Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Mariana Mazzucato writes about the need for governments to shape markets through their own investments, rather than acting only to serve existing business interests: The idea that at best the public sector can fix “market failures” and “de-risk” business, means that when the
Continue readingTag: public opinion
Accidental Deliberations: On greatness
Plenty of commentators have pointed to Dean Beeby’s report on public consultations about Canada’s most inspiring people as evidence that Stephen Harper and his Cons couldn’t be much further from the mark. And that point is fair enough on its own. But it’s worth noting something else as well: respondents
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Katie Allen discusses the Equality Trust’s research into tax rates in the UK – which shows that the poor actually pay the highest share of their income in taxes, even as the public has been led to believe the opposite: The poorest 10%
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – PressProgress digs into the PBO’s report on tax giveaways to look at what Canada has lost from the Cons’ cuts to federal fiscal capacity – and how little has been gained as a trade-off: (T)he Harper government, by starving the public coffers, is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robert Reich calls out four fundamental lies used to push corporatist policies. But perhaps more interesting is the truth which no amount of concentrated wealth seems to be able to suppress: But the more interesting thing here is the memo’s concession of a hurdle
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Krugman’s review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century includes his commentary on our new gilded age: Still, today’s economic elite is very different from that of the nineteenth century, isn’t it? Back then, great wealth tended to be inherited;
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jim Stanford writes that union-bashing has proven to be political poison for many of the parties who have tried to distract from increasing inequality with attacks on workers: (T)he biggest problem for Mr. Hudak’s crusade was a deeper sentiment in Canadian public opinion
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robert Reich confirms the seemingly obvious reality that poverty and inequality are in fact major obstacle facing the poor. And Paul Krugman explains why any successful progressive movement in the U.S. will need to discuss inequality and the hoarding of wealth to challenge
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: CRA, Abacus, and the 2013 Nova Scotia General Election #nlpoli #nspoli
In the recent Nova Scotia General election, Corporate Research Associates and the Halifax Chronicle Herald teamed up to provide readers with a daily tracking poll. CRA was quick off the mark after the election to issue a news release defending its own polling, complete with the screaming headline that claimed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On decisive choices
Nanos’ latest poll on the parties under consideration by voters has received plenty of attention. But the discussion so far seems to miss the most plausible explanation for the poll results. Compared to previous polling, the latest survey shows:– little change in the actual support levels of Canada’s federal parties;
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Frank Graves comments on the fundamental political choices we’re facing in determining whether to continue operating based on corporatist orthodoxy – and the reality that the vast majority of Canadians don’t agree with the side chosen by the Harper Cons: (T)he devil’s
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Wanted: a good row #nlpoli
One of the unreserved joys that comes from writing these scribbles is the moment when a post sparks something. Like on Monday, when a simple post looking at change in the provincial gross domestic product prompted an exchange among a few of the provincial Twitterati (Twitteratini?) on the whole business.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Frank Graves’ review of the current state of Canadian politics focuses in on the growing gap between the Cons’ waning interest in listening to the public, and their growing expenditures on advertising and marketing: In Canada in 2006, the federal government spent roughly
Continue readingCanadian ProgressiveCanadian Progressive: Canada’s New Democrats prefer Obama re-election
Canada’s Official Opposition, the New Democrats, prefers to see Barack Obama re-elected as U.S. President rather than Republican challenger Mitt Romney. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair told reporters in Montreal on Sunday that he “hopes to work wi…
Continue readingCanadian ProgressiveCanadian Progressive: Globally, Obama Overwhelmingly Preferred to Romney: Poll
by GlobScan A new 21-nation poll for BBC World Service indicates that citizens around the world would strongly prefer to see Barack Obama re-elected as US President rather than his Republican challenger Mitt Romney. The poll of 21,797 people, conducted…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: New Poll: American Voters Very Concerned About Global Warming Pollution, Support Taxing Dirty Energy
global climate change.jpg A new poll released today shows that American voters take global warming pollution very seriously and want to see action from government and the private sector to curb emissions and support clean energy solutions. The new Yale-GMU survey found that 76% of Americans believe that regulating CO2 emissions
Continue readingDavid Climenhaga's Alberta Diary: Albertans should worry when Calgary becomes the city Canadians love to hate
How other Canadians see the typical Albertan: rich, smug, condescending and irresponsible. Below: What they think of us as a result; Alison Redford; Dalton McGuinty. We won the lottery. Now we won’t stop telling everyone else how to run their financial affairs. And guess what? They don’t like it! I’ve
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