost of child care.

- Chris Hedges writes that our exploitative economic system is effectively built on a foundation of human sacrifice.

- Denise Leduc criticizes the exclusion and marginalization of people with intellectual disabilities from the workplace. And Robert Scott counters the spin that reasonable wages are a barrier to a successful manufacturing industry.

- Finally, Neil MacDonald rightly comments that the appropriate response to terrorism is not to grant its perpetrators the fear they seek - but that it will take a concerted effort to avoid succumbing to it.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Chris Hedges weighs in on the Trans-Pacific Partnership's entrenchment of corporate control over mere citizens, while PressProgress highlights just a few of the more obvious dangers it poses. And Blayne Haggart points out that the TPP has nothing at all to do with free trade.

TPP-like agreements are no longer exclusively or even primarily about reducing traditional trade barriers. As Harvard economist Dani Rodrik notes in his 2011 book The Globalization Paradox, with some exceptions (such as Canada’s dairy industry), tariffs have never been lower. Any gains from further reductions would be relatively modest.

Instead, agreements such as the TPP are about implementing policies that have nothing to do with comparative advantage, policies that are often designed to lead to higher consumer costs and concentrated corporate power. Treated as marginal issues, these policies are “free-trade free-riders,” coasting along on an unearned legitimacy.

Today, the free-trade free-riders are central to agreements such as the TPP. Take intellectual property. As Dr. Stiglitz, Dr. Hersh and groups such as Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders) have noted, greater drug-patent protection would “limit competition from generic drug manufacturers that reduce drug prices and improve access to treatment, and would accelerate already soaring medicine and vaccine prices.”

This isn’t a bug; it’s the point of the agreement.

The same goes for extended copyright terms. Longer terms are “a windfall for record companies, with little benefit to artists or the public,” as Canadian copyright expert Michael Geist has noted. Economists, including the late Milton Friedman, tend to agree. Prof. Geist also notes that the TPP would increase Canada’s copyright term from life of the author plus 50 years to life plus 70, potentially costing Canadians $100-million a year. Yet the cost of stronger intellectual property protection are played down when analysts sing the praises of agreements such as the TPP, treated like secondary issues.

Investor-state dispute settlement is another free-trade free-rider justified by appeals to comparative advantage. ISDS puts corporations on the same level as states, allowing foreign firms to sue countries, not only for breach of contract or nationalization, but against public policies, such as access to drinking water and environmental protection, that might negatively affect their bottom line.

- CBC reports on Canada's thoroughly unambitious position going into the Paris climate change conference. And Don Pittis comments on our total lack of both coherent emission reduction targets, and plausible plans to meet the targets that do exist.

- Meanwhile, Kate Aronoff discusses how the financial sector is looking to profit from the threat of a climate catastrophe.

- John Tozzi reports on the link between pollution and heart health risks. And Kelly Kenney points out the glaring gap in health education which focuses primarily on individual rather than social factors. 

- Finally, David Macdonald studies how a housing-market correction would affect Canadians, with a particularly alarming impact on young families who have had to borrow extensively to buy in at inflated prices. And Andrew Halata writes about the dangers of prioritizing exclusionary redevelopment of urban areas while ignoring the people who currently make their homes there.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Paul Rosenberg documents how Bernie Sanders is tapping into widespread public desire and support for more socially progressive policies:

Sanders is right to think that Scandanavian socialism would be popular here in the U.S., if only people knew more about it. And he’s right to make spreading that awareness a goal of his campaign. In fact, on a wide range of issue specifics Sanders lines up with strong majorities of public opinion—and has for decades.

You can get a strong sense of this from the results of the “Big Ideas” poll commissioned by the Progressive Change Institute in January, which has thus far gotten far less attention than it deserves. (Full disclosure: I’m a former blogmate with Adam Green, co-founder of PCI’s affiliate, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.) PCI first solicited ideas online through an open submission process (more than 2,600 specific proposals were submitted) and then let people vote on them (more than a million votes were cast). This bottom-up process was then tested out in a national poll. The following all received 70% support or more:

