Christopher Monkcton has taken time out of his busy schedule of being completely wrong about climate change to be completely wrong about economics too, in the pages of the Obama-birther and general conspiracist World News Daily: BANKRUPT: CYPRUS TODAY, AMERICA TOMORROWExclusive: Lord Monckton has action plan to protect your wealth
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Autonomy For All: Mulcair Displays Actual Courage
Federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair has frankly demonstrated astonishing political courage in being willing to speak up on behalf of Gary Freeman, a black American who had lived in Canada under an assumed name for decades while hiding from US authorities on an aggravated assault charge involving a Police officer
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Progressive Bloggers and Meta
I’m pleased to announce my little site was accepted by the good people at Progressive Bloggers as an “affiliate.” This means my posts will show up in their feed and I’m on their blogroll. Aside from possibly driving more eyeballs to my work (which has become increasingly Canadian focused as
Continue readingAutonomy For All: A Manhattan Project For the Climate
We need a Manhattan Project for the climate. That is a large, government led, well funded research and development effort to build technologies, techniques and policies that get global emissions at or below sustainable levels within 20 years. Large government led programs have long proven to be an effective way
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Why China Should Not Go First on Climate Change
It may actually be the climate denialists’ favourite refrain (particularly in Canada), that since China is now the world leader on carbon emissions, it has the moral obligation to lead on emissions reduction and countries like Canada can sit back until China or India have taken action. It is true
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Equality of Opportunity Requires Greater Equality
I know this isn’t new to many, but it doesn’t get said enough. Various conservatives and neoliberals get away with saying “I’m for greater equality of opportunity, meritocracy, but not enforced greater equality.“ They should be called out on it, as it is utter nonsense. You cannot promote equality of
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Solid Monckton Journalism
Viscount Monckton is on another one of his highly lucrative climate denial evangelism tours of Australia. I caught this great piece from a Tasmanian newspaper called “The Mercury”, Monckton’s Hot Air: At a public lecture in Hobart this week, he said there had been no global warming for at least
Continue readingAutonomy For All: How Difficult is Senate Abolition? A Law Professor Responds
Yesterday I came across this piece in the Hill Times that was quite negative on the constitutional prospects for Senate abolition. A couple different experts were quoted in the piece, and a couple elements of what they’re quoted as saying weren’t clear to me so I wrote to one of
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Most Senates are Subordinate to Lower Houses
I can’t claim to have reviewed every one of the 60 odd national governments with Senates, but in my review of a large number I find that limitations similar to what I outlined for Australia’s Senate are the norm, not the exception. Canadians probably have a skewed view based on
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Canadian Senate Reformers Should Not Cite The Australian Senate
Advocates of Senate reform (particularly direct election of Canadian Senators) have taken to citing Australia’s Senate as evidence that elected and democratically legitimate Senates are compatible with well run societies (here, here and here). They should desist, unless they are prepared to advocate for an actual Australian model Senate, which
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Chrisopher Monckton, Climate Skeptic Hero
This post provides the sources of a series of claims I am making over Twitter. My main points are two: 1) Christopher Monckton is the leading climate “skeptic” and is held in extremely high regard by climate skeptics. 2) Monckton is singularly unreliable, dishonest, deceitful, preposterous and possibly some kind
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Minimum Wages Are Required
I really love the classic film of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, so made a point a couple years ago to read the book, which I also greatly enjoyed. One of the things that really struck me was how the prevailing wages for rough physical work that the family encounters actually
Continue readingAutonomy For All: The Sensible Path: Abolish the Senate
Calls for reform represent a stealth effort to foist a radical new form of government on an unsuspecting Canadian public. Aside from the cost (about $90 million per year) and the recent scandals about residency and private life criminal behaviour, the real threat the Senate poses is that it has (mostly)
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Why Liberalism? Part 2
In part 1, I outlined a view of what liberalism is, and an understanding of what “ideology” is. In part 2, let’s look at some evidence for the views I’m promoting, in summary, the thesis that: [Liberalism] does not start from a sacred writ that outlines all outcomes and presupposes
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Why Liberalism?
In early January, Paul Krugman wrote something that actually cuts to the heart of perhaps the most important distinction between liberalism and other ideologies, particularly right wing ideologies like conservativism and libertarianism. Discussing the idea of minting a platinum coin in order to circumvent the Republicans’ ability cause a US
Continue readingAutonomy For All: One Liberalism Through the Ages
This was originally published at Open Left, I am republishing it here as a starting point to further updates on these topics and themes. – D. Last weekend Paul wrote: Moreover, by the 1870s, British liberals had become quite aware that their previous understanding of economic freedom was a hollow joke,
Continue readingAutonomy For All: A Casino Will Not Bring Mass Tourism to Toronto
To do the little I can do from my low-traffic blog to push back on a deeply stupid and frankly maliciously preposterous lie being pushed on the public, let’s just apply a little common sense to the claim that a Toronto waterfront casino would lead to any significant levels of
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Bill Kristol Mocks Idea of CRA Causing Housing Crash
The zombie lie that the Community Reinvestment Act was substantially or primarily the cause of the 2008 economic crisis may just have taken a mortal blow; Bill Kristol has apparently mocked the idea: But here was Bill Kristol reminding the summit audience that the “worst moment, economically, in middle-class Americans’
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Standing Up To Bullies
As part of their ongoing mission to destroy the Enlightenment, the right has latched onto a tweet by Lawyers, Guns and Money’s Erik Loomis, a non-tenured academic at a Rhode Island university. They’re of course trying to get him fired. It’s completely hypocritical, the substance of their complaint is preposterous
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Newtown: Another Expose on Conservative Ideological Bankruptcy
While liberals debate various forms of gun control, improvements to the psychiatric care system, and other actual measures to make slaughters like Newtown less likely, the abject bankruptcy of conservative thought is something to behold. The Tea Party suggests more George Zimmermans are the answer. Armed vigilante squads patrolling school
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