I know this is beginning to sound like a broken record but, as Robert Reich explains in under 2 minutes, 15 seconds, America’s economic future depends on restoring that country’s middle class.
Continue readingBlunt Objects: NDP Convention Question #1
Would it not make more sense to have all of Canada orange on that nice mural, instead of just the parts of Canada that supported you?
The deeper question here is whether or not the New Democrats – who have glaringly difficult gaps in the West and So…
Continue readingThey Call Me "Mr. Sinister": Which Side Are You On Boy
Which side are you on? The zeitgeist is shifting. People are starting to question our owners. Maybe, just maybe, we can head off a lot of needless suffering.
Continue readingA Housing Benefit for Ontario: An Affordable Plan To Help Alleviate Hunger and Homelessness
Anyone who has read this blog knows that the issues of poverty,hunger and homelessness are of particular interest to me, so when I come across a plan to help alleviate these scourges my ears perk up.A plan supported by industry and community groups ali…
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Vancouver Riots – Shameful and Predictable.
Pouring beer into the 18-34 demographic and then throwing them into a crowded urban street is an unsurprising recipe for disaster. If you look at the videos out there you see people reveling in distinctly anti-social behaviour and of course acting with extreme stupidity. In this clip, you see a man trying to curb the […]
Accidental Deliberations: Light Posting
For those who hadn’t noticed, I haven’t had a chance to post on #vancon2011 yet. But you can get some updates from my Twitter feed – and there looks to be no lack of noteworthy material to discuss once the convention is over.
Continue readingKulchur
For those who think that the word “culture” applies to something pure and “authentic,” I found this account of the destruction of a sweat lodge in the Cree village of Oujé-Bougoumou, Quebec, wonderfully destabilizing. There’s a little anthropology lesson here…
Continue readingthe reeves report: Weekly Round-Up: June 12 to June 18
Sunday, June 12 | National Post – First Nations ‘seeking clarity’ in a new name “Only a couple weeks into the Harper majority government, Aboriginal relations already seem off to a rocky start. On May 18, the Canadian government made the announcement that the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs will be changing its name to … Continue reading »
Paper Dynamite Online: You Teach People How To Treat You
The choice is yours.That’s right, it’s cryptic message day here at PDO.
Continue readingOpenMedia.ca: Casting an Open Net in Ottawa
OpenMedia.ca met with eleven pro-Internet Members of Parliament Wednesday and Thursday in Ottawa to discuss our community-crafted research report, Casting An Open Net, and to highlight to lawmakers that Canadians want open, accessible, and affordable I…
Continue readingMontreal Simon: When the Con Party Animals Go Wild
Lardy. Bean me with a bacon bit…or a Vienna sausage. They don’t call them Con hogs for nothing eh? But who knew they were such party animals?
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s own department has repeatedly broken the government’s toug…
Continue readingFacing Autism in New Brunswick: Autism and Haircuts: Conor Has A Great Haircut Treat Adventure
Above: Conor after this morning’s haircut.
Below: Conor before this morning’s haircut.
Conor has full blown Autistic Disorder with profound developmental delays. Haircuts were a real challenge at one time. But things have improved dramatica…
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Favourite Poems XXXIX
The story of how Coleridge came to write this famous poem is probably too well known to bear repeating (but nonetheless is found here, for example.) I have sometimes wondered if one could write a poem considered (maybe) one of the ten or twenty greatest in the English language intoxicated with opium; I know there […]
NDP can see the road ahead and it leads to the Government benches
I wish I were in Vancouver for the NDP’s convention. Too bad I have too work at a regular job! The next best thing to being in Vancouver is the internet and my cell phone with a plan including free long distance.
The mood is exciting. The mood is heading forward. The mood is about what could be possible in just four more years. The NDP plan to go for it. &n…
Continue readingObama is a centrist president.
The left has given up him, calling him far too empathetic to the right. Meanwhile, the right continues to paint Obama as a Marxist Socialist Muslim with the most savage of all language for any president in my lifetime. I can understand the frustration …
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Still Progressive and family friendly: evaluating Québec’s income tax policy
University of Sherbrooke economist and fiscal specialist Luc Godbout with Suzie St-Cerny and Michaël Robert-Angers has just published a timely research paper evaluating the net fiscal impact on households of Québec’s income tax system.Timely because, as discussed here be Armine Yalnizyan recent data from stats can shows that though globally income inequality has risen during […]
Continue readingBouquets of Gray: Orwell as Nostradamus
George Orwell, 1984: “She had without exception the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind that he had ever encountered. She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Media Misses New Report from Information Commissioner: Nearly Half of Information Requests Processed Illegally
Appallingly, all but CTV appears to have missed this week’s tabling of the annual report of the Information Commissioner, which makes for disturbing if characteristically dry reading. I’ll admit, I would have missed it myself but for the appearance of a fluff piece on the government newswire, claiming that the report highlighted “efforts to reverse […]
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: Rustling the branches of my old family tree
You’ve probably seen the advertisements for Ancestry.ca (or dot-com elsewhere). A few weeks ago I decided to give it a test-drive and I must say I’m hooked! The program isn’t doing all the work, mind you, as I leaf through two or thre…
Continue readingMorton's Musings: Gaddafi — Israeli agent?
It’s interesting that the street artists for the rebels in Libya decide to paint pictures of Gaddafi with a Star of David. I suppose it is not seen as anything other than a symbol of evil. Perhaps the rebels will not be uniformly progressive forces fo…
Continue reading