Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Emma Ladds, Alex Rushforth, Sietse Wieringa, Sharon Taylor, Clare Rayner, Laiba Husain and Trisha Greenhalgh study the wade-ranging and severe symptoms resulting from "long COVID", while Jennifer Lutz and Richard Carmona point out how a health care system dependent on individual funding is ill-equipped to respond. Andre Picard writes about the absurdity of Ontario taking a holiday from distributing COVID-19 vaccines.

- Meanwhile, Mitchell Anderson discusses the lives lost in Western Canada to decades of propaganda which have built deep antipathy and distrust toward both science and the federal government. And Lee Berthiaume reports on another poll showing that the vast majority of respondents in the prairie provinces have had enough of failed leadership in responding to the coronavirus.

- CBC News points out how we've wasted two decades in the fight to salvage a liveable planet in the face of a climate breakdown. 

- John Harris points out that the UK's current set of self-inflicted crises is nothing new, but instead reflects a history of hubris and poor judgment by the country's ruling class. And Dani Alexis Ryskamp discusses how the U.S. has eliminated the prospect of the modest but secure middle-class lifestyle depicted in the Simpsons and other cultural touchstones.

- Finally, Michael Laxer highlights how COVID-19 has been used as an excuse for class warfare in Canada, with the richest few individuals and largest corporations claiming massive handouts and taking the opportunity to exploit their advantages in wealth and power while people generally are shamed for trying to survive.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Michael Laxer writes that Doug Ford's attack on people who stood to be helped by a basic income demonstrates the cruelty of austerian politics. But we shouldn't take the callousness of right-wing parties as reflecting the preferences of most voters, as the Angus Reid Institute's poll on poverty in Canada examines attitudes toward the people facing it and the options available to address it - including the widespread recognition that poverty is primarily a matter of circumstances beyond an individual's control:

• Two-thirds of Canadians (65%) say the federal government is doing too little to address poverty, and approximately the same number (64%) feel this way about their provincial government

• More than seven-in-ten (72%) say poor people are poor because of circumstances beyond their control, rather than a lack of effort on their part

• A similar number (65%) say wealthy people are wealthy because they had more advantages in life, rather than because they worked harder than other people

- And Eric Levitz points out new data confirming that in the U.S., policies such as increased public enterprise are far more popular than the Republicans' template of tax giveaways to the rich and austerity for everybody else - even though they're hardly ever discussed by the political class.

- The Economist discusses how the world is losing the war against climate change. And Christopher Pollin interviews Naomi Klein about the need for divestment from fossil fuels as part of the public response to negligence by political leaders.

- Lisa Johnson reports on the threat to sockeye salmon posed by a warming Fraser River. And Emma Lui notes that Nestle has pumped over a billion litres of water out of the Aberfoyle well since its permit expired - and that it's showing no willingness to stop in the absence of public action.

- Finally, Andre Picard discusses how the Netherlands have taken harm reduction several steps further than Canada by allowing for drug-checking to protect against contamination.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Frances Ryan rightly calls out the anti-choice right for having no interest in the well-being of children once they're born:

(S)mall-state ideology can make it devastatingly difficult for a low-income parent to look after a child. Look at the controversial “two-child” limit to child tax credits under universal credit (UC). From its inception, it was predicted the policy would lead to hundreds of thousands of additional children living in poverty, but it’s now emerging that some women are even feeling forced to have abortions because they can’t afford to go ahead with the pregnancy. “It wasn’t planned but it was very much wanted. I was crying as they wheeled me in,” one woman told the Mirror this month about her abortion; without the safety net of tax credits, she had no way to afford another baby. Women in Northern Ireland in similar positions have an even more restricted choice: the rape-exemption clause that gives some women on UC a financial reprieve endangers women who haven’t reported their attack to the police (in Northern Ireland, failure to report a crime is an offence) and, as the renewed calls for reproductive rights in light of the Irish vote has highlighted, Northern Irish women have no legal access to abortion in their own country if they feel they can’t raise a child.

Recent years have in fact seen a determined removal of support from low-income mothers – everything from forcing single parents (90% of whom are women) to look for work once their child turns three or have their benefits sanctioned, to the benefit cap, a policy so regressive it was actually ruled to be unlawful when forced on single parents with toddlers.
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In the post-crash austerity era, this sense of social solidarity towards children has noticeably lessened. Under each policy to remove state support from parents there’s a lurking narrative that working-class women are “breeding too much” or that low-income children are drains on the “hardworking taxpayer”. (“Why should I pay for someone else to have more kids?” is the rejoinder on most articles advocating child benefits). In the real world, pregnancy is rarely predictable – contraception fails, relationships end, and jobs are lost – and besides, even the most ardent individualist would admit low-income children have done nothing to “deserve” their own poverty.

