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. 

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Matthew Agius reports on the growing body of evidence indicating that long COVID may produce lifelong aftereffects. Henna Saeed reports on  the large number of Canadians now suffering from long COVID symptoms. And Lee Han-Soo discusses new research showing that a reinfection may be twice as deadly as an original one.

- Meanwhile, Emily Leedham reports on the Manitoba PCs' choice to lie about the motives behind an event to support health workers in order to have it shut down - even as they were happy to let antivaxxers influence their own government's policy. And Jessica Wildfire weighs in on the contrast between careful testing and environmental controls at Davos and the elite consensus throwing everybody else to the wolves. 

- Patty Winsa reports that Ontario's PCs have arranged for public health lines to direct patients toward pay-for-play corporate primary care, while Norman de Bono reports on the growing backlash against the privatization of surgeries. And Thomas Walkom writes that the Ford government's idea of health care reform completely misses the point as to how medicare needs to work to keep everybody healthy.

- Justin Chandler discusses how temporary, weather alert-based shelter systems leave unhoused people in readily-avoidable risk.

- Rupert Neate reports that there are still billionaires begging for wealth taxes to limit their own destructive class hegemony. And Umair Haque discusses how perilous our future as a civilization looks if we don't achieve major progress in the present.

- Finally, Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood discusses what a just transition means - and why it's in everybody's interest to work on putting it in place (no matter how a few well-funded extractivists scream about what amounts to a desire for short-term profits). And Guy Walton points out a few of the most immediate consequences of failing to avert a climate breakdown.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Paul Krugman notes that hostility toward basic public health protection such as masks represents a stark example of conservatives sacrificing human lives to identity politics - though it's far from the first or the last one. And James Downie writes that the Republicans governments reversing mask mandates know perfectly well that the credence given to anti-social actors makes it impossible for people to take precautions for themselves.

- Colleen Barry reports on the new wave of COVID-19 in Europe due to increasingly dangerous variants. Camelia Dewan contrasts Norway's relative success in requiring everybody to contribute to limiting the spread of the coronavirus against the disastrous results of  Sweden's herd immunity strategy (complete with willingness to endanger the lives of elderly people along the way). And Lynn Desjardins reports that Canadians are understandably wary about our long-term care system now that its weaknesses have been exposed.

- Srinivas Murthy writes that the most effective strategy to contain COVID-19 involves making sure vaccines get where they're needed around the globe, rather than being systematically diverted to the wealthiest countries first. 

- Joseph Hall observes that economists don't share the right's insistence on putting selective deficit phobia ahead of relief and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

- Finally, PressProgress follows up on the Pallister PCs' secret legislative agenda.

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.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Tracy Fuller talks to Emily Oster about the process people can follow in minimizing COVID risks in the absence of full information. And Sarah Zhang writes about the impending period of vaccine purgatory as a limited number of people begin to be protected.

- Mickey Djuric compares the current coronavirus response plans of the prairie provinces - though none offers an overall plan and result deserving of much credit. Nicholas Frew reports on the spread of the virus in Saskatchewan through multiple hockey and curling events. And Joel Dryden reports on the importance of regular testing to protect residents of long-term care homes.

- J. Edward Les points out the social and health implications of COVID-19 patients who need to rely on an already-strained health care system for treatment. 

- Achal Prabhala, Arjun Jayadev and Dean Baker discuss how relaxed intellectual property rules would facilitate the development and distribution of vaccines. And Ronald Labonte and Mira Johri call out Canada's role in prioritizing intellectual property barriers over the control and treatment of COVID-19 - particularly in less-wealthy countries.

- Jane Lytvynenko discusses how decades of misinformation have destroyed the U.S.' ability to respond to COVID-19 and other crises by undermining both institutions and social trust.

- Finally, Claire Porter Robbins writes about Jason Kenney's selective interest in Charter rights as he seeks to protect anti-maskers and COVID cranks while attacking activists seeking to protect our planet and the people who inhabit it.

On incentive structures

Sure, this is one possible interpretation of the choices facing low-income parents whose school and child care have been taken away:

This is heartbreaking: One family decided to voluntarily put their two children into a foster home so they could be cared for. https://t.co/jpCxKVDzik

— Natascia Lypny (@wordpuddle) May 2, 2020

But I'm sure your local Conservative would argue people are simply being given appropriate incentives to work rather than parenting. 

On denialism

Others have already pointed out the substantive recklessness of Brian Pallister's refusal to accept federal funding for climate projects in the education system. But Pallister's choice of wording - that of a "hoax" - may be even more significant than the money involved.

After all, the "hoax" terminology is entirely familiar within discourse about climate change. From Donald Trump to Ezra Levant, Breitbart to the Friends of Science, merchants of doubt about settled climate science have regularly used the word to attack the reality of climate change.

And in case one wanted to pretend there's some difference in context, the word is no more accurate when advanced by Pallister than in the regular spewing of outright climate denialism.

The federal government is in fact collecting revenue; it is in fact making money available for education systems; Pallister is in fact rejecting it. There's no hoax here by any rational definition of the term - raising the question as to why Pallister is choosing to use such a loaded word in the context of his government's position on the climate crisis.

