This and that for your Thursday reading. – Nadir Khan interviews Linda McQuaig about her choice to run for the NDP in Toronto Centre – and confirms that McQuaig’s commitment to progressive politics fits neatly with her participation in a caucus: NK : You mention that you’ve been outspoken and taken
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Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Michael Harris offers a theory for the Cons’ handling of the Clusterduff – from their willingness to pay him off to their subsequent decision to cut him loose: Why were the CPC and the PM’s chief of staff willing to risk what
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – John Myles discusses the Cons’ war on evidence: The mandatory Census was the lifeblood of almost all social and business planning. It provided key data for studying things like income inequality and poverty since both low- and high-income households were required to report.
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot rightly challenges the attempt of corporate interests and their political sock-puppets to demonize anybody concerned about our planet’s future: Exotic invasive species are a straightforward ecological problem, wearily familiar to anyone trying to protect biodiversity. Some introduced creatures – such
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Michael Harris nicely describes what the Cons are actually doing with power while pretending to be innocuous fiscal managers: The PM and his government are not good managers. The nauseating repetition of the claim that the Tories know what they’re doing with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Thomas Walkom, Dan Leger and Michael Harris write about the sketchy surveillance programs in place on both sides of the 49th parallel. But there may be an opportunity to make common cause with the 1% in criticizing constant intrusion on personal privacy, as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Michael Harris tears into the Harper Cons for their compulsive dishonesty: Everything in the Westminster model under which we are supposed to operate depends on information, debate and verification — all of which are missing in ‘Harperland’, to use Lawrence Martin’s ringing coinage.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that to end your weekend. – Dave Coles introduces readers to the Cons’ latest attack on labour – with a backbencher’s private member’s bill again serving as an excuse to introduce unprecedent restrictions on union organization. – Michael Harris suspects that the Cons’ attempt to delay any public
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Mike Konczal discusses the distribution of U.S. tax breaks and incentives, and finds that measures normally presented as offering breaks for everybody in fact serve mostly as giveaways to the wealthy: (T)he government is very responsive to the interests of the top 20
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Assorted content to end your week. – For all the talk of fraud and cover-ups among the Cons this week, the most important story on that front looks to be the release of Judge Mosley’s decision on Robocon – featuring findings of fact based on the best evidence presented by
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Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman draws a much-needed connection between austerity politics and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: What Smith didn’t note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through
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Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Michael Harris tears into the Cons for their latest set of Senate abuses: It is time once more to throw up on your shoes over the Senate. We all did that when Liberal Senator Andrew Thompson went missing in action for a decade
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Linda McQuaig discusses Stephen Harper’s class war: Canadians don’t like Harper’s anti-worker agenda — when they notice it. That’s why there’s been such a public outcry since the temporary foreign worker program was exposed as a mechanism by which the Harper government has
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Assorted content to end your week. – Arthur Haberman argues that our universal public health care system helps contribute to a more democratic society: There is something that political philosophers — those like Tocqueville and Mill in the 19th century — have come to call living democratically. By this it
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Assorted content to end your week. – Sadly (if perhaps unsurprisingly), the Trudeau Libs’ vote with the Harper Cons against civil rights has received relatively little notice compared to the two parties’ attack ad posturing. But there’s still plenty worth reading on the subject – including another post from pogge,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ellie Mae O’Hagan and Nicholas Shaxson annihilate the claim that perpetually lowering corporate and upper-income tax rates offers any competitive advantage: Tax “competition”, it turns out, is always harmful. First, while people rarely move in response to tax changes – flighty financial
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Peter Gillespie discusses the problems with tax cheats (and the overseas tax havens which encourage them): Multinational corporations and banking and financial institutions routinely use tax havens to lower or eliminate their tax obligations, avoid regulation, and shield themselves from liability. Tax havens
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Michael Harris takes aim at Stephen Harper’s thugocracy: There is little that Stephen Harper has done that other prime ministers before him have not. But no one has used closure, time allocation, committee secrecy or omnibus legislation to a degree that renders Parliament
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Michael Harris rightly points out that a steady stream of scandals and incompetence from the Cons says plenty about Stephen Harper’s own judgment (or lack thereof): Sooner or later, the country is going to realize that there is something terribly wrong with
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
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