PHOTOS: Greetings from Halifax, where a minimum wage almost as low as Alberta’s isn’t half of what a two-earner family needs to live a decent life. Can it be much different in Calgary or Edmonton? Below: Enthusiastic Tweeter Dan Kelly’s Twitter thumbnail; Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci. HALIFAX, N.S. The
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Janelle Vandergrift reminds us that we should see ourselves as participating citizens, not mere taxpayers: Taxes are a way to pool our resources and develop common infrastructure that can have a positive impact on us all. They build our roads and bridges, pay
Continue readingAlberta Politics: There’s no way the Broadbent Institute should have hired a high-profile strikebreaker to moderate a panel on Alberta’s election
PHOTOS: A striker, at right, confronts a security guard during one of the dark days of the 1999-2000 labour dispute at the Calgary Herald. Below: Calgary Herald political columnist Don Braid and Broadbent Institute Executive Director Rick Smith. I was genuinely shocked when I learned a few days ago that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: How weird is this? Calgary Chamber of Commerce spokesperson praises Rachel Notley’s NDP government
PHOTOS: Premier Designate Rachel Notley, in orange shoes, with her caucus. Below: Scott Crockatt, the Calgary Chamber’s communications and marketing director; Manning Centre polemicist Colin Craig. Well, these are strange times indeed when the official spokesperson for the Calgary Chamber of Commerce can extol the potential for Alberta’s just-elected New
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jay Baron Nicorvo discusses how the myth of U.S. meritocracy serves largely as a means of funneling profits toward the 1%. And Mary Hansen points out one way of fighting back against evolving forms of corporate power – being the development of new,
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Amanda Lang Interviews Ed Broadbent
If you have as low an opinion of the CBC’s disgraced chief business correspondent, Amanda Lang, as I do, watch the following video. I think you will find that, with her absolutist questions typical of the extreme right and the intellectually deficient, she does not exceed expectations. For Broadbent’s thoughts
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Margot Sanger-Katz writes about the connection between inequality and poor health. Nicolas Fitz reminds us that even people concerned about inequality may underestimate how serious it is. And BJ Siekierski asks what will happen to Canada’s economy in terms of both growth
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: #prgrs15 Wrapup
As readers may have noticed in my earlier posts, I had the opportunity to attend the Broadbent Institute’s Progress Summit 2015. And as a whole, the summit was well worth attending, featuring a wide range of interesting speakers and topics, a strong turnout including plenty of people whose work is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – In advance of this weekend’s Progress Summit, Robin Sears comments on the significance of the Broadbent Institute and other think tanks in shaping policy options: The Center for American Progress was the wakeup call for progressives around the world. Independent-minded, massively funded,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the work done by the Broadbent Institute and Mariana Mazzucato to highlight the importance of publicly-funded innovation: According to a 2014 report by the International Monetary Fund, Canadian companies have been accumulating “dead money” at a faster rate than
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on this week’s confirmation from the Broadbent Institute that Canadians severely underestimate wealth inequality – as well as the strong popular support to reduce the wealth gap. For further reading…– The Norton/Ariely study of the views of Americans on wealth inequality is found here, and discussed further here, here
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Carter Price offers another look at how inequality damages economic development. And the Broadbent Institute examines the wealth gap in Canada – which is already recognized as a serious problem, but also far larger than most people realize: – Paul Buchheit discusses
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Canadian Wealth Gap – Far Worse Than Most Think
We hear a great deal about the giants who walk among us – the Canadian masters and mistresses of the universe, all those ‘self-made’ men and women who accomplished their feats thanks to daring, sheer hard work, and exclusive reliance on their own resources. They didn’t ask for any ‘handouts.’
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Hockey millionaires and pharmacare tell you everything you need to know about who the Canadian Taxpayers Federation really works for
The Montreal Canadiens in 1912-13. Now the highest-taxed hockey players on the continent, they’re still the best and likely to stay that way. Below: Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions President Linda Silas; U.S. anti-public-health-care fruitloop and Canadian Taxpayers Federation ally Grover Norquist. For a while now it’s seemed as if
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Stephanie Levitz reports on the Broadbent Institute’s study showing that Con-friendly charities haven’t been facing any of the strict scrutiny being used to silence anybody who dares to speak up for environmental or social causes. And Jeremy Nuttall notes that the problem is
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Video: Deconstructing Christy Clark spin on teachers strike and lockout
Charlie Smith was heard on CBC’s ‘On the Coast’s ‘Political Panel this afternoon. Bill Tieleman and Alise Mills were the other panelists. Charlie was cut short when responding to Alise Mills. Is this video his reply? Press Progress, which is an arm of the Broadbent Institute, has released a video
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Against Collective Forgetting
Workers must do our part to Stop Harper! Happy Labour Day! 🙂 In Stephen Harper’s Canada, we keep enumerating the things we’re losing: meaningful legislative debate, evidence-based policy, public science, a free and open society, among other things. But what happens if we go too long with a slow erosion
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Robert Reich muses about how our economy would look if we actually paid people based on their contribution to society rather than their ability to exploit others. In related news, the Broadbent Institute’s next Progress Gala is looking all the more fascinating with
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Transcript: Julia Gillard Addresses The Broadbent Institute Progress Summit
Here’s the transcript of former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s keynote speech to the Broadbent Institute’s first annual Progress Summit, held March 28-30 in Ottawa. The post Transcript: Julia Gillard Addresses The Broadbent Institute Progress Summit appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Thomas Frank discusses the corporate takeover of U.S. politics – and how even nominally left-oriented parties are willing to go along with the corporate position even as voters regularly demand something else: One of the reasons the phrase appealed to me, 17 years
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