Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Linda Givetash discusses how the consequences of climate breakdown include impending water shortages in the UK. But rather than recognizing and acting on that danger, Theresa May's Conservatives are looking at Brexit as an excuse to do even less to protect the environment.

- Meanwhile, Grace Blakely highlights how the UK's outsourcing of public services has led to the usual pattern of corporate profits, bailouts and declining working conditions and social supports. And Tria Donaldson discusses how Saskatchewan is suffering as a result of a decade of Sask Party austerity.

- Noah Smith comments on the economic costs (in addition to the well-known social harm) caused by an opioid crisis which has been met with a grossly insufficient policy response.

- Nora Loreto wonders whether the Christchurch massacre - and the role Canadian extremists played in laying the groundwork for it - might represent a tipping point in ensuring a needed crackdown on hate speech and violence. And Jim Waterson reports on Neil Basu's comments about the UK media's responsibility for radicalizing the far right.

- Finally, Rob Larson argues that we shouldn't accept the corporatist argument that freedom should be equated with unfettered greed, rather than the security for all types of people to be able to make choices.

New column day

Here, on how the UK's general election should remind us that we're not beholden to establishment voices (whether in the media or within a party) in deciding who's fit to lead us.

For further reading...
- I've already pointed out John Harris and Gary Younge have written about the rise of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, along with Michal Rozworski's take on the prospect of meaningfully democratizing an economy.
- Joseph Stiglitz argues that Labour's most important promise is to put an end to decades of destructive austerity.
- And finally, George Monbiot writes that Corbyn has offered the type of hope which he and other voters have never seen before.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Paul Krugman writes about the dangers of Donald Trump's crony capitalist infrastructure plan. And Tom Parkin warns us that Justin Trudeau's Canadian equivalent is headed toward exactly the same results:

A private infrastructure bank means paying more for financing. It means getting less infrastructure. Fewer construction jobs. Less for land, materials and equipment. Lower economic spin-off.

Canadian Economist Toby Sanger recently compared 30 year private and public finance costs on a $100 million construction project. Public financing would cost $31 million. Private financing would add $164 million to costs. Who pays that money? Who gets it?
...
Privatization could mean airports and sea ports sold to consortiums from Abu Dhabi and China. And Trudeau’s bank would further concentrate wealth as money from Canadians is pipelined up to global investors.

Economist Thomas Piketty has made the case that excessive concentration of wealth isn’t just “economically useless,” it may lead to “political capture of our democratic institutions.” In 2014 he worried that, when institutions can’t address inequality and social problems, “it's always tempting to find other people responsible for our problems.”

Wall Street captured the Democrats and Republicans decades ago. [Piketty’s] next worry couldn’t have been more prescient.

- Jordan Press reports on Trudeau's attempt to soften the image of corporatism in order to push through still more concessions to big business. But Jen Moore's review of Todd Gordon and Jeffery Webber's The Blood of Extraction: Canadian Imperialism in Latin America reminds us of the damage being done to people and the planet by the mining industry with the assistance of Canadian governments.

- Meanwhile, Konrad Yakabuski notes that we should be looking to facilitate sustainable trade while eliminating giveaways to the corporate sector - not following Trump and Nigel Farage toward insularity and deglobalization.

- Adnan Al-Daini is right to highlight the good which can be done by a well-organized government. But he shouldn't crediting Theresa May as an example - particularly when she's furiously backtracking on her previous statements about including citizens and workers in corporate governance

-Finally, Kathy Vandergrift responds to the Trudeau Libs' obsession with deliverology by arguing that instead of focusing on narrow short-term measurements, we should be pursuing progressive realization which puts those types of goals in a far wider context.