According to Bill Morneau, “as Minister of Finance, my only job is to make sure that Canadians can keep food in the fridge.” That’s actually a rare useful thought for a federal finance minister to keep front of mind in calamitous circumstances like the present ones. Economist Jim Stanford (Photo:
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Writings of J. Todd Ring: Political Philosophy 101: Democracy vs Elite Rule
Use anything and anyone to gain and maintain power. That is the Machiavellian philosophy which rules the minds of the power elite, both East and West, as Howard Zinn has indicated as well. Public health, human well-being, conscience, principles, morals, freedom, democracy, other high ideals, have nothing to do with
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The Collapse of Modern Civilization
More than 150 years ago Thoreau commented, “Our sills are all rotten.” He was right. It is for that reason that Western, and Westernized, “modern” “civilization” is collapsing. This could be cataclysmic, of course, (as in, an ecological holocaust), or relatively peaceful, (akin to the Maya abandoning their great cities
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It’s almost as if the new coronavirus has evolved to exploit the vulnerabilities of the modern neoliberal state
“The risk to Albertans is still low,” the Government of Alberta’s official website soothingly assured us yesterday afternoon, the day the World Health Organization officially declared the effects of the coronavirus swiftly coursing ’round the globe to be a pandemic. This may reassure some of us. Others, not so much.
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: US 2020 Election: One Choice Only – The Oligarchy
Chris Hedges states there is no choice in the 2020 US election if it is a choice between Trump and Biden: both are a vote for the consolidation of the oligarchy. Now that sums it up perfectly well. Mind you, it was the same in 2016. People in Germany felt
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Demystifying Economics – Or, Rescuing Humanity From Death By Shared Delusion, Part One
To start with, it should be made clear that it is unwise, to say the least, to disparage mysticism. Mysticism, in the true sense, means to dive into, and deeply examine the mystery of being: it means, to cultivate a direct experience of the true nature of being and reality.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joseph Stiglitz writes about the need to cultivate solidarity as an alternative to neoliberal selfishness. And Chuck Collins reminds us how the very existence of billionaires represents both a profound failure of public policy, and a cause of distortions at the whims of
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Neoliberal Ideas – Trade is *always* Beneficial
Believe the actions, not the words of the political class. We need to reassert the democratic will in our societies. “The idea that trade is always and everywhere beneficial has been the ‘American’ position, left, right and center, since the reemergence of neoliberalism in the mid-1970s. This is why
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Martin Lukacs writes that the Trudeau Libs’ attempts to put a glossier face on politics as usual may be running into a less than compliant public: Not just in Canada, but around the world we have seen the emergence of an airbrushed,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Nathan Robinson writes that there’s every reason for younger people – in the U.S. and elsewhere – to support the principle of socialism based on a desire to achieve gains for everybody rather than only a privileged few: A better definition, at
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Joseph Stiglitz discusses how the failure of neoliberalism to provide gains for any but the wealthiest few has led to risks to the democratic systems which have been treated as tied to laissez-faire economics. And Armine Yalnizyan challenges the false assumption that increased
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Luke Savage responds to the attempt by neoliberals to escape growing discontent with corporate control and individual atomization by denying they actually represent a distinct position capable of being opposed: The ubiquity of a particular phenomenon does not make discrete analysis of it
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Lifting the Poor out of Poverty – Into More Poverty…
I When people talk about how capitalism raises the tide for all boats my skepticism level begins to slowly creep upward. One must be careful when it comes to describing capitalism as panacea for the world and the world’s poor. Eve Ottenberg from Counterpunch takes aim at a few
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Why Canadian media won’t call post-Brexit protests ‘pro-democracy demonstrations’
If there are riots in Britain after the hard Brexit Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party cronies have scheduled for Halloween, will mainstream media in Canada describe them as “pro-democracy demonstrations” as they do when similar violent outbursts take place nowadays in Hong Kong or Moscow? On the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Stiglitz – Neoliberalism has Gutted the Middle Class
Nobel laureate and former World Bank chief economist, Joe Stiglitz, contends we urgently need to replace neoliberalism with progressive capitalism. Three years ago, President Donald Trump’s election and the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum confirmed what those of us who have long studied income statistics already knew: in most advanced countries,
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: What Would It Really Take?
We all know the injunction – cut greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 and entirely by 2050. To some that conjures up visions of the end of fossil fuels, a switch to alternative green energy, electric cars instead of gas guzzlers, baseboard heaters instead of oil or gas furnaces,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – George Monbiot contrasts the message of neoliberalism as freedom against the reality that it imposes severe corporate control on anybody short of the billionaire class: (N)eoliberal theology, as well as seeking to roll back the state, insists that collective bargaining and other forms
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Robert Reich offers a reminder that the Trump administration is just the most glaring example of the utter breakdown of any pretense of meritocracy in the U.S. – Daniel Zamora interviews Niklas Olsen about the dangers of replacing the idea of government representing
Continue readingDented Blue Mercedes: The Alberta Advantage was Dependence
In the end, the “Alberta Advantage” was dependence. And in retrospect, undoing that dependence on the oil industry — a mixture of real and perceived — needed to be the number one priority of the Notley NDP government. When Albertans (even to their own surprise) overthrew the 40-year Progressive Conservative
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Neoliberalism and the Great Dithering
The system is in trouble claims Jeff Cohen writing for Counterpunch. I can see where he is coming from as it would seem like our leaders often listen to the elites more than the people who have elected them. The current system is start to reach the limits of which
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