Toby Sanger has a post up at The Progressive Economics Forum discussing the effects of changes the Harper government made to the census. Specifically, the Conservatives eliminated the mandatory census long form and substituted a voluntary National Household Survey despite the warnings of, well, pretty much everyone who knows anything
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Peace, order and good government, eh?: On red lines
Andrew Coyne, arguing in support of an intervention in Syria: Much mockery has been made of U.S. President Barack Obama’s “red line,” as if it were mere macho posturing. Very well: do his critics have a line? Well, sure. If we’re going to start drawing red lines why wait ’til
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Friday night John Henry blogging
My earliest recollection of a song about John Henry and his hammer involved Harry Belafonte and Carnegie Hall. My father had the album. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a live performance of the song by Belafonte on YouTube. What I have found are a number of variations on the song just
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Sunday morning: Commodity
This is Guthrie Trapp.
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Friday night blues blogging
Good evening. This is a solo piece by Davy Knowles called Saving Myself. I thought he looked pretty young so I did the math: he was 22 when this was recorded in 2009. I bumped into this entirely by accident yesterday evening — Lyle Lovett and an “unplugged” ensemble performing
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: The Age of Austerity
The government of Ontario is pleased to announce that it’s improving the lot of those who rely on disability and social assistance benefits. Rates are being raised by 1%. Since that’s below the rate of inflation it’s really not an improvement at all. The poorest among us will fall further
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Same shit, different country
Based on recent history, I wouldn’t trust the US and/or UK to lead a military intervention into anything, whatever the stated justification. They’ve consistently lied about their reasons for going to war and then they continue to lie about how the wars are being conducted, the damage and casualties that
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Friday night blues blogging
You Upset Me Baby was written by B.B. King, whose recording of it was on the R&B charts in 1954. This is Buddy Whittington. Here’s The Allman Brothers Band, featuring both Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks, with Eric Clapton sitting in on Stormy Monday. You can crank this one up
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: On watchdogs with no bite
The watchdog charged with keeping tabs on CSEC, Canada’s signals intelligence agency, filed his annual report yesterday and I’d say it justifies recent demands by the federal opposition parties for stronger oversight. The Commissioner, Robert Decary, found evidence suggesting that CSEC may have targeted Canadians for surveillance, which is illegal
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Friday night blues blogging
This is Robert Johnson’s Come On In My Kitchen as performed by Kara Grainger and her band with her brother, Mitch Grainger, on harp. I’ve seen Otis Taylor’s music referred to as “trance blues.” Judge for yourself. This is Blue Rain in Africa. Jonny Lang took up the guitar at
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: QOTD: Michael Harris on the surveillance state
The conclusion to a piece published at iPolitics yesterday: The cancer of the surveillance state, which has metastasized since 9/11, is out of all proportion to any threat it was once designed to thwart. The decade of fear has turned into the industry of permanent fear. We once were intelligent
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: "I’m not one to hide what I do"
Nick Kouvalis in today’s Globe and Mail, responding to the suggestion that he might be working behind the scenes to undermine Tim Hudak’s leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives: Mr. Kouvalis vehemently denies allegations that he’s involved in such an effort now. “I’m not one to hide what I do,”
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Friday night blues blogging
Let’s ease into it. This is Johnnie Bassett fronting the Brothers Groove and the Motor City Horns. He’s still got the blues but now he’s got them in his Fleetwood Cadillac. Shakura S’Aida is going to slow things and then pick up the pace again. This is called That Ain’t
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Sunday morning: While You Wait For The Rain
She’s an interesting songwriter. Good morning.
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Friday night: RIP JJ Cale
According to his bio at Wikipedia, JJ Cale was considering giving up the music business when Eric Clapton recorded After Midnight in 1970. Cale spent the next forty years writing songs, recording and touring. He passed away last Friday after a heart attack. Let’s open with Mama Don’t. Here’s another
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: What Bruce Livesay said
Rabble.ca has picked up a piece from The Progressive Economics Forum by Bruce Livesay that discusses, among other things, the large amounts of money in uncollected taxes resulting from corporations and the wealthy taking advantage of tax havens. Not to mention the way governments, including our own, are trying to
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Doing the math on a living wage
Via David Atkins at Hullabaloo, here’s an article about a business student named Arnobio Morelix who studied McDonald’s annual reports and investors’ data sets and crunched some numbers. He wanted to find out what the impact on McDonald’s prices would be if their employees were paid at least $15 an
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Why should CSIS have all the fun?
We learned recently that the policy framework which allows CSIS to trade in information that might be the result of torture, or might lead to torture, or both, was actually a collaborative effort involving several federal agencies and departments. Now we have confirmation that CSEC is playing by the same
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Friday night: Trains
I’m pleased to be able to report that no Toronto city councillors were injured in the debate over which train songs to include in tonight’s post. This is British blues band Nine Below Zero performing Riding on the L & N. Now Brian Setzer, Mark Winchester and Bernie Dresel are
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: CSEC is just part of a larger picture
About six weeks ago when CSEC, Canada’s signals intelligence agency, was suddenly getting a lot of attention in the media, I wrote that in order to protect our rights as citizens, greater oversight of CSEC isn’t enough. We need to examine our relationships with intelligence and law enforcement agencies abroad
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