Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- The Canadian Health Coalition weighs in on the recent study showing that privatized surgeries in Quebec cost more than twice what public procedures would. And Matt Bruenig discusses the U.S. Democrats' development of a layer of bureaucracy for a child care subsidy program intended to exclude only 1% of applicants as a painful example of prioritizing the limitation of access to benefits over the effectiveness of the benefit itself.  

- Sarah Wakeman discusses by the involuntary treatment requirements being pushed as a draconian alternative to harm reduction are dangerous. And Duncan Kinney reports on the deaths resulting from the UCP's insistence on abstinence-only public policy, including ones caused by facilities' lack of training and supplies to deal with drug poisonings.  

- Meanwhile, David Climenhaga writes about the utter refusal of Alberta's energy regulator to answer even the first questions about its coverup of toxic tailings pond leaks. 

- Martin Regg Cohn calls out the Ford PCs' combination of cuts and neglect which is undermining Ontario colleges and universities. 

- Zak Vescera examines what's at stake in the strike among federal employees. And Cory Doctorow discusses how workplace democracy can serve as the foundation for the broader application of democratic principles.

- Finally, Liana Hwang highlights how the availability of food shouldn't be a matter of charity - even as governments are increasingly leaning on food banks and other charities to provide the necessities of life so they can spend lavishly on luxuries for billionaires. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Evelyn Lazare discusses how the refusal of the powers that be to act to mitigate an ongoing pandemic is only ensuring that its effects will be worse and longer-lasting than they need to be. And Emily Moskal reports on a promising new type of long-cost, non-refrigerated vaccine which could provide a means of protecting everybody if any attempt were being made to help anybody. 

- Rebecca Leber writes about new data showing that air quality is deteriorating in the U.S. as the pollution caused by the productions of climate change (including wildfires, heat and drought) outweighs any gains in pollutant regulation. And the Canadian Press reports on a release of polluted water from a Suncor tar sands mine, while Natasha Bulowski reports on the warranted outrage of Indigenous leaders who were kept in the dark about Imperial Oil's release of toxic tailings into food and water sources.  

- Julian Jacobs writes about the contrast between the capital class which continues to rack up massive increases in wealth, and the recession of choice being imposed on workers. And David MacDonald points out how federal benefits for housing and dental care have seen low uptake rates which results in far less improvement of people's material conditions than promised. 

- Emily Leedham offers a primer on the strike among federal government bargaining units seeking to avoid losing ground, while Jeremy Appel reports on the massive strike vote among WestJet pilots. 

- Finally, Max Fawcett writes that the alt-right takeover of Twitter has allowed Pierre Poilivre to claim one victory over truth in his contrived fight against the CBC. And Martin Lukacs points out that beyond serving to separate more gullible supporters from their money, Poilievre's false outrage also works the refs to help ensure the CBC's coverage remains objectively biased in favour of conservatives. 

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- George Monbiot discusses how everybody is being forced to play COVID roulette due to the choice not to work toward clean and safe air. Sophie Peterson offers a personal perspective on the damage being done by the failure of governments to take long COVID seriously. And Sharon Kirkey reports on the finding by a panel led by Alex Himelfarb that even using conservative assumptions, thousands of deaths in Canada have been caused by COVID disinformation. 

- Linda McQuaig writes that Doug Ford owes Ontarians an explanation for his refusal to fund public services (concurrent with his willingness to throw money at private profiteers). Bea Bruske warns that Canadian workers can't be expected to accept an economic system which is rigged against them by allowing for price increases but not corresponding wage boosts. And Christopher Olk, Colleen Schneider and Jason Hickel discuss how universal public services help to protect people against inflation and deprivation alike - while also helping to rein in windfall corporate profits and concentration of wealth.  

- Unfortunately, Anna Clark points out how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is instead treating its mandate as being the protection of corporate profits rather than the public - including in failing to regulate vital screening tests. And Cory Doctorow is rightly outraged that Moderna is planning to gorge itself on obscene markups being applied to vaccines researched and developed through public resources. 

- Finally, David Wallace-Wells writes about the continued fallout from the Brexit debacle which has seen standards of living plummet - even as the alt-right everywhere continues to push blinkered nationalism with no regard for its obvious self-sabotage which results. 

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Niels-Jakob Hansen and Rui Mano study the effect of mask mandates in saving tens of thousands of lives in the U.S. alone - while noting that far more could have been saved if they had been more widely applied. Anthony Vasquez-Peddie reports on a new study showing that thousands of Canadians died as a result of the systemic fallout from the pandemic beyond those who succumbed to COVID directly. And Bruce Arthur writes that we can't afford for our leaders to confuse hope for a strategy in responding to the Omicron variant, while Matthew Yglesias laments that the U.S. has chosen not to put substantial resources into improving its pandemic preparation.  

- Shannon Proudfoot writes that Canadian politicians will again have no choice but to reckon with the climate crisis in 2022. And Nadia Thunderwoman George reminds us of the persistent effects of environmental racism. 

