Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Andrew Coyne notes that the Robocon decision finding electoral fraud using the Cons’ voter database fell short of naming names – but recognizes that there’s still a glaring need for further investigation, a sentiment echoed by the Globe and Mail. Tim Harper explains
Continue readingTag: Paul Adams
Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Murray Dobbin contrasts the B.C. NDP’s recent election loss against the type of popular focus which helped Saskatchewan’s CCF to earn a twenty-year stay in office in the face of far more hysterical opposition: You can design a campaign that projects a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – As would-be frackers show us exactly why it’s dangerous to give the corporate sector a veto over government action, Steven Shrybman suggests that corporations are mostly doing only what we’d expect in exploiting agreements designed to prioritize profits over people: Canadian businesses are
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Paul Adams rightly points out that there’s no inherent value in centrism merely for the sake of centrism – especially when the spectrum of choices is itself shaped by decades of distorted assumptions: (T)he reality of modern politics is that the muddled middle
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
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: On first steps
I’m skeptical about Paul Adams’ argument that some type of electoral non-compete agreement between the NDP and the Libs is inevitable an election cycle or two down the road. But he does hint at something close to the type of cooperation that I could see as useful in the meantime:
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Paul Adams highlights how the Cons and their anti-social allies have spent decades trying to convince Canadians that it’s not worth trying to pursue the goals we value – and how the main challenge for progressives is to make the case that a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday morning reading. – Sixth Estate is the latest to weigh in on Statistics Canada’s findings about inequality: Progressive taxes are based on the idea that the more money you earn, the more you spend on unnecessary luxuries. Poor people therefore have very low tax rates
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On policy choices
Thomas Walkom and the Mound of Sound both note that a leadership race has only signalled how far the federal Libs are from being a progressive party. But with Walkom and Paul Adams also questioning whether Canada’s political system has seen either a convergence in the middle or a drift
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Joyce Murray to Justin Trudeau: What’s YOUR plan to ensure Stephen Harper is removed in 2015?
What is YOUR plan to remove Harper? Joyce Murray rocked Justin Trudeau with a sharp, hard question during the only real tussle between the nine candidates for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada at last night’s first debate of the LPC primary election campaign. Standing side by side,
Continue readingCuriosityCat: MP Joyce Murray to kickstart the Canadian debate on electoral reform tomorrow
Joyce Murray – Reformer Tomorrow MP Joyce Murray will be given the chance to kickstart what could be the most important public discussion in Canadian politics in two decades, when she debates the other candidates for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. Susan Delacourt has an interesting (and must
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that to start the new year. – Lynn Stuart Parramore discusses the dangers of needless means-testing for basic social benefits: When I spoke to Joseph Stiglitz, he discussed the idea that “means-testing is mean.” Programs like Medicare and Social Security, he explained, are matters of political economy. They
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Calgary Centre Byelection: Liberal leaders who cannot count give Stephen Harper a belated thanksgiving gift
As national polls and recent federal elections have shown time after time, our antiquated first past the post system of electing MPs results in a party with a minority of total votes cast being able to win a majority of seats in Parliament and act as i…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Open Letter to Paul Adams about Electoral Cooperation
Paul Adams has done us all a service by commenting on the wishes of the majority of voters in recent elections, and is now fending off attacks from right wing commentators about his proposal that the progressives unite to unseat the Harper new Tories in the next election. However, Adams
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Is Justin Trudeau caught in the Power Trap, like Thomas Mulcair?
Hat tip to Kinsella for alerting us to the latest book (Power Trap etc.) by Professor Paul Adams of Carleton U. Adams worked on CBC’s The National as well as CBC Radio and for the Globe & Mail. Before that he worked for EKOS Research, managing political polling conducted for
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