Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Joe Lo reports on Oxfam's researching that the global 1% have already burned through more than their fair share of a sustainable carbon budget for the year. And Peter Kalmus both points out how we need to fight the billionaire class in order to limit the damage from the climate breakdown, and discusses how the disasters which are becoming all the more frequent and severe are exactly the ones long forecast by climate experts. 

- Amanda Marcotte discusses the absolute nonsense from the fascist right seeking to blame a nonexistent lack of gender discrimination for the Los Angeles wildfires. Jack Peat reports that Elon Musk's violent conspiracism is well within the definition of terrorism - and that only his obscene wealth is shielding him from consequences. Polly Toynbee weighs in on the UK Cons' choice to echo that same madness in the hope of out-extreming Nigel Farage. And Martin Kettle discusses the response needed to ensure the joint bullying by Musk and Donald Trump doesn't win out. 

- Patrick McCurdy, Kaitlin Clarke and Bart Cammaerts study the weaponization of anti-woke discourse by Pierre Poilievre - and the lack of an effective counter-frame so far. And Dale Smith notes that Libs seem to be looking for ways to concede vulnerable people's rights to escape the criticism - even though the main reason they've struggled to win support for their version of wokeness is that they haven't matched inclusive language with commensurate policy. 

- Andre Picard writes about the need to recognize and combat the casual violence of car culture. And David Zipper notes that large SUVs in particulare are a public health threat and need to be treated as such. 

- Finally, Dhruv Khullar points out the multiple interrelated factors which have made the standard U.S. diet into an incubator for health issues. And Tom Perkins reports on new research showing that early exposure to forever chemicals has long-term effects on health and well-being. 

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Linda McQuaig writes about Catherine McKenna's rare (if belated) honesty about the extent to which Canadian policy is dictated by fossil fuel tycoons. And Susanne Rust and Ian James report on the corporate sector's plans to gut health and safety regulations in the U.S. 

- Grant Robertson and Kathryn Blaze Baum report on the combination of reliance on algorithms and self-regulation that led to a large and preventable outbreak of deadly listeria. William Gavin reports on a U.S. Senate committee report documenting Amazon's alarming propensity for work injuries (and deliberate executive choices to prevent workers from protecting themselves), while Hannah Critchfield and Juan Carlos Chavez investigate Florida's wave of heat deaths which employers have concealed from authorities. Jeremy Fuster reports on Disneyland's $233 million wage theft settlement. And Yuye Ding et al. study the effects of mandatory return-to-office policies, which produce a predictable brain drain which employers seem happy to accept in order to temporary slash costs. 

- Jon Queally reports on Donald Trump's plans to privatize the U.S. Postal Service - and the growing movement to save it. And Dru Oja Jay discusses how the same fight is playing out in Canada, with the Libs choosing to strip away the bargaining power of workers using collective action to argue for enhanced public service rather than dysfunction and precarity. 

- Emily Bell highlights why there's no reason to trust the self-serving propaganda of corporate media owners. Steven Beschloss calls out the wealthy and privileged Americans who are bowing before a Donald Trump dictatorship rather than using their resources to fight for a functional society, while Scott Dworkin examines a few of the forms of press complianc. And Greg Sargent interviews Anne Applebaum about the potential domino effect of ABC's failure to fight a strong defamation case on principle, while Jonathan Last notes that the extraction of protection money looks like one of the central pursuits of het second Trump administration. 

- Finally, Dale Smith discusses how 2024 can only be seen as a year of creeping (following by sprinting) authoritarianism. And Laura Barron-Lopez and Cynthia MIller-Idriss discuss the surge of public misogyny following the U.S.' election, while Taj Ali writes about the recruitment of young men into the toxic "manosphere".

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. 

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your long weekend reading.

- Umair Haque theorizes that the relatively benign outcome of the U.S.' recent election reflects a public that's finally rejecting Trumpism. But Krystal Ball notes that some of the most important Democratic success stories (notably including John Fetterman) included a message based on the recognition that government can use its power to help people, rather than a weary position that elections can't accomplish more than minimizing the damage inflicted by the other side.

- Ryan Patrick Jones and Nicole Brockbank list the well-connected landowners who stand to be enriched by Doug Ford's plan to turn protected greenbelt land into developers' profits. And Dale Smith points out that Ford's gratuitous use of the notwithstanding clause to attack workers out of sheer impatience and stubbornness signals that all human rights are at risk.

- Gaby Galvin offers a reminder that publicly-funded stadiums seldom accomplish anything other than to funnel money to a city's best-connected business figures. And Paul Dechene discusses how a push to put an arena downtown is leading Regina into another round of discarding social benefits in favour of corporate playthings. 

