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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links

Sep

23

2017

Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman discusses how the Republicans’ latest attempt to undermine U.S. health care is built on a foundation of cruelty and lies – and is entirely consistent with their usual modus operandi. And Joe Watts reports on new polling showing how popular Jeremy Corbyn’s progressive policy agenda is ...

Things Are Good: Learn Economics for Free in the Most Effective Way

Sep

19

2017

Economics is a large field filled with nuance – and assumptions. One of those assumptions is that environmental concerns and inequality are secondary to that of economic concerns. These assumptions are questioned in a new course prepared by an international team of economists called the core team. Their work is available for anybody around the ...

The Canadian Progressive: Rape at universities: One program is proven to reduce it

Sep

13

2017

The Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) Sexual Assault Resistance program, developed by Charlene Senn, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Windsor, empowers women students at universities to defender themselves against rape and other forms of sexual assault. The post Rape at universities: One program is proven to reduce it appeared first on The ...

The Progressive Economics Forum: Book review: Social policy in Canada (second edition)

Sep

11

2017

Oxford University Press has recently released the second edition of Social Policy in Canada, co-authored by the father-daughter duo of Ernie Lightman and Naomi Lightman. I recommend this book as an excellent resource for students of social policy. It will be useful for classroom instruction, while also being a handy reference for researchers, persons who ...

We Pivot: Trudeau’s Empty “Yes We Can” Moment

Sep

8

2017

Obama’s “Yes We Can” mantra made many question, yes we can do what exactly? That was its brilliance. He became whatever to whoever. Trudeau’s commitment to a national inquiry on murdered and missing indigenous women has become the same emptiness, … [Read more]

Susan on the Soapbox: A Pop Quiz

Aug

20

2017

Ms Soapbox is shocked. She just returned from the Alberta Teachers’ Association Summer Summit on Public Education and discovered that she knows far less about education and teaching in Alberta than she thought she did. What education looks like today So pop quiz! (Stop grumbling, many politicians are pontificating about the state of education in ...

Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links

Aug

16

2017

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Roderick Benns interviews Ryan Meili about the value of a basic income in freeing people from perpetual financial stress. And Doug Cameron reminds us that we have a choice whether to show empathy toward people facing homelessness – even if far too many forces try to push us ...

Dead Wild Roses: The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct – Oh Gender Studies, you so silly…

Jul

17

2017

Amazing what goes on and more importantly get accepted and published in the field of gender studies these days. Let’s take a peek at the abstract. The text reads: Abstract: Anatomical penises may exist, but as pre-operative transgendered women also have anatomical penises, the penisvis-à-vismaleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis ...

Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links

Jul

4

2017

This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ben Tarnoff discusses the growing number of basic public services which are being converted into private rents as profit motives are given precedence over democracy: A profit-driven system doesn’t mean we get more for our money – it means someone gets to make more money off of ...

centre of the universe: Acting Your Age

May

24

2017

Here’s the thing. We live in a society that values youth over experience, wisdom, ability and knowledge. I’m not sure why we do that, but children are more valuable to us than non-children, which also translates into vilifying people who opt not to breed. There’s a whole bunch going on in this statement, and I…

Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links

May

22

2017

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Paul Krugman criticizes the use of non-compete agreements to trap workers at low wage levels with no opportunity to pursue comparable employment – as well as the Republicans’ insistence on pushing employer-based health care which further limits workers’ options: At this point, in other words, noncompete clauses are ...

Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links

May

16

2017

This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Tom Parkin writes about the growing opposition to a Lib infrastructure bank designed to turn public needs into private profits at our expense: Paying higher fares, fees and tolls because of a political decision to use more expensive private capital would be a “massive transfer of wealth ...

We Pivot: Liberating Your Children?

May

12

2017

Yes, let’s! You know you want to. And if you find some mental resistance to sliding to the right side of the image, question your assumptions.

Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links

May

5

2017

Assorted content to end your week. – Clive Hamilton discusses the accelerating calamity of climate change which we’re allowing to happen: Our best scientists tell us insistently that a calamity is unfolding, that the life-support systems of the Earth are being damaged in ways that threaten our survival. Yet in the face of these facts ...

Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links

Apr

12

2017

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Dani Rodrik argues that it’s too late to try to compensate the people being deliberately left behind by trade deals – and that instead, we need to make sure their interests are actually taken into account in how trade is structured: Today’s consensus concerning the need to compensate ...

Susan on the Soapbox: The Whole Gay Thing

Apr

9

2017

Recently Brad Trost and Jason Kenney made some troubling comments about the whole gay thing and the progressives just won’t let it go. Trost, a “full spectrum” conservative, believes in all three conservative values: social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, and democratic populist conservatism. He recently shared his views on “the whole gay thing” in a campaign ...

The Progressive Economics Forum: A Review of the 2017 Alberta Budget

Apr

2

2017

Over at the web site of the Calgary Homeless Foundation, I’ve written a review of the recent Alberta budget. Points I make in the blog post include the following: -Alberta remains the lowest-taxed province in Canada. -Alberta’s net debt-to-GDP ratio remains the lowest in Canada. -For the third consecutive year, the Rachel Notley government announced ...

Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: The SaskParty’s Deaf Ears & Dumb Cuts

Mar

30

2017

It’s staggering that the province is willing to spend multitudes more money on redundant highway so people can avoid going to Regina, than they are to improve literacy. Don Morgan is out of touch, and wrong. The Saskatchewan Library Trustees’ Association said in a news release after the budget that Morgan has said the province ...

centre of the universe: Fuck Libraries

Mar

29

2017

The Saskatchewan government, in its 2017/18 budget, has slashed library budgets around the province. Its done all kinds of other things too like force civil servants to take a 3.5% cut in pay, shut down the only highway bus transportation service in the province, increase the provincial sales tax, and basically pissed off pretty much…

Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links

Mar

22

2017

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Katie Allen reports on the growing gap between the privileged few and the working class in the UK. And Frank Elgar highlights how we all pay the price of inequality, even as our governments can’t be bothered to rein it in: For decades, the IMF, OECD, and World ...

Dead Wild Roses: Critical Thinking – Survivorship Bias

Mar

18

2017

Consider the Hollywood actor giving the classic “follow your dreams and never give up” line is bad advice and is pure survivorship bias at work. Well what is surviorship bias? Let’s take a look friends and learn. 🙂 “Survivorship bias, or survival bias, is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that ...

The Progressive Economics Forum: Foundations for an Alberta Alternative Budget

Mar

15

2017

An Alberta-based volunteer working group, of which I’m a part, recently released a document titled Foundations for an Alberta Alternative Budget (for media coverage, see this Metro article). Working group members include staff from Alberta’s non-profit sector, labour movement and advocacy sector. While our long-term goal is to emulate the great work of the Alternative ...

We Pivot: IWD + 7 Days: Saudi Arabia Edition

Mar

15

2017

Maybe this is a first step at dismantling one of the harshest patriarchies on the planet? Or maybe that as we pivot to a society of gender equality, we can suggest to Saudi Arabia that if they oppose genders mixing, … [Read more]

Accidental Deliberations: Monday Evening Links

Mar

13

2017

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Jordon Cooper rightly argues that Brad Wall’s plan to slash education will only doom Saskatchewan to be further trapped in boom-and-bust resource cycles. And Toby Sanger discusses (PDF) how Saskatchewan can get back on track without imposing cruel cuts on the people who can least afford them. – ...

Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links

Mar

5

2017

This and that for your Sunday reading. – Carol Linnitt notes that British Columbia’s provincial pipeline spill map has been conspicuously disappeared by the Clark Libs in the lead up to an election where environmental protection is a major issue. And Kathy Tomlinson is the latest to highlight both the glaring lack of reasonable fund-raising ...