- David Zipper notes that the theme of individual responsibility for car crashes serves to conceal the systemic factors which actually cause them. And andrea bennett makes the case for free transit as a safer and healthier alternative to car culture. 

- Cyrus Tharpe writes that the current shortage of truckers is the result of unacceptable pay and working conditions, not a lack of willing workers. PressProgress examines new documents showing the pressure Amazon puts on its workers to work like machines at the expense of their health. And Matt Bodie reviews Gali Racabi's forthcoming paper reminding us that the prioritization of "management rights" over any other interest in the workplace is entirely a legal construct rather than an unavoidable state of affairs.  

- Finally, Matt Bruenig highlights the value of universal benefits in ensuring that social goods can be provided without a disproportionate burden on anybody. 

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Brian Goldman interviews Raywot Deonandan about the options available to limit the spread of COVID-19 through the coming fall and winter. But while most people are primarily concerned with the coronavirus directly, Adam Miller reports on the growing calls from health care workers to ensure the safety of essential service providers is assured against an increasingly violent and emboldened mob of anti-science quacks.

- Omayra Issa discusses how a climate breakdown in progress is causing anxiety and grief. Marieke Walsh reports on new polling showing overwhelming support for strong climate action in Canada even if it affects existing industries. And the Environmental Society of Saskatchewan offers (PDF) its recommendations to move the province toward a more appropriate level of climate ambition. 

- David Wallace-Wells muses that the strongest climate change rhetoric from political leaders is often coming from those who are trying to avoid doing their part. And Bill McKibben writes that we should be far past the point of expecting governments to fix the climate crisis - meaning that citizen action is the only plausible means of ensuring a habitable environment.

- Hannah Brais, Alex Nelson, Jesse Jenkinson and Kaitlin Schwan examine the connections between homelessness and women's rights. And Michelle Marcus and Katherine Yewell observe that universal free meals in schools produce significantly greater benefits for children from lower-income households than mere access. 

- Finally, Judd Legum weighs in on how corporate concentration and monopolization are the real cause of any current inflation facing consumers.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Steven Mackay writes about new research showing the different responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by gender - with the men who are disproportionately likely to die of the coronavirus expressing substantially less fear of its effects. 

- Robert Reich discusses how the inflation being used as an excuse to attack public spending and worker demands is in fact a result of profiteering by corporate monopolists. And George Monbiot writes that an end to extreme wealth is a must if we're going to rein in the climate crisis. 

- Mostafa Henaway offers an undercover account of life in an Amazon logistics facility - including the efforts made to winnow out all but the most compliant of employees to avoid unionization or any other worker strength. 

- Katherine Rader writes about new survey data showing that voters are far more likely to be persuaded by a commitment to strong universal programs than by mealy-mouthed bromides about access to for-profit services. 

- Finally, Gary Mason writes about the folly of Scott Moe's attempt to push nationalism as a substitute for even faintly competent government. Russell Wangersky discusses how Saskatchewan's citizens are worse off as a result of Moe's inflated sense of self-importance. And Steve Burgess evaluates the risk of Moe's bluster actually amounting to anything. 

On universal relief

Aside from the usual mantra that "NDP = CPC!", one of the most regularly-repeated Lib talking points criticizing the NDP's work trying to get coronavirus relief to all Canadians has been to point out that there's no single source of information available which contains the list of everybody who might receive help.

So let's talk about the real choices involved - and why the Libs' position pointing to the lack of a single source of information as a basis for limiting substantive relief is ultimately indefensible.

One of the core questions involved in any relief effort is its scope: whether the goal should be to include everybody in emergency funding, or to means-test and otherwise target what's going out. And the "not everybody's in the database!" talking point serves primarily as an excuse for saying we have no choice but to pursue the latter option.

Which, to put it simply, is asinine. If the best-case scenario is to reach 100% of the population, we're far better off starting with the best source of information available and adding recipients from there to fill in the gap, rather than starting from zero.

And that goes doubly given the obvious risks of setting up an application process outside or beyond the scope of anything else under federal jurisdiction.

The federal government has already shifted responsibility for its individual benefit away from EI after recognizing the current system wasn't set up to handle the previous iteration. But that means access to the core funding intended to keep Canadians afloat through a public health emergency will be running through a completely new and untested system. (Needless to say, the experience of federal civil servants with Phoenix should serve as a giant red flag on that front.)

So what's the effect on people in line to receive the benefit? Let's compare the Libs' scheme to an automatic helicopter drop to all Canadians in (say) the CRA's database.

For people already in the system, the Libs' scheme imposes unnecessary costs in time and effort on both the individuals applying, and the new mechanism set up to receive the applications. (And as many have pointed out, anybody who doesn't need the help can simply be taxed back next year when the system isn't so overwhelmed.)

