This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Will McMartin highlights the fact that constant corporate tax slashing has done nothing other than hand ever-larger piles of money to businesses who have no idea what to do with it. But Josh Wingrove reports that Justin Trudeau is looking for excuses
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Accidental Deliberations: On first steps
Dru Oja Jay, David Bush and Doug Nesbitt, Graham Steele and Karl Nerenberg have already offered their suggestions on the first steps for Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP government (and the progressives hoping for it to produce positive change). But I’ll offer my own take based on one overriding principle: having
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Michael Kraus, Shai Davidai and A. David Nussbaum discuss the myth of social mobility in the U.S. And Nicholas Kristof writes that inequality is a choice rather than an inevitability: Yet while we broadly lament inequality, we treat it as some natural
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robert Reich offers a long-form look at the relationship between inequality and policies designed to extract riches for the wealthy at everybody else’s expense: The underlying problem, then, is not that most Americans are “worth” less in the market than they had
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Barrie McKenna takes a look at how the Cons are pushing serious liabilities onto future generations in order to hand out short-term tax baubles within a supposedly-balanced budget, while Jennifer Robson highlights the complete lack of policy merit behind those giveaways. And Ian
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jeffrey Simpson lambastes the Cons’ determination to slash taxes and hand out baubles to the rich for the sole purpose of undermining the fiscal capacity of government to help Canadians. And Jeremy Nuttall highlights how a cuts to the CRA are allowing tax
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On trial and error
It may be true – as argued by Lawrence Martin – that Mike Duffy’s expense fraud trial will serve as the most prominent point of discussion about the Harper Cons’ stay in power. But we should be careful not to rely on it too much as a counterweight to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On enduring foundations
The framing panel at the Progress Summit included plenty of ideas as to how the left can shape political debates. But I’ll note that it seemed to miss a couple of related issues. Most notably, there was an almost exclusive focus on reaching out to swing voters rather than framing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On simple questions
Gerald Caplan goes far beyond what’s necessary in proposing that the NDP and Libs develop a pre-election cooperation pact intended to lead to a party merger. But as highlighted by the conversation started by Fern Hill’s Tweet, we can take his suggestion as a starting point in discussing what we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: #DefineHarper
A couple of earlier posts have started a bit of a discussion about the messages which will be most effective in convincing voters – and particularly swing voters – to shift their votes away from the Harper Cons. But I’ll take the opportunity to turn the discussion over to a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On changing reputations
Following up on this post as to the value of a common message in countering the Cons’ campaign spin, let’s test out Stephen Maher’s theory as to what the opposition parties need to offer: For years, Harper has missed no opportunity to portray himself as the only leader who can
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On common messaging
It shouldn’t come as much surprise that the new election year is bringing out the usual, tiresome round of calls for strategic voting and candidate withdrawals. In the past, I’ve responded by suggesting that if Canada’s opposition parties have enough common ground to cooperate, they should consider working with joint
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Daniel Tencer reports on a couple of important recent warnings that Canada is in danger of following the U.S. down the path of extreme corporatism and inequality: Speaking at a fundraiser for the left-leaning Broadbent Institute, Reich said Canada is facing the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On political calculations
I haven’t seen anybody else question the most self-congratulatory aspect of Stephen Harper’s position on a new Iraq war, and at least a few commentators seem to have been willing to swallow it whole. So let’s address the question of which leader has the most obvious political reason to position
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Joe Cressy argues that we need to take strong progressive positions to highlight the kinds of public investment which need to be made, rather than buying into right-wing spin about slashing taxes and eliminating public institutions: Public investment is about social justice, taking
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Bryce Covert writes that U.S. workers are receiving a lower share of economic output than at any point since 1950 – and that the decline in wages has nothing to do with the quality or quantity of work: Workers aren’t earning less because
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On healthy proposals
Paul Wells seems quite disappointed not to have received more attention for his recent piece on Thomas Mulcair’s speech to the Canadian Medical Association. So let’s take a closer look at why the angle Wells took didn’t seem like much of a revelation – and what might be more significant
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Ralph Surette suggests that Nova Scotia’s tax and regulatory review pay close attention to the fact that it can do more than simply slash both: Nova Scotia already has relatively low corporate taxes and lower than average taxes for the highest earners. Yet
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On progressivism
Joe Fantauzzi explains his reasons for avoiding the term “progressive” in defining his own political beliefs. But I’ll argue that the proper response to Fantauzzi’s concern is to work harder in defining what terms mean – not to abandon them altogether: The achievement by marginalized people of social citizenship. Collective
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – CJ Werleman writes that the U.S.’ inequality nightmare is getting worse even as the public gains a greater recognition of the issue. Nick Kristof recognizes that radically different levels of wealth result in a serious lack of opportunity for anybody who doesn’t win
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