Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Crawford Killian writes about the dangers of becoming unduly relaxed about a new COVID wave (with particular reference to South Korea's experience). Bruce Y. Lee notes that Austria has reinstated mask mandates based on its belated recognition that it couldn't afford to abandon public health measures. And Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon reports on a push for improved case reporting and transparency in New Brunswick, while David Shield reports that the lone source of ongoing reporting which Scott Moe hasn't been able to squelch is showing an explosion of transmission driven by the BA.2 Omicron variant. 

- Meanwhile, Zak Vescera reports on the growing number of children being born with syphilis and/or HIV in Saskatchewan as the Moe government ignores the need for prenatal care. 

- William Barber writes that the participation of poor and marginalized voters is a must for any remotely democratic system. 

- Lindsay Owens highlights how businesses are engaging in blatant price-gouging while falsely blaming inflation and other economic factors. Abe Asher discusses how the fossil fuel sector is taking its cue from anti-BDS laws to try to stifle any climate action based on holding corporations responsible for the damage they're doing to our planet. 

- Finally, in a column which is obviously relevant to how we view recent developments in Canada, John Harwood discusses how Obamacare has become an accepted fact of life in the U.S. even among the Republicans who once railed against it. 

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Bruce Arthur examines what the spread of the Omicron COVID variant figures to mean for Ontario. Rachel Emmanuel reports on the National Advisory Committee on Immunization's recommendation that all Canadian adults receive COVID booster shots. Alex Putterman examines how the need is exacerbated by the Omicron variant, while Josh Marshall points out that the gap in effect between vaccination and prior infection is only growing. And Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal write about the breakdown in social awareness which is resulting in large groups in the U.S. (and substantial ones in Canada as well) remaining unvaccinated with no regard for the danger to themselves and others.

- Meanwhile, Nicole Ireland reports on how patients and health care workers alike are feeling the effects of a health system bearing unmanageable burdens due to Scott Moe's fourth wave in Saskatchewan.

- Max Fawcett discusses why right-wingers fear allowing young people to vote on their own future - and why responsible political actors shouldn't let the reactionaries have their way. And Stella Levantesi and Giulio Corsi document how fossil fuel industry's latest set of scare tactics in their decades-old crusade to stifle climate action.

- Matt Gurney notes that we can't afford to let our future political choices be constrained by past expectations which don't fit into an evolving world at large - though it's worth noting that the expectation of a fossil fuel-based economy is likely the most important one currently limiting the perceived range of options in Canadian politics. 

- Finally, Kyla Tienhaara notes that two lawsuits arising out of Keystone XL signal how corporate trade agreements allow the ghosts of past trade negotiations to impose unacceptable costs on future democratic decision-making. And Jiwon Choi et al. trace how NAFTA produced first massive job losses in vulnerable U.S. counties, and then a shift in voting patterns away from the Democrats.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- As Jason Kenney and Scott Moe rush to slash public health protections including mask mandates, Gavin Leech et al. study how important masking has been in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Sarah Bridge, Ioanna Roumeliotis and Joseph Loiero highlight how rules which actually responded to the dangers of the coronavirus could have saved thousands of lives in Ontario. And Concepcion de Leon offers some suggestions for families considering traveling in the midst of the continued pandemic - with the key point being to recognize (unlike government officials) that children under 12 are at substantial risk.

- Meanwhile, Umair Haque writes about the shortages of catastrophe caused by the pandemic - and the likelihood that after failing to address the underlying causes of supply fragility, we'll see even worse economic breakdowns in the future. 

- Zachary Wolf discusses the drought and water depletion which represent the new normal for the western U.S. 

- Joe Pinsker argues that we should be pushing for a four-day work week as part of a logical progression toward making life less centred on work.

- Finally, Jake Thompson makes the case to lower the legal voting age to 16 in order to ensure that the people most affected by policy decisions in the long run actually have some say.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Simon Wren-Lewis discusses how media negligence allowed austerian economics to be treated as credible long after any pretense of academic merit has been debunked.

