Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jim Stanford explores how a just transition plan can ensure that workers have new opportunities in the midst of a needed shift away from dirty fossil fuels - and also highlights how a blinkered refusal to accept the decline of the oil sector will only make matters worse for workers. And Thomas Lukaszuk writes that there's no reason for Alberta (or any other province) to obsess over oil rather than emerging clean technology.

- Karim Bardeesy writes about the need for a paid sick leave plan which ensures that people don't feel the need to contribute to the spread of COVID-19 in order to keep paying their bills. And Maryse Zeidler highlights how a focus on high-risk populations is crucial to our COVID response, while Bruno Mégarbane, Fanchon Bourasset and Jean-Michel Scherrmann find that stay-at-home orders do create a substantial benefit in reducing viral spread. 

- Jeremy Nuttall examines what other countries have been able to accomplish in providing long-term care where their focus is on the personal well-being of residents, rather than opening up rent-seeking opportunities for investors.

- But Theresa Boyle warns that a policy vacuum is allowing our health care system to shift increasingly toward privatized and profit-seeking services. And Joel Lexchin discusses how big pharma is trying to limit Canadians' access to needed medication, while Rachel Aiello reports that Pfizer is taking advantage of the need for COVID vaccines to seek special treatment from the federal government's next budget.

- Finally, as most of the world celebrates Donald Trump's long-awaited removal from office, Ta-Nehisi Coates points out the need to recognize and challenge the forces that allowed him to take it in the first place.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Richard Eskow summarizes the basic facts about inequality in the U.S. Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that it's impossible to fully explain or address that problem without factoring in ongoing racial disparities. And Sean Trembath writes about James Daschuk's work in tracing health disparities among indigenous peoples back to Canada's colonial policies, while Cheryl McKenzie reports on the challenges in combating poverty.

- Greg Kaplan and Giovanni Volante point out that income insecurity isn't limited to poor households, as plenty of higher-earning families effectively live paycheque to paycheque at best

- Mike De Souza discusses the connection between TransCanada's firing of whistleblowers and a pipeline explosion.

- Andrew Mitrovica asks why nobody is prepared to tell Canadians the truth about the unauthorized  disclosure of tax data to CSIS. And Tonda MacCharles reports that the Libs are being even more obstinate than the Cons in trying to deny compensation to people who were wrongly detained and tortured.

- Finally, Lana Payne rightly argues that we can't move on from revelations of systematic sexual harassment without first doing everything we can to eradicate it.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Jason Warick reports on how the Cons' decison to gut federal environmental assessments will have a particularly acute effect on Saskatchewan:

The federal government has cancelled nearly 700 environmental assessments in Saskatchewan for oil wells and pipelines, sewage lagoons, hydro projects, a major uranium tailings facility and other operations.

Saskatchewan is by far the province most affected by the cancellation of nearly 3,000 assessments nationwide.

“It’s extremely significant,” said Bram Noble, a University of Saskatchewan geography professor who has years of experience teaching and conducting national environmental assessments.

“It’s a lot to be concerned about. It’s the only tool we have.”

Noble called the decision to scrap the assessments “unprecedented” and “a step backward.”

- Meanwhile, Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob duly call out the Cons for a dumb-on-crime mindset that's focused solely on marketing rather than public safety or crime reduction. 

- In the wake of Neil Armstrong's passing this weekend, David Atkins contrasts the mindset behind the moon landing against today's utter lack of a sense of greater common purpose:

His walk on the moon was the result of thousands of individuals working tirelessly to bring the impossible to fruition, and the result of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars (in today's money) to make one of humanity's oldest dreams come true. For that reason, we can all share in Neil's accomplishment even if only by proxy. Or at least, those of us who were alive at the time can do so. Of my generation I'm not so certain, though I would state emphatically the blame does not lie with us.

Neil's was an accomplishment undertaken at a time when we still believed we were capable of great things. A time when the common good and furtherance of the human spirit were more important than personal greed. A time when a President could utter the phrase "Ask not what your Country can do for you, but what you can do for your Country" and not be mocked for his optimism.

It was a time before Reagan. Before "Greed is Good." It was a time when a President could truly declare a "War on Poverty" without ridicule. Before the drabness of "Welfare Reform" became the sort of meager and churlish thing the press would hail as forward-thinking and bold.

It was a time when the health and wealth of the nation was seen as bound up in the heights to which our science, learning, and social justice could aspire. It was a time before we allowed our collective health and wealth to be measured by as meaningless, lackluster and empty a symbol as the the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

...
My generational cohorts and I know nothing but this. This all too petty, all too drab, all too villainous smallness of being. It is time for moral and spiritual rebirth.

So rest in peace, Neil Armstrong. And may my generation begin the process of rebuilding the greatness that took you to such exalted heights, and repairing the damage wrought by the Reagan Devolution. 

- Finally, Ta-Nehisi Coates' commentary on the state of race relations in the U.S. is well worth the (relatively lengthy) read.