Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jonathan Last discusses how the U.S. economy is coming apart under a regime which is attacking progress and security in any form. Matt Johnson highlights how the general public is turning against Trumpism even in the areas where it once found some support, while Toby Buckle laments that the people who offered early warnings about his dangers were ignored. But Miles Taylor warns that the Trump regime's next step is to designate all opposition as "terrorism" which can be summarily suppressed, while David Dayen rightly questions why Congress is continuing to allow Trump to run roughshod over laws and appropriations alike. 

- Justine Calma writes that public backlash is succeeding in blocking expensive and dangerous data centres. And Joe Wilkins reports on the revelation that the contents of "private" ChatGPT conversations are being harvested for profit. 

- Science Magazine names the growth of renewable energy as the breakthrough of the year for 2025. But in case anybody thought that meant governments would stop going out of their way to push dirty fossil fuels, Rafi Schwartz reports on Donald Trump's intention to undermine climate science by trashing the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, while Catherine Garrett reports on yet another oil company leaving the Alberta public holding the bag after failing to pay its taxes. And Natasha Bulowski reports on Steven Guilbeault's painfully modest request that the federal government enforce the law when it comes to climate obligations, while Adrienne Tanner reports on Avi Lewis' far more ambitious plan to make Canada a clean energy leader rather than a fossil. 

- Finally, Ximena Gonzalez writes about the need for Alberta's housing policy to focus on building non-market homes rather than providing handouts to corporate developers, while Alex Hemingway points out the need for B.C. to invest far more in its own social housing. And Ludovic Viger discusses the value of co-ops as another housing model. 

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- William Ripple et al. offer a new and alarming state of the climate report. And Damian Carrington delves into their findings as to the precarious state of the Earth's living environment, while Becky Ferreira highlights their warning of societal collapse within the next century if we don't reverse the current course toward climate catastrophe. 

- But if there's any doubt whether our corporate overlords care in the slightest about that imminent risk, Jessica Wildfire draws the connection between Thomas Malthus' explicit desire to eradicate the lower classes and the policy choices being pushed by today's political and economic elites. 

- Michelle Gamage discusses how a shortage of health care workers is undermining the well-being of patients and remaining staff alike. And Cory Doctorow weighs in on the need for a well-resourced and effective civil service to protect the public interest. 

- Jon Steinman muses about the prospect that people may become sufficiently fed up with exploitation by corporate grocery chains to revitalize the cooperative model for food supplies. 

- Finally, Rohan Anand and M Eugenia Socias write about the strategies needed to respond to the toxic drug crisis - with a public health lens serving as the first and most important. 

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Andre Picard warns not to expect the end of the COVID-19 pandemic (however distant that may be) to result in any particular triumph. And Reuters reports on the looming possibility that the vaccines developed to date may not protect against the coronavirus variant now spreading in South Africa.

- Jennifer Francis reports that the outbreak of COVID-19 at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary is creating both mental and physical health dangers. And Anna McMillan reports on the hunger strike in provincial correctional facilities protesting Christine Tell's neglect in allowing outbreaks to run rampant.

- Neil Irwin and Weiyi Cai discuss the particularly glaring divergence between people's well-being and the stock market in the midst of a pandemic which has pushed more money into markets.

- Simon Read writes about new research showing that a 4-day work week can substantially improve well-being with little if any effect on productivity. And Peter Goodman points out how co-operatives have helped workers in Spain weather the pandemic - though it's well worth noting that co-operative structures can become as corporatized as any privately-owned business.

- Finally, Harrison Samphir interviews Rob Larson about the corporate takeover of the Internet, and the prospects of converting to a socialized alternative.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Emily Stewart reports on Elizabeth Warren's message about the need to end corruption and corporatism in order to make U.S. politics work for people. Martin Wolf writes that a rigged economic system is undermining the prospect of viable democracy. And Andrew MacLeod examines where Canada's federal parties stand when it comes to tax fairness.

- Jennifer Wells makes the case for the federal government to buy GM's Oshawa plant as a hub for the development of electric vehicles in Canada. And the Guardian's editorial board offers its support to the spread of worker-owned industries as a means of sharing wealth and power.

- Oliver Milman reports on the growing desire for strong climate action in the U.S., with two thirds of the public demanding a policy response to our climate breakdown. Ben Ehrenreich discusses how public activism is vital in building the action needed to counter entrenched interests in business and government, while Geoff Dembicki wonders whether we'll see Canada's political parties match leading Democratic presidential contenders in calling out the oil industry as a villain. And Bill McKibben points out the significance of large pools of capital concluding they're not prepared to fund the continued degradation of our living environment.

