Here, questioning whether Canadians share Stephen Harper’s newly-professed aspiration to spend tens of billions of dollars more every year to prop up U.S. and U.K. military contractors. For further reading…– David Pugliese reported on this week’s NATO summit. – NATO’s most recent spending calculations are here (see PDF link), showing
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Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – James Meek writes about the UK’s privatization scam, and how it’s resulted in citizens paying far more for the basic services which are better provided by a government which actually has the public interest within its mandate: Privatisation failed to demonstrate the case
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Olga Khazan writes about the connection between lower incomes and obesity in the U.S. And Truthout discusses how poverty and other stressors can directly affect individual and communal genetics for generations: (A) study by researchers at University College London’s Institute of Child
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Jim Stanford looks into the fine print of the Hudak PCs’ assumptions about corporate tax slashing and finds that even their own numbers show that most of the money gifted to corporations would be thrown away (emphasis added): On second reading there are
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Larry Bartels highlights how class plays a particularly large role in U.S. politics, as opinions about the role of government are particularly polarized based on income. And Paul Krugman notes that as a consequence, any demand to “stop class warfare” in favour of
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Slamming Harper Secrecy
The Toronto Star recently revealed the following: Health Canada is keeping secret the vast majority of the drug reviews it conducts despite a clear promise from the federal minister to publish this critical safety information. Only 24 of 152 drug reviews completed last year by Health Canada are being considered
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Jeremy Nuttall discusses why the Cons’ temporary foreign worker program is ripe for abuse, as it ensures workers have every incentive to avoid reporting employer wrongdoing since the employer can singlehandedly ship the employee out of Canada in retaliation. – But the good
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Diane Coyle offers a preview of Thomas Piketty’s upcoming book on inequality – featuring a prediction that absent some significant public policy intervention, we may see a return to 19th-century levels of concentration of wealth. – Meanwhile, Murray Dobbin calls for 2014 to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The Economist takes a look at the effect of international trade agreements – and confirms the long-held concern that the erosion and non-enforcement of labour standards consistently follows the signing of government suicide pacts: Some results are rather unsurprising. Countries with better
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On false promises
Last week, I linked to this story on the cost of prescription drugs under CETA. But let’s follow up on another aspect of the giveaway to big pharma which might sound fairly familiar: Russell Williams of R&D Canada, which represents the brand-name drug industry, questioned whether it was possible to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Don Braid comments on Alberta’s complete lack of credibility when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental issues. And Andrew Leach nicely sums up the PC/Con position in trying to put a happy face on growing emissions: Suppose you run
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Frances Russell rightly asks whose freedom is supposed to be protected by free trade agreements such as CETA: Once Canada signs CETA (the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) with Europe, federal, provincial and municipal governments will suddenly find their hands and feet
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – It shouldn’t be a surprise that more people are pointing out the importance of effective regulation in preventing disasters like the Lac-Mégantic explosion. But it may be somewhat unexpected to see that message from a CEO in the industry which stands to be
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Henry Blodget recognizes that the systematic corporate squeeze on mere workers represents a deliberate choice rather than an inevitability: One of the big reasons the U.S. economy is so lousy is the American companies are hoarding cash and “maximizing profits” instead of investing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Peter Buffett rightly questions the trend toward making the provision of basic necessities subordinate to a corporate mindset, rather than putting human needs first: As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The Globe and Mail weighs in on the Lac-Mégantic tragedy by pointing out that we should be far more concerned about public safety than technical defences and excuses. Saskboy notes that as soon as a corporation’s business choices lead to a massive public
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joseph Stiglitz makes the case for free trade talks to be based on the public interest rather than the further entrenchment of corporate power and siphoning of wealth to the top. But there’s little reason to expect a meeting of corporate and government
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Scott Sinclair discusses how CETA could create extreme and unnecessary risk in Canada’s banking and financial system: The failure of a single company (such as Lehman Brothers in October 2008) or unchecked growth in markets for high-risk financial products (such as sub-prime
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Michael Harris tears into the Harper Cons for their compulsive dishonesty: Everything in the Westminster model under which we are supposed to operate depends on information, debate and verification — all of which are missing in ‘Harperland’, to use Lawrence Martin’s ringing coinage.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – To the extent corporatist voices are pushing increased private involvement in funding Canadian health care, their main argument generally involves the claim that private insurers will be more willing to fund expensive courses of treatment which might be rationed out of public plans.
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