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
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Janet Bagnall neatly dissects the Cons’ plan for dismantling public services: The Harper government is nothing if not predictable in how it goes about dismantling a program or service. It starts by denigrating the program and the program’s beneficiaries, and telling Canadians that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On parallel pursuits
Let’s follow on the theme of both Thursday’s column and the Mound of Sound’s post with a closer look at the corporatist “there are no bad jobs” philosophy – which serves as the obvious foundation for constant attacks on wages, unions and workers even if it’s been walked back as
Continue readingLeft Over: It’s 40 below, and I don’t give a ….
Stampede celebrates 100th anniversary For all those barbaric yahoos who enjoy torturing animals for fun, entertainment, and most of all – profit..you can keep your little circus…leave the rest of us out of it.. CBC..perpetuating this anachronism is beyond belief..if you polled, nationally, I think you’d find that most Canadians
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Dan Gardner nicely sums up how any Con cabinet shuffles are utterly irrelevant since Stephen Harper prefers ciphers to functional ministers in any event: In the past, parties in power always had factions, and ministers with their own political clout, and these provided
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Convenient
In case we needed any more confirmation that the Cons won’t even pretend to be honest about what they’ve done until after they’re done having to answer for it, this nicely fits the pattern. So who thinks we can afford to let any of the rest of the Cons keep
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On risky bets
Others have already batted about some theories about the Cons’ first set of attack ads against Tom Mulcair. But it’s worth noting that there are a couple of important differences between the first salvo against Mulcair, and the previous saturation campaigns against Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. While it’s been
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On open channels
Fern Hill is frustrated at how political reporters have tried to make a non-story out of the #denounceharper hashtag which trended globally yesterday as Twitter users took the opportunity to discuss what Canadians actually want for Canada Day. And I can certainly understand the concern at normally well-connected reporters choosing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Mia Rabson writes that patronage and secrecy are thriving under the Harper Cons, even after they’ve lost any excuse about other parties’ ability to stop their plans: But when the federal appointments process has no transparency, any time someone with political ties as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that to occupy your Canada Day. – Tim Harford discusses why randomized trials as part of a genuine evidence-gathering process are a must in developing public policy. – Mike de Souza reports that the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans was already short on resources to do its
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On truth in advertising
It’s been quite some time since I did anything new with Photoshop – and lately, that’s been more out of a lack of time than a lack of readily available material. But now that we’re into a quiet political season, let’s start working on some images to define the Cons’
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: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Michael Harris slams the Cons for their attacks on science: How far has the government been prepared to go to smother the facts surrounding the ELA? For starters, DFO declined all requests from the media to speak with scientists. Being an equal
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how CETA and especially the TPP are serving as ever more glaring examples of the Cons’ willingness to give away everything Canadians value as part of ideologically-driven trade negotiations for no real economic gain. For further reading…– Scott Sinclair and Michael Geist have recently commented on the TPP
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Derrick O’Keefe calls for a mass movement to stop the Harper Cons in their tracks now, rather than waiting for 2015: Thoughts of ousting Harper in 2015 are well and good, but not nearly sufficient at this perilous moment for democracy and social
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On importance
There’s been plenty of debate about the protest which caused Joe Oliver to move a funding announcement. But I’d think there’s a more fundamental question we should ask about the event, particularly when the indignant response of the event host was to the effect that “this is an important announcement!”.
Continue readingLeft Over: Bob Paulson, Emperor Steve’s New Minion
Top cop concerned with Mounties airing problems in public RCMP Commissioner says bill will help end ‘outrageous’ behaviour “1984, knocking at your door…” What is it about the CRAPs that their supporters like? Must be the fact that they are impressive sweepers…of bad news, directly under the rug, never to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for a sunny Sunday. – Paul Wells offers some theories as to why the Cons haven’t yet launched attack ads against Thomas Mulcair. But I’d think the more important aberration is the fact that they did do so against Bob Rae before he ever became the Libs’ permanent
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – I wouldn’t want to take Dan Gardner’s conclusion as to the effects of power as an immutable truth – as he himself notes in pointing out means of minimizing its risks. But it’s certainly an apt description of what’s happened since the Harper
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jeffrey Simpson criticizes the Cons for killing off the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy as punishment for telling the truth about climate change at its own request: In a letter to the National Round Table on the Environment and
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