- Meanwhile, Max Fawcett highlights how Jason Kenney is trying to amplify the most toxic of petro-politics.

- Finally, Fair Vote Canada has released the results of a new poll showing a strong majority of Canadians in favour of a proportional electoral system.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- The Star's editorial board rightly criticizes Doug Ford for his propensity to announce massive cuts first, then begrudgingly acknowledge their unconscionable consequences later. Linda White, Elizabeth Dhuey, Michal Perlman and Petr Varmuza note that Ford's cuts to child care will be particularly harmful for low-income families with parents working or studying full-time. And Madeleine Ritts calls out the PCs for blaming individuals for systemic poverty (and denying them the essentials of life as punishment).

- Meanwhile, Robert Booth reports on the connection being drawn between the UK Cons' similar attack on the poor, and the historical blight of workhouses. And Chris Vallance discusses the medicalization of the symptoms of poverty, including the overprescription of drugs in response to the inevitable stresses of precarity.

- Ronald Labonte, Courtney McNamara, Deborah Gleeson and Eric Crosbie point out how the new NAFTA can be expected to harm public health by preventing governments from regulating in the public interest. And Ed Finn discusses how the corporate push toward processed foods and a focus on convenience over nutrition is making us all less healthy.

- Mitch Potter highlights how the Libs are echoing the Cons' anti-refugee rhetoric and policy as this fall's federal election approaches.

- Finally, Jonathan Michie points out that employee-owned businesses perform significantly better than their corporate counterparts, but are limited in their development by government and financial policies which stifle them.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Emma Paling discusses how the security of a basic income provides the opportunity to escape an abusive relationship. And Jim Stanford collects four views of a basic income from Australia, including this (PDF) from Ben Spies-Butcher:

There are two broad ways that politicians talk about welfare and social services that create these very different dynamics. One way is to tell a story of shared need. We all get sick, we all need Medicare. We all get old, we all need the pension. Those needs are often experienced differently. Some people get sick more than others. But the story focuses on what we have in common, and the policy is designed to emphasise what unites us. This creates a politics of universalism, and it does so even when the policy isn’t technically universal. In fact, there is little genuinely universal about Australia’s social policy; the pension sits next to super, Medicare next to subsidies for private health insurance. But the politics of these programs is based on a story of shared need, and so powerful is that story that even governments that initially opposed Medicare now legislate to retain it, and both sides of politics feel compelled to defend the pension.

The other story is one of rule following and deservingness, and ultimately of division. We can see it most obviously with immigration. Our expensive, unaccountable and inhumane system of offshore detention is the end result a form of ‘wedge politics’ based on showing how some people are deserving and others are not. The logic of ‘queue jumping’ mirrors the logic of breaching and quarantining for Newstart – it suggests there is a legitimate way to behave to access help, and if you do not behave that way you are cheating the system and should be refused. Conditionality is thus the cornerstone of wedge politics, it is the mechanism both to ‘test’ deservingness and to demonstrate to the public the importance of recipients being deserving. Of course, in both cases the very mechanismsthat are overtly designed to ‘test’ deservingness ultimately cause everyone to fail. In the public’s mind all refugees are suspect, and all those on Newstart are stigmatised.

It has been a very long time since progressives have won a debate about wedge politics. Victories are much more likely when campaigns reframe their goals in the language of universalism – as in ‘marriage equality’ and ‘love is love’. Of course, income payments are not the only way to reduce inequality and establish dignity. Decent jobs and social services are also important. Basic income is not a magic bullet, and when it is pitched as a retreat from those claims, as cheaper than public services or a safety net for mass unemployment, it is clearly not a progressive claim at all. But in the world we have, income is a basic social need – like health, education and housing – and income from employment is not guaranteed. In the short run, at least, it is an essential part of any progressive vision.

- The Equality Trust introduces its push for an Ownership Charter toward a more democratic economy in the UK.

- Jesse Eisinger writes that there may be a reason why the authors of extensive criminal activity around Donald Trump expected to avoid answering for their actions, as it's only the increased scrutiny of the political context that's led to the investigation of the type of white-collar crime which all too often goes unaddressed.

- Finally, Christo Aivalis examines some of the aftereffects of Maxime Bernier's announcement of a new, hard-right federal party. And Brent Patterson highlights the need for a serious response to Bernier's move to tap into the xenophobic sentiment that's done so much harm in other developed countries. 

