Assorted content to end your week. – Martin Lukacs offers up the definitive response to the Lac-Mégantic rail tragedy: The deeper evidence about this event won’t be found in the train’s black box, or by questioning the one engineer who left the train before it loosened and careened unmanned into
Continue readingTag: regulation
Accidental Deliberations: On glibertarianism
One of the more obvious points of convergence in political thought over the past 70-80 years is the greater appreciation of systemic complexity – the recognition that different decisions by many types of actors may collide in unpredictable ways, with the results potentially far outweighing the perceived impact of any
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ethan Cox discusses how the Lac-Mégantic tragedy was a predictable – if not inevitable – outcome of a self-regulated (or un-regulated) rail system: Prior to, during, and after the process of deregulating railroads, there were strident warnings issued by the most credible and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot rightly challenges the attempt of corporate interests and their political sock-puppets to demonize anybody concerned about our planet’s future: Exotic invasive species are a straightforward ecological problem, wearily familiar to anyone trying to protect biodiversity. Some introduced creatures – such
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jason Fekete reports that the Harper Cons are taking the side of international tax evaders against other G8 leaders trying to implement an effective enforcement system. And CBC reports that the Canada Revenue Agency has repeatedly turned down the opportunity to access information
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – David Miller makes the case to take aim at inequality in Canada: With globalization being the holy grail of efficiency, it became a race to the bottom as international capital sought the lowest cost and the lowest wages. The result in Canada and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – I’ll quickly link to a few Robocon stories which I han’t yet blogged. Karl Nerenberg noted that the Federal Court decision finding widespread election fraud using the Cons’ voter database was only the beginning, and Jean-Pierre Kingsley was hopeful that the ruling
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Thomas McDonagh discusses how the combination of concentrated corporate wealth and ill-advised trade agreements has allowed business interests to override the will of even strong citizens’ movements: In 2009, when the government of El Salvador refused to issue an environmental permit to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Juxtaposition
From Warren Bell’s devastating comparison between the Peter Kent of yesteryear and the embarrassment he’s become, here’s Canada’s environment minister on why we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about the environment effects of the tar sands: “One of the opposition parties has taken the treacherous course of leaving the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The Broadbent Institute has released a new set of polling (PDF) as to Canadians’ values. And it’s particularly worth noting that even on the Cons’ signature issues such as tax cuts, austerity and crime – where millions upon millions of public dollars
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Yes, there’s plenty more on the Cons’ Senate scandal, with Tim Harper headlining the latest discussion: Mike Duffy is radioactive. The one-time Conservative cheerleader is now the poster boy for the filth which envelops the party brand. The man holed up on Friendly
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On measured responses
Shorter Enbridge, responding to the revelation that a tidy 94% of its Canadian pumping stations are missing required backup generators and/or shut-off buttons: So the question is whether we’ll take steps to comply with environmental laws if nobody’s bothering to enforce them? Let’s consider that for a moment. In summary,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – We shouldn’t be surprised that the corporate sector is reacting with contrived outrage to the Cons’ tinkering with a severely flawed temporary foreign worker program. But Jim Stanford points out what it would take to actually move labour standards upward rather than
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David Olive writes that the dangerous effects of long-term unemployment (caused in no small part by gratuitous austerity) are just as much a problem in Canada as in the U.S.: With our persistent high levels of long-term unemployment, Canada is at risk of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: #mtlqc13 Priority Resolutions – Economy
Following up on my earlier post, let’s start taking a look at a few of the resolutions which I hope to see discussed and passed at this weekend’s federal NDP convention in Montreal. In addition to the criteria mentioned in my earlier post, I also won’t spend too much time
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Frances Russell weighs in on the Cons’ continued contempt for democracy: The Conservatives under Stephen Harper are running an effective dictatorship. They believe they are quite within their rights to muzzle Parliament, gag civil servants, use taxpayer money for blatant political self-promotion, stand
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the CFIA’s inability to do anything about tainted horse meat exemplifies the problems with weak and under-resourced regulators. For further reading…– Again, Mary Ormsby’s original story is here. – Andrew Nikiforuk’s take on the appointment of oil lobbyist Gerald Protti to set up Alberta’s new regulatory system
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Sunny Freeman reports on the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights’ study into the effects of anti-labour legislation: The CFLR argues that [right-to-free-ride] laws would contribute to greater income disparity by undermining union strength and rights to collective bargaining, which they say leads
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, applying the recently-approved Somerset development as an example of why we should expect elected representatives to do more than just remind us that we’re on our own in dealing with health and environmental issues. For further reading, see:– reports from CBC and Vanessa Brown; and– commentary from Edward Dodd
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Alan Feuer writes about New York City’s brilliant use of “big data” to connect the dots in making public policy. And the examples look like a rather compelling reason why we should be looking to expand public-sector data collection and analysis as
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