- Kevin Milligan and Tammy Schirle examine the relationship between income and life expectancy in Canada - featuring both the comparatively good news that we haven't seen a U.S.-style increase in the disparity between high and low incomes, and the reality that the preexisting gap also hasn't been reduced.

- Meanwhile, Joan Grant comments on the growing housing gap in the UK, as homeowners have become wealthier while housing has become ever less accessible for renters.

- Bethany Hastie and Daniel Mare identify a few simple changes to ensure British Columbians in precarious work are able to exercise their freedom of association and improve their working conditions. And Celine McNicholas, Samantha Sanders and Heidi Shierholz offer their set of suggestions to bolster workers' rights south of the border.

- Emily Atkin points out the need for a sea change in our transportation infrastructure as part of any meaningful effort to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. But the Canadian Press reports that the Trudeau Libs' main priority is instead to ensure that public spending on transit comes at the price of interest payments to private investors.

- Finally, Eli Day writes about a long-overdue movement to ensure that U.S. prisoners - along with anybody else with a stake in public policy - are able to exercise their right to vote.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The New York Times' editorial board comments on the predictable flow of the Trump tax cuts toward primarily the few who already had more wealth than they could possibly put to productive use. And Tom Parkin discusses Jagmeet Singh's expectation that Canadians expect better from their government:

Surely one sharp contrast will be drawn with Trudeau’s proposed Infrastructure Bank, which hands over public infrastructure financing to private capital investors. Trudeau’s private banking approach increases financing costs significantly. And, because investor profits are required, Trudeau’s plan gives private investors a significant role in controlling which infrastructure projects — roads, bridges, community centres, transit — go forward and which won’t.

On infrastructure, Singh has plenty of room to develop contrasting policies that regain public control over projects and redirect financing costs into more project construction.

Another sharp policy contrast is likely to be drawn over tax policies. Trudeau, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper before him, continues to cut taxes and maintain loopholes for corporations and high-income Canadians, creating an increasingly unfair tax system.
...
Singh’s contrasting vow to “unrig” the tax system and restore fairness isn’t new. During his NDP Leadership campaign, Singh released a bundle of tax fairness proposals including increased corporate taxes, higher taxes on incomes over $350,000 and an estate tax on high inherited wealth. Those ideas may now get fine-tuned, but clearly they will not be abandoned.

The broad strokes of Singh’s conflict with Trudeau have been drawn. Jagmeet Singh doesn’t simply seek to replace Justin Trudeau. Singh seeks to rebuild a trust, broken by Trudeau, that public infrastructure and progressive taxation are social goods that create fairness and a strong country. If Singh can rebuild that trust he will have put himself on strong ground for his conflict with Justin Trudeau in 2019.

- Meanwhile, Ed Pilkington reports on the massive amounts of money spread around by U.S. billionaires to attack public-sector unions to lay the groundwork for this week's Supreme Court argument to trash the concept of collective action. And Rachel Cohen highlights some of the consequences if collective bargaining is treated as pure free speech rather than a separate class of activity.  

- Chris O'Neill-Yates reports on Husky's "economic" decision to risk a collision between an oil production vessel and an iceberg, while the Canadian Press reports on the HMCS Calgary's fuel spill off of Vancouver Island.

- Max Fineday argues that there's no prospect of reconciliation in Canada as long as Indigenous people's lives are being treated as expendable. And Tanya Talaga discusses how a long and shameful track record of deaths without accountability parallels the history of injustice for Indigenous people.

- Finally, John Nichols makes the case to lower the legal voting age to 16.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Abigail McKnight and Richard Reeves write about the gilded floor that prevents the wealthy from facing the realities lived by most people. Eric Levitz discusses how the Trump economy is producing plenty for the ultra-rich, but little but mediocrity for everybody else. And Michelle Styczynski points out that there's no apparent connection between the stock market and wage levels:

This leads us to ask: Are these two variables even correlated? When the S&P increases, does the real wage also increase? Correspondingly, when the S&P decreases, does the real wage decrease? From 1950 to 1975, they were largely positively correlated. But after 1975, the correlation tended to be more negative than positive. Meaning, when the S&P increases the real wage tends to decrease, and when the S&P decreases the real wage tends to increase. After 1975, on average, while one was moving up the other was moving down.