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Melissa Benn discusses how private schools entrench a class divide within a generation - and argues that they should be eliminated in favour of an inclusive education system:

(W)e urgently need to renew the conversation about the private-public divide, and move beyond the superficial, profoundly apolitical debates of recent years. These have chiefly been characterised by the rolling out of the same information again and again, almost as if the private schools were not human creations but unchallengeable phenomena like the weather or religious deities. Over and over we are told: private schools achieve higher results; their graduates vacuum up the majority of places at the best universities; they take all the top jobs; they dominate the top of society. There is, as a result, a continual stirring up (with the liberal help of a few capital letters) of resentment, envy and panic – “Private pupils are SIX TIMES more likely to get A* grades at GCSEs than those at state schools”; “A third of private pupils score 3 A* grades at A-level compared to one in TEN at state schools” – finely seasoned with a good dollop of hopelessness: “The awful truth: to get ahead you need a private education.”
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If we are to move the conversation on, then, we need to be clear that the success of private education is not replicable precisely because it offers the already socially and economically privileged superior resources and opportunities that inevitably augment their confidence and capabilities in every sphere. Private day schools now cost, on average, £14,500 a year – more than the annual disposable income of the average English family. Boarding is a great deal more costly. The annual fees of a top private school such as Westminster, which sends more students to Oxbridge than any other school in the country, are around £35,000 a year for boarders. Compare this with the average per-pupil spend in a state secondary school of between £4,000 and £6,000 a year. But the difference is not only in simple resources, for the spread of pupils at many state schools will include those from deprived or struggling families, compounding the pressures on their education and those who teach them, while a private school is in general recruiting from the already affluent, literate and enterprising. Thus, we need to publicly acknowledge that the success of private education is far less to do with character building or autonomous governance than the powerful alchemy of several kinds of advantage.

Now, more than ever, there is a strong moral and political argument in support of integration. At a time of growing divides and damaging inequality, we urgently need public institutions that bring the nation together, not further separate and divide us. For many in the UK, the idea of a unified education system to which all subscribe is too great a leap of the imagination, too daring a proposition – and yet the benefits of a common schooling could be immense.

Finland teaches us not only that state education will never be considered truly first-rate until we give all our children the same high-quality schooling, but also that a country that educates its children together has a better chance of being at ease with itself than one that segregates different parts of the population from an early age.

- And the BBC reports on Scotland's new policy making sanitary products available for free to students in order to remove one obvious drain on students' limited resources.

- Karri Munn-Venn makes the case for a federal budget which focuses on people's well-being, not merely GDP and profits. Gideon Resnick reports on Bernie Sanders' proposal to tax large employers who rely on social benefits to make up for their failure to pay a living wage. And David Olive offers a reminder of the tangible benefits of minimum wage increases.

- Meanwhile, Maya Bhullar talks to Hazel Corcoran the role workers' co-operatives can play in building a diverse economy with shared benefits.

- Finally, the New York Times' editorial board examines how harm reduction strategies are reducing the number of opioid-related deaths at the state level.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Peter Gowan discusses UK Labour's push for greater social control over economic development. And Rainer Kattel, Mariana Mazzucato, Josh Ryan-Collins and Simon Sharpe set out a useful framework to evaluate policies which are intended to shape markets rather than merely attempting to fix them.

- Anis Heydari reports on the choice far too many Albertans face between food and housing when neither is affordable. And Glen Pearson comments on how poverty can trap people in a cycle of deprivation and pessimism:

What do kids in low-income situations do, for instance, when school is out? For many, camps are beyond reach because of the expense, vacations to other regions virtually impossible, and for some, hunger pangs will increase with the loss of school breakfast and feeding programs. It’s a sad irony of our times that agricultural growing seasons flourish at the same time as kids go more hungry than usual.

For working parents pressed down with precarious or vulnerable work, inquiring as to what their plans are for the summer can prove to be a moment of insensitivity. They possess no cottage, boat, travel agenda or, for some, even a car. They can enjoy the sun like everyone else, but not in those more exotic locations most citizens can get to.

This is what modern-day poverty looks like — not just a lack of resources but also a loss of hope.

It is this psychological state that presents democracy and politicians with one of their greatest challenges because there seem to be no solutions if the economic status quo prevails. And those losing faith in their future are frequently working adults, trapped in vulnerable employment, unable to escape their situation.
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The longer we put off pressing for change, the closer the tentacles of poverty come to us. We all know people in our neighbourhoods and among our friends and families who have become increasingly vulnerable to low-income pressures, despite their best efforts to retrain, finish their education and work unbearable hours. There is more of this to come.

