Assorted content to start your week. – Chris Turner rightly recognizes the urgency in implementing effective policies to avert climate breakdown – though he does set the bar too low in the process. The Star’s editorial board highlights how the latest IPCC report confirms the danger of politicians fighting against
Continue readingTag: proportional representation
THE FIFTH COLUMN: THE FIFTH COLUMN 2018-10-13 19:17:00
On Democracy What a better way to restart The Fifth Column than by a treatise on how to make our democracy actually democratic. Hopefully this will be the first posting in a newly regenerated Fifth Column. I write this at a time when there are so many examples of democracy
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Tiffany Crawford interviews Kirsten Zickfeld about the contradiction between new fossil fuel infrastructure and any serious attempt to reverse our climate breakdown. Murray Mandryk offers a reminder of the local costs of climate change. Fatima Syed highlights how Doug Ford’s supposed climate plan
Continue readingCuriosityCat: FPTP makes Canadians second class citizens
Voters in the province of British Columbia are faced with a dilemma: Does morality require them to vote for political reform because they owe their family, friends and neighbours a duty to take care of them? This dilemma arises because each voter in BC will within days receive a postal
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Evelyn Forget makes the case for a national basic income which would provide a more stable fiscal base for Canada’s provinces as well as its citizens. And Dennis Raphael writes about the social murder resulting from the wanton destruction of income supports and
Continue readingCuriosityCat: A vote for FPTP is a vote for legalized theft
Voters in BC are being given the chance to vote for a dramatic change in the way in which their representatives in the provincial government are chosen, as this article shows: David Eby said the referendum would be conducted by mail-in ballot, with the campaign to begin July 1 and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jim Stanford discusses how abusing precarious workers has become the primary job of big business. But Owen Jones notes that strikes against McDonald’s in the UK represent just the latest example of workers taking collective action to fight for a more fair
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Oliver Milman reports on new indications that we’re far beyond any reasonable pace in trying to rein in climate change. – The Star’s editorial board discusses why lower-income Ontarians are right to feel like they’re under attack from Doug Ford’s government. And Noah
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jean Swanson writes about the success of Vancouver tenants in pushing to limit the rent increases which can be forced on them. But any win for collective action will come attempts to stifle more of the same – and Dan Taekema reports on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Evelyn Forget discusses the international outrage at the Ford PC’s cancellation of a basic income pilot. And Paul Waldeman writes about Republicans’ shock that voters are smart enough to recognize their giveaways to the wealthy for what they are. – Doug Cuthand makes
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Emily Atkin offers a reminder that the people with the least stand to face the most severe costs of climate change. But lest we take that as a signal that there’s an irreconcilable gap between countries, Eric Levitz writes that even in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Matt Phillips and Karl Russell write that the next severe financial meltdown may not be far away, and that student and consumer debt (along with new derivatives from corporate debt) look to be at the centre of it. And Stephen Long points
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman writes that progressive voices need to reclaim the theme of freedom as it becomes increasingly obvious how deprivation and precarity deprive people of meaningful choices: (L)arge economic players are dominating more and more of the economy. It’s increasingly clear, for example,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Gary Mason discusses how politicians are fiddling while our planet burns. And Jonathan Watts reports on the strongest sea ice in the Arctic breaking up for the first time in recorded history, as well as the likelihood that Arctic warming bears part
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Is the Trudeau government unconstitutional?
Canada demanded that Saudi Arabia release persons jailed there and a storm erupted, with Saudia Arabia cutting off most interactions with Canada. It would be very ironic if the current Trudeau government was determined by our Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, as I believe it is, would it not? Justin
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – David Moscrop makes the case for a long-overdue inheritance tax in Canada: Over time, if left unchecked, capitalism facilitates the pooling of wealth — cash, property, business ownership, investments — among a select few. This is as true in Canada as anywhere else.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Evening Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joel Achenbach and Angela Fritz discuss how climate change is amplifying all kinds of extreme weather (with severe heat as only the most obvious example). And Umair Irfan examines some of the dangerous economic and social side effects of unprecedented heat waves. –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Osmond Chui writes that Australia is no exception to the trend of modest economic growth being entirely hoarded by the wealthiest few, while work and life are ever more precarious for everybody else: What makes people angry about excessive executive pay is the
Continue readingIn-Sights: Too stupid for democracy
Thanks to Richard Hughes for pointing to this video.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Lisa Gennetian discusses how behavioural economics can inform the development of programs to end child poverty – including by ensuring a guaranteed income to help parents avoid needless financial stress. And Annie Lowrey makes the case for a basic income as a matter
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