Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Joseph Heath discusses how the Volkswagen emission cheating scandal fits into a particular type of corporate culture: (W)hen the Deepwater Horizon tragedy occurred, or now the VW scandal, it was hardly surprising to people who follow these things. Certain industries essentially harbour and reproducing
Continue readingTag: haroon siddiqui
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Robert Reich writes that the most important source of growing inequality in the U.S. is a political system torqued to further enrich those who already had the most: The underlying problem, then, is not just globalization and technological changes that have made most
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Angella MacEwen comments on the fight for universal child care, along with the lessons we can learn from Quebec’s experience. And Claire Cain Miller notes that inequality in the workplace extends to benefits as well as wages – with child care included alongside
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Haroon Siddiqui comments on the Cons’ tall economic tales. And Steven Chase and Greg Keenan note that workers are rightly fighting back against the Cons’ plan to sell out Canada’s auto parts industry and its 80,000 jobs. – Canadian Doctors for Medicare
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ryan Meili reminds us of the harmful health impacts of inequality. And Susan Perry discusses the effect of inequality on health in the workplace in particular: The rise in income inequality over the past three decades or so is taking a major
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Fear In The Streets? It’s What He Wants
Those of us who have been following the machinations of our Machiavellian prime minster know that he seems intent on remaking Canada in his own malevolent image – a land where fear, suspicion, and division prevail, a land where only he and his party deserve the people’s electoral trust to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Alan Rusbridger explains the Guardian’s much-appreciated effort to provide both space and analysis of the need to fight climate change. And Naomi Klein makes the case for a Marshall plan-style response to transition the world to a sustainable society, while highlighting the need
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson link inequality and climate change as massive problems which are generated by political choices (and thus amenable to correction through the political system): Rising inequality is no more natural than global warming. And just as with global
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading. – Al Engler argues that it’s long past time to start raising taxes on the wealthy to make sure that Canada can fund the level of social development we deserve. – Kevin Drum writes that we shouldn’t be satisfied with a temporary dip in
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Diseased Leadership
Almost four years ago I wrote a post on failed leadership, using the Elizabethan notion of The Great Chain of Being as it pertained to the relationship between the governed and those who govern. In essence it postulated that if the leader was good, the nation would prosper, but if
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jim Stanford highlights the fact that a deficit obsession may have little to do with economic development – and calls out the B.C. Libs for pretending that the former is the same as the latter: I found especially objectionable the article’s uncritical cheerleading
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Mark Gongloff takes a look at social mobility research from multiple countries, and finds that there’s every reason for concern that inheritance is far outweighing individual attributes in determining social status. And Left Futures notes that the problem may only get worse
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Jackson takes a look at some dire predictions about the continued spread of inequality, and notes that we need to act now in order to reverse the trend. And UN Special Rapporteur Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona discusses how more progressive tax policies –
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: About That War Thing
I am dismayed over the general collective amnesia that has once more taken hold of political leaders and the public over the latest so-called world threat. In the solution being embraced, few seem to remember the abject failure of past incursions in the Middle East, incursions that only gravely exacerbated
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Justin Trudeau Speaks
But, unfortunately, says nothing. As I have noted elsewhere in this blog and in comments on others’, I have grave misgivings about the Liberal Party under the leadership of Justin Trudeau. Despite the latest EKOS poll showing the party with a commanding lead while the Conservatives continue to sink under
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Our Politicians Serve Nothing But Their Own Ambitions
Given the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, many in Canada have been dismayed, not by the predictable and uncritical enthusiasm for all things Israeli from the Harper regime, but by the relative silence or complicity demonstrated by the two major opposition leaders, Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair; both have amply
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Our Monochromatic Political Leadership
The images are graphic and heartbreaking – buildings reduced to rubble, maimed and dead children strewn among that rubble, families fractured, lives broken beyond repair. Were it not for the distancing effect that television news inevitably brings, the pictures would be overwhelming, leaving room for nothing but despair. Thus is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Mark Taliano highlights the distinction between corporate and public interests (while pointing out that both military and economic policy are all too often based on the former). And Jamie Doward discusses how the perception that government is either unwilling or unable to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Chris Dillow discusses how a shredded social safety net may turn into a vicious cycle – as voters are more prepared to cast ballots based on resentment when their own livelihood is less secure: Marko Pitesa and Stefan Thau first manipulated subjects’ perceptions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Stephany Griffith-Jones points out the lack of any coherent argument against a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions – and the public support when political parties actually raise it for debate: Major financial sectors such as the United States, Hong Kong and
Continue reading