- Finally, Yasmine Ghania reports on the John Howard Society's push for the provincial government to invest in the social issues at the root of crime. But Adam Hunter reports that the Moe government is instead bent on establishing more - and more politically-controlled - police and security forces even when all available evidence points to an absence of benefit for the cost.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Timothy Wilson reports on the emerging revelations of Enbridge's paying to harass environmental activists. And Jeremy Appel offers the background facts as to W. Brett Wilson's abandonment of wells operated by Forent Energy - leaving Alberta's public to pick up the tab for his company's failure to clean up its messes. 

- And based on those stories among others, there's ample reason both to agree with Nicolas Perrone's argument that we shouldn't pay reparations to fossil fuel companies for transitioning to a cleaner society, and take into account his warning that they'll consider themselves entitled to nothing less.

- Amanda Follett Hosgood reports on the RCMP's pitiful response to the report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. And PressProgress exposes how Lib MP Kevin Lamoureux arranged to pay public money to a "subject matter expert" to prepare a petition to treat criticism of police as hate speech. 

- Robert Baird writes about the history of the idea of "whiteness", as well as the role it's played in justifying or excusing the treatment of people as subhuman.

- Finally, Dale Smith discusses how the Cons are using concern trolling and delay tactics to prevent the passage of legislation to ban conversion therapy.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- The New York Times editorial board chimes in on how Kansas serves as an ideal test case as to illusory benefits of top-end tax cuts:

The 2012 cuts were among the largest ever enacted by a state, reducing the top tax bracket by 25 percent and eliminating all taxes on business profits that are reported on individual income returns. (No other state has ever eliminated all taxes on these pass-through businesses.) The cuts were arrogantly promoted by Mr. Brownback with the same disproven theory that Republicans have employed for decades: There will be no loss of revenue because of all the economic growth!

“Our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy,” he wrote in 2012. “It will pave the way to the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs, bring tens of thousands of people to Kansas, and help make our state the best place in America to start and grow a small business.”

But the growth didn’t show up. Kansas, in fact, was one of only five states to lose employment over the last six months, while the rest of the country was improving. It has been below the national average in job gains for the three and half years Mr. Brownback has been in office. Average earnings in the state are down since 2012, and so is net growth in the number of registered businesses.

...

The evidence of failure is piling up around Mr. Brownback, whose re-election campaign is faltering because of his mistake. Yet he continues to cling to his magical ideology, pleading for more time. “It’s like going through surgery,” he told The Wall Street Journal last month. “It takes a while to heal and get growing afterwards.”

But it’s not clear the patient can recover from this surgery — the reserve fund, in fact, is likely to nearly run dry next year. As Kansas has clearly shown, states cannot cut their way to prosperity. They need to use every tool of government to nurture growth, and those tools require money.

- And in a similar vein, Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew reports on the growing recognition that Ontario will need some significant revenue increases to avoid the Wynne Libs' plan to sell off and slash public services.

- Meanwhile, Mark Serwotka duly mocks the claim that austerity reflect financial necessity rather than a desire to ensure that a still-expanding pie serves fewer and fewer people. Simon Tremblay-Pepin examines the effect of austerity in Quebec. And PressProgress connects the dots between more active government and happier people.

- Susan Wright discusses Alberta's farce of a climate change strategy - along with the minimal chance that a strong rebuke from the province's Auditor General will result in any change for the better.

- Finally, Dale Smith expands on the vital role played by political parties - and some of the steps needed to make sure they work as they're supposed to:

What people often forget is that parties represent different things in different arenas.  The parliamentary party is a facet that is important in the day-to-day operation of parliament, and serves some of the most crucial functions of all – maintaining confidence.  This is the underlying principle by which our system of Responsible Government operates – that the government of the day has the confidence of the Chamber, so that it can continue to govern.  It maintains confidence by means of arranging its followers into a party that will support it on matters of confidence – things like spending proposals or key government programs and foreign policy decisions.  It also means that the prime minister can continue to advise the Queen or Governor General, because he or she has the confidence of the Chamber.  So you can see why it’s a pretty big deal.
...
(I)n order to fix the problems, they require more engagement from people and not less.  The problem when no more than two percent of the population – one of the lowest rates in the democratic world – are members of a political party at any given time, is that it allows a small number of people within the party to exert undue influence.  This applies for things like policy development, candidate selection and nomination races – you need more people engaged, in order to push back against top-down control and to make themselves heard and to hold the party itself to account.
...
There is, however, a uniting factor in the problems that plague both the parliamentary and electoral party structures, which is the fact that a lack of civic literacy, combined with a lack of responsibility on the part of both voters and MPs, has created a system where everyone walks around going “not my problem.”  Voters don’t want to engage in parties, and MPs don’t want to claim their rights and responsibilities, seemingly more comfortable blaming others for their lack of action (not to mention backbone).  This was confirmed in the recent book The Tragedy of the Commons, which Delacourt also cited, but to a different conclusion.  What is most striking about that book is the way in which the former MPs that were interviewed were concerned with their own self-mythologizing, insisting that they were all outsiders to the system (almost to a single MP), and that the party made them do everything.  Except that each and every one of them could have said no.

