Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Aaron Wherry discusses the dramatically different effects of the COVID-19 pandemic based on inequalities in income and privilege. And Katherine Scott draws on Canada’s most recent monthly jobs report to highlight the need for a recovery centered on women. – Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield
Continue readingTag: Doug Ford
Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Robert Reich writes about the end of any pretense that Donald Trump was acting as a president rather than a self-serving social media influencer. – Branko Milanovic discusses why it’s useless to make modeled economic predictions in a time of complete uncertainty
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney’s bloviations about medical matters may have found a friendly audience south of the Medicine Line
Stuff UCPers Say! Epidemiologists and other scientific types may not like it very much when Alberta Premier Jason Kenney equates COVID-19 with influenza, but at least Fox News seems to be on side. Last Wednesday in the Legislature in a prepared speech arguing for the government’s understandable desire to get
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Jason Kenney’s Miniscule Pandemic Bump
He’s tried everything from rolling up his shirtsleeves and pointing at graphs to quoting Franklin Roosevelt (“we have nothing to fear but fear itself”), but still Albertans refuse to give him his due. Jason Kenney’s pandemic performance gave him a one point bump in approval ratings (from 47 to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
Assorted content for your mid-week reading. – Christine Boyle, Penny Gurstein, Matthew Norris and Jim Stanford make the case for a public option in housing. And PressProgress documents how for-profit seniors’ homes are dominated by board members with no knowledge or experience in caring for people’s health. – Toby Sanger
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The future is ours.
As the song asks, “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?” That was a song that many believed after the First World War. It is also a lament for those politicians who think they can give the public greater freedoms and then expect to
Continue readingMontreal Simon: The Military Blows The Whistle On A Sickening Scandal
When I first saw Canadian soldiers arriving at long term care homes in Ontario and Quebec I must admit I was shocked.I didn't think they had the training or the equipment to be able to do much good. But boy was I wrong.Read more »
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Ethan Cox writes that a large majority of Canadians favours massive public investments funded by more fair taxes on the wealthy as our road to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. And Aaron Wherry points out the folly of fixating on deficits and public-sector
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Linda McQuaig warns us not to tolerate yet another around of austerian demagoguery when investment in people’s well-being is a positive step toward every end other than the goal of pushing people into additional precarity. And Marilyn Watkins examines how Washington state was
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
It is part of being of the political elite. We have no royals like the Brits. And we have little of America’s Hollywood. We have to settle for talking and speculating about our politicians. We put them on pedestals and then complain when they take advantage of their position to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Who will bell Ford?
Before you bell the cat, you had better learn something of its habits. This is not an animal that has been de-clawed nor rendered toothless. Nor has Ontario premier Doug Ford. You have to remember that Ford is a bully and a braggart and there are no Marquess of Queensbury
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Facing facts for Ford’s fortunes.
So, you think Ontario premier Doug Ford is riding the white charger towards a 2022 election victory? You are probably deluding your self. Much can happen in the next two years. And there is more than enough of the old-Ford poking through the current veneer to convince us that he
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Glen’s coat of many colors turns Green.
Former mayor of Winnipeg, former member of the Ontario legislature, former Ontario cabinet minister and former executive director of the Calgary-based Pembina Institute, Glen Murray, has a new quest. He wants to replace Elizabeth May as head of the Green Party of Canada. It might not be one of his
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Give Ford the credit he deserves.
Premier Doug Ford of Ontario had two choices. He could continue the bombast and bluff of his usual approach to politics, or he could learn from his mistakes and tone down the rhetoric. His new approach is far from perfect but it shows that unlike his first year as premier,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Ontario NDP: A party of survivors.
If you came to Ontario recently, you would have a problem figuring out what goes on at the provincial parliament at Queen’s Park. With that big blowhard who seems to be running things, this seems to be a one-party government. And you are even more convinced when you are told
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The populism of the coronavirus.
We live in an age of populist political solutions but we never expected to have to deal with a populist pandemic. The problem is that a populism pandemic is blind. It strikes the rich and powerful one per cent as easily as the person in poverty. It can kill the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: That goofy letter from Kingston to Jason Kenney — promise made, promise kept?
Now, about that goofy letter from Kingston, the one wherein the generous author or authors sent Alberta Premier Jason Kenney $1,000 to help out the Alberta treasury, I have a contrarian point of view. To wit: My opinion is that it’s totally legit, the real McCoy, it actually happened, the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A phony Ford forges forward.
It is hard to believe that it is so easy to con Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star. The provincial affairs specialist wrote a piece the other day admiring the new version of premier Doug Ford he is seeing at Queen’s Park. What Regg Cohn is missing is that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: OK, Canada’s good to go for those 3M medical masks — at least until Donald Trump changes his mind again
As is often the case when dealing with Donald Trump, the saga of the five million N95 respirators built by Minnesota’s 3M Co. and purchased by Ontario keeps changing. On Saturday, the U.S. President invoked the Defense Production Act to force the Maplewood, Minn.-based multinational to stop sending Canadians the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Dougie dumbs it down.
You get the impression that our Ontario premier goes to the office each day hoping to find new things to screw up for Ontario residents. Despite the tantrum he threw the other day over a high-priced grocery store overcharging for sanitary wipes, I never get the impression that he is
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