Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frances Russell comments on the Canada which the Harper Cons are determined to destroy. But the more important point looks to me to be less any theory of constitutionalism than the desire to have governments be as ineffective as possible at all levels:
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to start your week… – Remember the Cons’ talking point that we should assume all of the Robocon calls which purported to come from Lib candidates could safely be said to have come from that source? Because Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher just shot a massive hole in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Sixth Estate catches a right-wing election contractor defending vote suppression, then theorizes as to how Robocon may have come together. – The introduction of Doctors for Fair Taxation is certainly a positive step in ensuring that Canadian physicians show their support for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – William Black suggests that we consider applying the “broken windows” theory to the financial sector – particularly since the signs of a severely damaged system are still obvious. – Jim Stanford proposes one way to make sure that resource extraction actually does benefit
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Erin nicely summarizes Don Drummond’s report on Ontario’s finances. But it’s worth noting that leaving aside Drummond’s own choice not to follow the instruction, anybody looking for a thorough analysis of Ontario’s fiscal realities should be able to discount the report in
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – I’d planned to post on the sheer arbitrariness of the Cons’ insistence on eliminating a regulation for any new one they implement. But Erin gets there first: At best, this rule is a gimmick. At worst, it will delay or prevent the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Thomas Walkom puts the Cons’ anti-environmental hysteria in perspective by noting how our cabinet ministers are going out of their way to sound like the most fringy of lunatic Tea Partiers: America’s Exxon Mobil, Britain’s BP, France’s Total E&P, China’s SinoCanada Petroleum Corp.
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Frances Russell criticizes the Cons’ latest attempts to stifle parliamentary accountability. And the Citizen can only scoff at Tony Clement’s claim to be an advocate for open government: What matters is whether government makes information available. The statistics from access-to-information requests suggest
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
Assorted content for your evening reading. – Alex Himelfarb finds a few positives in the Cons’ ramming their dumb-on-crime bill through the House of Commons: Thankfully many are not willing to “get over it”. How heartening, for example, to hear Leadnow.ca announce that they were simply regrouping for the next
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Frances Russell wonders what happened to the concept of the public good: Our political language about taxes has changed. Gone is “ability to pay.” The new catchphrases are “user pay” and “pay as you go.” The bottom-line message to citizens is “if
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frances Russell laments Stephen Harper’s determination to replace democracy with court rule: Pierre Trudeau started it. Stephen Harper is finishing it off. The “it” is the effective demise of parliamentary democracy and the installation of “court government” ruled by an all-powerful prime minister
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
Assorted content for your evening reading.- Murray Dobbin nicely summarizes what the Cons are hoping to do in prioritizing big-money “philanthropy” over a functional state and civil society:Ideology is meaning in the service of power, and the Conservat…
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