We are at the point in which it is not rare to hear of infants living in B&Bs, sleeping on cardboard, or even scrambling for food in school bins. If the ongoing debate over abortion rights teaches us anything, it’s that there are no shortage of voices content to defend the “unborn”. It’s a shame few are willing to give the same care to those children who are already here.

- And Elizabeth Wall-Weiler points out the vicious cycle of separating children from teenage mothers in care - which tends only to ensure a lack of family security across generations.

- Edgardo Sepulveda examines the effect on inequality of the party platforms in Ontario's provincial election, showing the stark distinction between the increased fairness of the NDP's platform and the exacerbated inequality on offer from Doug Ford. And Michael Laxer's roundup contrasts the real Conservative scandals which have been downplayed by the media against the contrived attempts to manufacture controversy surrounding the NDP. 

- Andrew Jackson reviews Christo Aivailis' The Constant Liberal on Pierre Trudeau's consistent pattern of trying absorb progressive activity into centrist power structures to dilute its ultimate effect.

- Finally, Helene Laverdiere criticizes the Libs' insistence on enabling the sale of arms to human rights abusers.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Martin Lukacs discusses the need for collective action to fight climate change - and the dangers of allowing ourselves to be distracted by calls to focus solely on individual choices:

These pervasive exhortations to individual action — in corporate ads, school textbooks, and the campaigns of mainstream environmental groups, especially in the west — seem as natural as the air we breathe. But we could hardly be worse-served.

While we busy ourselves greening our personal lives, fossil fuel corporations are rendering these efforts irrelevant. The breakdown of carbon emissions since 1988? A hundred companies alone are responsible for an astonishing 71%. You tinker with those pens or that panel; they go on torching the planet.

The freedom of these corporations to pollute – and the fixation on a feeble lifestyle response – is no accident. It is the result of an ideological war, waged over the last 40 years, against the possibility of collective action. Devastatingly successful, it is not too late to reverse it.
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Anything resembling a collective check on corporate power has become a target of the elite: lobbying and corporate donations, hollowing out democracies, have obstructed green policies and kept fossil fuel subsidies flowing; and the rights of associations like unions, the most effective means for workers to wield power together, have been undercut whenever possible.

At the very moment when climate change demands an unprecedented collective public response, neoliberal ideology stands in the way. Which is why, if we want to bring down emissions fast, we will need to overcome all of its free-market mantras: take railways and utilities and energy grids back into public control; regulate corporations to phase out fossil fuels; and raise taxes to pay for massive investment in climate-ready infrastructure and renewable energy — so that solar panels can go on everyone’s rooftop, not just on those who can afford it.
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If affordable mass transit isn’t available, people will commute with cars. If local organic food is too expensive, they won’t opt out of fossil fuel-intensive super-market chains. If cheap mass produced goods flow endlessly, they will buy and buy and buy. This is the con-job of neoliberalism: to persuade us to address climate change through our pocket-books, rather than through power and politics.

Eco-consumerism may expiate your guilt. But it’s only mass movements that have the power to alter the trajectory of the climate crisis. This requires of us first a resolute mental break from the spell cast by neoliberalism: to stop thinking like individuals.

- Tim Harford argues that part of the public response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy should be to act on the desperate need for more and better-maintained social housing. And Michael Laxer connects the mindset behind the media's dutiful praise of a slapdash set of stairs in Etobicoke to the themes of deregulation and antisocialism that lead to public safety catastrophes.

- Aaron Mate interviews Kerris Cooper about the role of family income in a child's development and future prospects, while also highlighting the potential gains from a more fair income distribution.

- Rob Shaw reports on the precarious state of ICBC after it was used as a cash cow by Christy Clark and her self-serving B.C. Liberals. And Jennifer Ackerman reports that Brad Wall and the Sask Party are determined to similarly suck all the value out of Saskatchewan's Crown Corporations as quickly as they can get away with it - even as the Crowns remain a bright spot both for economic development and public revenue.

- Finally, Anjuli Patil reports on Nova Scotia's move to reverse the privatization of 10 schools due to its belated recognition that P3 schemes did nothing but cost the province money.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your long weekend reading.

