This and that for your Sunday reading. – Julian Cribb reports on new research as to mass exposure to chemicals and pollutants: Almost every human being is now contaminated in a worldwide flood of industrial chemicals and pollutants – most of which have never been tested for safety – a
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Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Gwynn Guilford discusses how dependence on coal and other resources has left the U.S.’ Appalachian region both poor and ill-equipped for the future after enriching a few corporate owners. And David Dayen notes that a national tax giveaway to the rich is leading
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Tom Parkin duly slams the Libs for a “middle class” tax message being used to sell a giveaway to the rich: Here’s the blunt facts: the tax cut by Finance Minister Bill Morneau gives $0 to anyone earning under about $45,000. Then
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ashifa Kassam writes about the elements of Canada’s health care system which call for ambitious improvement rather than imitation: “I think privatisation is a major threat to public health care in Canada,” said Natalie Mehra of the Ontario Health Coalition. Earlier this
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rupert Neate reports on a new study showing that the world’s 1,500-odd billionaires between them control over $6 trillion in wealth. – Stuart Trew sets out Canada’s choice between corporate-oriented trade deals such as the CETA, or sustainable and fairly-distributed economic development. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Roderick Benns interviews Ryan Meili about the value of a basic income in freeing people from perpetual financial stress. And Doug Cameron reminds us that we have a choice whether to show empathy toward people facing homelessness – even if far too many
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Kate Aronoff writes that in addition to being a political loser, corporate-friendly centrism is extremely dangerous in allowing for far less than the effort we should be putting into fighting climate change. And Tess Riley reports on new research that only a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Your money, his pockets
So much for the theory that Brad Wall’s handouts to the oil sector would merely help his donors. Instead, the Saskatchewan Party’s plan to pay off oil barons would also serve to enrich Wall himself by paying the salaries of employees working for companies in which he owns shares. But
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Anis Chowdhury refutes the theory that top-heavy tax cuts have anything to do with economic development: Cross-country research has found no relationship between changes in top marginal tax rates and growth between 1960 and 2010. For example, during this period, the US
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Larry Beinhart argues that aside from the gross unfairness and economic harm from growing inequality, there’s a basic problem trusting the uber-rich to make reasonable decisions with massive amounts of wealth. And George Monbiot makes the case that even as he pretends
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your weekend reading.
– Naomi Klein discusses how Canada’s longstanding – if far from inevitable – identity as a resource economy is standing in the way of both needed action on climate change and reconciliation with First Nations:
In Canada, cultivation and industrialization were secondary. First and foremost, this country was built on voraciously devouring wildness. Canada was an extractive company – the Hudson’s Bay Company – before it was a country. And that has shaped us in ways we have yet to begin to confront.Because such enormous fortunes have been built purely on the extraction of wild animals, intact forest and interred metals and fossil fuels, our economic elites have grown accustomed to seeing the natural world as their God-given larder.When someone or something – like climate science – comes along and says: Actually, there are limits, we have to take less from the Earth and keep more profit for the public good, it doesn’t feel like a difficult truth. It feels like an existential attack.…The trouble isn’t just the commodity roller coaster. It’s that the stakes grow larger with each boom-bust cycle. The frenzy for cod crashed a species; the frenzy for bitumen and fracked gas is helping to crash the planet.…Today, we have federal and provincial governments that talk a lot about reconciliation. But this will remain a cruel joke if non-Indigenous Canadians do not confront the why behind those human-rights abuses. And the why, as the Truth and Reconciliation report states, is simple enough: “The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.”The goal, in other words, was to remove all barriers to unrestrained resource extraction. This is not ancient history. Across the country, Indigenous land rights remain the single greatest barrier to planet-destabilizing resource extraction, from pipelines to clear-cut logging.
– Meanwhile, Marc Lee signals what we might expect from a federal climate change action plan based on the working groups currently reviewing the options.
– Laurie Monsebraaten reports on a needed push to ensure that child care funding is used to create not-for-profit spaces. And Ashifa Kassam points to Wellington’s loss of water rights to Nestle as a prime example of what happens when corporate dollars trump public needs.
– Finally, Alon Weinberg discusses why now is the time to implement a proportional electoral system in Canada. And Craig Scott makes the case for mixed-member proportional over the other options under consideration.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Sherri Torjman discusses how the the gig economy is based mostly on evading protections for workers – and how the both employment law and social programs need to catch up:Much of the labour market is morphing in…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Miles Corak reviews Branko Milanovic’s new book on the complicated relationship between globalization and income inequality. Dougald Lamont examines the current state of inequality in Canada. And Matth…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Michael Klare writes about the future direction of the oil industry – which looks to involve cashing out quickly than building anything lasting:At the beginning of this century, many energy analysts were convinced th…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Angella MacEwen discusses how most of what’s sold as “free trade” serves mostly to hand power to the corporate sector at the expense of the public. Ashley Csanady and Monika Warzecha point out that the same is true f…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On delayed rectification
I’ll largely echo David Climenhaga’s take on Alberta’s oil and gas royalty review (PDF). But it’s well worth highlighting the difference between the two main interpretations of the review’s recommendations – and what they mean for future resource polic…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Compare and contrast
One option in responding to a precipitous decline in commodity prices which has exposed a province’s overreliance on resource extraction is to work on developing an economy which isn’t so vulnerable to predictable shocks:Ceci said his main focus i…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Saskatchewan Party’s mid-year fiscal update shows it hasn’t learned a thing about managing a boom-and-bust resource economy – and how it may take Saskatchewan’s electorate to fix the underlying problem. For further reading…- The mid-…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Scott Clark and Peter De Vries discuss the need for a Canadian economic plan which involves investment in the long term rather than politically-oriented payoffs only within a single election cycle. And Joseph Stiglitz points out the obvious need for a global
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Stephen Marche discusses the Cons’ ongoing efforts to make Canada a more closed and ignorant country: Mr. Harper’s campaign for re-election has so far been utterly consistent with the personality trait that has defined his tenure as prime minister: his peculiar hatred for
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