Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – CBC reports on the latest research showing that Canada would save billions every year with a national pharmacare plan. And Thomas Walkom argues that politics are standing in the way of what should be a no-brainer from a policy standpoint. – Richard Gwyn
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Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Kendra Coulter discusses the connection between human treatment of animals and humans: Close to home and around the world, working class and poor people are really struggling. In countries like Canada, unemployment and underemployment persist. We have been told that corporate tax cuts
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On full information
Michael Harris’ latest is well worth a read in offering a guide to avoiding the worst consequences of election-year spin. But it’s worth noting that his most important advice is only presented as an afterthought: Final note on street-proofing your vote? Inform yourself. Look at what the people who want
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Michael Harris’ Guide to Street-Proofing Our Votes
As you may have heard, Ottawa has been swirling with rumours that Stephen Harper could be getting ready to call a very early election. So he can strike before the flames of fear and bigotry he has been fanning die down. And before the Duffy Trial.And although those rumours seem to have
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Assorted content to end your week. – Frank Graves writes that we’re seeing the end of progress for all but the wealthiest few – and that we all stand to lose out if we come to believe that progress for the rest of us is impossible: There is a virtual
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Nora Loreto rightly challenges the instinct to respond to tragedy with blame in the name of “responsibility”, rather than compassion in the interest of making matters better: Blame is the projection of grief, sadness or fear. It is the projection of our
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Assorted content to end your week. – Nicholas Kristof discusses how U.S. workers have suffered as a result of declining union strength. And Barry Critchley writes that Canada’s average expected retirement age has crept over 65 – with that change coming out of necessity rather than worker choice. – Alex
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Elizabeth Renzetti makes clear that we can’t count on one-time crowdsourcing to perform the same function as a social safety net: This is the problem with the wildly popular new online world of what you might call misery fundraising: It semi-solves one small
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Paul Mason discusses the effect a guaranteed annual income could have on individuals’ choices about labour and employment: A true, subsistence level basic income would close to double [existing social spending in the UK]. But it is imaginable, in the short to medium
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Will Hutton writes about the connection between inequality and the loss of any moral or social purpose in public life: Britain is beset by a crisis of purpose. We don’t know who we are any longer, where we are going or even
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Paul Rosenberg writes about the high-priced effort to undermine public institutions and the collective good in the U.S. And Paul Krugman highlights how the Republicans’ stubborn belief in the impossibly of good government (regardless of large amounts of evidence that such a thing
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Can Canadians Be Bought By The Grubby Stephen Harper?
He hasn't been seen for days, since he sent his shabby minions out to announce that he was proroguing the budget until April.So he's probably banging away on his piano in his gloomy basement, trying to figure out how he can restore the surplus he blew before he had one.So he
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Oliver Milman reports on research showing how humanity is destroying its own environmental life support systems. And our appetite for exploitation is proving a failure even from the standpoint of the pursuit of shortsighted greed, as David Dayen considers how the recent drop
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Hugh Segal discusses the need for an open and honest conversation about poverty and how to end it. And to better reflect Canadians’ continued desire for a more fair society, Roderick Benns makes the case for a basic income as Canada’s next
Continue readingMontreal Simon: How We Can Stop Harper and Take Our Country Back
In my last post I looked at Stephen Harper’s ghastly record and wondered how he gets away with it. And I said that I was confident that although a lot of people in this country are discouraged, that record would come back to haunt him in the election campaign.Despite his desperate efforts
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Brigette DePape, Michael Harris, and the Stop Harper Movement
When I think about how we might create a mighty movement to help the progressive parties bring down the Con regime.And I am assailed by the usual doubts about whether one person can even hope to make a difference in this filthy Harperland.I remember the brave young Senate page Brigette DePape,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jordon Cooper rightly argues that we should move away from forcing people to rely on homeless shelters and other stopgap measures when we can afford to provide permanent homes: We fill a bus for the hungry while ignoring that the reason for
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Assorted content to end your week. – Aditya Chakrabortty contrasts the myth of the free market against the reality that massive amounts of public money and other privileges are shoveled toward the corporate sector: Few conceits are more cherished by our political classes than the notion that this is a
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Will Hutton compares the alternative goals of either shrinking government to the point where it does nothing or harnessing it to meet everybody’s basic needs, and explains why we should demand the latter: A financial crisis has been allowed to morph into a
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Assorted content to start your week. – Murray Dobbin writes about the damage caused after decades of allowing the corporate elite to dictate economic policy – and notes that the Cons are determined to make matters all the worse: However you see it — as separate from society or integral
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