Allow Government to Negotiate Drug Prices (79%)
Give Students the Same Low Interest Rates as Big Banks (78%)
Universal Pre-Kindergarten (77%)
Fair Trade that Protect Workers, the Environment, and Jobs (75%)
End Tax Loopholes for Corporations that Ship Jobs Overseas (74%)
End Gerrymandering (73%)
Let Homeowners Pay Down Mortgage With 401k (72%)
Debt-Free College at All Public Universities (Message A) (71%)
Infrastructure Jobs Program — $400 Billion / Year (71%)
Require NSA to Get Warrants (71%)
Disclose Corporate Spending on Politics/Lobbying (71%)
Medicare Buy-In for All (71%)
Close Offshore Corporate Tax Loopholes (70%)
Green New Deal — Millions Of Clean-Energy Jobs (70%)
Full Employment Act (70%)
Expand Social Security Benefits (70%)

...Sanders is not simply cherry-picking a few popular ideas here and there. He’s tapping into a broadly shared set of inter-related attitudes and ideas about closely related issues Although these views and ideas are usually sidelined in most political discourse, the convergence of attitudes into a coherent policy texture is remarkably consistent. And this gets to a primary problem with America’s political system: liberal policy views form a coherent whole, every bit as much as conservative ones do, but they are far less publicly recognized, articulated, discussed and explored—despite the fact that they are wildly popular!

- Iglika Ivanova discusses how British Columbia can easily afford $10 per day child care (particularly since it effectively pays for itself). And some wise investments along those lines might be especially important for a province which continues to give away essential natural resources for virtually nothing.

- Dylan Matthews charts the connection between poverty, inquality and mental health. And Ryan Meili interviews Michael Marmot about the first steps toward turning awareness of the social determinants of health into policy gains.

- Alex Boutilier reports that past bluster that a requirement to seek warrants for the disclosure of personal information by telecoms would meaningfully affect its ability to work has proven false by the RCMP's own account. And with the unsupported arguments for a secretive and unaccountable security state falling apart at the seams, it's no wonder the Libs are paying the price for meekly parroting them.

- Finally, it's hardly possible to do more than scratch the surface of the must-read commentary on the Troika's overthrow of democracy in Greece. But Christopher Majka, Suzanne Moore, Paul Krugman, Daniel Altman, Chris Hedges, Matthew Yglesias, Yves Smith and Michael Babad offer some useful places to start.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Margot Sanger-Katz writes about the connection between inequality and poor health. Nicolas Fitz reminds us that even people concerned about inequality may underestimate how serious it is. And BJ Siekierski asks what will happen to Canada's economy in terms of both growth and equity as unsustainable resource and real estate booms come to an end.

- Of course, we could help matters by not burning billions of public dollars where they're needed least. On that front, David MacDonald compares the Cons' actual budget plans to the far more productive uses of public resources proposed by the CCPA. And Thomas Walkom discusses how the Cons have transformed a public welfare state into a costly vote-buying apparatus.

- Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger write that the U.S.' desperate lack of infrastructure funding can be traced directly to a failure to ensure that corporations pay their fair share in taxes - and that still more tax amnesties in the name of bringing in one-time revenue will only make matters worse. And Chris Hedges talks to Jenny Uechi about the corporate buyout of Canadian politics which the Harper Cons have taken to new extremes.

- Rick Smith writes about the Broadbent Institute's role in pushing for progressive change in Canada. And Jeremy Nuttall writes that the 2015 federal election may offer an interesting test of different means of organizing to improve political outcomes - as Quebec unions are focusing on holding off Conservatives in specific ridings, while Saskatchewan's labour movement is focusing more on issue advocacy.

- Finally, Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the Workers' Action Centre's study showing that employment standard laws need to be updated to deal with increasingly precarious work (much of which has been made that way precisely to avoid protections for employees), while Angella MacEwen offers her own suggestions. And Jeff Noonan points out that public-sector strikes can serve an important role in protecting the public interest.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Jon Talton discusses how the increased automation of our economy stands to disempower workers and exacerbate inequality if it's not combined with some serious countervailing public policy moves. Peter Gosselin and Jennifer Oldham comment on the broken link between productivity and wages. And Conor Dougherty and Quentin Hardy expose how employers are cheating employment laws by using game-style rewards for employees who overwork themselves.

- Meanwhile, Amien Essif points to Germany's paid internship model as one way of ensuring people aren't squeezed at their most vulnerable point while entering the workforce.

- Lucy Hooker reports on the continued connection between excess wealth and antisocial behaviour. And Dennis Howlett suggests that we not go out of our way to reward undue selfishness by gutting the CRA's ability to prosecute major tax evasion.

- H.G. Watson interviews Chris Hedges about the place of C-51 as a particularly extreme example of a disturbing trend toward monitoring and stifling free speech:

In terms of this particular bill, do you think that this fits into a wider trend of similar legislation in the western world?

