This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Simon Enoch examines Scott Moe’s bait-and-switch when it comes to carbon taxes, including his utter refusal to offer any other plan for province-wide emission reductions as a substitute for consumer-based carbon pricing. And Aaron Wherry points out how any carbon tax falls
Continue readingTag: Jason Kenney
Alberta Politics: The declining impact of ‘bozo eruptions’ – are Albertans the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water?
Have Albertans grown so inured to Conservative “bozo eruptions” they no longer have much impact? To put that another way, have we grown so accustomed to the Lake of Fire that we imagine we can bathe in it comfortably without putting on an asbestos swimsuit? That’s likely at least part
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Robert Reich offers a reminder that the Trump administration is just the most glaring example of the utter breakdown of any pretense of meritocracy in the U.S. – Daniel Zamora interviews Niklas Olsen about the dangers of replacing the idea of government representing
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 33: Ballot Questions, the Leaders’ Debate, and your great Alberta Election questions
In this episode Dave and Ryan discuss the latest Alberta’s election developments, including the fallout from Mark Smith’s homophobic comments, Jason Kenney’s interview with Charles Adler and how it might impact voters on April 16, the televised leaders’ debate, and what Rachel Notley needs to do in the final week of
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Day Jason Kenney Edited the UCP Policy Document…
The UCP policy document opens with a letter from Jason Kenney which cribs Ronald Reagan’s well known question, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Kenney’s answer is no, and he lists a number of reasons why it’s time for a change. The “time for a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Will McMartin writes that if we needed more evidence that Jason Kenney’s trickle-down economics are nothing but a scam to concentrate more wealth in the hands of the rich, British Columbia’s own moves in the same direction produced none of the promised economic
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Norway Shines a Light We Don’t Care to See
Little Norway and it’s big sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, are once again leading the way, this time by plunging into alternative clean energy investment. Not for the first time Norway is demonstrating how screwed up Canadian energy policy has become and will continue to be until we get
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney escape relatively unscathed in Alberta election leaders’ debate
Last night’s Alberta election leaders’ debate was an unedifying experience, as these things often are. If anyone except hard-core political junkies kept their hands off the remote, I’d be surprised. Debate stuck to talking points we’ve heard before, the broadcast aired at a weird hour when many viewers were still
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how Jason Kenney, Scott Moe and other right-wing leaders make a habit of substituting futile complaints about other levels of government for action in the public interest in the jurisdiction where they pursue power. For further reading…– Kenney’s Alberta campaign has focused heavily on whinging about pipelines and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Were Mark Smith’s comments on gay love a Lake of Fire moment for the UCP, or just another insignificant bozo eruption?
With the revelation United Conservative Party candidate Mark Smith holds the offensive view gay love can never be real love, and equates LGBTQ people with pedophiles, it appeared that Alberta’s United Conservative Party was finally having its own genuine Lake of Fire moment. But was it? It certainly looked like
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – CBC reports on Canada’s Changing Climate Report showing that we’re facing climate change twice as severe as the rest of the world, while Phil Tank writes about the anticipated effects on Saskatoon in particular. And the Canadian Press reports on the latest report
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP math: 1.5 = 1 – and you’re lucky to get that!
One hour is the same as one and a half hours! Who knew? It’s always an education to listen to the way Jason Kenney and his UCP team explain things. Yesterday, the leader of Alberta’s United Conservative party was testily engaged in an epic effort to persuade Albertans that his
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Roland Paulsen is rightly critical of the billionaire-funded take that we should ignore the ready availability of resources to end severe crises simply because they were worse on an absolute level in the past: To exclusively discuss social progress based on a certain
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Former NDP leader Brian Mason said ready to bring Alberta-style politics to B.C.
Brian Mason, soon to be a resident of British Columbia, will seek a nomination as an NDP candidate in that province as soon as he can, AlbertaPolitics.ca is reporting. The former leader of the Alberta New Democrats and Edmonton city councillor who announced in July he was retiring from Alberta
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 32: GSAs, GSAs, GSAs. Week 2 of Alberta’s Election.
Alberta’s provincial election is 16 days away and for the duration of the campaign, we are going to be recording a new episode of the Daveberta Podcast each week. In this episode Dave and Ryan talk about the United Conservative Party reopening the Gay-Straight Alliance debate, the transphobic comments that
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: GSAs…Here we go again
Last Thursday Mr and Ms Soapbox joined hundreds of Calgarians protesting Mr Kenney’s plan to out kids who join gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in schools. The question on everyone’s mind was why would the man who says he’s fit to govern Alberta enact legislation that increases the risk of harm to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: How to save a province by destroying it: Jason Kenney releases the Full Monty, political version
About that 117-page “full platform” released by United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney on the billionaire Southern Family’s back stoop south of Calgary yesterday, the first thing it’ll do is raise the deficit. That’s right! Raise it. Increase it. Make it bigger. Because that’s what happens when you eliminate at
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jeff Callaway bids to derail Kamikaze Campaign finance probe – why won’t he wait, like Trump?
Despite obviously having been tempted to shut down the “Russian collusion” investigation when he saw friends and supporters charged with lying to the FBI, aides to U.S. President Donald Trump managed to persuade him to hold his fire. How? Although many of us wondered about this during Special Counsel Robert
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The UCP health platform: mostly spin, some two-tier medicine, and scraps of red meat for the base
Jason Kenney’s health care policy announcement yesterday was a typical conservative political speech – a mish-mash of anodyne sentiment, misleading spin, market-fundamentalist nostrums, scraps of red meat for the base, cheap shots at the federal government, terrible ideas he’ll implement if he gets the chance, and even a couple of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robert Borosage discusses why we shouldn’t let conveniently one-sided calls for civility silence debate over progressive possibilities. And Alex Ballingall reports on the affordability anxiety which demands an effective political response rather than a contemptuous dismissal: In a memo outlining the results,
Continue reading