And even for people left out of current information sources, a system of paying by default would be helpful. If you're going to need to apply to a new federal bureaucracy for benefits either way, surely it would be better to be among a relatively small number of people required to do so, rather than potentially getting stuck at the back of a backlog as millions of applications converge on the same system.

In sum, the lack of a complete list of people needing benefits doesn't represent a valid excuse for imposing either means-testing or mandatory registration under circumstances where it's possible to help people faster and more efficiently. And the people who left waiting for their emergency help will have reason to remember who's chosen to put barriers in their way.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Rachel Shabi writes that UK Labour's plans for universal social investments would be both more compassionate and more efficient than the Conservative-created tearing patchwork.

- Simon Jäger, Benjamin Schoefer and Jörg Heining study (PDF) the positive effects of worker representation in corporate governance. And Michael Laris and Ian Duncan report on the consequences of Boeing's obsession with short-term capital interests which led it to conceal defects on its planes.

- Fiona Harvey reports on the vast swaths of ocean facing oxygen deficiencies caused by climate change - as well as on the latest research from the European Environment Agency showing how incremental economic gains (to the extent they exist at all) are far short of being worth the destruction of a liveable environment. And Matt McGrath reports on the Global Carbon Project's conclusion that global emissions continue to rise even as the visible effects of carbon pollution become far more difficult to avoid. 

- Finally, CBC News reports on the increase in support for proportional representation in the wake of Canada's federal election. And PressProgress points out some of what's missing from the Libs' throne speech.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Sam Pizzigati discusses the predictable social consequences of allowing inequality to grow:

What sort of unintended consequences [result from increased inequality]? The British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have some compelling answers in their powerful new book, The Inner Level.

The more unequal a society, the pair write, “the more people feel anxiety about status and how they are seen and judged.” And not just poor people, but people at every economic level.

Some respond by losing all self-confidence. Social gatherings “become an ordeal to be avoided.” The more they withdraw, the more they “suffer higher levels of anxiety and depression.”

“Others react quite differently to the greater ego threat of invidious social comparisons,” observe Wilkinson and Pickett. “Instead of being modest about achievements and abilities, they flaunt them.”

Narcissism becomes endemic in highly unequal societies, and the issues of dominance and subordination that become so much more intense in unequal societies also exacerbate other mental illnesses and personality disorders.

Maybe worst of all, greater inequality undermines the “social relationships and involvement in community life” that researchers have “shown repeatedly” to determine health and happiness.
“By making class and status divisions more powerful,” sum up Wilkinson and Pickett, rising inequality “leads to a decline in community life, a reduction in social mobility, an increase in residential segregation, and fewer inter-class marriages.”

Unintended consequences.

So let’s by all means debate the unintended consequences of bold egalitarian reform proposals. But let’s not stop there. Let’s make sure the debate on these proposals also addresses the unintended consequences of letting our our lives continue to become ever more unequal.

- Stephen Kidd notes that narrowly-targeted social programs ultimately serve the interests of the wealthy who avoid funding more effective solutions, rather than the people who are forced to rely on a threadbare safety net.

- Jim Stanford points to the D-J Composites lockout - and the Newfoundland government's utter neglect of the workers affected - as a prime example of how political power is all too often used to favour wage-suppressing employers over workers. And Iglika Ivanova and Mark Thompson offer their suggestions to update labour and employment law to address new forms of exploitation.

- And on the bright side, Terry Pedwell reports on the pay equity arbitration decision won by rural and suburban postal carriers.

- Finally, Tom Parkin writes that the Ontario Court of Appeal's decision allowing Doug Ford to drastically interfere in Toronto's municipal elections should serve as a signal of the importance of political organizing.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Emma Paling discusses how the security of a basic income provides the opportunity to escape an abusive relationship. And Jim Stanford collects four views of a basic income from Australia, including this (PDF) from Ben Spies-Butcher:

There are two broad ways that politicians talk about welfare and social services that create these very different dynamics. One way is to tell a story of shared need. We all get sick, we all need Medicare. We all get old, we all need the pension. Those needs are often experienced differently. Some people get sick more than others. But the story focuses on what we have in common, and the policy is designed to emphasise what unites us. This creates a politics of universalism, and it does so even when the policy isn’t technically universal. In fact, there is little genuinely universal about Australia’s social policy; the pension sits next to super, Medicare next to subsidies for private health insurance. But the politics of these programs is based on a story of shared need, and so powerful is that story that even governments that initially opposed Medicare now legislate to retain it, and both sides of politics feel compelled to defend the pension.

The other story is one of rule following and deservingness, and ultimately of division. We can see it most obviously with immigration. Our expensive, unaccountable and inhumane system of offshore detention is the end result a form of ‘wedge politics’ based on showing how some people are deserving and others are not. The logic of ‘queue jumping’ mirrors the logic of breaching and quarantining for Newstart – it suggests there is a legitimate way to behave to access help, and if you do not behave that way you are cheating the system and should be refused. Conditionality is thus the cornerstone of wedge politics, it is the mechanism both to ‘test’ deservingness and to demonstrate to the public the importance of recipients being deserving. Of course, in both cases the very mechanismsthat are overtly designed to ‘test’ deservingness ultimately cause everyone to fail. In the public’s mind all refugees are suspect, and all those on Newstart are stigmatised.

