Assorted content to end your week. – David Green asks whether decades of corporate insistence on “flexible” labour markets (i.e. ones which offer no stability for workers) have resulted in the improved wages promised at the outset: Increased wages are how we share the benefits of economic growth among a
Continue readingTag: Jeffrey Simpson
Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Thomas Walkom writes that the Harper Cons’ much-hyped economic record in fact offers ample reason to demand a change in government: The Conservatives insist that the economy is their strong suit. And for a while it was. In 2011, voters bought Harper’s pitch.
Continue readingLeftist Jab: Hack Pundit of the Week: Jeffrey Simpson
Jeffrey Simpson is so knowledgeable, he doesn’t need to think Leave it to the senior senile sages of Globe and Mail to cough up columns that exist only in the fantasies of the author’s feeble faculties. When Margaret Wente isn’t blaming women for their own kidnappings and rapes, it is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The National Post offers an excerpt from Susan Delacourt’s Shopping for Votes discussing the role branding played in the election of John Diefenbaker. And Jeffrey Simpson discusses the continued drift toward consumer politics.– But in commenting on the Nova Scotia provincial election, Ralph
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Martin Lukacs offers up the definitive response to the Lac-Mégantic rail tragedy: The deeper evidence about this event won’t be found in the train’s black box, or by questioning the one engineer who left the train before it loosened and careened unmanned into
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The Broadbent Institute has released a new set of polling (PDF) as to Canadians’ values. And it’s particularly worth noting that even on the Cons’ signature issues such as tax cuts, austerity and crime – where millions upon millions of public dollars
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Harper Government lacks a strategic vision for Canada’s oil industry
400 parts per million … Those Albertans who have voted for Harper’s Conservatives in election after election must be starting to wonder whether Stephen Harper and his Cabinet are the best choice for their main industry: oil. They should start to worry, because the Harper Tories are displaying yet again
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Chrystia Freeland points out why productivity doesn’t provide an accurate picture of economic development if it merely results in increased inequality rather than shared benefits: Productivity and innovation, the focus of policy makers and business leaders, no longer guarantee widely shared prosperity. “Digital
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jeffrey Simpson rightly notes that Alberta (like other resource-heavy jurisdictions) should be trying to diversify its revenue sources and economic development instead of relying on the one-time sale of publicly-owned resources to pay the bills. And Robyn Allan points out why we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading.- Michael Geist notes that even as the Harper Cons have done nothing but hand more free money to big pharma through ever more generous patent giveaways, the Supreme Court of Canada has offered a reminder of the …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
This and that to end your week.- Tavia Grant writes that at least one region of the globe – Latin America – is seeing some real progress in combating inequality. And the World Bank has some ideas to keep up the momentum:The bank still sees room for imp…
Continue readingAlberta Diary: More files from the You-Heard-It-Here Dep’t
Jeffrey Simpson of Canada’s National Website ponders the topic of another column. High-profile national prognosticators may not appear exactly as illustrated. More files from the Déjà-Vu-All-Over-Again Dep’t at Canada’s National Website and the You-Heard-It-Here Dep’t at Alberta Diary : “Are storm clouds forming in Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s sunny skies?” “… Ms. Redford’s problem in …
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: The citizen as consumer, as a mere "marketing target."
http://tinyurl.com/9nu7j9c Under a neoliberal regime such as ours, anything – including your very soul – can be commodified. (Ask those members of the evangelical church to which OGL apparently belongs.) The very concept of consumer assumes a market. Yet we’ve naturalized the concept so unconsciously no one questions the term
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Files from the You-Heard-It-Here Department
Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe and Mail tries to remember when he first thought that thought. High-profile national prognosticators may not appear exactly as illustrated. “It’s semi-official: The Enbridge Northern Gateway project is kaput!” – David J. Climenhaga, Alberta Diary, July 19, 2012 “You heard it here: Northern Gateway’s dead”
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Michael Harris follows up on the previous activism to save the Experimental Lakes Area by noting that efforts to work with the Harper Cons are providing both divisive and disastrous: (J)ust a few months after the Death of Evidence rally, another event is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – The Cons’ latest line of talking-point addiction isn’t passing without some substantial comment from Canada’s political press. Today, Jeffrey Simpson lambastes Stephen Harper and his party for trying to wipe out their own history and promises, while Dan Gardner considers the Cons to
Continue readingAlberta Diary: News from Imperial Washington: Alberta Diary’s surprise endorsement (sort of) from afar
You want moments in American history? Apropos of nothing, here lies Alexander Hamilton, slain in a duel by his political foe Aaron Burr, who got off scot free. Top that! Below: Danielle Smith, disapproving of my tinfoil cap. Your blogger is normally disinclined to give too much of this space
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jeffrey Simpson marks Peter Lougheed’s passing by discussing what he brought to Alberta’s political scene that’s been sorely lacking ever since: Mr. Lougheed, defending Alberta’s jurisdictional turf in conflicts with Liberal and Conservative governments in Ottawa, navigated his province through these shoals. The
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jeffrey Simpson criticizes the Cons for killing off the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy as punishment for telling the truth about climate change at its own request: In a letter to the National Round Table on the Environment and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
This and that to end your week. – Jeffrey Simpson discusses how the Cons have diminished Canada’s place on the world stage: For those who care about Canada’s international reputation and Canada’s ability to influence others in the pursuit of Canada’s self-interest, these are discouraging days. Everywhere, there is penny-pinching
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