This and that for your Thursday reading. – Scott Rivkees writes that COVID-19 denialism has come to dominate public policy around an ongoing viral threat, while Kelly Skjerven reports that the relentless minimization of the ongoing pandemic has led Canadians to stop getting updated vaccinations. Eric Reinhart discusses how doctors
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – CBC News reports that Saskatchewan’s children’s hospital is among the health care facilities with an internal outbreak, while Laura Sciarpelletti talks to some of the parents begging the provincial government to limit transmission in schools. – Moira Wyton reports on British Columbia’s
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Assorted content to end your week. – Dan Diamond reports on the shortage of health care workers as the fifth wave of COVID crests in the U.S., while Carl O’Donnell and Ahmed Aboulenein report on the escalating number of children being hospitalized with the coronavirus. Robyn Urback warns that our
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Ricky Leong discusses the complete lack of any reasonable explanation for the UCP’s failure to protect the health of Albertans in the face of the fourth wave of COVID-19. And Murray Mandryk comments that the Sask Party likewise insists on doing too
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Assorted content to end your week. – Anand Giridharadas writes about the dangers of letting political discussions become primarily a matter of process and personalities, rather than the real impact decisions have on people’s lives. – Graham Thomson calls out Jason Kenney for his consistent refusal to acknowledge the reality
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Christo Aivalis rightly points out that the NDP needs to be a party of labour and fight to ensure workers’ needs are central to Canada’s political discussion, rather than amplifying the rhetoric of the exploitative corporate lobby even when it’s in the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – In an excerpt from his new book, Martin Lukacs examines the disappointment Justin Trudeau has inflicted on anybody who thought his carefully-cultivated progressive image would be matched by action: Long before photographs of Trudeau partying in black-face and brown-face in his twenties
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Assorted content to end your week. – Luke Savage writes that the most compelling case for socialist policies is the importance of expanding on the unduly narrow definition of freedom offered by the right: Socialists, on the other hand, have long understood that class stratification, poverty, and economic deprivation are
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On cult leadership
Andrew Scheer’s scheming with oil lobbyists in advance of this fall’s federal election has received at least some attention. But it’s worth pointing out just how drastic a step Scheer has taken in aligning himself with a shadowy group trying to push dirty energy sources as “miracles” rather than commercial
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On definitive statements
Following up on this post, I’ll take a step back point out how Scott Moe’s insistence on attacking any carbon price through the courts is only enshrining in Canadian jurisprudence – in both the majority and dissenting decisions – some of the points he’s trying to soft-peddle for the climate
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, wondering whether Alberta’s lamentable election of Jason Kenney and his gang of regressive Conservatives might have been avoided if Rachel Notley’s NDP had made an effort not to perpetuate the province’s petro-politics. For further reading…– The Alberta NDP’s 2015 platform is here (PDF), and doesn’t so much as hint
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Damian Carrington reports on new research showing that it’s possible to stop climate change in its tracks – but only by beginning to phase out fossil fuel infrastructure immediately. And Ryan Cooper comments on the problems in responding to an immediate crisis with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Dennis Gruending writes about the difference between genuine populism focused on the interests of the public at large, and the discriminatory politics of the right which are often given the same label: The Oxford English Dictionary defines a populist as someone who is
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Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman writes that progressive voices need to reclaim the theme of freedom as it becomes increasingly obvious how deprivation and precarity deprive people of meaningful choices: (L)arge economic players are dominating more and more of the economy. It’s increasingly clear, for example,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Zoe Williams highlights how misleading framing has caused far too many people to accept destructive austerity and inequality: Not unreasonably, given the financial crash and its worldwide consequences, the economy was seen as intensely volatile, susceptible to grand forces whose actual nature
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomas Edsall discusses the difficulties in trying to address wealth inequality through a money-infused electoral system: Five years ago, for example, Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford, published “Why Hasn’t Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?” Economic theory, he wrote, holds that “inequality should
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David Brady, Ryan Finnigan and Sabine Hubgen challenge the claim that there’s any relationship between single motherhood and poverty. And Doug Saunders writes that there’s an opening for progressive movements to take back the theme of family values which obviously bear no
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Andre Picard argues that Bernie Sanders’ trip to highlight Canada’s health care system shouldn’t be taken as an indication we lack plenty of room for improvement. And Margot Sanger-Katz writes that Sanders indeed learned lessons about the holes in our health coverage.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Hugh Mackenzie writes that the biggest problem with the Libs’ closing tax loopholes for private corporations was the failure to push for far more tax fairness: Any tax reform that isn’t just a give away creates winners and losers. If the goal is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On relentless positivity
Following up on my candidate profiles for the Saskatchewan NDP’s leadership campaign, I’ll point out one obvious change in dynamics since 2013 – starting with this observation from the previous campaign (emphasis added): As long as there were four leadership candidates in the race, there were several ways to try
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