It has been a very long time since progressives have won a debate about wedge politics. Victories are much more likely when campaigns reframe their goals in the language of universalism – as in ‘marriage equality’ and ‘love is love’. Of course, income payments are not the only way to reduce inequality and establish dignity. Decent jobs and social services are also important. Basic income is not a magic bullet, and when it is pitched as a retreat from those claims, as cheaper than public services or a safety net for mass unemployment, it is clearly not a progressive claim at all. But in the world we have, income is a basic social need – like health, education and housing – and income from employment is not guaranteed. In the short run, at least, it is an essential part of any progressive vision.

- The Equality Trust introduces its push for an Ownership Charter toward a more democratic economy in the UK.

- Jesse Eisinger writes that there may be a reason why the authors of extensive criminal activity around Donald Trump expected to avoid answering for their actions, as it's only the increased scrutiny of the political context that's led to the investigation of the type of white-collar crime which all too often goes unaddressed.

- Finally, Christo Aivalis examines some of the aftereffects of Maxime Bernier's announcement of a new, hard-right federal party. And Brent Patterson highlights the need for a serious response to Bernier's move to tap into the xenophobic sentiment that's done so much harm in other developed countries. 

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Melissa Benn discusses how private schools entrench a class divide within a generation - and argues that they should be eliminated in favour of an inclusive education system:

(W)e urgently need to renew the conversation about the private-public divide, and move beyond the superficial, profoundly apolitical debates of recent years. These have chiefly been characterised by the rolling out of the same information again and again, almost as if the private schools were not human creations but unchallengeable phenomena like the weather or religious deities. Over and over we are told: private schools achieve higher results; their graduates vacuum up the majority of places at the best universities; they take all the top jobs; they dominate the top of society. There is, as a result, a continual stirring up (with the liberal help of a few capital letters) of resentment, envy and panic – “Private pupils are SIX TIMES more likely to get A* grades at GCSEs than those at state schools”; “A third of private pupils score 3 A* grades at A-level compared to one in TEN at state schools” – finely seasoned with a good dollop of hopelessness: “The awful truth: to get ahead you need a private education.”
...
If we are to move the conversation on, then, we need to be clear that the success of private education is not replicable precisely because it offers the already socially and economically privileged superior resources and opportunities that inevitably augment their confidence and capabilities in every sphere. Private day schools now cost, on average, £14,500 a year – more than the annual disposable income of the average English family. Boarding is a great deal more costly. The annual fees of a top private school such as Westminster, which sends more students to Oxbridge than any other school in the country, are around £35,000 a year for boarders. Compare this with the average per-pupil spend in a state secondary school of between £4,000 and £6,000 a year. But the difference is not only in simple resources, for the spread of pupils at many state schools will include those from deprived or struggling families, compounding the pressures on their education and those who teach them, while a private school is in general recruiting from the already affluent, literate and enterprising. Thus, we need to publicly acknowledge that the success of private education is far less to do with character building or autonomous governance than the powerful alchemy of several kinds of advantage.

Now, more than ever, there is a strong moral and political argument in support of integration. At a time of growing divides and damaging inequality, we urgently need public institutions that bring the nation together, not further separate and divide us. For many in the UK, the idea of a unified education system to which all subscribe is too great a leap of the imagination, too daring a proposition – and yet the benefits of a common schooling could be immense.

Finland teaches us not only that state education will never be considered truly first-rate until we give all our children the same high-quality schooling, but also that a country that educates its children together has a better chance of being at ease with itself than one that segregates different parts of the population from an early age.

- And the BBC reports on Scotland's new policy making sanitary products available for free to students in order to remove one obvious drain on students' limited resources.

- Karri Munn-Venn makes the case for a federal budget which focuses on people's well-being, not merely GDP and profits. Gideon Resnick reports on Bernie Sanders' proposal to tax large employers who rely on social benefits to make up for their failure to pay a living wage. And David Olive offers a reminder of the tangible benefits of minimum wage increases.

- Meanwhile, Maya Bhullar talks to Hazel Corcoran the role workers' co-operatives can play in building a diverse economy with shared benefits.

- Finally, the New York Times' editorial board examines how harm reduction strategies are reducing the number of opioid-related deaths at the state level.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Martha Friendly, Susan Prentice and Morna Ballantyne discuss how universal child care is a necessary element of any serious push toward equality for women. Dennis Grunding notes that it will take a concerted public effort to secure the universal pharmacare program Canadians want and deserve - even though the blueprint was set out over half a century ago. And the Star's editorial board calls out the Libs for their stubborn and counterproductive refusal to consider universal social programs of any kind:

The research of Rothstein and others, drawing on numerous international examples, suggests universal programs have a number of advantages that should not be glibly dismissed by governments, especially ones concerned about the middle class and those aspiring to join it.

