This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Richard Shillington studies the Cons’ income-splitting scheme for the Broadbent Institute, and finds that it’s even more biased toward the wealthy than previously advertised: • The average benefit of income splitting across all households is only $185, though nine out of 10
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Alberta Diary: Good advice for Alberta New Democrats from Quebec: this time, make it easy for voters to support you
Ray Guardia, one of the key architects of the federal NDP’s 2011 breakthrough in Quebec, at yesterday’s closing session of the Broadbent Institute’s 2014 Progress Summit in Ottawa. Below: Environmental activist Tzeporah Berman. OTTAWA Here’s a tip for Alberta New Democrats from one of the principal architects of Jack Layton’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Robert Reich discusses the Koch brothers and their place in the U.S.’ new plutocracy: The Kochs exemplify a new reality that strikes at the heart of America. The vast wealth that has accumulated at the top of the American economy is not itself
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Revelation CAPP paid Mansbridge, defender of Murphy’s speaking fees, brings simmering controversy back to boil
CBC Chief Correspondent Peter Mansbridge, back in the day before he could seriously contemplate receiving a $28,000 speaking fee just for flapping his gums over dinner. (Photo found on the Internet.) Below: Similarly compensated CBC commentator Rex Murphy, presumably at about the same moment in history. Below that: Wildrose Party
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Future bleak for Brent Rathgeber’s CBC disclosure bill; perhaps less so for Rex Murphy’s commentaries
Your blogger with CBC commentator Rex Murphy, quite possibly on his way to a speaking engagement with the oil industry. Below: the same blogger with Edmonton-St. Albert Member of Parliament Brent Rathgeber, who has a date with history next week; the controversial Press Progress Rex Murphy info-graphic. ST. ALBERT, Alberta
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Paul Wells and Dan Lett offer roundups of today’s federal by-elections, while Chantal Hebert offers some advice to the candidates (whether or not they’re elected to Parliament today). And Murray Dobbin explains why there’s only one true progressive choice in Toronto Centre in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Frances Russell discusses the dangers of Stephen Harper’s authoritarian democracy. And Michael Harris takes note of Harper’s decision to mete out career executions to his own Senate appointees based on exactly the same evidence he once declared to be fully exculpatory. – Dan
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Martin Regg Cohn discusses EllisDon’s ability to dictate political choices by the Ontario Libs and PCs as a prime example of corporate manipulation of the political system: What Wynne didn’t say was that EllisDon, its subsidiaries and executives, have been shockingly generous donors
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The CP reports on Suzanne Legault’s much-needed warning about the Cons’ secrecy in government: In a closed-door session with dozens of bureaucrats Thursday, Suzanne Legault cited a series of novel measures she says are damaging an already tottering system. “I am seeing signs
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The Broadbent Institute has released a new set of polling (PDF) as to Canadians’ values. And it’s particularly worth noting that even on the Cons’ signature issues such as tax cuts, austerity and crime – where millions upon millions of public dollars
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Reason To Hope?
Canadians want a vision for the future. Canadians know we’re not going in the right direction. A lot of Canadians are dismayed at the calamity that has befallen our democracy and the mean-spirited authoritarianism and the divide and conquer politics that have become the benchmark of our federal government. Give
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Karl Nerenberg reports on the House Finance Committee’s hearings into income inequality in Canada, featuring a few familiar themes which we should hear far more often from our policy-makers: “I would make all tax credits refundable, including the current non-refundable ones,” Boadway
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Conservatives attack on unions a threat to shared prosperity in Canada, says Broadbent Institute
By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: The right-wing’s regressive anti-union rhetoric and U.S.-styled attacks on the labour movement threatens Canada’s prosperity, says a report recently released by the progressive Canadian think tank Broadbent Institute. The report expresses grave concern about the Conservative government’s current political agenda and “highly-organized right-wing campaign to import American-style
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Andrew Simms and Stephen Reid note that the corporatist dogma that everything is done more efficiently in the private sector has no apparent basis in reality: The myth of private sector superiority says that the private sector is efficient and dynamic, the
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Thatcherism: A grand, failed economic experiment
By: Andrew Jackson | Broadbent Institute Admirers and detractors of Margaret Thatcher can agree that she will be remembered as one of the key political architects of our times. Along with her soulmate, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, she broke decisively with the post-war Keynesian welfare state and ushered in the still-enduring age
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Broadbent Institute’s “Union Communities, Healthy Communities” report discusses the significance of the labour movement in achieving positive social outcomes. And Rick Smith concurrently writes that the right’s attacks on unions represent a solution in search of a problem: (W)hen unions are
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Lana Payne offers an introduction to austerity for Newfoundland and Labrador residents who are just learning about it on a provincial level: In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also taken a rather deep liking to austerity. It is a ready-made excuse to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The CP reports on the Canadian applicants rejected by HD Mining as it chose instead to staff its Murray River coal project solely with low-rights temporary immigrant workers: The unions, which are more broadly seeking a judicial review of Ottawa’s decision to
Continue readingThe Ranting Canadian: A claymation version of Ed Broadbent makes a clear and logical…
A claymation version of Ed Broadbent makes a clear and logical 3.5-minute presentation on income inequality and politics in Canada.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ed Broadbent and the Broadbent Institute are putting together a strong public push on the problem of growing inequality – featuring a video, op-ed and research paper (PDF). For more, see coverage from Rachel Mendleson, Natalie Stechyson, and CBC News. – Today’s
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