- But on the bright side, Matt Robinson reports on Vancouver's action to expropriate slum hotels to ensure they can be properly maintained and made available for people who need the housing. And Cami Kepke reports on a push by several Regina city councillors to stop further commercial development in Wascana Park. 

- Finally, Michael Harris weighs in on Doug Ford's choice to impose chaos on Toronto's municipal governance.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Laura Basu discusses the media's role in accepting and perpetuating the corporatist ideology behind privatization campaigns:

(R)esearch carried out by myself at Cardiff University has shown that while austerity has been controversial, trickle-down reforms like privatisation, deregulation and corporation tax cuts have been embraced by the media. In the sample of five UK mainstream media outlets, only one – the Guardian – took a more critical stance towards these reforms than a supportive one. Even that outlet contained almost as much favourable coverage as critical coverage. The right-wing sections of the press, which dominate the British media landscape, were unflinchingly supportive of these measures and urged the government to go even further.

The idea behind these policies is that what’s good for business is good for everyone. If businesses are handed more resources, freed from regulation and handed tax breaks, they will be encouraged to invest in the economy, creating jobs and growth. The rich are therefore ‘job creators’ and ‘wealth creators’. One exposé revealed that in the UK, business is handed £93 billion a year in this kind of corporate welfare. With a few notable exceptions, there has been a black hole around corporate welfare in public discourse.

This is despite the fact that these policies have an impressive fail rate. Business investment and productivity growth remain low, as corporations spend the savings not on training and innovation but on share buy-backs and shareholder dividends. Share buy-backs are when a company purchases its own shares, decreasing the number of its shares on the open market and thereby increasing their value. According to the Financial Times, in 2014, the top 500 US companies returned 95 per cent of their profits to shareholders in dividends and buybacks. Meanwhile, inequality is spiralling.
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By the time of the 2008 crash, neoliberal ideology had become so dominant that other positions were virtually invisible. And so, the same people responsible for financial collapse were called upon to offer solutions.

In my study, business and finance representatives were the second biggest category of sources featured in the media coverage. The biggest category was politicians, who until the Corbyn shake-up have been pursuing a blindly pro-business agenda. These two groups got to set the news agenda and the terms of debate. Other voices – trade unions, campaign groups, activists and academics – were sidelined. These groups helped manufacture an amnesia that was taken up zealously by some sections of the media and passively reproduced by others.

It has taken the Grenfell fire tragedy costing the lives of at least 70 people and the collapse of Carillion for the political consensus to even begin to be questioned. If we are to build on this progress we will need to start having grown-up conversations about corporate welfare and the strengths and weaknesses of market capitalism.

- Meanwhile, Tom Wall exposes how UK landlords are exploiting the opportunity to extract millions of pounds by offering unsafe housing as publicly-funded temporary accommodation to people who can't find anywhere affordable to live on a permanent basis.

- Alex Matthews-King discusses new research on the connection between inequality and increased obesity among other health risks.

- Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin reveal the Trump administration's attitude toward climate change - with ignorance and deliberate undermining of scientific evidence both treated as viable options, while acting based on reality was left off the table. And Ellen Knickmeyer reports on the collusion between Trump's appointed environmental regulators and the climate change denial industry.

- Finally, Ben Choiniere reports on Rhode Island's proposal to offer employees the chance to turn layoffs or closures into a first step toward cooperative ownership.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Benjamin Austin, Edward Glaeser and Lawrence Summers make the case for economic policy focused on reducing regional disparities. And Chad Shearer and Isha Shah highlight how inclusion is a necessary element of sustainable economic development:

(B)etter performance on one measure [out of growth, prosperity and inclusion] is associated with better performance on the other two measures in all three time periods. Gains in one category, like growth, are typically accompanied by gains in others, like prosperity and inclusion, and vice versa. For example, Table 1 shows that over the one year from 2015 to 2016, each one-unit increase in metro areas’ composite growth score was associated with a nearly half-unit increase in composite prosperity scores, on average. This relationship is moderately strong: growth scores explain about one-quarter of the variance in prosperity scores. The magnitude and strength of this relationship is relatively consistent over each of the time periods.

