Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Thomas Walkom, Dan Leger and Michael Harris write about the sketchy surveillance programs in place on both sides of the 49th parallel. But there may be an opportunity to make common cause with the 1% in criticizing constant intrusion on personal privacy, as
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Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Michael Harris tears into the Harper Cons for their compulsive dishonesty: Everything in the Westminster model under which we are supposed to operate depends on information, debate and verification — all of which are missing in ‘Harperland’, to use Lawrence Martin’s ringing coinage.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that to end your weekend. – Dave Coles introduces readers to the Cons’ latest attack on labour – with a backbencher’s private member’s bill again serving as an excuse to introduce unprecedent restrictions on union organization. – Michael Harris suspects that the Cons’ attempt to delay any public
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Frances Russell makes the case for mandatory voting as an antidote to vote suppression: At first glance, entrenched opposition to mandatory voting in all the English-speaking democracies – Australia excepted – is puzzling. Given all the obligations of citizenship in a democracy
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how Tom Mulcair’s effective cross-examination of Stephen Harper serves as only one step toward the government we should want – i.e., one thoughtful and responsible enough to actually withstand answering real questions. For further reading… – Plenty of other commentators are rightly pointing out Harper’s predictable retreat into
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
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Assorted content to end your week. – Arthur Haberman argues that our universal public health care system helps contribute to a more democratic society: There is something that political philosophers — those like Tocqueville and Mill in the 19th century — have come to call living democratically. By this it
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Normalizing secrecy
I haven’t commented yet on the story surrounding Tom Mulcair’s request for basic investigation into back-channel information between the Trudeau government and the Supreme Court of Canada – which seems best classified as a minor but reasonable request which has been blown out of proportion. But I’ll take a moment
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading. – Daniel Kaufman notes that the EU is on the verge of implementing new standards for transparency in oil extraction – while recognizing that big oil has fought the effort every step of the way in an effort to keep its activities secret. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading. – Daniel Kaufman notes that the EU is on the verge of implementing new standards for transparency in oil extraction – while recognizing that big oil has fought the effort every step of the way in an effort to keep its activities secret. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Lori Theresa Waller provides her own take on the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights’ study on labour rights and inequality: In the 1970s, all provinces used the simple card check system, whereby an employer must legally recognize a union if the majority of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has unveiled its alternative federal budget – which highlights the choice between the Cons’ needless austerity, and the 200,000-300,000 extra jobs which could be created alongside important social improvements which could be brought about through well-placed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Lawrence Martin discusses how the B.C. Libs, Harper Cons and other governments have responded to transparency requirements by deliberately refusing to record what they’re doing and why: News from the government of British Columbia. Sorry citizens, we have no files. There is
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Christy Clark’s Stealth Government Exposed
And I was hoping she’d survive long enough to run the B.C. Libs on the rocks in the May elections. Having thrown most of her closest advisers under a good many buses, B.C.’s unelected, unelectable and outgoing premier, Christy Clark, is now pretty much on her own. Even her caucus
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Andrew Nikiforuk discusses how Alberta and other petro-states have ended up destroying their treasuries and their democratic systems alike by relying excessively on volatile resource prices: Thanks to the volatile nature of the world’s most lucrative commodity, various petro states find themselves short
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Joseph Stiglitz discusses how the combination of increasingly concentrated wealth and deteriorating has eliminated any pretense of equal opportunity within the U.S.: It’s not that social mobility is impossible, but that the upwardly mobile American is becoming a statistical oddity. According to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Carol Goar discusses Canada’s broken fiscal stabilizers – as unemployment insurance and social programs intended to assure citizens of at least a reasonable standard of living have been cut to well below that level: Canada’s economic shock absorbers are badly worn. Employment insurance,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Ian Lovett reports on the use of “capital appreciation bonds” in California to ensure that future generations pay an inflated price to private-sector developers for infrastructure today. – Justin Ling’s review of Joyce Murray’s message about electoral non-competition pacts is well worth a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – While we may sometimes lose track of the continuing differences between Canadian politics and those in the U.S., here’s a reminder of how we’re familiar with a far wider and more progressive range of public policy choices: while we’ve seen plenty of discussion
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On predetermination
Shorter Brent Rathgeber: What government backbencher would dare consider asking the Parliamentary Budget Officer for information if he can’t suppress any inconvenient findings? I’d rather stay ignorant, thank you very much.
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