Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Michael Harris concludes that we’re currently stuck in a golden age for political falsehood and deceit: (T)here are problems with blotting out inconvenient truths with self-serving Newspeak. It’s catchier than a flu-bug in a pup tent. Quite a few pairs of pants are
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Carol Goar discusses Canada’s broken fiscal stabilizers – as unemployment insurance and social programs intended to assure citizens of at least a reasonable standard of living have been cut to well below that level: Canada’s economic shock absorbers are badly worn. Employment insurance,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – While we may sometimes lose track of the continuing differences between Canadian politics and those in the U.S., here’s a reminder of how we’re familiar with a far wider and more progressive range of public policy choices: while we’ve seen plenty of discussion
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Dennis Gruending writes about the importance of Edgar Schmidt’s whistleblowing against unconstitutional legislation: Schmidt says that he has over a period of years raised concerns about what he considers the department’s flawed practices. He has done that through various official channels, up to
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Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Michael Harris discusses the impending moment of truth for the Cons in owning up to their substantive failures toward Canada’s First Nations: Whether it’s Canada’s natives or its health ministers, Stephen Harper’s preferred place for his opponents is under his thumb. He has
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Michael Harris comments on Stephen Harper’s reckless choice to gamble that Theresa Spence in particular and First Nations issues in general will go away on their own, rather than exhibiting any leadership whatsoever: Stephen Harper has placed his bet. It is clear from
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Michael Harris asks why Stephen Harper is afraid to look Theresa Spence in the eye: (Harper) believes that the government’s lying about all these things is far less important than the fact that it is the government. Incumbency is a magic potion. Under
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Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford is the latest to point out that the Cons see accountability and transparency solely as punishments to be inflicted on their perceived enemies, not as values to be applied to their own decision-making: Following Mr. Hiebert’s logic, any organization in society
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Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Paul Krugman discusses two theories behind the ever-growing divergence between soaring profits and stagnant wages. But it’s particularly important to note that neither of them calls for “free money for rich people” as a rational response: Why is this happening? As best as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Martin Kirk discusses the role governments play in allowing and facilitating the extraction of a substantial portion of the world’s wealth to tax havens (h/t to thwap): Tax theft is endemic all over the world. It is organised through an intricate system of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Barbara Yaffe writes about the continual rise in food bank use and the underlying political choices which have brought it about:(I)n the last decade food banks have been helping Canadians through both good time…
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Here Is A Brilliant Examination of Harper’s Crumbling Control of Caucus
Richard ‘Hub’ Hughes – Political Blogger Those of us who fall into the news/political junkie slot scan the media in its many variations. Searching for relevance can be an exhausting effort but every once in awhile a refreshing, independent and insightful source appears and is relished. The following is such a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – The Toronto Star’s Public Editor Kathy English discusses the wall being built around information by the Harper Cons. But at least as interesting to me is the Cons’ determination to put up roadblocks in the way of information which can obviously be obtained
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
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Mitchell Anderson reports on how Norway has assured itself of long-term fiscal security by saving a fair share of its oil resources: Norway produces 40 per cent less petroleum than Canada and has one-seventh our population, but has saved more than $600
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David Olive comments on the world food crisis, making the point that what we’re lacking is some link between more-than-sufficient productive capacity and the nutritional needs of less wealthy people around the globe: (A) permanently higher price for oil spurred successful innovation to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Frances Russell comments on how the Harper Cons are ready to impose exactly the kind of centralized and unresponsive decision-making they’ve long loathed – but only when it comes to favouring Alberta’s interests over B.C.’s real environmental concerns. But Michael Harris notes that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michael Harris continues to highlight some of the fundamental problems with the Cons’ view of politics, this time identifying Stephen Harper as being afflicted with “master of the universe syndrome”: When you control all the levers of power, when you have no scruples,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ed Broadbent discusses the connection between unions, democracy and equality: In democratic societies, there are two principal arenas of non-violent conflict over power: the state and the workplace. Just as political democracy entails the right to select or reject one’s representatives and
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Just How Much Fear Does Harper Inspire?
We know about the loathing part, but July 10 will answer the title question. Recommend this Post
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