Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Stephen Hawking discusses the crucial distinction between seeing money as a means of pursuing worthy ends versus treating it a goal in and of itself – and notes that we should be wary of political choices bas…
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Dani Rodrik comments on the need for a far more clear set of policy prescriptions for left-wing political parties to present as an alternative to laissez-faire corporate domination, while noting there’s no lack…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Choose your progressives
Choose your drug policy: harm reduction…#CdnPoli #HarmReduction “@VanAlias: #NDP2016 passed this. pic.twitter.com/D6nkKaTAi9″— Susan Gapka (@SusanGapka) April 9, 2016 …or harm retention.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Up for discussion
Kady O’Malley has already highlighted a few of the noteworthy resolutions (PDF) submitted to this weekend’s NDP policy convention. But I’ll point out a few more which look to me to deserve attention.First, in the category of simple good ideas regardles…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Desmond Cole rightly slams the stinginess of Ontario’s government in taking support away from parents based on child support which isn’t actually received. And Karl Nerenberg laments Bill Morneau’s decision to …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Charlie Cooper reports on the UK’s increasing wealth inequality, with the richest 10% now owning half of all wealth. And Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony Atkinson and Salvatore Morelli highlight (PDF) how even the b…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Movements and moments
Let’s continue this line of thought about the federal NDP’s most recent election campaign with my slight twist on one of the more familiar questions which has faced the party (in various forms) over a period of decades.I’ll start by drawing a distincti…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On balancing acts
For those wondering, I’m indeed following up on these posts and working my way through some of the factors in the NDP’s federal election result. (For more on the subject, see the latest from Lawrence Martin, and Desmond Cole talking to Cheri DiNovo.)I’…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the opportunity posed by the change in Canada’s federal government – as well as the risks involved in letting the moment pass without an activist push for meaningful change. For further reading…– Nora Loreto makes much the same point with a particular focus on Canada’s labour movement.– Susan
Continue readingDeath By Trolley: Dude, where’s my progressivism?! Why I no longer identify as progressive.
For many years I self identified as a proud progressive. I identified as such because I believed in such things as secularism, universal healthcare, affordable education, various other social safety net programs, gay rights, gender and racial egalitarianism, I was pro-choice, etc. I didn’t always fall directly in line with
Continue readingDeath By Trolley: Dude, where’s my progressivism?! Why I no longer identify as progressive.
For many years I self identified as a proud progressive. I identified as such because I believed in such things as secularism, universal healthcare, affordable education, various other social safety net programs, gay rights, gender and racial egalitarianism, I was pro-choice, etc. I didn’t always fall directly in line with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jim Stanford points out that the Harper Cons’ already-dismal economic track record is only getting worse. And Nora Loreto notes that even on the Cons’ own estimates, the Trans-Pacific Partnership looks to result in Canada paying more in compensation to industries hurt by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jeffrey Simpson lambastes the Cons’ determination to slash taxes and hand out baubles to the rich for the sole purpose of undermining the fiscal capacity of government to help Canadians. And Jeremy Nuttall highlights how a cuts to the CRA are allowing tax
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: #prgrs15 Wrapup
As readers may have noticed in my earlier posts, I had the opportunity to attend the Broadbent Institute’s Progress Summit 2015. And as a whole, the summit was well worth attending, featuring a wide range of interesting speakers and topics, a strong turnout including plenty of people whose work is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On enduring foundations
The framing panel at the Progress Summit included plenty of ideas as to how the left can shape political debates. But I’ll note that it seemed to miss a couple of related issues. Most notably, there was an almost exclusive focus on reaching out to swing voters rather than framing
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: New Contest. Spot the Progressive!
I’ll bet you’ve got inside yourself some sense of progress, progressive, progressivism. Even bad people have a little. The question today is whether progressivism remains a real construct in Canadian politics. Have our political parties become so neoliberal as to eradicate progressivism? Let’s take a look at some of the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jacques Peretti discusses how corporate elites rewrote our social contract in a concerted effort to the inequality we’re fighting today – and suggests it’s well past time to push back in the name of moral economics: Politicians have now, as then, conspired in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Joe Cressy argues that we need to take strong progressive positions to highlight the kinds of public investment which need to be made, rather than buying into right-wing spin about slashing taxes and eliminating public institutions: Public investment is about social justice, taking
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Restoring the Vox Populi
Some thoughts for this, Labour Day.The voice of the people. Oh, how long has it been since that really meant anything? In Canada and many other advanced countries, polls show that people are being governed without much if any regard to their views, their concerns. It’s sort of like standing,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On progressivism
Joe Fantauzzi explains his reasons for avoiding the term “progressive” in defining his own political beliefs. But I’ll argue that the proper response to Fantauzzi’s concern is to work harder in defining what terms mean – not to abandon them altogether: The achievement by marginalized people of social citizenship. Collective
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