For instance, because everyone benefits from them and is therefore invested, universal programs have been shown to be more durable, less vulnerable to market fluctuations or political lurches. Commitment to medicare, for example, has not seriously wavered, even through major recessions and long stretches of austerity government.

Moreover, while the initial costs can seem politically prohibitive, universal programs often create significant long-term savings. A universal pharmacare program, for instance, would allow for the bulk-purchasing of drugs and the elimination of administrative bureaucracy, yielding billions of dollars in savings forgone by a more targeted approach.

Finally, and crucially for a government concerned about inequality, universal programs have been shown to promote solidarity and trust. Targeted or means-tested programs may stigmatize recipients, contributing to a sense that low-income people are apart from the rest of the community. “A welfare state built mainly on means-tested programs,” Rothstein writes, can actually “perpetuate feelings of inequality among both the poor and the more affluent.”

Such feelings should worry Trudeau. After all, the prime minister rightly observed that Donald Trump won the U.S. election in part because too many Americans felt they were not sharing in the country’s prosperity and that this was something Ottawa must also address. The evidence suggests universal programs, design depending, can be a powerful tool for doing just that.

- Meanwhile, Patrick DeRochie lists a few of the crucial social supports which are receiving substantially less federal money than the Libs are paying out in subsidies to oil and gas companies.

- Andrew Jackson points out the importance of measuring different types of poverty (including absolute and relative measures), and ensuring that public policy responds to all of them.

- Finally, Rick Salutin discusses the potentially valuable side of populism which genuinely reflects the interests of people excluded from decision-making. And commenting on the Ontario PCs' leadership campaign, Martin Regg Cohn recognizes the risks that arise when only anti-social candidates present populist messages.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Peter Whoriskey examines how inequality is becoming increasingly pronounced among U.S. seniors. And Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson discuss how inequality contributes to entrenching social divisions:

The toll which inequality exacts from the vast majority of society is one of the most important limitations on the quality of life – particularly in developed countries.  It damages the quality of social relations essential to life satisfaction and happiness. Numerous studies have shown that community life is stronger in more equal societies.  People are more likely to be involved in local groups and voluntary organisations.  They are more likely to feel they can trust each other, and a recent study has shown that they are also more willing to help each other – to help the elderly or disabled.  But as inequality increases, trust, reciprocity and involvement in community life all atrophy.  In their place – as numerous studies have shown – comes a rise in violence, usually measured by homicide rates.  In short, inequality makes societies less affiliative and more antisocial. 

If you look at some of the most unequal societies such as South Africa or Mexico, it is clear from the way that houses are barricaded, with bars on windows and doors and fences and razor wire round gardens, that people are frightened of each other.  That is dramatically confirmed by a quite different indication of exactly the same process: studies have shown that in more unequal societies a higher proportion of a society’s labour force is employed in what is classified as ‘guard labour’ – that is security staff, police, prisons officers etc.. Essentially, these are the occupations people use to protect themselves from each other.  
...
Important to understanding the effects of inequality is the way it affects mental health.  An international study has shown that more unequal societies have higher levels of status anxiety – not just among the poor, but at all income levels, including the richest decile.  Living in societies where some people seem extremely important and others are regarded as almost worthless does indeed make us all more worried about how we are seen and judged.  There are two very different ways people can respond to these worries.  They may respond by feeling overcome by a lack of confidence, self-doubt and low self-esteem, so that social gatherings feel too stressful and are seen as ordeals to be avoided and people retreat into depression.  Alternatively, and yet usually still a response to the same insecurities, people may go in for a process of self-enhancement or self-advertisement, trying to big themselves up in other’s eyes.  Instead of being modest about their achievements and abilities, they flaunt them, finding ways of bringing references into conversation of almost anything which helps them present themselves as capable and successful. 
...

But the real tragedy of this is not simply the costs of so much additional security or the human costs in terms of increasing violence.  It is, as research makes very clear, that social involvement and the quality of social relations, friendship and involvement in community life, are powerful determinants of both health and happiness.  Inequality strikes at the foundations of the quality of life.  Status insecurity and competition makes social life more stressful: we worry increasingly about self-presentation and how we are judged. Instead of the relationships of friendship and reciprocity which add so much to health and happiness, inequality means we prop ourselves up with narcissistic purchases or withdraw from social life.  Though this suits business and sales, it is not a sound basis for learning to live within the planetary boundaries.  

-  Dr. Dawg, the Star's editorial board and Sadiya Ansari each criticize the Quebec Libs' bigoted attack on women who wear niqabs. And Emmett Macfarlane highlights why Bill 62's deliberate discrimination isn't likely to survive a challenge in court.

- Danyaal Raza offers some lessons for the U.S. from his experience working in Canada's health care system. And Gillian Steward writes that Donald Trump's actions to strip health insurance from Americans shows how important it is that Canada didn't settle for anything less than universality.

