Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Ed Broadbent laments Canada’s failure to meet its commitment to end child poverty – and notes that the Harper Cons in particular are headed in exactly the wrong direction: This child poverty rate is a national disgrace. It jumped from 15.8 per cent
Continue readingTag: David Climenhaga
Alberta Diary: Alberta Diary is closed, but, like Gen. MacArthur, we (I) shall return…
Yeah, we’re closed, but we don’t plan to be closed for long. Below: Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Below him: Alberta Diary’s crack research staff scouring the Internets, looking for blog ideas and royalty-free illustrations to go with them. This may come as a surprise to readers, but actual Alberta Diary researchers
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
This and that to start your weekend. – Robert Reich discusses how the increasing concentration of corporate wealth and power is undermining the U.S.’ democracy, while noting that there’s only one effective response: We entered a vicious cycle in which political power became more concentrated in monied interests that used
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics: PC Party: Oh Albertans, give us one more chance (we want you back)
TweetIn 1971, The Jackson 5 were topping the billboard charts and Peter Lougheed‘s Progressive Conservatives were just starting what has become an uninterrupted 43-year reign as Alberta’s governing party. Recent messaging from the PC Party have certainly drawn inspiration from the band’s famous song – I Want You Back – as the PC Party
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Author’s Note: Changes are coming to Alberta Diary, soon to be AlbertaPolitics.ca
Write hard. Live a long time. (Edited version.) Tattoo by Jason Edward Morgan, Bastrop, Texas. Round about the end of summer – Labour Day or thereabouts if God’s willin’ and the crick don’t rise – there are some significant changes coming to Alberta Diary. The biggest will be a change
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Paul Krugman calls out the U.S.’ deficit scolds for continuing to invent a crisis to distract from the real problems with middling growth and high unemployment. And Bruce Johnstone singles out a few of the Cons’ talking points which have somehow become conventional
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Ralph Surette highlights the dangers of a pollution-based economy which fails to account for the damage we’re doing to our planet and its ability to provide food for people: This is something to behold. A more-or-less hurricane in early July. Has anyone ever
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig discusses how a renewed push for austerity runs directly contrary to the actual values of Canadians, who want to see their governments accomplish more rather than forcing the public to settle for less: Their formula for achieving small, disabled government is
Continue readingAlberta Diary: A blast from the past: Oh, those Tories and their stories!
A postal worker searches for David Climenhaga’s lost letter from the minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Ray Speaker. Nope. That’s not it … Nothing’s turned up just yet. Below: Mr. Speaker and NDP MLA Ed Ewasiuk. On May 7, 1991, Ray Speaker, the minister of municipal affairs in the
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics: Tory culture of entitlement a big problem for Jim Prentice
TweetWhoever leads Alberta’s long-governing Progressive Conservatives into the next election (probably Jim Prentice) will have some serious challenges to deal with. After more than forty years in office, Alberta’s natural governing party has become accustomed to getting its way, regardless of who stands in their way. Perhaps realizing how much damage this
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Finance Minister Doug Horner meekly throws his support to heir apparent Jim Prentice
Alberta Progressive Conservative Party activists surround leadership candidate Jim Prentice at a recent $500-a-plate fund-raising dinner in Edmonton. Finance Minister Doug Horner is visible immediately to Mr. Prentice’s right. The painting in the background illustrates Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. Actual Progressive Conservative Party members may not appear exactly as illustrated.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Polly Toynbee looks at how the UK is now treating children in need as investment opportunities to be exploited by investors, rather than people to be assisted. And Mark Taliano writes that privatization is a problem rather than a solution when it comes
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics: Who wants to be leader of the Alberta NDP?
TweetWhile most political chatter in Alberta is focused on how big Jim Prentice’s victory will be on the first ballot of the Progressive Conservative leadership vote on September 6, there is another race about to begin – the race to become the leader of the Alberta NDP. At his press
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Aging long-shot ‘blockhead’ candidate knocks off huge Journal political team to capture Yeggie political category award
Yeggie winning blogger David Climenhaga with a familiar-looking Albertan. What was her name again? Below: The same guy with some other political types who look faintly familiar. When the podcast site for the Edmonton Journal’s entire 11-member political affairs team was nominated for one of this year’s Yeggies, the annual
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics: Albertans defend modest pensions, Redford staff defend Palm Springs flight
TweetAbout 2,000 Albertans from every corner of the province braved the -33C windchill yesterday to defend their modest pension plans at a rally in Edmonton’s Churchill Square. Many municipal and provincial employees are concerned that Finance minister Doug Horner‘s proposed changes to Alberta’s public sector pension plans could impact their retirement security.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – David Macdonald comments on Statistics Canada’s latest wealth survey, with particular emphasis on the continued gap between a privileged few and the vast majority of Canadians: (T)he top 20% of families have twice as much wealth as the bottom 80% of families
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
This and that for your mid-week reading. – Erin Weir posts the statement of a 70-strong (and growing) list of Canadian economists opposed to austerity. Heather Mallick frames the latest Con budget as yet another example of their using personal cruelty as a governing philosophy, while the Star’s editorial board
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the reactions of the federal government and the rail industry six months after the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion only seem to reinforce the risk of more disasters to come. For further reading…– Monique Beaudin reports on the finger-pointing and other attempts to avoid responsibility on the part of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – The Star’s editorial board sees Canada’s woeful job numbers as a signal that it’s time for some economic management in the interests of people (rather than artificial manipulation of numbers): Economists used words like “dismal” and “ugly” for these results, and no wonder.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Stuart Trew fleshes out the Cons’ new(-ly explicit) Corporate Cronies Action Plan – and it goes even further in entrenching corporate control over policy than one might have expected at first glance: – The makeup of the advisory panel that consulted with Trade
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