Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- John Michael McGrath makes the case for optimism about our potential to avoid further waves of COVID as long as COVID-19 vaccinations overtake the risk of community spread. Brian Platt reports on Nova Scotia's use of rapid testing to catch a substantial number of cases in its third wave (while far too many provinces continue to let rapid tests languish). And Kim Siever notes that Alberta's headline numbers primarily reflect a worrisome drop in testing overall. 

- David Moscrop notes that the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the problems with a first-past-the-post political system which doesn't require majority governments to be even remotely responsive to citizens between elections. Duncan Cameron writes that electing good people then failing to put pressure on them once in power is nowhere enough to ensure the kind of action we need to avert a climate breakdown. And Mitchell Thompson interviews Svend Robinson about the importance of the NDP providing a transformational option for voters and activists alike.

- The CCPA's presentation to the federal finance committee highlights the importance of collecting more revenue from the rich to ensure needed services are available to everybody. 

-  Pat Armstrong, Hugh Armstrong, Dan Buchanan, Tony Dean, Gail Donner, Arthur Donner, Sharon Sholzberg-Gray, Alex Himelfarb and Steven Shrybman point out the importance of investing in long-term care for people rather than profits for donors. And Karl Nerenberg discusses how corporate landlords - with the active participation of far too many governments - are putting the price of housing far out of the reach of the people who need it.

- Finally, Christine Ro discusses how overwork is killing many people (even as many others are told there's no work available for them).

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Charles Demers points out the impact Svend Robinson has had on Canadian politics - and suggests that he should be the model for fellow progressives:

Not only did Svend embody something different from the usual electioneering pabulum [sic] — a genuine belief in the righteousness and effectiveness of indigenous, environmentalist, and social movement direct action, for starters — but, as Truelove’s wonderful and readable and extremely well-researched book shows, he also showed how gadflies could still exercise real power and affect people’s lives. The episode in which Svend leads the successful campaign to keep “the right to enjoy property” from being enshrined in the Charter (Robinson worried that if it were, things like minimum wage laws and environmental legislation could be imperiled) is indicative; a recurring theme throughout the book is how a third party MP, sometimes even a backbencher, could make real and lasting legislative change. In the end, that might be what was scariest to conventional NDPers about Svend: not only that his radical politics and irreverence endangered the party’s ability to win enough votes to become official opposition or even government, but the fact that his own example showed that if they were smart enough, worked hard enough, and were willing to participate in and draw on social movements, they didn’t necessarily have to, if all they wanted to do was effect change (as opposed to winning). In a world of horse-race politics, where everyone’s killing themselves trying to get to the inside lane, Svend was off in the stables unionizing the jockeys and pointing out that the track was built on stolen land.

[Update: Though of course it's also worth pointing out that the dichotomy between presenting progressive positions and earning electoral success may be a false one to begin with.]

- Peter Frase discusses the need to move beyond complaints about the status quo and propose an alternate model as to how things can be improved. And Dean Baker points out that Thomas Piketty's description of near-inevitable capital concentration may miss some obvious opportunities to turn technological developments into widespread gains - even if we're far from applying them to the extent possible.

- But it is worth documenting how capital is managing to perpetuate itself at the expense of mere people. And David Harvey's commentary on the spread of luxury services and the new "prosumer" model is worth a read on that front.

- Meanwhile, any assertion of the public interest over private profit-seeking looks rather remote at the moment. On that front, Theresa Tedesco and Jen Gerson report on the massive private interests being served by Canadian Senators - even as the same patronage appointees try to excuse their split loyalties by complaining about the insufficiency of six-figure public salaries. And David Pugliese notes that the Cons are willing to let the private sector decide which Arctic search and rescue capabilities are sufficiently profitable to be maintained as public safety is privatized.

- Finally, Alan Bowker asks the Cons to follow the post-war Robert Borden model of voluntarily working on a better democratic system - rather than the wartime philosophy of rigging the system in their favour on the assumption that democracy is dangerous. And Susan Delacourt proposes that a voter identity card could go a long way toward meeting the Cons' excuses for cracking down on voting while minimizing the damage to voting rights.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Alex Pareene muses that Lawrence Summers would be an entirely worthy nominee to oversee U.S. monetary policy - for a very specific set of criteria:

Laws and policies he championed directly led to the financial crisis, and the same laws and policies caused that crisis to kick off a global recession that we still have not crawled out of. He is more responsible than almost anyone else alive — it’s him, Robert Rubin, Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan, basically — for the severity of the crisis. I can’t think of a better time to inexplicably reward Summers for his disastrous record than today, as news outlets everywhere revisit those miserable days of five years ago and sort through the aftermath. The ascension should happen as soon as possible. Think of it as a sort of birthday president for the crisis.
...
The timing has never been better to reaffirm that in America, a lucky few are able to be wrong — disastrously wrong, in ways that cause a great deal of harm and suffering — about everything and be forever rewarded for it. Larry Summers is basically the mascot of the last few terrible decades, and today is the day that should be officially recognized.

- And Peter Beinart sees Bill de Blasio's primary victory as evidence that voters are very much willing to throw their support behind genuinely progressive options, rather than looking for somebody who caters primarily to the Very Serious People.

- Speaking of unabashed progressive heroes, Peter O'Neil excerpts Graeme Truelove's take on Svend Robinson's legacy. And the would-be MPs currently pursuing nominations in the upcoming set of by-elections would do well to follow his example.

- Finally, Armine Yalnizyan offers her take on how the Cons have permanently damaged our ability to assess the state of Canada's housing market - and how the limited data available through the National Household Survey offers plenty of reason for concern.

Incidentally...

...those looking to impose an NDP litmus test in favour of the federal gun registry may want to take a look at the history behind its implementation. The "yea" votes for Bill C-68 included a grand total of one NDP MP (Svend Robinson), while the "nay" votes when the registry first passed included the rest of the NDP caucus - including such familiar names as Audrey McLaughlin, Bill Blaikie and Simon de Jong.

Which isn't to say that the party couldn't rightfully change its mind in the interim. But surely there would be some significant explanation needed as to how the position held by all but one NDP member when a measure passed initially would be grounds for punishment when it comes to reversing course.