Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Ross Barkan takes stock of the reality that the U.S. has allowed a million people to die of a disease whose transmission could largely have been prevented, while Alexander Quon reports on the latest data showing that official death totals in Saskatchewan significantly undercount the lives lost to COVID-19. Holly Else notes that a more thorough accounting of the COVID damage would include recognition of the time and function lost due to disability as well, while Danielle Wenner and Gabriella Arguidas Ramirez point out that a lack of messaging about the reality of long COVID is likely distorting both public policy and individual actions. And Malia Jones writes that while the decision by governments to deny us current and accurate information makes it impossible to fully assess our risks, we're still best off doing all we can to avoid catching and spreading COVID. 

- Max Fawcett writes that the meltdown in cryptocurrency just as Pierre Poilievre put it at the centre of his Con leadership campaign highlights the need for exactly the public-interest regulators who will be the first to go under fanatic libertarians. And Jessica McKenzie discusses how the harm done by bitcoin includes an assertion of entitlement to burn gas and spew carbon pollution without regulation or regard for the planet. 

- Chris Turner offers a valiant defence of climate optimism even as the likelihood of success in averting climate breakdown appears grim. And Damian Carrington reports on new research showing that in order to avoid catastrophe we need to not only stop the 195 carbon bombs in the planning stages, but also shut down existing fossil fuel production sites. 

- David Wallace-Wells writes that temperatures which are now being reported as unprecedently extreme will likely be the norm (or even the lower end of expectations) in the decades to come. Olivia Rosane highlights the UN's research showing that 75% of the world could face drought by 2050 due to climate change and land degradation. And Karin Brulliard reports on New Mexico's largest-ever fire which is still burning after a month. 

- Christopher Mathias reports on the concerted effort by violent extremists to hijack Idaho's entire political system through both intimidation and abuse of electoral systems.  

- Finally, Jared Abbott interviews Jonathan Smucker and Alison Troy about the opportunities available for left-wing populism to offer a positive alternative to the hatred and nihilism of the right. 

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Josh Eidelson and John Schmitt take a look at the guaranteed annual income which will be voted on in Switzerland - and the sole barrier to a similar discussion in the U.S. (and likely in Canada):

What is a universal basic income, and why are we hearing more about it now?

The proposals that are floating around the world vary a lot. But the basic idea is, no matter what you do, if you’re a resident — or in some cases, a citizen — you get a certain amount of money each month. And it’s completely unconditional: If you’re rich you get it, if you’re poor you get. If you’re a good person you get it, if you’re a bad person you get it. And it does not depend on you doing anything other than making whatever effort is involved to collect the money. It’s been a topic of discussion for several decades. Why is it happening right now? I think it’s obvious that it’s a reaction to the high level of economic inequality that we’ve seen. Most European countries haven’t had big increases in inequality at the same scale that we [in the U.S.] have, [but] some of them have had much more than they’re used to.
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So what are the merits of universal basic income?

We have a system that has high unemployment, high underemployment. This would allow people to survive and to live, with dignity, assuming that other systems stay in place. It puts a floor under wages — people could say, “I don’t have to do that job if you’re not going to pay well.” People could pursue a lot of activities that are not particularly well paid but that have a lot of social use or personal satisfaction: art, creative work, volunteer work, working with people who have disabilities.

So if we were a very rich world, which I think we are to a certain degree, it would be a remarkable way to make sure that people could maximize their ability to express themselves but also maximize their ability to participate in the communities that they live in in a full way. Stay home and take care of kids if that’s what you want to do. Take care of your parents when they’re old and sick.

People sometimes refer to this as a kind of “Star Trek” economy — you just said, “Replicator, make me a ham sandwich.” There wasn’t any social conflict around production and consumption. And that, I think, is that kind of ideal in which this kind of a thing could play out. We are probably there in terms of the economics. We are very, very wealthy — we could afford to do this. But we are not there in terms of the politics.

 - And Scott Stelmaschuk joins the chorus calling for an adult conversation about taxes which might spur a discussion of the merits of more effective social programs.

- Chris Turner discusses the Cons' war on science:

This is a government interested mainly in what Canadians use and spend, and only passionate about those parts of Canada it can develop and sell off. It cares little about Canadians as citizens and even less about protecting Canada’s shared public goods and standing on guard for its natural capital.

Harper’s true agenda, pretty much all along, has been to dismantle the government’s great traditions of natural science and environmental stewardship, which until recently made Canada a world leader in both fields. This is a government waging a quiet legislative and administrative war on science — especially those fields of science dedicated to gathering and analyzing data on the health of Canada’s natural environment — and it has undone a century of good work with alarming efficiency since the passage of its sweeping omnibus budget bill in June 2012.
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The government’s war on science was well underway by the time of the omnibus budget bill — the long-form census long gone, a crime bill passed with little recourse to the data gathered by criminologists, scientists publishing papers on environmental topics already being muzzled — but the bill was its full-scale launch. It has proceeded apace since — and inspired the unprecedented scene of lab-coated scientists marching through the streets of Canadian cities in protest from Ottawa to Victoria.

