This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Star-Phoenix editorial board comments on the need to crack down on tax havens: (T)he scale of the avoidance Mr. Henry detailed in his report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, drives home just how immoral is the practice of tax avoidance, particularly
Continue readingTag: national defence
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Doug Saunders discusses how corporate cash hoarding is limiting any economic recovery – and what we can do about it: (T)his should be a great time for companies to invest: low prices, low interest rates, cheaper labour costs. A sensible company would build
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Parliament in Review – May 9, 2012
Wednesday, May 9 saw the first Committee of the Whole discussion of the Cons’ budget bill – with the opportunity for hours of direct questions about military spending giving rise to little more than even more tedious repetition of F-35s talking points in place of responses. The Big Issue Jack
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Lana Payne weighs in on the Cons’ goal of reducing wages for Canadian workers: As an economist, Stephen Harper must know what his government’s changes to employment insurance (EI), the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), the elimination of the Fair Wage Act
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Guest Post: Mulcair vs. the Chickenhawks
Dan Tan weighs in on Thomas Mulcair’s principled position on Iran – which may come as a pleasant surprise to anybody concerned that he’d be more interested in appealing to the Very Serious People than thinking carefully about whether military intervention is justified: North American & European capitals are inundated
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Mark Kennedy reports that once again, Canadians are largely opposed to the Cons’ plans to attack social supports: The poll found that 49 per cent of Canadians are preparing for a “bad news” budget from federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and that 57
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Tabatha Southey speculates as to the inevitable results when the Cons try to summon the entire Internet to answer for its political activity. – David Olive points out that for anybody who wants to buy into “tax freedom day” messaging, the corporate sector
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Mike de Souza’s report on the Cons’ attempts to hide both the oil industry’s involvement and its own lack of credibility is well worth a read in full. But let’s focus on a more basic revelation: Harper has set up a publicly-funded
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Parliament in Review: November 30, 2011
After the previous day’s debacle in which government-sponsored amendments to the Cons’ dumb-on-crime bill were ruled out of order, one might have expected at least some acknowledgment of fallibility on the part of the Harper Cons. The Big Issue But Wednesday, November 30 saw nothing of the sort, even when
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – No, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Harper Cons are allowing defence contractors to deliver nothing at all. But is it really so much to ask that they not actually provide an incentive for further delays by reducing the penalties applied as they
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – With prorogation looking like it’s bound to be back on the table fairly shortly, Lori Turnbull offers a worthwhile suggestion to end the Cons’ abuses: The 2012 prorogation would be substantively different. First, there is no obvious political land mine to avoid. Second,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Parliament In Review: October 27, 2011
Thursday, October 27 saw the House of Commons discuss the gun registry – and if the Cons’ choices to not just dismantle the federal long gun registry but also shred the evidence weren’t problematic enough, the debate also featured the Cons’ closure motion. The Big Issue Once again, that motion
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Barrie McKenna thoroughly debunks the claim that “financial literacy” alone is enough to put ordinary citizens on a level playing field with the financial industry: Looking to financial literacy to fill the void is like asking ordinary Canadians to be their own brain
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Back to the Future #nlpoli
The Department of National Defence will freeze the size of the Regular Force and sell off property in an effort to cut spending and control budgets, according to David Pugliese. The man knows what he is talking about. Take it as a given that t…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Friday reading.- Susan Riley points out that nothing positive figures to come from the Cons’ plans to slash Canada’s public service:No good will come of proposed public service cuts, if experience is any guide. Not a lea…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: We appreciate the sacrifice
Shorter Walt Natynczyk:But somebody has to make use of our expensive entitlements. So I figured, hey, why not me?
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading.- As I’d suspected, the Cons are making clear that the kind of behaviour that would get any mere civil servant fired on the spot will be treated as entirely unobjectionable in a parliamentary secretary like Bob De…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Henry Farrell points out why supposedly progressive ideas which don’t do anything to counter corporate power are doomed to failure:Neo-liberals tend to favor a combination of market mechanisms and technocratic …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Barbara Yaffe points out that the Council on Hemispheric Affairs seems to have a much better idea what Canada needs out of a fighter jet than the government that’s trying to push ahead with a multi-billion doll…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On foreseeable futures
In posting about the DND’s “First Look” at where Canada is headed, Mike DeSouza focuses on a seemingly throwaway sentence mentioning the Green Party. But the more striking part of DeSouza’s post looks to be this:The life expectancy for men would be 80+…
Continue reading