Well, Andrew Scheer's Great Scam Tour of India is finally over, and I think it's safe to say it was a total bust.The idea was to make Scheer look "prime ministerial" by NOT wearing Indian garb, like Justin Trudeau did when he was in India.And making a virtue out of
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Charles Smith writes about the importance of a living wage as a matter of fairness and justice. But Stephanie Taylor reports on Regina City Council’s lamentable vote against ensuring that the people who make the city function are able to earn enough
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Evelyn Forget makes the case for a national basic income which would provide a more stable fiscal base for Canada’s provinces as well as its citizens. And Dennis Raphael writes about the social murder resulting from the wanton destruction of income supports and
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Is there life after NAFTA?
Like all sensible folk I was myself opposed to the NAFTA at the outset, convinced that it did more for the corporations than for the rest of us. I’m still of that view. Is it possible that the biggest change that is now taking place is in the name
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jim Stanford discusses how abusing precarious workers has become the primary job of big business. But Owen Jones notes that strikes against McDonald’s in the UK represent just the latest example of workers taking collective action to fight for a more fair
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the corporate sellouts in the Libs’ new version of NAFTA – including a little-discussed chapter designed to turn anti-regulatory bias into official policy for an entire continent. For further reading…– The text of the USCMA is here, with Chapter 28 (PDF) forming the subject of most of the
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Andrew Scheer and the Grubby Con Losers
As we all know Andrew Scheer has been playing a nasty and rather kinky game. Where he uses a dead child to try to smear Justin Trudeau, and pretends he's a prison guard who can move prisoners around at will. Which is bad enough.Looking as it does, like a tacky remake of Caged
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Laurie MacFarlane writes that flows of income and wealth have everything to do with bargaining power and social decision-making, rather than productivity or merit: (A)ggregate wealth is not simply a reflection of the process of accumulation, as theory tends to imply. It
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Donald Trump’s Win?
We might as well let Donald Trump think he won. You hate to give a bully the victory but he would just go away and pout if we did not. What he really got was the right to rename the deal. That way, he can tell his claque that he
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Canada signs on to new NAFTA.. er… USMCA trade deal
It’s not a perfect deal, and there are some things in it I’m not totally happy about (ie the pharmaceutical companies getting 10 year patent protection on drugs vs the 8 years it had been), but given who was in the Oval Office, and given what we saved (Chapter 19
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jim Stanford writes that the D-J Composites lockout should offer Canada a much-needed reminder as to the reality of labour conflict: Through 640 emotional days, the picket line has remained peaceful: the only injury was a union member hit by a vehicle charging
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Matt Bruenig discusses how UK Labour’s plans to ensure workers have an ownership stake in major corporations fits into the wider principle of common wealth: The Labour Party’s John McDonnell recently unveiled a policy that would require large corporations with more than 250
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Dragging down the dialogue.
That Donald Trump is at it again. The diplomats laughed at him in the United Nations in New York the other day. Prime minister Justin Trudeau of Canada was walking by in the U.N. building the next day and did not want add to the American president’s discomfort and stopped
Continue readingMontreal Simon: A Crazed Donald Trump Takes Aim At Canada. Again.
It had to be one of Donald Trump's most bizarre and deeply disturbing news conferences ever. It lasted for almost an hour and a half. Trump almost never stopped talking, jumping from one subject to another, and praising himself over and over again. When it was over I'm sure that millions of people
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Bandy Lee discusses the need to treat inequality as a social disease which calls for immediate treatment: Residents of countries with higher income inequality have worse health, not just of the poor but of the rich (Subramanian and Kawachi, 2006). Greater income inequality
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The con of the carnival barker.
I remember as a child listening with awe to carnival barkers. I had learned young that the bearded lady and world’s tallest man were just hot air to impress the gullible. What impressed me even then was the glibness and ease with which the con man lied to the public.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Tracy Smith-Carrier comments on the importance of addressing poverty as an issue of human rights rather than charity: It is not a matter of being down on your luck or misfortunate, as if people are somehow fated to live a life of poverty.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – David Roberts highlights the trillions of dollars in global benefits to transitioning to sustainable energy over the next decade-plus – as well as the political choices keeping us from achieving them. Orville Schell and David Hochschild note that California and China are putting
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Jackson comments on the need for a national anti-poverty strategy which can actually meet its intended purpose: [The new Poverty Reduction Strategy] responds to progressives and anti poverty activists who have long called for a federal government led, broadly based initiative
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Thomas Walkom reminds us that the Libs’s supposed tradeoff of climate policy for pipelines is failing as much in producing the former as the latter: For almost two years, the Trudeau government has tried to finesse the contradictions of its climate-change policies.
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