What MPs and voters alike need is a crash course in civic literacy, so that they are armed with the knowledge that is necessary to push back against the power structures that have entrenched themselves in the leaders’ offices and party hierarchies.  You don’t like the way the party elite run things?  Ensure that you have a strong enough grassroots to push back.  You don’t like how the leader’s office treats MPs like puppets?  It only takes a handful of MPs to say no, because they can’t all be fired at once without some serious questions being raised.  All it takes is a little effort.  To simply declare that parties are the problem is facile and wrong, and abolishing them just throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- PressProgress highlights how the Cons' stay in office has been marked by temporary rather than permanent jobs, while Kaylie Tiessen writes that precarious work is particularly prevalent in Ontario. And Erin Weir notes that more unemployed workers are now chasing after fewer job vacancies than even in the wake of the last recession.

- Kathleen Harris points out that the Cons' attempt to label refugees as "bogus" based solely on their country of origin bears no resemblance whatsoever to reality, as numerous claims from the U.S. and other countries labeled as "safe" have been found to be valid by the Immigration and Refugee Board. And she also finds the Cons applying a rather unusual definition of "protection" for refugees:

Alexis Pavlich, spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, said refugee reforms that include restricting health care means more protection for those in need and faster removal of those who don't.

That's right: the Cons are so callous as to claim that people in need get "more protection" by being denied essential health care.

- Meanwhile, Mike Palacek discusses the Cons' secret and deceptive plan to gut and privatize Canada Post - which of course was given a political push to replace the postal banking idea which would have resulted in better service and increased public returns.

- Tabatha Southey rightly observes that the Cons should want to distance themselves from Robert Goguen for grandstanding about a witness' gang rape. But the fact that they haven't seems to signal what seemed to me the most plausible explanation to begin with: is there any reason to think Goguen was doing anything but reading off his party's script to begin with?

- Finally, there are plenty of reasons to question Susan Delacourt's attempt to use relatively minor concerns about our current political system as a basis to eliminate political parties altogether - and Dale Smith neatly lays them out. But if we're looking for examples of the type of theory about political party operations which positively begs to be challenged, there are worse places to start than Jeffrey Simpson's insistence that leaders should hold the power to hand-pick their own pet candidates.

On executive decisions

My post yesterday on the Senate's choice to remind Canadians of its existence by blocking a bill passed by the House of Commons has sparked plenty of discussion. But I'll highlight one of the more stunning arguments being made in favour of the Senate's actions.

Here's Dale Smith in his own comments section:

The Senate is almost never going to turn down a budget bill because they’re confidence measures, and the Senate is not a confidence chamber.

And another commenter, James Bowden, in more stark terms:

There is no legitimate constitutional argument why the Senate should not be able to kill this private members’ bill. It is certainly not a matter of confidence and did not require the royal recommendation. The Senate poses no threat to the primacy of the Commons by voting against a frivolous private members’ bill.

So the pro-Senate line is that a private members' bill which happens to win the support of a majority of elected members can be killed without any reason to think twice - just so long it's the result of mere elected MPs debating and voting on a bill on their own, rather than the approval of the executive branch. (And the fact that the bill under discussion didn't receive a lot of debate has everything to do with the reality that very little time is allocated to private members' business compared to government business.)

By that account, the limits of Senatorial authority would be seen to begin and end with a declaration that a bill is a priority for the sitting government (as a budget or confidence measure). Which looks to me to entrench all the more power in the hands of the PMO - even as the Harper Cons have given us nothing but reason to worry about the control our current executive exercises over both MPs as a matter of party discipline, and parliamentary procedures as a matter of preventing inconvenient votes.

Suffice it to say I consider it rather questionable that a constitutional relic intended to limit democratic decision-making from day one should be accepted as a reason to treat the legislative process in the House of Commons as being no more significant in deciding on the fate of a law which meets with the disapproval of a chamber of appointed hacks than a straw poll of the Parliamentary kitchen staff. And if our goal is to make sure that MPs do their jobs better, we'll accomplish far more by asking them to justify their their actions directly than by declaring that we're just fine seeing their work rendered meaningless by unelected Senators.