Of course it fits into a wider trend -- not only into the western world but in Canada. Canadians are monitored as closely as U.S. citizens are as closely as British citizens or any other. This is a global phenomenon and the corporate state -- and Harper is representative of the corporate power and the corporate state -- seeks this kind of control because they know what is coming with climate change and the inevitable financial collapse that is looming now that global speculators are back on a spree as they were before 2008. With a flick of a switch essentially we have both the legal and physical mechanisms through the creation of massive security forces -- militarized police forces -- to in essence declare a militarized state both in Canada and the United States. Or should we have another catastrophic act of domestic terrorism anything like that, all the mechanisms are there... we have to fight it now.
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What would you propose as a way of them making sure people don't feel like they are alienated or isolated?

Don't take away their rights. Don't take away their right to privacy; don't take away their right to dissent.

Don't take away -- you know, a functioning democracy is a mechanism by which reform: incremental and peaceful reform can be carried out. When you [shut down] that mechanism you inevitably radicalize, especially your disenfranchised.

- But then, David Pugliese notes that the Cons are making no secret of their desire to silence anybody whose speech doesn't mirror tar sands talking points.

- Finally, Zunera Ishaq presents a compelling argument against the Cons' attempt to pretend their anti-Muslim bigotry is somehow intended to serve the people targeted:

My desire to live on my own terms is also why I have chosen to challenge the government’s decision to deny me citizenship unless I take off my niqab at my oath ceremony. I have taken my niqab off for security and identity reasons in every case where that’s been required of me, such as when I have taken a driver’s license photo or gone through airport security. I will take my niqab off again before the oath ceremony without protest so I can be properly identified. I will not take my niqab off at that same ceremony for the sole reason that someone else doesn’t like it, even if that person happens to be Stephen Harper.

I am not looking for Mr. Harper to approve my life choices or dress. I am certainly not looking for him to speak on my behalf and “save” me from oppression, without even ever having bothered to reach out to me and speak with me.

And by the way, if he had bothered to ask me why I wear a niqab instead of making assumptions, I would have told him that it was a decision I took very seriously after I had looked into the matter thoroughly. I would tell him that aside from the religious aspect, I like how it makes me feel: like people have to look beyond what I look like to get to know me. That I don’t have to worry about my physical appearance and can concentrate on my inner self. That it empowers me in this regard.

While I recognize that it’s not for everyone, it is for me. To me, the most important Canadian value is the freedom to be the person of my own choosing. To me, that’s more indicative of what it means to be Canadian than what I wear.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your holiday reading.

- Paul Buchhelt discusses eight areas where privatization has proven to be a disaster in the U.S. - with one holding particular interest for Regina residents:

A 2009 analysis of water and sewer utilities by Food and Water Watch found that private companies charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services. A more recent study confirms that privatization will generally "increase the long-term costs borne by the public." Privatization is "shortsighted, irresponsible and costly."

Numerous examples of water privatization abuses or failures have been documented in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Texas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island -- just about anywhere it's been tried. Meanwhile, corporations have been making outrageous profits on a commodity that should be almost free. Nestle buys water for about 1/100 of a penny per gallon, and sells it back for ten dollars. Their bottled water is not much different from tap water.

Worse yet, corporations profit from the very water they pollute. Dioxin-dumping Dow Chemicals is investing in water purification. Monsanto has been accused of privatizing its own pollution sites in order to sell filtered water back to the public.

- Robert Reich responds to three lies used to push for corporate tax giveaways. Bernie Sanders discusses how anti-worker employers have built their obscene wealth on effective subsidies from the public. And Chris Hedges comments on the U.S.' prison-industrial complex.

- Meanwhile, Bob Weber reports on an attempt to label a closed assembly of oil-backed governments and tar sands lobby groups as a "Pan-Canadian" discussion of pipelines. And Greenpeace's Keith Stewart offers the appropriate response:

Keith Stewart of Greenpeace said it’s telling that no environmental or aboriginal groups have been invited to help determine the group’s goals and objectives.

“Industry says, ‘Oh yes, of course we’ll engage people — after we’ve set everything up.’ The people who have been expressing concerns aren’t getting any say on setting terms of reference, the types of things that are going to be looked at, how it’s going to operate.”
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Noting Alberta has yet to release a long-awaited report on pipeline safety, Stewart suspects the collaborative may be aimed more at public opinion than anything else.