While there are a few possible explanations for Pallister's choice to echo the preferred wording of the climate death cult, it's hard to see how any would be anything but a gross condemnation of his leadership.

Is he deliberately targeting his message toward the prejudices and misinformation of climate change denialists? Or is the information he's currently choosing to hear on climate issues so grossly slanted that he can't begin to discuss climate policy without turning into Anthony Watts on stilts?

Either way, Pallister looks to be going further than ever before in rejecting even his own government's recognition of facts to reinforce the message of Canada's gang of climate vandals. And Manitoba voters should take note of his extremism before allowing him to keep turning away funding for community priorities in the name of climate destruction.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Crawford Kilian reviews Richard Johnston's Canadian Party System: An Analytic History, and in the process points out how a sensible federal political system would include the NDP as one of the primary options to form government. And Jamie Maxwell discusses how Jagmeet Singh's by-election victory in Burnaby South may offer a preview of a progressive populist message which has a strong prospect of resonating nationally.

- Alanna Smith reports on Jason Kenney's determination to shovel free money toward his corporate masters through wholly gratuitous tax cuts. And AUPE examines what Kenney's combination of stagnant funding and determination to privatize services would do to the health of Albertans.

- Meanwhile, Kirsten Bernas comments on the federal money being left on the table by Manitoba's PCs who can't be bothered to negotiate an agreement to combat poverty and homelessness.

- Bryan Bicknell reports on the lives saved by the opening of a supervised consumption site in London, ON. And Chelsea Laskowski reports on AIDS Saskatoon's leadership in opening the province's first safe injection site, while Heather Polischuk notes that Regina is once again far behind the curve.

- Finally, Jennifer Scarlott discusses the importance of building an environmental movement which amplifies historical victims of environmental discrimination.

Saturday Evening Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Brian Bethune interviews Joseph Stiglitz about his longstanding recognition that an international economic system biased toward capital could lay the groundwork for Trump-style demagoguery.

- Kristin Annable reports on the Manitoba PCs' steps toward for-profit health care as an alternative to properly funding and managing the public system. But Keith Gerein notes that the Alberta NDP is instead developing public-sector senior care alternatives where the private sector is falling short of meeting people's needs.

- David Hardman defends the concept of a basic income by noting that our sleep cycles are at best an awkward fit with even standard full-time work. David Rosen discusses the end of the true 40-hour work week due a combination of undercounting work time and the need for multiple incomes to stay afloat. And Colin Gordon notes that U.S. laws have been undercutting the labour movement's ability to defend workers' rights for the past 70 years. 

- Angela Wright points out that a serious effort to combat offshore tax evasion needs to deal with prominent developed countries which choose to act as tax havens.

- Finally, Brent Richter offers a good-news story as to how a single tax return gave one marginalized citizen a chance for a genuine fresh state - while noting that many people would benefit similarly from a concerted effort to prepare returns for people who aren't currently submitting them.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Jordon Cooper writes that the Saskatchewan Party's slash-and-burn budget confirms that for them, the poor don't matter. CBC reports on the devastating effect the budget will have on municipalities, while Courtney Markewitch reports that Saskatoon's city council is fighting back. And Joel Senick notes that the planned shutdown of the Saskatchewan Transportation Company is another area where the Wall government may be on shaky legal ground.

- Tom Parkin examines how the Trudeau Libs are substituting meaningless buzzwords for coherent policy and campaign promises. Rob Gillezeau and Jeffrey Ansloos highlight Trudeau's empty words when it comes to First Nations issues in particular. And Campbell Clark warns about the risks of the Libs' plans to undermine the role of Parliament.

- John O'Kane reports on Douglas Hoyes' research showing how bankruptcies are increasingly the result of income inequality.

- Kathleen Lahey studies (PDF) the gender impacts of tax policy, finding in particular that both cuts to progressive taxes (including income and corporate taxes) and joint tax laws serve only to advantage wealthier men.

- And finally, Scott Price summarizes the attacks on labour coming soon from Brian Pallister's Manitoba PCs.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- PressProgress points out that neither the public nor a group of the world's leading economists sees the slightest value in balanced-budget gimmicks which override sound public decision-making. And Paul Krugman observes that the entire conservative economic strategy is based on overinflating bubbles, then letting somebody else clean up the resulting mess.

- Matthew Weaver highlights the use of "poshness tests" to screen out working-class applicants seeking work with key UK employers as a particularly stark example of how prestige and wealth have less and less to do with individual achievement. And Anna Mehler Paperny reports on the spread of precarious work which has made so many other jobs into traps for the unwary.

- Meanwhile, Molly McCracken rightly slams Manitoba's PCs for trying to privatize child care and other social services when that only produces worse working conditions as a means to create a profit stream. And Warren Bell examines the far-reaching implications of the Doctors of B.C. run-off election due to the presence of corporate-health zealot Brian Day.

- Mike Blanchfield reports on a new study from Voices-Voix documenting the Cons' stifling of dissenting voices. Kim Covert writes about the Cons' decision to create lower tiers of citizenship. And Errol Mendes argues that we need a Magna Carta moment to ensure that our federal government uses its power in the public interest, rather than using public resources solely to increase its own power.

- Finally, the Parkland Institute makes the case to end corporate and union donations to political parties in Alberta.