- Meanwhile, Ian Welsh argues that Barack Obama missed an important opportunity to reshape the U.S.' economy through both stimulus legislation and executive action.

- Finally, Susan Scutti reports on new research showing that exposure to air pollution in the womb has life-long consequences for a person's health. And Bob Weber reports on new research showing that methane releases from Alberta's oil industry may be far worse than previously assumed.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- The Center for Economic Performance finds (PDF) that increased inequality and concentration among firms in an industry exacerbates disparities in wealth while putting downward pressure on wages. And Frank Partnoy warns that we may be headed for another financial crisis as loan obligations are again being repackaged as being far safer than they actually are.

- Sally Guy reviews Danielle Martin's Better Now as an important reminder of the value of universal public social programs. But Ruth Lopert and Steve Morgan offer a warning that the U.S.' plans for NAFTA include preventing Canada from building the national pharmacare program we want and deserve.

- Meanwhile, Cory Coleman reports that seniors with disabilities are the latest Saskatchewan residents to feel the brunt of the Saskatchewan Party's austerity. And Sarah Shartal points out the plight of Ontarians with disabilities who are similarly being left behind by their provincial government.

- The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour notes that Brad Wall has taken the unprecedented step of rejecting a labour nominee to the Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board.

- Bengt Petersson, Rodrigo Mariscal and Kotaro Ishi study how women's participation in the workforce is crucial for Canada's economic success. And Lana Payne discusses the need for more women in politics - particularly in leadership roles.

- Finally, Shannon Gormley rightly wonders why any politician - let alone the entirety of the Libs and Cons - would have any trouble accepting the general principle that we shouldn't sell arms to human rights abusers. And Yves Engler points out that the Libs are similarly backing corporate human rights abuses by Canadian mining firms operating around the world.

Leadership 2017 Links

The latest from the federal NDP's leadership campaign.

- Jagmeet Singh offered a must-read Multiculturalism Day take on the extra challenges faced by people fighting negative stereotypes, while also announcing his first caucus endorsement from Randall Garrison.

- However, Andrew Jackson chimed in with a note of caution about Singh's plan to fold Old Age Security into an income-tested benefit for seniors. 

- Guy Caron stepped forward to critique Phillipe Couillard's attempt to conflate Muslim faith with terrorism. And Niki Ashton proposed a health care plan which includes adding dental care and other preventative care (along with a focus on the social determinations of health) to Canada's national medicare system.

- Jeremy Nuttall's report on the latest debate (hosted by the United Steelworkers and addressing labour issues in particular) focused on the strategic voting issue. Meagan Gilmore highlighted the candidates' support for labour while noting a few areas of developing disagreement. And Christo Aivilis reviewed the candidates' performances while emphasizing the importance of winning support for the NDP in particular, not merely running against pone or more right-wing competitors.

- Campaign Research's latest polling shows Singh slightly ahead in the general public, and Charlie Angus with a narrow lead among NDP supporters and self-declared members - though the most important finding is the modest public awareness of the candidates.

- Finally, Adam Radwanski points out both the rewards and the risks in front of NDP members due to the diversity of plausible winners in the race. Tim Harper notes that all of the leadership candidates are staking out distinctly progressive positions to at least some extent, rather than limiting themselves to centrist platitudes. Tom Parkin argues that instead of making a concerted push in any particular direction for strategic purposes, the leadership candidates (and NDP members choosing between them) should place a priority on authenticity and trust. And Duncan Cameron highlights the importance of presenting a positive vision for change.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Nina Shapiro comments on the price of privatizing public goods. And George Monbiot weighs in on how the Grenfell Tower fire confirms that what corporatist politicians deride as "red tape" is in fact vital protection for people:

For years successive governments have built what they call a bonfire of regulations. They have argued that “red tape” impedes our freedom and damages productivity. Britain, they have assured us, would be a better place with fewer forms to fill in, fewer inspections and less enforcement.

But what they call red tape often consists of essential public protections that defend our lives, our futures and the rest of the living world. The freedom they celebrate is highly selective: in many cases it means the freedom of the rich to exploit the poor, of corporations to exploit their workers, landlords to exploit their tenants and industry of all kinds to use the planet as its dustbin. As RH Tawney remarked, “Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows.”
...
Crucial public protections have long been derided in the billionaire press as “elf ’n’ safety gone mad”. It’s not hard to see how ruthless businesses can cut costs by cutting corners, and how this gives them an advantage over their more scrupulous competitors.

The “pollution paradox” (those corporations whose practices are most offensive to voters have to spend the most money on politics, with the result that their demands come to dominate political life) ensures that our protections are progressively dismantled by governments courting big donors.

