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Politics and Entertainment: My Take-Away from the System Change Initiative
There are of course many different but complementary take-aways from the Council of Canadians System Change Initiative: systemchange.ca. This is a summary of what seems salient if not crucial to me: Global Warming is caused by unsustainable economic production in the material world, a process that has been driven by an abundance of energy, the
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Finding New Strategies for Progressives in Canada
A few weeks back, Andrew Coyne wrote an excruciatingly epideictic column for The National Post on the virtues of free trade in general, stressing in the process how virtuous CETA (the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) is likely to be for Canada. It was such an egregiously neoliberal column
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Peak Everything and a Perpetual No Growth Economy
Many heterodox economists and post-carbon researchers – most notably Richard Heinberg in several books but particularly in his seminal The End of Growth and Chris Martenson in The Crash Course – have recognized that, among other lesser causes, because of peak oil, the core source of energy that has been
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: McGuinty-Redford Dollar-Tar Sands Dance
Wouldn’t a lower Canadian dollar encourage both foreign investment in Canada and investment and saving by Canadians in Canada where purchasing power would be stronger than in a foreign market? And wouldn’t it also make Canadian export goods, no matter which province is their source, more attractive to foreign buyers since they
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Weaver’s Data is on #tarsands is Incomplete: It’s not the Whole Picture
As I predicted, there was much hype this week about Andrew Weaver’s research from the oil industry and some specious logic from a few suckered journalists who hopped on the story as a repudiation of exaggerated claims made by environmentalists about the tar sands. But, as Weaver himself points out (http://t.co/v5E28Xr3),
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Moral Distinctions Matter in the Toews-Social Media Brouhaha
It’s important to make a moral distinction between the actions of Vikileaks30 and Anonymous – the latter’s actions clearly constituting an overt and hostile threat – instead of lumping them together, as some eager journalists have, in sanctimonious indignation. The effect if not the intention of Vikileaks30’s tweets was to
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: The Response to Toews’ List Should be one of Absolute Outrage
http://goo.gl/qswg The response from both the media and politicos to Toews’ list seems remarkably tepid to me. Shouldn’t an appropriate response be one of absolute outrage? I certainly consider this threat to progressives to be the most heinous, the most openly articulated, the widest assault yet perpetrated by the Harper Regime
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Gateway is Certainly in Sinopec’s Interests. It is in No way in Canada’s National Interests
Defenceless: Selling Our Sovereignty Glavin’s been writing a series of articles on our retreat from even gesturing in the direction of national security interests in our trade and foreign investment dealings. We are sacrificing both our natural resources and sovereign power in the interests of what is clearly a neoliberal agenda:
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Overlapping Agendas and Neoliberal Markers
This is a brief addendum to my last post. Of course four other obvious neoliberal markers that precede the four mentioned in that post are TFSAs, proposed PRPPs – both of which serve the financialization of the economy, a major global neoliberal project – a series of corporate tax cuts, and
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Most Commentators and Economists Say Threshold Change for OAS is Unnecessary
Surveying recent media coverage including economists referenced or interviewed, one will discover that roughly 9 out of 10 commentators argue that the age threshold for OAS does not require changing to maintain sustainable funding for the program despite swelling seniors’ ranks and a decreasing Canadian population. Neither the argument that
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: The Assault on the OAS is the Beginning of an Attempt to Strengthen Neoliberal Principles
Yesterday on CTV Question Period, Dan Gardner’s argued that it a was good thing to raise the entry level for the OAS by at least two years because everybody else has done it Well, Dan, just because everyone else has done it doesn’t make it right, especially when the reasons for doing
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Some Canadians are snoozing while Harper continues his destructive crusade through democracy, the environment, and the Canadian economy; but not all
As Susan Riley suggests in the Citizen today, most Canadians are snoozing through President Harper’s vicious assault on democracy, the environment, and, more noticeably recently, the Canadians economy. If you’ve read any of my other posts here about the Harper Regime’s extraordinary misspending and misguided attempts to manage the economy – which
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Debt Continues To Smother Us All Thanks to the Banksters
So here’s how it works. Although coming off record profits in 2011, Canadian banksters have decided to nickel and dime us in 2012 with their new chequing and ATM fees. Why? Because, on the one hand, healthy corporations are hoarding their Flaherty tax cuts cash, are understandably reluctant to invest given a
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Keystone, Northern Gateway pipelines raise questions that need answers before approval
The Star: This is the most realistic and sensible perspective I’ve seen on the environment-oil-pipeline dilemma. Olive is right: oil as our primary source of energy is not going to go away any time soon. It took well over 50 years to shift from coal as a primary source of
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: More Figures Illustrating Harper Regime’s Economic Mismanagement
Okay, here are some new revelations adding to what I’ve enumerated before. This is probably no surprise given the misguided law and order agenda and the Harperites’ fondness for locking people up whenever they can, but capital spending by the Correctional Services of Canada is up by 146% in the
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: The Harper Regime is Playing Dangerous Game
By unleashing strident propagandistic messages aimed nominally at environmentalists but really anyone opposed to or even questioning of the Gateway pipeline, the Harper Regime is playing a dangerous game in attempting to limit legitimate discussion on the Gateway pipeline. This is, as David Eaves argues, given all the complex issues involved, exactly the moment
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Yeah, right, President Harper and his Stepford Wives Are Such Good Economic Managers
Let me get this straight. This past week we learned that the Harper Regime spent $53.8 million in 2009-10 spinning their “Economic” Action Plan to a gullible populace – a budget that is more than the annual advertising budget for the entire federal government before 2006, the year the Regime took power.
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Cuts for Cash: Think about how absolutely appalling and hypocritical this tactic is
Cuts for cash: it can only spur mangers to propose even deeper cuts. Only a nasty neoliberal would use the profit motive to conduct what is supposed to be a rational, considered appraisal of departmental services and staffing needs in the Public Service. And how much is the per diem
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Five Lumps of Coal for Canada’s Economy
The recent IMF Report on Canada prompts me to remind everyone of some startling figures about the Canadian economy: 1) The private and federal debt combined ratio to GDP is an astonishing 203%. 2) The jobless rate in November is 7.4%, the worst in 5 months. 3) Youth unemployment is
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