Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan highlight how inequitable access to vaccines around the globe increases the risk of variants which will hurt everybody. Charles Schmidt takes note of the work being done to track variants – but also the massive blind spots which
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Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Vrishti Beniwal writes about Abhijit Banerjee’s call to put concentrated wealth to better social use by taxing it. – Yutaka Dirks interviews Linda McQuaig about the corporate takeover of far more public wealth than is normally recognized. And Matt Coughlin discusses how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Stewart Elgie and Nathalie Chalifour write about the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal’s recognition of the importance of action on our climate crisis. Alexis Wright comments on the need for global action to address the common global problem of impending climate breakdown. Brian Eckhouse
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Astra Taylor points out that we should be far more concerned about a planetary carbon budget which actually involves inflexible limits, rather than delaying action in the name of avoiding spending on government balance sheets. J. David Hughes highlights how choices which subsidize
Continue readingThings Are Good: British Columbia’s Carbon Pricing Works Well
British Columbia shows carbon pricing works while another province looks uselessly backwards. The regressive and antidemocratic Ontario “conservative” government is set to sue the Canadian government for protecting the environment. The argument by the Conservatives is basically that an economy allowed to inefficiently consume non-renewable resources is good and that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Chris Hughes discusses how progressive politics, including expanded social programs and more progressive taxes, are proving to be a winner for U.S. Democrats in both primaries and general elections. Jacob Bacharach writes about the myth of the U.S. as a particularly wealthy country
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on British Columbia’s electoral reform referendum – and the need for a political system where voters have more say than simply a yes/no vote on an incumbent government. For further reading…– For examples of the attempt to defend first-past-the-post based on the desire for accountability for a majority government,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Evening Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joel Achenbach and Angela Fritz discuss how climate change is amplifying all kinds of extreme weather (with severe heat as only the most obvious example). And Umair Irfan examines some of the dangerous economic and social side effects of unprecedented heat waves. –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning LInks
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – James Wilt examines how Canada lets the corporate sector get away with paying far less than a fair price for our natural resources. And Marc Lee points out the massive subsidies British Columbia has handed to the natural gas industry in particular.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jonathan Amos and Victoria Gill report on Antarctica’s alarming rate of melting – with three trillion tons of ice lost in the past 25 years. Peter Erickson reminds us that the avoidable greenhouse gas emissions from subsidized oil sands development will only
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Paul Krugman writes that a transition to a clean energy economy is well within reach – as long as politicians don’t put the interests of oil money over our economic and environmental future. But Gordon Laxer notes that NAFTA already limits Canada’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Dylan Walsh interviews Jeffrey Pfeffer about his book Dying for a Paycheck, and the ways in which employer demands make people worse off: Has this connection always been there, or has there been an evolution in workplace culture that got us to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Support in Alberta is overwhelming for ending public support of elite private schools, new poll shows
PHOTOS: Private schoolboys. In Alberta, our taxpayers subsidize ’em! (Photo: Bundesarchiv.de.) Below: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney, and Progress Alberta Executive Director Duncan Kinney. Now that’s interesting! According to a new poll, the idea of ending funding for elite private schools enjoys more support in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne writes about the need for real wage increases to relieve the financial stress on Canadian workers. – Sheila Block examines the relative effects of tax cuts and minimum wage increases on lower-income workers, and finds that people are far better off
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Elizabeth Bruenig makes the case for the U.S. to make a much-needed turn toward democratic socialism: In fact, both Sullivan’s and Mounk’s complaints — that Americans appear to be isolated, viciously competitive, suspicious of one another and spiritually shallow; and that we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On historical perspective
I’ll give Roland Priddle this much: he’s absolutely right in his impression that the best way to argue for waving through expanded tar sands pipelines without an unbiased review is to pretend that nobody has learned anything about environmental protection, oil or dilbit spills, climate change, or energy industry trends
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Rick Smith writes about the Filthy Five loopholes taking the most money out of Canada’s public coffers for the least benefit to anybody but the wealthy. And Ed Finn reminds us to follow the money in figuring out who stands to gain from
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Harriet Agerholm comments on the connection between income inequality and a growing life expectancy gap between the rich and the rest of us. – May Bulman notes that after a generation of austerity, children of public sector workers are increasingly living in poverty
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David Brady, Ryan Finnigan and Sabine Hubgen challenge the claim that there’s any relationship between single motherhood and poverty. And Doug Saunders writes that there’s an opening for progressive movements to take back the theme of family values which obviously bear no
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jim O’Neill proposes an end to corporate free-riding (and an assurance of contribution to the society which allows for profit) through explicit “pay-or-play” rules: Since proposing a pay-or-play scheme for the pharmaceutical industry, I have come to think that the same principle could
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