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.

- Hakan Bengtsson offers some useful discussion about the challenges facing Sweden's social democratic system - as the same factors being used to prevent the development of a more equitable society in Canada and elsewhere are being cited as excuses to tear down the model many countries aspire to reach:

The Swedish experience has shown that deregulation has not resulted in a considerable number of non-profit alternatives, as many people believed and which they used as an argument for change. Instead, it has meant the emergence of private companies, large corporate groups and venture capitalists in the Swedish welfare system. This was hardly envisaged when these “reforms” were discussed and implemented. There is every reason for other countries to study developments in Sweden in this respect. Today a much more stringent regulation of schools and medical and care services is on the agenda. This is, at any rate, what the labour movement is currently discussing and proposing.
...
The future of the welfare state touches on, by implication, how much of our consumption should be handled by individual citizens in their private capacity, and how much should be paid for jointly in the public sector and in collective forms. The question of the rate of taxation will have to be discussed. The Swedish welfare model covers many areas and relies on financing via taxation to a considerable extent.

As early as the late 1950s, John Kenneth Galbraith was arguing that a greater proportion of our consumption should be channelled through the public sector rather than disbursed in the private sphere – otherwise the private sector would become rich and the public sector poor. This risk is just as obvious today.

- And Larry Hubich writes about the need to deal with a massive (and growing) income gap in Saskatchewan.

- CBC reports on the Cons' latest attempt to revive lawful access legislation (this time while talking about cyber-bullying instead). Paula Simons recognizes the civil liberties at stake when telecoms are encouraged to hand over sensitive personal information to the state without notice to anybody affected, while David Fraser is working on a thorough review of the bill.

- Finally, Tim Harper and Mohammed Adam both take a moment to highlight Chris Montgomery as the lone person advising the upper echelons of the Cons' leadership who spoke out against the bribery and cover-up carried out by the PMO and its Senate flunkies. But Montgomery's role only highlights the unethical behaviour of the rest of the individuals involved - who can't claim they merely went along with a plan that wasn't questioned by anybody, but who actively labeled a public servant who pointed out its ethical frailties as "the Problem" while pushing ahead with their scheme.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Alison draws the links between Robocon and an American firm proud of its efforts in some of the Republicans' most odious causes, while Sixth Estate provides a timeline of shady election dealings by the Harper Cons. Dr. Dawg asks the media to stay focused on the "fraud" part of the Cons' Robocon scam; Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher seem set to oblige by hinting that the infamous Pierre Poutine may soon be coming forward, while John Geddes speculates about just how far up the rot within the Cons actually goes. Allan Woods notes that the scam seems to have been largely aimed at older voters, while Andrew Potter points out the importance of context in determining how individuals act. The NDP is working on making sure Elections Canada has the necessary authority to deal both with Robocon and future abuses, while plenty of citizens rallied yesterday to demand a full inquiry.

- But perhaps the most interesting comment on Robocon is Don Martin's - which makes it clear that the Cons offered weeks of categorical denials of any national-level election fraud before making even a cursory attempt to determine whether it held any truth. (And does anybody think that being shut in a room with a raging Harper was going to encourage anybody to step forward?)

- Meanwhile, Karl Nerenberg points out Jason Kenney's refusal to provide refugees with any escape from international human rights abuses if they don't fit the Cons' political plans.

- Michael Geist notes that unfortunately, some of the loudest lobbying on the Cons' copyright bill wants to make bad legislation even worse by making consumers' privacy and ISPs' business both subject to the whims of media conglomerates.

- Thomas Friedman draws a contrast between countries which rely on natural resources and those which develop based on education - making it particular problematic that the Cons are so determined to emphasize the former at the expense of the latter.

- Finally, David Cay Johnston discusses how Sweden's social-democratic orientation has resulted in a radically higher standard of living for much of its population:

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Mind you, some of the stories are a couple of days old precisely because there's been an embarrassment of riches in the Con criticism department this week. Most of the time, stories about a government violating immigrants' privacy for the sake of a photo op, blatantly politicizing a gratuitously extravagant system of medal-awarding or going far over the top in claiming political disagreement means undermining a country's troops would rank relatively high on any weekly list of outrages.

- But instead, the Cons are reaching the cartoon-villain standard of pushing trans fats and torture.

- Yet even those affronts to reason and human decency may not quite say as much about the mindset of the party governing our country as the fact that the Cons are under orders to be needlessly disagreeable:

At the time, it was explained to me by a staffer that the snub was unintentional -- Conservative MPs are simply told to deny any request for unanimous consent not emanating from the government side.

- All of which is to say that whatever morality supposedly guides the Harper Cons doesn't figure to serve much purpose other than as an example of how to get it wrong.

- So what can we do to change matters? Well, George Lakey points out what peoples' movements were able to accomplish in Norway and Sweden.

- And in another great opportunity to work toward something positive at home, Alice discusses the impending Toronto-Danforth by-election, while Megan O'Toole notes that the Libs' oft-repeated promises of a star candidate have fallen by the wayside.

On coverage gaps

There's been plenty of talk about how a single blogpost has changed the course of Sweden's ongoing election. But it's worth pointing out exactly what the problem is that's earned so much public sympathy, and how it fits into what the right wants to do to healthcare in Canada:

A young Swedish woman named Emilie wrote a blog post about her mother losing her health insurance. In Sweden, there's a national health plan that covers your living expenses if you lose your job due to failing health. While Emilie's mom has been certified unable to work by her doctors, the government functionaries running the national plan didn't believe her, and just cut off her benefits. Emilie wrote that she and her mother are now considering selling their home, as it's the only way they can be eligible for any more government benefits.

Now, it's not hard to see that Emilie's mother's situation is a natural consequence of a conditional public plan available only as part of a patchwork of insurance. Not only do significant resources have to be used determining what is and isn't covered, but some decisions will inevitably result in a massive burden on those who slip through the cracks.

So while the latest set of talking points in favour of a similar patchwork in Canada rather than equal and universal coverage has relied heavily on the exclamation that "even social-democratic countries like Sweden have private insurance!!!", the Swedes themselves seem set to decide an election based in large part on dissatisfaction with the harms caused by that system. And while it remains to be seen whether they'll end up taking steps in Canada's direction as a result, surely the outpouring of concern over stories like Emilie's should give us pause in listening to those who want to set up similar limitations on the availability of public health care in Canada.