- Marc Jarsulic, Ethan Gurwitz, Kate Bahn and Andy Green comment on how corporate monopoly power and rent-seeking produce disastrous public consequences:

Income inequality is rising, middle-class incomes are stagnant, and much of the current economic policy debate is centered on finding ways to counter these trends. A renewed focus on antitrust enforcement could make a significant contribution toward accomplishing this goal.

When firms with dominant market power are able to elevate the prices they charge and earn supra-normal returns—which are economic rents—they simultaneously lower the real incomes of those who buy from them. In other words: The seller benefits when market power elevates the price of hospital care or raises the price of an airline ticket, but the buyer has less income for other needs. Moreover, the tendency of monopolies to restrict output combined with reduced competitive pressure to invest can translate into reduced employment.
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(T)here is systematic evidence—ranging from the disconnect of corporate profits and corporate investment to evidence of persistent supra-normal profitability—that points to an increase in rent extraction in the U.S. economy. And while large rent extraction is a primary outcome of unchallenged market power, there are additional and equally undesirable results. For example, the entry of new firms in the market can be blocked; innovation can be stifled; product quality can be degraded; the prices paid to workers and suppliers can be reduced; and influence with government officials can be increased.

- And as part of the CCPA's Monitor issue on the state of Canada's media, Fenwick McKelvey examines the need to make a diverse range of content available rather than allowing large providers to fully define and limit which options can easily be discovered.

- Paul Willcocks points out there's no evidence-based reason for concern that a higher minimum wage will affect the availability of jobs. And PressProgress notes that the corporate interests trying to shout down any improvements to the minimum wage are the same ones trying to use exploitative immigration schemes to lower wages for all workers.

- Michael Laxer highlights how the manufactured problems at Canada Post - with consistent profits deemed insufficient without explanation in order to attack working conditions, and plans for a postal bank which would both raise profits and provide an important public service given short shrift - are only part of the wider hostility against the public sector. 

- Finally, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group sets out the gross deficiencies in the Libs' plans for a security review committee even from the standpoint of basic oversight - to say nothing of the underlying lack of action to protect civil rights from a pervasive surveillance state.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Edward Greenspon's report on the Keystone XL review process is well worth a read - particularly in exposing how the Harper Cons have handled their U.S. relations (along with many other policy areas) based on the presumption that nobody will ever see fit to consider the environmental costs of maximizing oil exploitation. And on that front, Andrew Leach highlights how Ottawa and Edmonton alike have assumed they can get away with paying lip service to climate change - even as the Obama administration has rightly recognized it as a top priority.

- Stephen Hume is the latest to point out the hypocrisy of free-marketeers insisting that employers be provided with special privileges to import easily-exploited workers rather than paying market wages. And Doug Saunders recognizes that we should be encouraging long-term immigration rather than treating new arrivals as disposable labour.

- While I'd question Michael Laxer's view of a "progressive" orientation as the problem, he's absolutely right in recognizing the need for far stronger presentation of social democratic principles than we're accustomed to seeing on our political scene:

We are told, regularly, that one has to compromise to get elected. But these compromises always seem to be on "our" part and not the right's. The right is not compromising at all when it comes to economic principles.

But, more significantly, these compromises are always at the expense of those living in  poverty, those on social assistance, unions and public sector workers. Always. In other words, these "progressive" political compromises are a basic part of the attack on unions, public sector workers, those living in poverty and those on social assistance as they directly facilitate them.
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The progressive agenda in North America has become so insignificant in its aims that if it got any less so it would simply cease to be. There is nowhere for it to go that is anymore insignificant than it already is.

Are minimum-wage workers and those on social assistance going to be once more sacrificed on the alter of political expediency? Is their extreme need of solidarity to be forsaken yet again?

 - And if we needed more evidence as to how distorted our current political environment is, John Manley's latest pitch on behalf of the CCCE is asking the public to allow the corporate sector to keep evading taxes - even after its own numbers showed how little businesses are contributing to the public interest. And Quebec is the latest province to be confronted with demands that it sacrifice social programs on the altar of corporatist "seriousness" - with precisely zero consideration given to raising additional revenue as another means of balancing the budget.

- Finally, Alison discusses how the true foreign-funded operatives in Canada's political systems are Nigel Wright, Linda Frum and the rest of the Cons who were propped up by the U.S.' right-wing propaganda machine.