Boy, this would seem like a great opportunity for anybody truly concerned about government interference in a fulsome political debate to make the case for freedom of speech. We could even label that hero with a pithy term like “free speech warrior”. Now if only such a person existed.
Continue readingTag: charity
Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Andrew Potter highlights the difficulties in practicing and encouraging truth-based politics at a time when entire parties make a deliberate strategy of lying – as well as the one technique that seems to be wor…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading.- Haroon Siddiqui highlights the similarities between the Harper Cons and the U.S. Republicans – who lost last week’s election, and are even less popular outside their country’s own borders (including in Canada)…
Continue readingTerahertz: Support our Light the Night Walk
Grant LaFleche, writing for the St. Catherine’s Standard, wrote a column yesterday calling on atheists to be more charitable. It’s a common trope that atheists and Humanists don’t give as much (or frequently) as the religious. Lacking formal structures and congregations, there’s less of a culture of philanthropy, both in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted material to end your weekend. – Chrystia Freeland comments on the self-destructive nature of elite protectionism: (E)ven as the winner-take-all economy has enriched those at the very top, their tax burden has lightened. Tolerance for high executive compensation has increased, even as the legal powers of unions have been
Continue readingIn This Corner: The donation conundrum: to give, or not to give?
Over the years, I have received probably hundreds of cheap inducements to donate to “good causes” (bad causes rarely ask for money). You’ve all seen them — address labels (I still have address labels from about five years ago, since I send maybe five letters a year), note pads with
Continue readingCanadian Progressive: Breasts squeezed for charity in Tokyo (VIDEO)
Oh, the things we progressives do in the name of charity! A charity “breast squeeze” orgy took place during the August 27-27 weekend in Tokyo as part of the “Erotica will Save the World“ event. The event, hosted by Japan’s Paradise TV encouraged people to donate money to STOP! AIDS, a charity that
Continue readingTerahertz: Support the World Cerebral Palsy Challenge
One of the projects that I’m working on right now is to raise awareness and recruit teams for the upcoming World Cerebral Palsy Challenge in support of the Cerebral Palsy Association of British Columbia. The Challenge started two years ago among a network of CP associations in Australia. It was
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Dan Gardner rightly notes that we should be encouraging more public advocacy from charities and other groups with useful input to offer into policy debates – not shutting it down as the Cons are doing: “Many charities have acquired a wealth of knowledge
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading. – It’s undoubtedly an embarrassment for John Baird to have leapt at a thoroughly implausible bit of anti-UN spin. But I’d think there’s more reason for hope than concern in the long run: if a year into their majority mandate the Cons are still
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: No tough choice
Back here, I discussed how ridiculous the Cons’ “tough on crime” model would look if applied to any other area of policy – and used that comparison to question why we’d handle criminal justice any differently. But after a minority government period where the Cons mostly limited their shows of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Dr. Dawg responds to Andrew Coyne’s suggestion about cracking down on advocacy by charities with an entirely reasonable suggestion as to how to allocate our resources: Given that charities do essential work that the government does not fund—feeding and clothing the poor, defending
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – There’s still plenty more emerging on the Robocon election fraud scandal. The reporting combinations of McGregor/Maher and Chase/Leblanc/Mills have both discussed Elections Canada’s latest court filing showing that Con campaign officials openly discussed implementing U.S.-style vote suppression efforts – including exactly the forms
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your Saturday reading. – As much sympathy as I normally have for Linda McQuaig, I’ll argue that her premise in discussing Andrea Horwath’s call for the wealthy to pay a fair share of taxes is entirely off base. Even if it is easier to discuss such ideas
Continue readingWill the Fraser Institute be audited?
Now that the federal government has allocated $8-million for the auditing of charitable groups ostensibly to ensure they stay within the Charities Act, one naturally wonders if this will include all charities or be limited to environmental groups, the bête noire of the Conservative/oil industry coalition. The Fraser Institute is
Continue readingcmkl: Niceying up the wealthy so we feel bad for them when we want to tax them more
There’s this refreshing counter-melody threading in and out of the deafening cacophony of rhetoric around cutting our way to greatness and the great quest for lower wages and cheaper stuff. You can barely hear it. But it’s there.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Murtaza Hussain nicely sums up why we should be pushing for businesses and wealthy individuals to contribute their fair share through a progressive tax system rather than through self-aggrandizing charity: The private social safety net, provided by corporate donors as compensation for the
Continue readingPop The Stack: Conservative Budget Shows Us What is Important to Them
A common response from many pundits on the recent Conservative budget seems to be: sensible, dull, uncontroversial. David Frum recently published his analysis and went a bit further asking whether or not this budget definitively proves that Canada is the “best-governed country in the advanced democratic world”. He thinks it does. His question is especially
Continue readingPop The Stack: Conservative Budget Shows Us What is Important to Them
A common response from many pundits on the recent Conservative budget seems to be: sensible, dull, uncontroversial. David Frum recently published his analysis and went a bit further asking whether or not this budget definitively proves that Canada is the “best-governed country in the advanced democratic world”. He thinks it does. His question is especially
Continue readingCanadian Progressive World: In Ottawa, an elected Liberal MP defeats a Harper-appointed Conservative senator
It was a political showdown that revealed what we already know: the Conservatives can’t take a fair fight. Yesterday, Liberal MP Justin Trudeau convincingly defeated Tory senator Patrick Brazeau in a charity boxing bout here in Ottawa. The Fight for … Continue reading →
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