It’s one of those “truths” in politics that is beyond questioning, like the “necessity” of an independent (i.e. free from democratic controls) central bank, but which, like everything else has evolved from a time when it wasn’t actually the truth. I’m,…
Continue readingTag: austerity
Austerity More Important Than Justice For Victims Of Conjugal Violence in Topeka, Kansas
Is there nothing the Batshit crazy won’t stop at in the name of austerity? Here’s something that could warm the heart of Super Vic Toews. According to a report from Daily Kos, it appears that Topeka Kansas, nor Shawnee County, can “afford” to prosecute perpetrators of domestic abuse.
The Topeka City Council on . . . → Read More: Austerity More Important Than Justice For Victims Of Conjugal Violence in Topeka, Kansas
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Parliament In Review: September 29, 2011
As Parliament heads into a week off, let’s get caught up on what happened in the last couple of weeks before its break – starting with a day that focused on the NDP’s choice of opposition day motions.The Big IssueWhile the Cons have spent nearly all of…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your afternoon reading.- Ladies and gentlemen, your fully accountable Treasury Board president:Clement, the MP for Parry Sound-Muskoka and a former Ontario cabinet minister in the Mike Harris years, emerged from Conservative caucus…
Continue readingRedBedHead: Stock Markets Have A Mood Disorder
There are so many ways that capitalism is absolutely irrational (not to mention inefficient at allocating resources) – the fact that the USA spends $1 trillion on “defence” while children die from lack of clean drinking around the world (or while growi…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading.- David Olive weighs in on the disastrous results of the all-too-prevalent obsession with austerity when economic conditions are still fragile around the globe:From London to Berlin, and Ottawa to Washington, the w…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Friday reading.- Susan Riley points out that nothing positive figures to come from the Cons’ plans to slash Canada’s public service:No good will come of proposed public service cuts, if experience is any guide. Not a lea…
Continue readingRedBedHead: Harper-nomics Is Recipe For Global Depression & Trade Wars
I feel like I’m repeating myself, having just written that the global crisis is not a crisis of debt but, rather, that the debt is a symptom of the long term decline in the rate of profit. Now, I read Stephen Harper and British Tory Prime Minister Davi…
Continue readingRedBedHead: Debt Is Not The Cause Of The Crisis
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper are all over the media attacking European Union politicians for failing to take decisive action to deal with the “debt overhang”, particularly in places like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. This failu…
Continue readingRedBedHead: Tories $20 Million Auditors Are Serial Fraudsters
If you’re the government and you want to find “gravy” – to pick a random metaphor – that you can eliminate in the provision of services in order to reduce the deficit, what do you do? Why, you hire an auditor of course. An auditor has specially traine…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Parliament In Review: September 19, 2011
With the start of the fall session of Parliament I’ll plan to resume taking a daily look at what happens in the House of Commons – with a particular focus on the stories that don’t necessarily make the headlines written about question period.What You D…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Alex Himelfarb offers a warning about Canada’s current inequality trap:In a society with just a few winners and many losers, a case can be made that everybody truly loses. When he argued for higher taxes on th…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The similarities between debt crises and currency crises
During the nineties, the predominant form of economic crisis that could hit a nation was the currency crisis whereby the value of a countries currency drops precipitously. Most infamously was the Asian financial crisis, whose effects rolled around the…
Continue readingRedBedHead: Toronto: Mayor Ford Retreat, Tory Vote Meltdown
Ah, I love the smell of self-inflicted Tory panic on a Monday morning. It seemed only a year ago that things were heading towards Tories at all levels of government. Harper was riding high – and would soon win a majority – Ford won a majority of vot…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Gerald Caplan laments the difficulty in trying to comment reasonably on the actions of a government whose attitude toward reason ranges from overt hostility to wilful blindness:Stephen Harper has just declare…
Continue readingRedBedHead: Civil War Looming In "Ford Nation" HQ
If I were a betting man, I would have slapped down a c-note that Ford’s administration would go off the rails within two years. Even during the election it was clear that Ford’s buffoonish populism – attacks on public sector workers, combined with a …
Continue readingRedBedHead: European Revolt Against Austerity Picks Up Steam
Strikers in Italy resist austerity.
It seems apparent that European politicians somehow missed out the economics class where they explain how massive cuts to public spending in the middle of an economic contraction makes things worse. They also miss…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.
– Carol Goar asks whether the Harper Cons learned anything whatsoever from a recession which they first deemed impossible, then minimized before acting only under political duress:
We have less manoeuvring room today…
Stand Up, Fight Back
Earlier this evening, I came across this slick video, USW The Fighting Spirit, put out by the Steelworkers that I can only describe as kickass. Hope you enjoy it.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.
– Heather Mallick highlights the dangers of the permanent unemployment which regressive politicians around the globe are so vociferously demanding in the guise of austerity:
As we fend off a double-dip recessio…