Monday, April 2 saw the second day of Peter Julian’s extended budget speech. And perhaps the point most worth noting is how many Canadians outside of Parliament took the opportunity have their voices heard in the budget debate. The Big Issue So let’s focus this review on some of the
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Accidental 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
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Gerald Caplan looks at the principled leadership which Stephen Harper embarrassingly made into an attack on the NDP as an example what Canada desperately needs now: Repeating that war settles nothing, Mr. Woodsworth declared: “I rejoice that it is possible to say these
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Miles Corak comments on how inequality undercuts social mobility. And Joseph Stiglitz highlights the fact that the vast majority of people hold a strong interest in not having their path to a secure and successful life blocked by a wall of upper-class money.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The Cons’ move to suppress Canadian wages by encouraging the use of disposable, temporary foreign labour is receiving plenty of due outcry. Here’s Armine Yalnizyan: Disturbingly, the federal announcement also set out new wage rules that permit employers to pay temporary foreign
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michael Harris sums up the first year of a Harper majority by pointing out the overwhelming need for change from the government we’re stuck with now: The curtain has been well and truly whipped away from the PM’s self-promoting deceptions and he is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Parliament in Review – March 30, 2012
Friday, March 30 was the first day of Peter Julian’s budget filibuster. But while it accomplished its goal of avoiding several hours worth of Con talking points, was there much to take from Julian’s own comments? The Big Issue Well, let’s highlight a few of his more noteworthy observations. First,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Dead and buried
Others have already pointed out last week’s news that oil-sands operators are pulling out of a major carbon capture and storage project. But it’s worth taking a closer look at their explanation, and how it compares to the Cons’ claim to have the slightest interest in dealing with climate change.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Parliament in Review – March 29, 2012
There’s been much ado about the NDP’s position on trade agreements based on the Cons’ recent publicly-funded cheerleading for free trade at any price. But for anybody looking for the NDP’s actual view on trade, the House of Commons debates from March 29 offer a rather thorough indication. The Big
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – For much of the relatively recent past, one of the areas of relative consensus in economic theory is that productivity increases would find their way to workers. But Paul Krugman shows that hope to be utterly misplaced: Where did the productivity go? The
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman writes a long-overdue obituary for the confidence fairy who was supposed to turn needless austerity into growth contrary to all economic evidence: So, about that doctrine: appeals to the wonders of confidence are something Herbert Hoover would have found completely familiar
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On equivocal labels
I’ll agree with the commentators pointing out that Nanos’ polling on party labels shows far more trouble for the Cons than for the NDP. But let’s point out another part of the story that the media spin seems to be leaving out. Plenty of the terms used in association with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Wells had previously theorized that the size of environmental demonstrations in Montreal might hint at the NDP’s ability to establish a long-term base. So what ended up happening? What happened in Montreal was a great big rally for Earth Day whose
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: Parliament in Review: March 26, 2012
Having taken a bit of a hiatus during and after the NDP’s leadership campaign, I’ll resume looking back at what’s happened in the House of Commons starting with the election of Thomas Mulcair. (I’ll plan to return to the previous sitting later on.) Monday, March 26 saw Mulcair’s introduction as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Brian Mason makes the closing argument for Alberta’s NDP in tomorrow’s provincial election: – Meanwhile in Ontario, Keith Leslie reports that the McGuinty Libs are still dragging their heels on Andrea Horwath’s entirely reasonable set of budget requests. But while Martin Regg Cohn
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On short-sightedness
Others have already drawn parallels between the Cons’ plan to require Employment Insurance recipients to accept whatever low-paying temporary work might be available as a condition of receiving the benefits they’ve paid into, and other attacks on individual workers such as workfare and forced relocation. But let’s take a closer
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Tim Harper gets somewhat closer to the mark than most pundits in recognizing that any talk an NDP/Lib merger is neither timely nor particularly well-placed. But the “one more time” message is a little bit off: again, we’ve still run precisely zero election
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Buchhelt offers five reasons why the extremely wealthy should pay more in taxes. But if we can anticipate some conflict over that idea, there’s stronger evidence than ever that the public is rather united behind one side. – Bob Hepburn notes that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On shadow boxing
Aaron has already listed and commented on Thomas Mulcair’s shadow cabinet assignments. But there are a few additional points worth adding into the mix. First, while others have pointed out Nathan Cullen’s promotion to House Leader, the exact choice of positions is very much worth emphasizing. As the leadership candidate
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