So what is the nature of this war on science? Above all else, it is a sustained campaign to diminish the government’s role in evidence-based policy-making and environmental stewardship in three simple ways: reducing the capacity of the government to gather basic data about the status and health of the environment and Canadian society; shrinking or eliminating government agencies that monitor and analyze that evidence and respond to emergencies; and seizing control of the communications channels by which all of the above report their findings to the Canadian public.

The ultimate goal is equally clear: to induce in the federal government a sort of wilful blindness, severely limiting its ability to see and respond to the impacts of its policies, especially those related to resource extraction.

- John Geddes highlights the wide-open question of whether the Cons will allow Elections Canada to do its job of ensuring fair elections - especially when fraud within the Cons' own campaigns worked to Stephen Harper's advantage in 2011.

- And finally, Tonda MacCharles comments on how our Mostly Competent Government utterly bungled its latest Supreme Court appointment - to the point where our top court will be left with one less member than it's supposed to have.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Ed Broadbent comments on both the growing problem of inequality, and the one institution which can do something about it:

Canada is not doing better. From 1982 until 2004, almost all growth in family income went to the top 20 per cent, with much of that going to the top 1 per cent, while the bottom 60 per cent saw no growth at all. The increase in inequality in Canada since the mid-1990s has been the fourth highest in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

But does this matter? Yes, the evidence is in, and the conclusion is clear: Inequality does matter. In terms of social outcomes, more equal societies do better for everyone, not just for the poor, in almost every respect: health outcomes, life expectancy, level of trust in society, equality of opportunity and upward social mobility. A recent study showed that if Americans want to experience the American Dream of upward mobility, they should pack up and move to Sweden. They would have to leave the most unequal democracy and move to the most equal.

Contrary to the mythology propagated by so many, the actual degree of inequality in advanced democracies has little to do with the so-called forces of globalization or shifts related to technological change. It’s largely the result of government action or inaction. Globalization affects all countries. But, from the mid-1970s, the share of income of the top 1 per cent in Canada, the U.S. and Britain rose rapidly, while there was little change in France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. As recently highlighted by the World Bank, Brazil and other Latin American countries have become significantly more equal over the past decade.

Once again, the evidence is clear: Whether countries become more or less equal depends largely on government policies. Government can reduce or exacerbate the market trends producing inequality.

- And there's at least some evidence that voters will choose the party which recognizes inequality as a problem, as Eric Boehlert discusses how the Republicans' closed information system and associated disdain for mere working Americans led to massive election losses:

Republicans won't because they're intimidated by the right-wing media's power. That's why New Jersey Governor Chris Christie quickly got on the phone  with Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch after Murdoch tweeted that Christie, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and his bipartisan appearances with Obama, needed to re-endorse Romney or "take the blame" for the president's re-election.

Murdoch: Jump! Republicans: How high?

That unhealthy relationship is the reason why, when it comes to the simple question of whether America is divided between "makers and takers," and if the 62 million Americans who voted for Obama represent a decaying nation of moochers in search of handouts, there's a wide gulf within the conservative movement. The right-wing media consider the claim to be a central tenet, while Republican leaders think saying it out loud is completely batty and a prescription for an electoral losing streak.

 

So yes, those are conspicuous handcuffs the GOP is wearing: Fox News has hijacked the party's communications apparatus and is pushing the type of paranoid, blame-the-voter rhetoric that loses elections, and the type of rhetoric Romney's now being blamed for. But the GOP can't turn it off. In fact, most Republicans can't even work up enough courage to ask Fox News to turn down the volume.

- Of course, part of avoiding that type of destructive closed loop involves a willingness to look at policy on something other than a wholly tribal basis. And on that front, I'll note that while the Cons' announcement that they're following the U.S.' lead in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles is only a minor gain, it's certainly better than the alternative of Canada serving as a dumping ground for the least efficient vehicles being manufactured for the North American market - which would be the case if our standards dropped substantially below the U.S.'. And opponents of the Cons' general neglect for the environmental will do nothing but damage by echoing and reinforcing the still-farcical "tax on everything" message in response.

- Which isn't to say we should be anything but horrified by the Cons' economic strategy of "resource boom forever!". And Geoff Dembicki rightly points out just one more counterproductive result of that focus - as we're losing out on a rapidly-expanding global market for clean technology due to a government which insists on pushing dirty alternatives.

- Finally, while I'm skeptical of Chris Turner's take on future electoral cooperation schemes, I'll heartily endorse his argument as to why Calgary Centre is the last riding anybody should be pointing to in calling for them.