Conservative MPs see Brexit as an excellent opportunity to strip back regulations. The speed with which the “great repeal bill” will have to pass through parliament (assuming that any of Theresa May’s programme can now be implemented) provides unprecedented scope to destroy the protections guaranteed by European regulations. The bill will rely heavily on statutory instruments, which permit far less parliamentary scrutiny than primary legislation. Unnoticed and undebated, crucial elements of public health and safety, workers’ rights and environmental protection could be made to disappear.

Too many times we have seen what the bonfire of regulations, which might sound like common sense when issuing from the mouths of ministers, looks like in the real world. The public protections that governments describe as red tape are what make the difference between a good society and barbarism. It is time to bring the disastrous deregulatory agenda to an end, and put public safety and other basic decencies ahead of corner-cutting and greed.

- Jane Philpott rightly points out how double-billing is contrary to the spirit of the Canada Health Act and the goal of an effective universal health care system - though it's worrisome that her response to the growth of the practice is merely to express concern, rather than taking real steps as the minister with authority to actually implement a policy response. And The Sunday Edition discusses how overtreatment and overdiagnosis create both dangers for patients, and added costs for our health care system.

- Gary Younge writes that Jeremy Corbyn has fundamentally changed the rules of UK politics by mobilizing voters who had previously been ignored. Naomi Klein discusses the importance of offering the public a substantial vision worth voting for. Rick Salutin looks at the parallels between Corbyn and Bernie Sanders in winning over younger voters with unabashed left-wing policy, while Matt Taibbi hopes that corporate-focused centrists will no longer be taken seriously when they claim they're the best progressive voters can hope for. And Sam Kriss takes Corbyn's success as an opportunity to recognize that socialist policies are in fact broadly popular.

- Finally, Brett Murphy explores how the trucking industry is set up to exploit drivers. And Graeme Wood reports on a push to ensure that contracting-out arrangements don't serve as a means to evade paying fair wages at Vancouver's airport.

Friday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Maureen Conway and Mark Popovich argue that something has gone severely wrong if (as seems to be the case) Wall Street is treating higher wages as bad news:

In 2017, America has a jobs problem: It’s not that we don’t have enough jobs, but that we don’t have enough good jobs. We all lose when pay raises for workers – despite rising productivity and quality service – are unreasoningly restrained.

Corporate leaders say things like, “Our people are our most important asset.” The problem is that too few act like they believe it. And too many face Wall Street brickbats when they do. It’s time to turn down the distraction and up the voices for reasonable investment and due consideration to our workforce. If finance and investing take the right aim, the switch will be made to more good companies and good jobs.

- Meanwhile, David Dayen makes the case for a public job guarantee, while pointing out how the Center for American Progress' proposal on the issue falls somewhat short of the mark.

- Corey Mintz points out the problems with the Ontario Libs' workplace review in assuming that existing laws are actually being enforced. And Gary Marr reports on a new TD Bank study showing how widespread income volatility contributes to precarious lives for Canadian families.

- David MacDonald asks who stands to benefit from the Libs' infrastructure bank plan, and concludes that the only real gains will go to investors taking far larger returns than would exist if governments merely borrowed infrastructure money directly. And Shawna Curtis points out the problem with necessities like housing being treated solely as profit centres rather than social goods.

- Finally, Marc-Andre Gagnon discusses why universal programs which include benefits for the better-off ultimately lead to greater equality than means-tested systems. And Harold Meyerson highlights how income inequality correlates to disparate life expectancies.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Dan Levin writes that Christy Clark and her B.C. Libs have turned British Columbia into a haven for capital to run wild without any social responsibility or public benefit:

Like many places, British Columbia set up a system of tax incentives to lure businesses to the far western Canadian province in the hopes of creating jobs and transforming Vancouver into a global financial center.

But if the program has been good for business, it’s been less beneficial for British Columbia.

Participating companies have created few jobs, according to government figures, while more than 140 million Canadian dollars ($106 million) have been doled out in tax refunds since 2008, when the initiative was expanded.

The incentives operate under a cloak of secrecy that is unusual for similar efforts in Canada and the United States, critics say. The province will not name the companies that get the breaks. The only information available about them is on the website of a nonprofit that promotes the program.

“This is essentially a temporary foreign-worker program for the rich, with secret government subsidies for multinational corporations,” said Dermod Travis, the executive director of IntegrityBC, a nonpartisan political watchdog group based in Victoria, the provincial capital. “The government is selling B.C. as a tax haven for the global elite to park investment here, but not have to contribute.”

- Meanwhile, Jeremy Nuttall exposes just a few of the more blatant lies which Clark is substituting for any reasonable defence of her record or plans.

- Branko Milanovic examines just a few of the reasons why we need to be concerned about inequality - as well as some of the areas where there's room for far more study as to its effects. 
 
- Andre Picard highlights how Canada's current patchwork of prescription drug coverage is contrary to the principles of universal health care. And Steve Morgan makes the case for universal pharmacare, while Martin Regg Cohn emphasizes the importance of making such a program available to everybody.

