This and that for your Sunday reading. – Robert Green looks at Quebec as a prime example of selective austerity – with tax cuts and other goodies for the wealthy considered sacrosanct, and well-connected insiders being paid substantial sums of public money to tell citizens they’ll have to make do
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Danyaal Raza and Edward Xie write that a well-designed city environment can make all the difference in enabling individuals to live healthy lives: What if city council took our health into account when designing neighbourhoods? An idea gaining favour in major cities around
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Buttonwood weighs in on the disproportionate influence of the ultra-rich when it comes to making policy choices which affect all of us: But the analysis backs up earlier work by Larry Bartels of Princeton, author of a book called “Unequal Democracy”, and the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Stuart Trew fleshes out the Cons’ new(-ly explicit) Corporate Cronies Action Plan – and it goes even further in entrenching corporate control over policy than one might have expected at first glance: – The makeup of the advisory panel that consulted with Trade
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Whipped
For those who haven’t yet seen Whipped, Sean Holman’s documentary on party discipline in the B.C. legislature is now available through CPAC’s website. And it’s well worth a watch (particularly on a stormy Saturday). But I will point out that there may be an important distinction between an elected representative
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rick Salutin highlights the dangers of relying on bulk data collection and algorithmic analysis as a basis to restrict individual rights: The National Post’s Jen Gerson interviewed a U.S. privacy expert. She asked about the PRISM program, by which U.S. agencies spy on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michael Babad takes a look at Bureau of Labor Statistics data on wages and employment levels – reaching the conclusion that the corporatist effort to drive wages down does nothing to improve employment prospects. But the absence of any remotely plausible policy justification
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Coming Soon to Canada, "Fortress B.C."
The CBC’s Stephen Smart sees rough waters and rocky shoals ahead for Ottawa-B.C. relations after Tuesday’s provincial elections. Perhaps for the first time in his reign our eastern ruler may be confronted by a province spoiling for a fight. Most of the past dozen or so years can be seen
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how all of Canada could lose out if Christy Clark’s B.C. Liberals are able to follow through on their plans to eliminate the Therapeutics Initiative which has provided needed information about the effectiveness of prescription drugs. For further reading…– More background about the current status of the Therapeutics
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: A Not-So-Public Hearing
Yesterday I gave my testimony to the Joint Review Panel for the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project. Protesters in Vancouver January 2013 Some might argue it was an exercise in futility because ultimately Bill C-38 gives decision-making power for these projects to Cabinet. Perhaps. Yet yesterday on the fourth floor of
Continue reading350 or bust: Canadians Answer The Call To Defend Our Coast While Climate Silence Reigns South of Border
It was a cool rainy day in Victoria, British Columbia yesterday, but that didn’t stop thousands of people from coming out to the B.C. Legislature to show both the provincial and the federal governments that they are opposed to the two pipelines that industry and governments want to build to
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: British Columbia’s Sordid Premier
There’s something really sleazy about BC premier Christie Clark. Faced with growing public opposition to the Northern Gateway and Kinder-Morgan bitumen pipeline trafficking, she sat mute for months as her own and her party’s fortunes tanked. Finally she stood up on her hind legs and announced the pipeline/supertanker business was
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Joe Stiglitz discusses the link between increased inequality and the U.S.’ economic frailty: Any solution to today’s problems requires addressing the economy’s underlying weakness: a deficiency in aggregate demand. Firms won’t invest if there is no demand for their products. And one of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Sid Ryan rightly criticizes Tim Hudak’s anti-labour plans as a push toward poverty rather than prosperity. – Via Climate Progress, Steven Mufson reports on the causes of Enbridge’s Michigan oil spill – with Enbridge’s complete failure to repair known defects over a period
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Barbara Yaffe discusses Thomas Mulcair’s strong start in winning over B.C. voters. And Martin Regg Cohn notes that Stephen Harper is starting to face some real (and needed) pressure from Darrell Dexter and other premiers to start actually talking to the provinces,
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: EOG Resources: The Gas Corporation That Does It All From Cradle to Grave
EOG Resources.jpg DeSmogBlog, on multiple occasions, has reported that the damage caused by hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" in the unconventional oil and gas industry goes far beyond water contamination, put in the spotlight by the documentary film "Gasland." The multi-pronged harms were tackled in a comprehensive manner in our report, "Fracking the
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: TransCanada’s Latest Extreme Energy Export Pipelines in the U.S. and Canada
shutterstock_48011347.jpg TransCanada was once in the limelight and targeted for its Keystone XL pipeline project. Now, with few eyes watching, it is pushing along two key pipeline projects that would bring two respective forms of what energy geopolitics scholar Michael Klare calls "extreme energy" to lucrative export markets. Pipeline one: the southern
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jared Bernstein discusses the effect of raising taxes on the highest-income households, featuring this in particular: Growth and jobs. History shows that higher taxes are compatible with economic growth and job creation: job creation and GDP growth were significantly stronger following the Clinton
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for a sunny Saturday. – Paul Wells discusses the clash shaping up between the Cons and the NDP: Some 57 per cent of respondents said they’re dissatisfied with the Harper government, compared to 36 per cent who like it. Last month’s federal budget drew more unsatisfied reaction
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – pogge points out that the Cons’ response to the perception that judges aren’t fully onside with their efforts to impose top-down control has been to eliminate the judiciary’s ability to ensure fair results: Where the institutions of government have put constraints on
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