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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Michael McBane highlights one of the less-discussed changes in the Cons’ 2014 budget – as it officially eliminates the federal distribution of health care funding based on provincial need in favour of handing extra money to Alberta: The Harper government is eliminating
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford discusses how unions and collective bargaining improve the standard of living for everybody: The following figure illustrates the broad negative correlation between bargaining coverage and poverty: that is, the higher is bargaining coverage, the lower is relative poverty (and the more
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: The Government of Canada Must Respect the First Nations Rights and Treaties
Richard Hughes-Political Blogger Hardly a day goes by without hearing of another environmental disaster. In most cases they are easily traceable back to the doorsteps of greedy ‘Oil and Gas Corporations’ combined with reduced or eliminated federal and provincial regulations. Do we hear outrage and a call to action from
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Diane Coyle offers a preview of Thomas Piketty’s upcoming book on inequality – featuring a prediction that absent some significant public policy intervention, we may see a return to 19th-century levels of concentration of wealth. – Meanwhile, Murray Dobbin calls for 2014 to
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Ignorance Is Strength
At least it is so in Harperland. Recommend this Post
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Stephen Harper to Canada: ‘It’s not my fault! Now shut up and vote for me’
Trying to change the channel: Unfortunately for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the remote seems to have disappeared under a pillow and the movie stuck on the TV screen stars Mike Duffy, shown above moving toward the Telus Convention Centre in Calgary Friday night. Actual Canadian Senators may not appear exactly
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Nikiforuk writes that air quality in Alberta’s Upgrader Alley may be among the worst in North America, including dangerous concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals. And Danny Harvey points out that the planet as a whole stands to be damaged by excessive tar
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Krugman makes the case for significantly higher taxes on the rich: What would raising tax rates at the top accomplish? It would, to some extent, mitigate the rise in inequality, which some of us consider a good thing in itself: You
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the CFIA’s inability to do anything about tainted horse meat exemplifies the problems with weak and under-resourced regulators. For further reading…– Again, Mary Ormsby’s original story is here. – Andrew Nikiforuk’s take on the appointment of oil lobbyist Gerald Protti to set up Alberta’s new regulatory system
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Andrew Nikiforuk discusses how Alberta and other petro-states have ended up destroying their treasuries and their democratic systems alike by relying excessively on volatile resource prices: Thanks to the volatile nature of the world’s most lucrative commodity, various petro states find themselves short
Continue readingEarthgauge Radio: How do you know you live in a petro state?
From Andrew Nikiforuk in today’s Tyee. The full article, called ‘Why can’t Alberta break even?‘, is worth a read. How do you know when you live in petro state? Here are some key signs: When your government pays 30 per cent of its road, education, and hospital bills with finite
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Frances Russell discusses how the Harper Cons have capitalized on the general public’s lack of familiarity with how our parliamentary system is supposed to work – and the conventional checks and balances which have been overridden at every turn by a governing party
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Duncan Cameron highlights the choice between austerity and prosperity facing the governments of both Canada and the U.S.:The economic realities faced by working people in both Canada and the United St…
Continue reading350 or bust: A Women’s Look At The Alberta Oil Sands: It Ain’t Pretty
From October 9 – 16, the Nobel Women’s Initiative is visiting Canada’s oil sands to get women’s perspectives on the impacts of this huge oil extraction project to the local communities, women and children. This creative initiative is called Breaking Ground: Women, Oil & Climate Change and you can read
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Regrets might come later
Chairman Harper and the Chinese Sell-Out, Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee “By Nov. 1 three of China’s national oil companies will have more power to shape Canada’s energy markets as well as challenge the politics of this country than Canadians themselves. And you can thank Prime Minister Stephen Harper for this
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Gerald Caplan weighs in on Jack Layton’s legacy: It seems to me that Jack Layton’s enduring legacy is twofold. First, he set a standard of doing politics that, if followed by others, would change the entire tone of public life for the country.
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Understanding Harper’s Evangelical Mission
harpersmiles300px.jpg This post originally appeared in The Tyee, and is re-published with permission. Any Canadian listening to the news these days might well conclude that the Republican extremists or some associated evangelical group has occupied Ottawa. And they'd be righter than Job, I believe. Almost daily, more evidence surfaces that Canada's
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ed Broadbent discusses the connection between unions, democracy and equality: In democratic societies, there are two principal arenas of non-violent conflict over power: the state and the workplace. Just as political democracy entails the right to select or reject one’s representatives and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Michael Harris slams the Cons for their attacks on science: How far has the government been prepared to go to smother the facts surrounding the ELA? For starters, DFO declined all requests from the media to speak with scientists. Being an equal
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