Growth and prosperity’s relationship to inclusion, however, grows larger and stronger with time. Table 1 shows that over the one-year period, each one-unit increase in metro areas’ composite growth score was associated with less than a quarter-unit increase in their composite inclusion scores. This relationship is tenuous: composite growth scores explain just 8.9 percent of the variance in their inclusion scores over a year. But the magnitude and strength of this relationship are greater over the five-year period and even greater over 10 years. Prosperity and inclusion, similarly, show little relationship over a one-year period, but exhibit an even stronger relationship over 10 years than prosperity and growth.
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(P)rogress on inclusion seems to stand out even despite the unevenness noted above. Of the 38 metro areas that achieved above-average performance on growth from 2006 to 2016, 28 also achieved above-average performance on inclusion. Twenty-five (25) of the 38 also performed above average on prosperity. Of the 45 metro areas that achieved above-average performance on prosperity during that period, 32 also achieved above-average performance on inclusion. Twenty-five (25) of the 45 also performed above average on growth.

This admittedly wonkish analysis thus points to a simple insight that should guide regional economic development efforts: although it may be elusive from year to year, in the long run, inclusion may provide the key to true economic success.

- Meanwhile, Naomi Jagoda and Niv Elis write that the Trump Republicans have realized they can't claim with a straight face that their tax scam helped anybody other than the wealthiest Americans.

- The Chicago Sun-Times examines the disastrous results of privatized custodial work in public schools. And the Canadian Press reports on the Parliamentary Budget Office's conclusion that the Trudeau Libs' capital-focused infrastructure scheme is already delivering far less than promised.

- Michelle Chen discusses how co-operatives are more productive than corporations designed solely to exploit workers and consumers in the name of shareholders.

- Finally, Doug Saunders rightly argues that the only speech crisis on campuses is the disproportionate attention being paid to people laughably claiming that their already-privileged positions should be granted even more deference.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- May Boeve and Michael Brune comment on the danger that political- and court-based attacks on U.S. unions could substantially weaken the progressive movement as a whole. But Jane McAlevey writes that West Virginia's successful teachers' strike may provide an important reminder that the power of collective action can operate in the face of laws intended to isolate workers.  

- James Wilt notes that Canada's plans to transition communities away from reliance on diesel fuel fall far short of what's needed - resulting in dirty fuels continuing to be subsidized in the absence of alternatives. Andrew Ward points out the trillions of dollars being bet by the oil industry on an insufficient response to climate change. And George Monbiot writes about the facts of environmental destruction which are far too often ignored in policy discussions.

- Warren Bell discusses how a switch to a proportional electoral system in British Columbia could shift politics from a combat model to one based on cooperation.

- Meanwhile, Elvy Del Bianco, John Kay, Mary Childs, Ben Hyman and Marc Lee offer some suggestions to build B.C.'s cooperative economy.

- Finally, Tressie McMillan Cottom rightly argues that the real threat to freedom of speech and thought comes from harassment rooted in racism and sexism, not from overwrought complaints about political correctness.

Leadership 2017 Platform Analysis - Charlie Angus

While most discussion around the NDP's leadership campaign has revolved around the ebb and flow of news cycles, it's always worth a closer look as to what the candidates see as worth highlighting. So I'll be taking a look at the policies on offer from the candidates, starting with Charlie Angus.

While Angus has been vague on some points in the leadership debates, he's offered interesting and distinctive proposals in a few others, including:
- the devolution of Indigenous program delivery to the community level, accompanied by a plan to dismantle the INAC structure which currently oversees it;
- a housing plan which would use existing CMHC surpluses to provide for a right to housing, both through social housing and through credits toward the cost of other forms of construction; and
- a push toward cooperative economic development, including giving workers the legal right of first refusal over a closing business.

Aside from those points, there isn't much in Angus' platform which isn't broadly reflected in the plans of his challengers. And more problematically, Angus' platform leaves more questions than answers both in some of what it promises, and particularly what it omits.

On climate change, Angus' lack of clarity on pipelines is matched by the absence of any specific targets (or plans to meet them). And in a policy area where the supply of ideas and promises has long exceeded the political will to act, the proposal of a national advisory council leaves a worrisome amount of room for further delay. 

Meanwhile, Angus' urban agenda seems to utterly miss the jurisdictional basis of municipal operations, proposing the creation of "neighbourhood corporations" and altered municipal governance models which make no mention of the provincial role in establishing and governing municipalities.

And Angus lacks specific plans in areas ranging from justice and ethics to health care and child care (though pharmacare does show up as a subpoint in his "working class" policy).

At best, those omissions might be explained by Angus' plan for membership-driven policy development. But that too represents a lot more deflection than detail.

As a result, Angus more than any other candidate has left NDP members with little more than a "trust me" when it comes to policy. And while a series of high-profile endorsements coupled with a career's worth of activism and advocacy offers some basis to do so, I'd be much more comfortable if Angus had provided a more clear indication was to which policies he'd pursue if given the chance.