politics ← Progressive Bloggers // Blogues progressistes

Things Are Good: These Millionaires Want Higher Taxes

Apr

24

2018

When it comes to taxes Americans love not paying them, but now some millionaires want to change that. The Patriotic Millionaires call on the rich to pay their fair share, and they call for that attitude to permeate the globe. Developed nations tend to tax money made through labour at a higher rate than money ...

Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Hire Organ Donor Transplant Doctors

Apr

18

2018

Saskatchewan has a big problem in our health care system. The last Premier, Wall, promised to do something about this, but nothing got fixed. Premier Moe may be too busy picking a fight with B.C. to ask his Health Minister(s) to hire a small team of doctors to ensure donor organs are collected and given ...

Things Are Good: America Might Find Salvation in Satire

Apr

18

2018

2016 witnessed the election of Donald Trump thanks in a large part to Russian meddling in the American democratic process. One of the most effective things that the Russians did was lie and spread contradictory information to make it hard for people to discern reality. Trump’s marketing skills made use of these Russian efforts to ...

Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Reporter Was Right Before

Apr

14

2018

When someone is correct multiple times about major events, it’s worth hearing what they have to say about the latest unfolding. Trump’s Presidency is crumbling, and if Americans wake up, it won’t last long into next year.

Dead Wild Roses: Spheres of Influence; Human Lives – Syria Teaches Us What is Important

Apr

11

2018

The parochial attitude of North Americans is quite disturbing, and unjustified. We have unparalleled access to information and news from across the globe and by this feature alone we should be attuned to the plight of others and the injustice in the world. Yet, most of us are not. As long as shit happens ...

Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Up Is Down In Moe Town

Apr

10

2018

Will @CBCSask and @leaderpost and @620ckrm let the Premier continue to lie without being challenged?Does @ryanmeili or someone else have to say something first? Is there no permission to correct the Premier's lies?#skpoli #carbontax — Saskboy (@saskboy) April 3, 2018 Saskatchewan's emissions are going up, not down https://t.co/nlZxCrOsv3 pic.twitter.com/KspZuhpexX — Regina Leader-Post (@leaderpost) April 4, ...

Dead Wild Roses: Yes, we get to vote. Super. Big Deal…

Apr

3

2018

We have a long way to go to fix the democratic systems in the US and Canada. Paul Street, writing for Counterpunch gives a little insight into the ‘electoral process’. “Yes, we get to vote. Super. Big deal. Mammon reigns nonetheless in the United States, where, as the leading liberal political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin ...

Dead Wild Roses: “Cool Even Handed Statesmanship”

Mar

28

2018

We’re playing with nuclear fire. Hell, we’re doing a fire dance with twirling batons ablaze in a fireworks factory. This all started after the US nuked Japan in 1945. Since then, we’ve just been piling more fireworks around the fire dancers and giving the dancers bigger batons to twirl. There is no logic to this ...

Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Husky Might Be Fined

Mar

26

2018

Husky has only been charged now by the Crown, for a spill nearly 2 years ago. Federal charges may be pending too. The provincial charges carry a possible fine of only $1M. Great deal for an oil company, to operate and ruin the water supply of Saskatchewan’s 3 largest city and many other people too. ...

Susan on the Soapbox: An Evening with Michelle Obama

Mar

25

2018

Last Friday Ms Soapbox and her friend spent an intimate evening with Michelle Obama. True, we were packed into the Stampede Corral with 6000 other people, but as soon as Michelle Obama stepped on to the stage, we were captivated by her intelligence, kindness, and wit. Michelle told us about growing up in a blue ...

Dead Wild Roses: Could We Get Back to Just “Screwing the Poor”?

Mar

19

2018

I sincerely hope the MAGA’s down south are enjoying the bountiful economic gifts the cheeto-in-cheif and his republican bag men are bestowing upon them. I mean the establishment of an military oligarchy in the US was well under way under Obama, but at least he made the obligatory nods to democracy and caring for the ...

Babel-on-the-Bay: The redemption of Patrick Brown?

Mar

19

2018

How do you like those phone calls you get from automated polling systems? The worst of them are the ones that want you to press one if you intend to vote conservative and two if liberal. I always have lots of fun with them by pressing numbers at random. But I had to pause and ...

