At first glance, you wouldn't think that Rob Ford had anything in common with Andrew Scheer.Scheer is a sinister religious fanatic and alt-right sympathizer, who despite the creepy smile that he glues to his face every morning, is consumed by his hatred of Justin Trudeau.While Ford is a brutish political ape,
Continue readingTag: Doug Ford
Babel-on-the-Bay: Calamitous cost of change.
Talking, the other day, about how lawyers are the only ones happy with the Ford government in Ontario, you have to admit that is our own fault. Did we really have a clue as to what it would cost the voters to throw out the McGinty/Wynne government? This might be
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Joesph Stiglitz writes that history has proven wrong the theory that the weak recovery from the 2008 economic crash was the result of “secular stagnation” rather than a woefully insufficient public policy response. And Sam Pizzigati points out how the U.S. public is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Matt Bruenig makes the case for a social wealth fund in the U.S. And David Dayen offers a reminder that Alaska’s dividend to citizens from its own wealth fund is both extremely popular and an effective treatment for many social ills. – Meanwhile,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s ‘Scheer’ Madness.
Checking reports from last week’s conservative conclave in Halifax has not indicated any serious policy directions for the party in next year’s election. It was Maxime Bernier who sucked all the air out of the beginning of the event and it became just a footnote to Bernier’s farewell. But what
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Beauce’s Bernier bugs-out.
‘Bug-out’ is an American military term for the rapid advance to the rear of troops or an installation about to be over-run by enemy combatants. It is also an appropriate term for political people deserting their political party in the face of sure and certain defeat. And that is the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Dougie doesn’t define Ontario.
Watching the first session of the new Ford government at Queen’s Park was a letdown. It was regressive, loud, uncivil, sexually repressed and barely disguised in its bigotry. The sea of white faces on the government side is barely broken by any ethnicity. Dougie does not do diversity. And this
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ajit Zacharias, Thomas Masterson and Fernando Rios-Avila study the economic well-being of U.S. households, and find a stagnant standard of living including a falling base income for the median family. Josh Bivens and Ben Zipperer confirm that in the past few decades, workers
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Who says Dougie’s done?
Looking at the upcoming Toronto municipal election in October, you can end up with more questions than answers. The problem is premier Ford. This guy is not finished with his home town. And they are not finished with him. And they are wasting the taxpayers’ money fighting him. We seem
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – A new IMF working paper confirms the connection between employment deregulation and workers’ share of income. And Jennefer Laidley points out the all-too-imminent danger that the Ontario PCs are about to undo what little belated progress had been made in making social assistance
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Dougie’s dummies don’t do doubts.
This summer session of the Ontario legislature showed that Dougie and the dummies do not do deep thinking. It is not their style. As the government of Ontario, we can expect scatterbrained legislation, shallow thinking, ignorance and precipitous actions. And that will be on the good days. After all, he
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Colby Smith writes about the changing role of public stock markets, which are serving primarily to allow already-wealth investors to cash out rather than to fund the growth of expanding businesses. And the Equality Trust examines the growing gap between the CEO class
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Doomsayers, Chicken Littles and Conservatives get it wrong on the impact of minimum wage increases
Now there’s a surprise! Ontario’s minimum wage increase behaved exactly as predicted by most mainstream economists. That is, the 21-per-cent wage increase implemented by the former Liberal government that took effect on Jan. 1 this year did none of the terrible things Conservative politicians, right-wing think tankers, Astro-Turf “tax watchdog”
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Humberto DaSilva comments on the need to recognize that it’s the distortion of the political system by the wealthy that’s left most people with a standard of living that’s stagnating or worse. And Davide Mastracci makes the case for an inheritance tax
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Somini Sengupta writes that the extreme heat experienced so far in 2018 shows how ill-prepared humanity is for the climate change it’s causing. And the Economist offers a warning that the oil industry can’t realistically expect past prices to continue to apply
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A summer of silly slogans.
It has to be this hot summer. It is either that or we have some of the stupidest politicians in the world right here in tropical Ontario. Premier Ford and a few of his political cronies took a road trip—with news media in tow—back down the Highway of Heroes to
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Is Doug Ford Already Going Over the Deep End?
As I'm sure you know, I never believed that Doug Ford was anywhere near qualified to be the Premier of Ontario.And I always knew it was only a matter of time before his inner ape emerged..But who knew he'd be riding the crazy train so soon?Read more »
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frank Rich writes that the lack of a meaningful response to the 2008 financial crisis has understandably undermined public confidence in the U.S.’ future: Everything in the country is broken. Not just Washington, which failed to prevent the financial catastrophe and has done
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Brian Nolan examines the relationship between inequality and median incomes in developed countries, and concludes that there’s little basis to view inequality as an inevitable outcome of international forces: Globalisation and technological change are often portrayed as exogenous forces sweeping across the rich
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Folks find Ford far from frugal.
We are told that Ontario premier Doug Ford is going to sue prime minister Justin Trudeau. And he is going to use our money to do it. I hardly see how that is going to please Ontario residents. Other than our money going to enrich a bunch of lawyers, what
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