Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrew Jackson reviews the OECD’s economic recommendations for Canada – featuring a much-needed call for fair taxes on stock options: Special tax breaks for stock options primarily benefit senior corporate executives, especially CEOs of large public companies who are commonly given the right
Continue readingTag: progressivism
Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Following up on this morning’s post, George Monbiot discusses the need for a progressive movement which goes beyond pointing out dangers to offer the promise of better things to come: Twenty years of research, comprehensively ignored by these parties, reveals that shifts
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – D.L. Tice writes that it’s becoming more and more difficult for the right to ignore the spread of income inequality – and the reality that only public policy, not faith in the market, can produce a more fair distribution of income. Which is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman explains how one’s political values figure to affect one’s view of evidence as to the success or failure of a policy: (T)he liberal and conservative movements are not at all symmetric in their goals. Conservatives want smaller government as an end
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Robert Reich discusses the Koch brothers and their place in the U.S.’ new plutocracy: The Kochs exemplify a new reality that strikes at the heart of America. The vast wealth that has accumulated at the top of the American economy is not itself
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – David Atkins emphasizes the need for progressive parties and activists to discuss big ideas rather than settling for the path of least short-term resistance: Both the poor and the middle class feel threatened and increasingly pessimistic. Opinions of elite institutions across the board
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Thomas Walkom points out that many Canadians can expect to lose jobs without any social supports due to the Cons’ focus on political messages over real-life impacts. And Blake Zeff offers a reminder that while progressive economic policy may be receiving more attention
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Nick Pearce offers an interesting discussion of conception of equality that should be placed at the core of social-democratic thinking – with one goal in particular standing out as demanding further attention: (S)social democrats would be more self-consciously political in pursuit of their
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom notes that the Harper Cons’ latest EI cuts look to amplify the pain of unemployment in Ontario while serving the broader purpose of forcing workers to conclude their federal government doesn’t care if they go hungry: The great irony is that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Alex Pareene muses that Lawrence Summers would be an entirely worthy nominee to oversee U.S. monetary policy – for a very specific set of criteria: Laws and policies he championed directly led to the financial crisis, and the same laws and policies caused
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On external forces
Leadnow’s latest fund-raising pitch is attracting some well-deserved criticism for once again relying (at least in part) on strategic voting in the face of ample evidence showing its futility. But I’ll point out that there’s also part of Leadnow’s message which looks new – and which may go a long
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Kathleen Geier makes the case for greater progressive activism at lower levels of government – and the point applies with equal force in Canada: (T)hose of us who want to build a more progressive America would be well-advised to pay relatively less
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rick Salutin highlights the dangers of relying on bulk data collection and algorithmic analysis as a basis to restrict individual rights: The National Post’s Jen Gerson interviewed a U.S. privacy expert. She asked about the PRISM program, by which U.S. agencies spy on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot writes about the dangers of allowing wealthy and privileged individuals to speak as the voice of the poor and downtrodden: As the UK chairs the G8 summit again, a campaign that Bono founded, with which Geldof works closely, appears to
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: "In America truth is offensive, If you tell the truth, you are offensive."
So writes former U.S. deputy treasury secretary, Paul Craig Roberts, in his column for CounterPunch, America, Land of the Lost. Roberts recently published the e-book, The Failure of Laissez-Faire Capitalism, reviewed on this blog three weeks ago. Plenty of offensive truth-telling there. Now, Roberts confronts the shrill unacceptability of being
Continue readingThe Ranting Canadian: “The biggest distinction between a Liberal Party led by me and Stephen’s Harper’s…
“The biggest distinction between a Liberal Party led by me and Stephen’s Harper’s Conservatives is one of tone …” – Justin Trudeau (Toronto Star print edition, April 6, 2013) Exactly. Many of us have been saying for years that the main difference between the pro-corporate, pro-globalization Liberals and the pro-corporate,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On priorities
Yesterday, I posted a brief overview of the policy resolutions set to be discussed at the NDP’s federal convention in Montreal next weekend. But over the next few days, I’ll go a step further in taking a look at the ones I see as most important for the party’s development
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On topics of discussion
In advance of next weekend’s Montreal convention, the NDP has released the resolutions (PDF) to be voted on by delegates. And for all the distraction created by a non-binding constitutional preamble, the more interesting point to watch will be the treatment of substantive policy resolutions which look to confirm the
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 readingProgressive Proselytizing: A 30,000 foot view of the Canadian political landscape
In this post I investigate the 30,000 foot view of the Canadian political landscape, and consider various factors for what I consider to be a defining political trend of the last several decades: the declining political space between parties. Room for three parties:Wind back the clock to the 70s and
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