- Finally, Alan Broadbent criticizes the City of Toronto for leaving needed city-owned social housing to rot.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Abi Wilkinson writes about the importance of making social benefits universal in order to reflect a sense of shared interests and purpose:

Universal aspects of the welfare state tend to be thought of as the fruit of common endeavour. The NHS tops the list of things that make people in this country proud to be British, ahead of the royal family and armed forces. The suggestion that some patients should be charged for hospital visits is likely to make most shudder. Such a reform is widely understood as contrary to everything the NHS is about. Once you’ve introduced a universal provision, it is politically difficult to remove it. Voters are fiercely protective of the entitlements that come to be understood as basic rights.

Means-tested benefits, on the other hand, are seen more as a form of charity. As such, it’s frequently argued that they should go only to the “deserving poor”. The specific definition of “deserving” is a subject of constant public debate. Those further towards the left of the political spectrum are more likely to argue that income level is the only relevant factor. Those on the right tend to see welfare as a tool to control the behaviour of recipients and often insist on additional moral tests. This is the logic that drives the benefit sanctions regime, and the recent cut to child tax credits for families with more than two children.
...
It’s true that money spent on middle-class kids’ dinners could theoretically be directed at poorer pupils in more targeted ways, but that misses the point. Maximising cost-effectiveness isn’t what universality is about. Children who receive free school meals report being bullied and stigmatised, and many families who are entitled to claim them avoid doing so for this reason. Others earn just above the £16,190 income threshold but still struggle with the cost of food. Families with an income below the threshold are excluded if a parent works more than 16 hours per week. In some cases, children go hungry not for financial reasons but because of parental neglect. Providing a hot meal to every child ensures that nobody falls through the net.

There’s a solid, practical argument for Labour’s proposal, but focusing only on direct outcomes fails to capture the true challenge facing the party. The welfare reforms introduced under New Labour were largely means-tested. For this reason, the Conservatives have found it easy to roll back much of the progress that was made. The most resilient aspects of our welfare state are the universal provisions which were introduced decades ago.
...
Of course the problems with our education system won’t be solved with a single policy, but this could represent a symbolic turning point. Expanding universal provisions could be at the centre of a genuinely exciting vision for the future of the country. More radical options, such as a universal basic income, have also been discussed, but there are all kinds of possibilities. To convince disillusioned voters it has something to offer, Labour needs to be brave and think big. Fiddling with numbers on a spreadsheet won’t cut it.

- Meanwhile, Henry Mintzberg comments on the dangers of trying to run government like a business.

- Jordon Cooper discusses how important public institutions and vulnerable people are bearing the brunt of Brad Wall's cutbacks, even as corporations are handed goodies with no prospect of any public benefit. And Murray Mandryk highlights how this year's extreme austerity budget has made clear that the Saskatchewan Party's supposed concern for people with disabilities has proven illusory.

- CBC reports on new research showing the strong effect of rent subsidies on the well-being of lower-income citizens of Waterloo. But Shawn Jeffords notes that the Ontario Libs and Cons shot down an NDP attempt to ensure that rent is more affordable.

- Finally, Adnan Al-Daini writes that even the dirtiest government Donald Trump can think to administer won't stop the spread of clean energy around the globe. And on that front, Natasha Geiling reports on the imminent end of new coal power in Europe.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Andrew Coyne and Rob Mason each discuss Justin Trudeau's broken promise of a fairer electoral system. Chantal Hebert observes that the commitment itself - however frequently and fervently repeated - looks to have been little more than a cheap campaign prop. And Karl Nerenberg highlights how the Libs sucked in "strategic" voters with a promise they've done nothing but try to avoid keeping, while Ethan Cox places the false hope of electoral reform within a pattern of Lib lies.

- Andre Picard comments on the key issues which need to be addressed in Canadian health care - and particularly the importance of properly defining and funding medically necessary services, rather than letting user fees serve as a barrier to access.

- Carmen Lawrence asks who's really running Australia at a time when government choices seem to be oriented solely toward enriching corporate supporters:

It’s clear Australians are increasingly wary of the power of big business; in the latest post-election survey by researchers at the Australian National University, 74% responded “yes” to the proposition that “big business has too much power”, with 56% (up from the last survey) agreeing that “government is run for a few big interests”.
...
In the face of frequent revelations about corporate wrongdoing and corruption – including participation in foreign bribery, accelerating levels of tax avoidance and evasion, fraudulent misrepresentation of financial products, systematic underpayment of wages, and environmental vandalism – governments, state and federal, have not responded with robust measures to deter such practices. Nor have they made good use of the powers they already have to take effective action, despite evidence of clear abuses of corporate power.  

- And Sarah Cox raises similar concerns in British Columbia, where the Clark Libs are engaged in a scorched-earth campaign to stifle critics while pushing the controversial (but business-friendly) Site C project to the point where the public can't vote to stop it.

- Finally, Elise Stolte reports on a positive development out of Edmonton's City Council, which has voted to apply a subset clause to private reports to make sure they can be publicly reviewed once information is no longer sensitive.