Assorted content to end your week.- Mariana Mazzucato discusses the futility of slashing government without paying attention to what it’s intended to accomplish. And Sheila Block and Kaylie Tiessen are particularly critical of Ontario’s short-term sell…
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Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Robert Reich writes about the growing disconnect between the few well-connected people who have warped our political and economic systems for their benefit, and the rest of us who are on the wrong side of that system: (C)orporate executives and Wall Street
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 readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your election day reading. – Ed Finn discusses how neoliberalism is damaging Canada, and what we need to do to reverse its influence: Corporate influence on federal politics, the country’s flawed electoral system, and the staunch pursuit of a political and economic ideology since the 1980s that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Branko Milanovic answers Harry Frankfurt’s attempt to treat inequality as merely an issue of absolute deprivation by reminding us how needs are inherently social: “[Under necessities] I understand not only the commodities that are indispensable for the support of life, but whatever the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On governing alternatives
As David Climenhaga points out, Brad Wall has positioned himself as the heir to Stephen Harper’s throne as the voice of the anti-democratic corporate elite. But let’s note that Wall and his mindset aren’t without some jarring approval within the media. For example, I’ve already highlighted John Ibbitson’s argument that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On closed-door decisions
Memo to Don Lenihan: It’s well and good to point to past backroom policy debacles such as utterly unwanted Crown corporation giveaways as examples of a complete lack of public engagement. But before lauding Kathleen Wynne as the face of open government, might it be worth noting that she’s doing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On first steps
Dru Oja Jay, David Bush and Doug Nesbitt, Graham Steele and Karl Nerenberg have already offered their suggestions on the first steps for Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP government (and the progressives hoping for it to produce positive change). But I’ll offer my own take based on one overriding principle: having
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the massive shift in public opinion against the Conservatives’ terror bill should remind us that people are more than willing to reconsider their initial position on a policy – and how it should signal to political parties that it might be a good idea to do the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – George Monbiot opines that curbing corporate power is the most fundamental political issue we need to address in order to make progress possible on any other front: Does this sometimes feel like a country under enemy occupation? Do you wonder why the demands
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Walden Bello discusses the need for our political system to include constant citizen engagement, not merely periodic elections to determine who will be responsible to implement the wishes of the elite: Even more than dictatorships, Western-style democracies are, we are forced to conclude,
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Here, on how personal and institutional stress make it more difficult for people to defend their interests – and on the need to respond to political strategies increasingly aimed at exploiting that principle to reduce public participation. For further reading…– Again, Chris Mooney discussed the effect of stress on voter
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On inspiring action
The NDP’s first National Day of Action last weekend looks to have received virtually no media attention despite involving numbers of participants comfortably within the range of similarly-timed conventions and conferences which routinely dominate national headlines for weeks at a time. And there’s reason for optimism that the NDP’s plan
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Justin Fox questions whether traditional studies tracking the distribution of wealth by quintiles do much good when the most obvious economic faultline is between the (give or take) 1% and everybody else: Something really dramatic is going on up there in the top
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David MacDonald studies the effect of the Cons’ income-splitting scheme, and finds that it’s oriented purely toward funnelling money toward the top of the income scale: “Income splitting creates a tax loophole big enough to drive a Rolls Royce through. It’s pitched
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot criticizes the UK Cons’ latest effort to outlaw any form of individual action or expression which might intrude upon the corporate bubble: The existing rules are bad enough. Introduced by the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, antisocial behaviour orders (asbos)
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Polly Toynbee discusses how the public shares in the responsibility for a political class oriented toward easily-discarded talking points rather than honest discussion: Intense mistrust of parties is growing dangerously with each generation: with fewer than 1% of the population members of a
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: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Susan FitzGerald reports on new research that growing up in poverty has a significantly more damaging effect on a child’s development than exposure to drugs – leading to obvious questions as to why so many governments loudly wage a nominal war on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Richard Seymour comments on more and more draconian anti-protest laws which are being applied to attack public activism: To understand why this is happening, it is necessary to grasp the relationship between neoliberal austerity and popular democracy. In a previous era, when
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