“We’ve see this around the world, where companies who are under fire launch these types of initiatives to try and allay public concern and avoid new regulation,” he said. “They treat it as a public-relations problem rather than an operations problem.”

 - Finally, Adam Radwanski identifies the NDP as the big winner in last week's Ontario by-elections. And while Nora Loreto is rather less optimistic, she's right in pointing out how that result should help the party influence the province's wider political system:

Assuming that government holds long enough to even consider a budget, the pressure on the NDP to deliver a budget with the Liberals that reflects some progressive values will be their greatest test in nearly 20 years. The Liberals will need NDP support. The New Democrats cannot rely on weak, populist policies if they’re going to prove that they’re a viable alternative. They’ll have to demonstrate that they can play politics: make serious demands or force a general election.
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If the NDP picks their big issues now (public childcare? lower tuition fees? new energy policies?), pulling a Liberal budget to the left won’t be politically difficult.
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There are many, many months for the NDP to clean itself up internally and find the best political minds and organizers they can mine from the left. With an activist Ontario Federation of Labour, this shouldn’t be a hard task.

[Edit: fixed typo.]

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Zach Carter shines a spotlight on the few types of interests who stand to gain from austerity:

But the austerity game also has winners. Cutting or eliminating government programs that benefit the less advantaged has long been an ideological goal of conservatives. Doing so also generates a tidy windfall for the corporate class, as government services are privatized and savings from austerity pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens.
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"Austerity policies are literally a redistribution from the bottom of the income spectrum to the top," said Dorian Warren, a professor of political science at Columbia University and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, an economic policy think tank. "In Wisconsin, both wealthy people and businesses got tax breaks, while middle-class and working-class employees of the state essentially got crushed."

Warren emphasized that there are political dimensions to the austerity push. Efforts to curb collective bargaining rights -- and thus pay and benefits -- for state employees cut to the heart of the American labor movement. With only 7 percent of the private-sector workforce unionized, public-sector unions are a critical component of labor's political influence and an important bloc in Democratic Party operations.

Governments in Europe, most notably the United Kingdom, have also pursued tax cuts for the rich while imposing austerity measures on the working classes. And the European financier class has benefited even more directly than their American counterparts from these budgets.

Every time the European Union has reached a crisis point on the debt carried by Greece or Spain, EU leaders, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have come to the rescue with bailout funds. That money goes to the banks that own Greek and Spanish debt, whose holdings would take a hit if either country were unable to repay. But the bailout comes with harsh austerity requirements intended to encourage budgetary discipline, so it's ordinary citizens who end up taking the hit. The most vulnerable populations are harmed by the bailouts, while the well-paid financial professionals who made the deals to finance Greek and Spanish deficits in the first place continue profiting handsomely.

- Chris Hedges recognizes the need for thoughtful questioning of self-serving "conventional wisdom":

And here is the dilemma we face as a civilization. We march collectively toward self-annihilation. Corporate capitalism, if left unchecked, will kill us. Yet we refuse, because we cannot think and no longer listen to those who do think, to see what is about to happen to us. We have created entertaining mechanisms to obscure and silence the harsh truths, from climate change to the collapse of globalization to our enslavement to corporate power, that will mean our self-destruction. If we can do nothing else we must, even as individuals, nurture the private dialogue and the solitude that make thought possible.

- Erin Weir makes the point that massive potash profits only confirm that Saskatchewan is forfeiting massive amounts of public wealth to the Saskatchewan Party's corporate benefactors. And Tom Shelstad notes that a reasonable royalty regime would provide ample money to fund projects like a Regina stadium up front - rather than requiring the city to take on decades of debt.

- Meanwhile, the Star-Phoenix editorial board is duly skeptical about the Wall government's pretending to listen to cultural industries only after driving them out of the province.

- Finally, I've tended to view Regina's housing crisis as a significant issue demanding a policy response. But apparently I should have known it was nothing more than a charming human interest story all along. (I'm just surprised the featuredidn't end with a down-on-his luck new arrival marrying the campground manager's daughter.)

Wednesday Morning Links

Assorted content for your midweek reading.

- Carol Goar laments the fact that Canadian governments at all levels have been able to get away with defiantly doing nothing to combat poverty:

(Diane Finley) would not still be minister of human resources, after four years, if her words didn't reflect Prime Minister Stephen Harper's wishes. He has said repeatedly that he wants nothing to do with the design or delivery of social programs.

But Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is no champion of the poor, either. Since taking the reins in 2008, he has disowned his party's comprehensive poverty reduction plan and replaced it with three measures (so far): a modest caregiver's benefit aimed primarily at middle-class families, a small increase in funding for school nutrition programs and a still-to-be-unveiled national child-care strategy.

Things aren't much better at the provincial level. All of the premiers have decided, to varying degrees, that reducing poverty is unaffordable. Dalton McGuinty's poverty reduction plan for Ontario, unveiled with great fanfare in 2008, has degenerated into a succession of studies, deliberations and excuses. The province's social assistance rate ($592 per person) now stands 59 per cent below StatsCan's low-income cut-off.

In Toronto, Mayor Rob Ford is promising to slash spending and get the city's hands out of taxpayers' pockets.

Politicians at all levels are taking their cue from the public. Canadians either want them — or allow them — to overlook those tossed aside by market forces.

- But Chris Hedges notes why it's entirely predictable that a class of economic and political elites won't take others' interests into account unless they're forced to:

The liberal class is discovering what happens when you tolerate the intolerant. Let hate speech pollute the airways. Let corporations buy up your courts and state and federal legislative bodies. Let the Christian religion be manipulated by charlatans to demonize Muslims, gays and intellectuals, discredit science and become a source of personal enrichment. Let unions wither under corporate assault. Let social services and public education be stripped of funding. Let Wall Street loot the national treasury with impunity. Let sleazy con artists use lies and deception to carry out unethical sting operations on tottering liberal institutions, and you roll out the welcome mat for fascism.

The liberal class has busied itself with the toothless pursuits of inclusiveness, multiculturalism, identity politics and tolerance—a word Martin Luther King never used—and forgotten about justice.
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We have tolerated the intolerant—from propaganda outlets such as Fox News to Christian fascists to lunatics in the Republican Party to Wall Street and corporations—and we are paying the price. The only place left for us is on the street...The powerful, with no check left on their greed and criminality, are gorging on money while they busily foreclose our homes, bust the last of our unions, drive up our health care costs and cement into place a permanent underclass of the broken and the poor. They are slashing our most essential and basic services—including budgets for schools, firefighters and assistance programs for children and the elderly—so we can pay for the fraud they committed when they wiped out $14 trillion of housing wealth, wages and retirement savings. All we have left is the capacity to say “no.” And if enough of us say “no,” if enough of us refuse to cooperate, the despots are in trouble.

- Meanwhile, for those still trying to pretend there's hope of the Cons being reasonable (I'm looking at you, David McGuinty), Dan Gardner reminds us what the Harper Cons think of civility and restraint:

For the prime minister and his core team, there is no such thing as honest and honourable disagreement. One either supports Stephen Harper or one is the enemy -and enemies must be defeated by any means necessary.

In the 2006 election, the Conservatives issued a press release with the headline "Paul Martin Supports Child Pornography?" It was retracted. But when Stephen Harper was asked about it, he didn't apologize. He attacked. "I'm not going to, in any way, give the Liberal party any break in its record on child pornography."

This was the template for what was to come. One of the lowest points in Canadian political history was reached when the prime minister stood in the House of Commons and insinuated that the Liberals were opposing certain anti-terrorism provisions because a Liberal MP's father-in-law may have been involved with terrorists.

Naturally, this no-limits mentality is not limited to the political arena.
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The change isn't solely Stephen Harper's doing, of course. It's also the product of American influence.

The prime minister and the people around him have all followed American politics their entire lives, they all have close connections with American politicos, and many have actively participated in American politics. In the American system, the idea of political neutrality scarcely exists. Senior civil servants are political appointees. Judges are identified as Republicans and Democrats and the Supreme Court routinely splits along political lines when ruling on politically contentious cases. There is no Governor General or Queen above politics -nothing is above politics. Indeed, the closest thing to neutrality in American politics is "bipartisanship," which is quite a different creature.

It's also important that the Harper Conservatives are connected to, and influenced by, the American conservative movement. As Rick Perlstein showed so brilliantly in Nixonland, that movement was shaped in important ways less by the sunny nature of Ronald Reagan than the dark insecurities of Richard Nixon. Conservatives are outsiders. They have to fight dirty because power lies with a ruthless and entrenched elite. It's civil war. And it never ends: Even in the middle of the Bush years, when Republicans controlled the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, conservatives sincerely saw themselves as hard-pressed and persecuted insurgents.

Just like the underdogs of the PMO.

- And for those looking for a handy example, look no further than Peter Langille.