This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jordon Cooper rightly argues that we should move away from forcing people to rely on homeless shelters and other stopgap measures when we can afford to provide permanent homes: We fill a bus for the hungry while ignoring that the reason for
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Reviewing Darrell West’s Billionaires, Michael Lewis discusses how extreme wealth doesn’t make anybody better off – including the people fighting for position at the top of the wealth spectrum: A team of researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute surveyed 43,000
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Monica Pohlmann interviews Armine Yalnizyan about the undue influence of our corporate overlords in setting public policy: What’s your sense of the state of our democracy? We have a troubled relationship with our democratic institutions. We need to get over the idea
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Ed Broadbent laments Canada’s failure to meet its commitment to end child poverty – and notes that the Harper Cons in particular are headed in exactly the wrong direction: This child poverty rate is a national disgrace. It jumped from 15.8 per cent
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The 25th anniversary of Parliament’s unanimous – if failed – commitment to eliminate child poverty has given rise to plenty of worthwhile commentary. Marco Chown Oved talks to Ed Broadbent about what the resolution meant at the time (as well as how it
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Juxtaposition
The minister responsible for the plight of Saskatchewan’s homeless people: In response to a CBC iTeam question about the waiting list for social housing faced by homeless people Harpauer said, “you’re assuming that there’s these desperate homeless people.” The plight of Saskatchewan’s homeless people: Saskatoon police have confirmed that a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Heather Mallick and Linda McQuaig both weigh in on the connection between income splitting and the Cons’ plans for social engineering. And Scott Clark and Peter DeVries point out that a giveaway to wealthy families is as indefensible from an economic standpoint
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Robert Reich discusses the right’s utter lack of – and aversion to – empathy as either a personal or political value. Bob Norman reports on a particularly galling example of that phenomenon, as Fort Lauderdale has begun arresting people for feeding the homeless.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Erika Shaker points out how condescending attitudes toward public benefits are both making it unduly difficult to develop new programs which would benefit everybody, and threatening existing social safety net. Sean McElwee writes that inequality only figures to grow as an issue as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Tony Burman comments on the increasing recognition of the dangers of inequality even among corporate and financial elites: (I)t is significant that the policy debate among many decision-makers seems to be changing. Rather than the nonsense about “the makers versus the takers,”
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how precarity is a serious concern in far more areas than the workplace alone – and how we should think about public policy as a means of eliminating precarity (whether it be in work, housing, food or other necessities of life) wherever possible. For further reading…– Once again,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Michal Rozworski responds to idealized views of Canadian equality with the reality that we fall well short of the Scandinavian model: Canada appears on many accounts much closer to the US than Sweden, the stand-in for a more robust social democratic and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig discusses the radical difference between how Canadians want to see public resources used (based on the example set by governments elsewhere), and the determination of the Cons and their corporate allies to instead fritter away every dime of fiscal capacity the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: A friendly reminder from your military-industrial overlords
Money to extend and improve the lives of Canadian citizens is never available, and the need for funding precludes any discussion of the benefits of investing in people. But money for war is free and unlimited, and the need for funding is not to be discussed as part of any
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Assorted content to end your week. – Rick Smith discusses the growing public appetite to fight back against burgeoning inequality – along with the need to make inequality a basic test for the fairness of any policy: (I)t is significant that a finance minister of our decidedly right-wing government showed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Nora Loreto reviews the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights’ Unions Matter: Unlikely to convince someone who is anti-union on its own, Unions Matter provides the fodder for union activists to be able to make important arguments in favour of unionization. Even more important,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Steven Hoffman and Julia Belluz write that the current ebola outbreak – like many health catastrophes in the developing world – is traceable largely to the warped incentives facing medical researchers: (W)e’ve learned a lot about Ebola: that it’s spread through contact
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Leo Panitch questions the “responsible capitalism” theme which is being used by Ed Miliband in lieu of a more significant alternative to unfettered market dogma: It is most unlikely that Miliband’s call for “responsible capitalism” will refresh genuine political debate let alone galvanise
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Colleen Flood writes that our health care system is more similar to the U.S.’ than we’d like to admit – and that many of the most glaring inefficiencies within it are already the result of services funded through private insurance rather than our
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Sarah Jaffe examines the “bad business fee” proposal which would require employers who pay wages below public assistance levels – receiving work while forcing the public to subsidize their employees’ livelihood – to at least make up the difference: As inequality has
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