Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Gerald Caplan suggests that Rogers and Bell might be ripe for nationalization – though it’s also worth pointing out that we don’t have to guess what happens when a Crown delivers telecommunications services: The British Labour Party has begun to make the case
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Danyaal Raza and Edward Xie write that a well-designed city environment can make all the difference in enabling individuals to live healthy lives: What if city council took our health into account when designing neighbourhoods? An idea gaining favour in major cities around
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: UPDATED: Gerald Caplan’s Lament
The NDP exists for a reason: to express certain principles and to represent certain voters. Today it is not easy to say what the Ontario party’s principles are or for whom it speaks. This lament, which Gerald Caplan places near the beginning of his open letter to Ontario NDP leader
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Timothy Shenk discusses Thomas Piketty’s contribution to a critique of unfettered capitalism and gratuitous inequality: Seen from Piketty’s vantage point, thousands of feet above the rubble, the fragility of this moment becomes clear. Economic growth was a recent invention, major reductions to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Graeme Wearden reports on Oxfam’s latest study on inequality and the outsized political influence of the wealthy few: The Oxfam report found that over the past few decades, the rich have successfully wielded political influence to skew policies in their favour on issues
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – The CP reports on the latest federal-provincial discussion about pensions. And as is so often the case, all parties at the table seem to agree that there’s an important problem to be fixed – even as Brad Wall, Stephen Harper and others stand
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Gerald Kaplan discusses how the privileges of power have contributed to the utterly callous response to the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion by Stephen Harper and Ed Burkhardt: For me, of all Burkhardt’s outrageous statements nothing surpasses his public accusation that the train’s engineer, Tom
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Robert Reich asks a few impertinent (but important) questions about plutocratic encroachment on the U.S.’ political system. – Catherine McKenna explains why it’s important to try to make a difference in our political system. But Chris Cobb reports on what happens to
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Who Will Give Us Hope?
I recently wrote a post on the ailing Nelson Mandela and why he is so important a world figure. Last Friday Gerald Caplan wrote a piece in the Globe entitled The world will be poorer without Nelson Mandela. I hope you will take the time to read his thoughts on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your Family Day. – Gerald Caplan comments that it’s long past time to put the Senate out of its misery: Who knew that when well-known Canadians in 2011 begged old acquaintances now turned Conservative Senators to back a bill for cheap generic AIDS drugs for Africa,
Continue readingAlberta Diary: It’s time for Ezra Levant to apologize or explain his hateful Roma commentary
Canadians struggle to cope with the offensive noise from the Sun News Network. Typical TV viewers may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Commentator Ezra Levant. It’s 2013, and it’s time for Sun News Network commentator Ezra Levant to either apologize for or explain his comments on Sept. 5, 2012,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jim Stanford responds to the claim that we should be eager to import whatever capital we can for lack of other means of developing our own resources: Measured by foreign direct investment, Canada has been exporting capital, not importing it. During the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week.- Susan Delacourt comments on what’s often lacking from Canadian political coverage – and the challenge facing journalists looking to stop relying excessively on horse-race numbers which may miss what ultimately moti…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jim Coyle wonders whether or democracy is in decline, and cites as evidence the utter disconnect between the primary functions of elected representatives and the way politics are covered in the media: (R)eal influence and authority has left the precincts — drifting
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom discusses how the McGuinty Libs are going beyond imposing immediate pay freezes on the public sector, and instead passing what’s better seen as the War on Workers Measures Act – giving Ontario’s government the power to dictate labour outcomes by decree
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Gerald Caplan weighs in on Jack Layton’s legacy: It seems to me that Jack Layton’s enduring legacy is twofold. First, he set a standard of doing politics that, if followed by others, would change the entire tone of public life for the country.
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Doug Saunders discusses how corporate cash hoarding is limiting any economic recovery – and what we can do about it: (T)his should be a great time for companies to invest: low prices, low interest rates, cheaper labour costs. A sensible company would build
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that to occupy your Canada Day. – Tim Harford discusses why randomized trials as part of a genuine evidence-gathering process are a must in developing public policy. – Mike de Souza reports that the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans was already short on resources to do its
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Chantal Hebert theorizes that Canada’s political scene has taken every turn Jack Layton might have hoped for since his passing last summer, while Gerald Caplan discusses what the NDP needs to do next: As the Liberals flounder their way through the next year,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Bruce Johnstone and the Star-Phoenix editorial board both join the voices decrying the Cons’ decision to throw parliamentary democracy under their omnibus budget bill. And Gerald Caplan points out the Harper Cons’ more general tendency to silence dissenting views: (T)here’s little doubt the
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