Things Are Good: Jaywalking Shouldn’t be Illegal

Mar

13

2018

So far in 2018 a car driver has killed a person every week; if this continues Toronto will see yet another year in which more people die from vehicles than guns. Automobile advocates argue that it’s the victim’s fault for dying and demand stricter punishment for trivial things like jaywalking. Clearly, the debate in Canada ...

Things Are Good: Resistbot Makes it Easy for Americans to Reach Politicians

Mar

12

2018

The inability to easily take action is a leading factor in why people don’t engage in political change. The creators of a new service, Resistbot, want to make it simple for Americans to have their voices heard. Resistbot is a bot you can interact with via SMS or using it has a plugin to Telegram ...

cartoon life: Trump and Kim Jong to talk.

Mar

11

2018

It’s the age of Big Hair Diplomacy

Dead Wild Roses: Managing Dissent and the threat of Populism in the US

Mar

10

2018

We’ve had a few pieces on the disconnect between the public and the political process. This essay by Richard D. Wolff looks to answering the question why, despite there being two different political parties in the US, that the overall arc of the US body politic maintains the same general direction. “In short, “democracy” ...

Dead Wild Roses: Get Used to It – The American Empire in Chaos

Mar

6

2018

Some historical context By Tom Englehardt showing the lead up to the bright and cheery future we now inhabit. “In the end, those seeds, first planted in Afghan and Pakistani soil in 1979, led to the attacks of September 11, 2001. That day was the very definition of chaos brought to the imperial ...

Dead Wild Roses: Why Was Greece So Brutalized By Their ‘Bailout’?

Mar

1

2018

The tortures that the Grecian people are being subjected to by the neo-liberal institutions of Europe (European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF) are unnecessarily brutal and threaten to unravel the fabric of their society. We can learn what is in store for other nations that dare to act against the ‘good prudence’ of the ...

Dead Wild Roses: A Disassociated Public Guarantees a Generational War

Feb

27

2018

If democracy is to be a useful concept for our future generations one aspect that is necessarily going to have to change is the level of engagement people have toward their political system. What is in play now is a plutocratic distortion of what representative government is supposed to look like. When our political representatives ...

Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Amarillo Police Shoot the “Good Guy With A Gun”

Feb

26

2018

This is pretty much how you could imagine things would go wrong if you were caught disarming a crazed gunman before or as police arrive on the scene. Garces and Blackburn are working with the city to ensure the medical bills are paid, but Garces hopes for one other item: More education for officers on ...

The Common Sense Canadian: On Energy & First Nations, politicians want to have their cake and eat it too

Feb

21

2018

Jonathan Ramos cartoon Canada can fight climate change and build more climate-ravaging pipelines. First Nations’ rights should be respected – just not at the expense of these pipelines, dams and other major projects they oppose. Got it? It’s hard to fathom, but these are the positions of our provincial and federal leaders. They want to have their ...

cmkl: The revolution you ask for

Feb

17

2018

When I was in high school studying European history we studied revolutions and explored the age-old hypotheses of whether they are brought on by rising or declining expectations. Did people come together to make change because they feared things were getting worse, or because they saw that things could get better? Take, for example my ...

Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Layin’ Pipe

Feb

15

2018

Wanda's having relationship troubles…because she's just not that into #pipelines:https://t.co/V8ppUMFnTd RT if you can identify with Wanda. #StopKM #NotPipelines#cdnpoli #bcpoli #WaterIsLife #NoMeansNo pic.twitter.com/1zCvBAA1Sf — Mike Hudema (@MikeHudema) February 15, 2018 From reality:Are you sure this wasn't speaking to the #WaterProtectors, and a CC to your email?A pipeline is expedient, and not correct if we hope ...

Writings of J. Todd Ring: What Do I Want? (Or, What is to be done, if we are to have any future worth living?)

Feb

15

2018

What do I want? Well, I would like to see us move immediately to a libertarian socialist society, along the lines that Chomsky, Bertrand Russell, Rudolph Rocker, or Murray Bookchin have described. Or better: an anarchist communist society, such as Kropotkin described. But I don’t see that as something that is likely to happen in ...

Scripturient: Thoughts on local municipal governance

Feb

14

2018

A popular political theory presents two basic and often contradictory models of how elected officials should (or do) behave as representatives. One is as a delegate: solely acting as a representative of the people who elected them. The other is as a trustee, serving (or attempting to serve) everyone under their governance. In practice, these ...