Political leaders seem to believe that what’s good for the stock market is good for the larger economy. But the data show that since the 1980s, when the stock market rises, wages barely move. Today, hourly wage earners – who constitute nearly 60 percent of the workforce – are only making slightly more on average than they did forty years ago. In fact, if the federal minimum wage kept pace with the average hourly wage and average productivity since the late 1960s, it would be over $18 per hour today.

Yet, political and business leaders still proceed as if the stock market is key to measuring the success of the economy. Perhaps the stock market tells us about the prospects of capital owners, but it certainly doesn’t tell us much about the average worker.

- Meanwhile, Citizens for Public Justice offers its proposals for the federal budget to help citizens, not merely productivity statistics. And Thomas Walkom argues that we should expect far more than mere tweaks to NAFTA's unlevel playing field between corporations and people.

- Rebecca Leber reports on what climate scientists found when they took up Exxon's invitation to compare its past research to its public denialism. And Katharine Hayhoe offers the perspective of one of the scientists whose work was made subordinate to the PR campaign to keep pushing dirty energy. 

- Finally, Jerry Dias comments on how the Cons and other right-wing parties created and nurtured the bigoted media monsters they're now trying to disavow. And Chuck Schumer discusses the connection between racism and the right's constant attacks on access to the polls.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Jim Stanford writes that Tim Hudak's combination of austerity and indiscriminate tax slashing represents a recipe for less jobs rather than more:

Mr. Hudak’s initial policy agenda is mostly a recycled business wish list: cut taxes, cut regulations, pay for training, cut energy costs, free trade.  Its logic is 100% trickle-down economics: anything that’s good for business, must be good for jobs and for all of society.  There is no powerful stimulative or expansionary impetus coming from any of those 5 proposals (unlike some other policies being debated in this election, like infrastructure investments and transit programs, which have a logical and direct connection to employment).  And whatever positive employment gains were generated by any of those five measures would be massively swamped by the negative side-effects of the severe fiscal contraction required to achieve Mr. Hudak’s “biggest” job-creating goal: namely, simply balancing the budget.

There is a way in which balanced budgets and job-creation are logically connected — but the direction of causation is exactly the opposite of Mr. Hudak’s argument.  Ontario’s deficit today is overwhelmingly due to the downturn in employment that accompanied the 2008-09 financial crash and recession — recovery from which has been painfully slow and inadequate.  (Remember, for several years before the recession hit, Ontario’s budget was balanced.)  Restoring the employment rate to its 2008 level would mean 250,000 more jobs, and generate billions in additional revenues (through personal income taxes, HST revenues, growing spending, and other streams).  The deficit will take care of itself, if and when we put Ontarians back to work.

- Alex Boutilier reports on the Cons' latest laughable claim to secrecy - this time claiming cabinet confidence to withhold information about pensions from the Auditor General. And Larry Pynn highlights the frustration of one mayor with the Cons' insistence on providing total secrecy to shippers of dangerous goods - even as against the public who could be left with no warning of a potential disaster. 

- David Dayen responds to baseless criticisms of Seattle's new $15 minimum wage, while pointing out that the minimum should properly reflect a living wage. And Iglika Ivanova examines the need for a living wage to help combat child poverty in Vancouver.

- Sid Ryan discusses the role of unions in ensuring that the benefits of growth are shared across the population as a whole, while pointing out a few areas demanding immediate attention.

- Finally, Frances Russell argues that the Chief Justice of Canada was bound to make Stephen Harper's public enemies list at some point, while Jeffrey Simpson still sees the attack as a new low. And the CP reports on another case which figures to bring the judicial system into the Cons' cross-hairs, as the Ontario Superior Court has restored the constitutional right to vote to a million Canadians living abroad who were stripped of their say by the Harper government.