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,
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Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Yves Engler discusses the importance of a “social wage” – and how the minimum standard of living we’re prepared to tolerate affects the well-being of all kinds of workers: These attacks against the poor and unemployed should be opposed by anyone who
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – The Guardian discusses how the all-too-familiar trend of growing inequality and ever more precarious lives for all but the fabulously wealthy is unsustainable: While the debate in the UK is mostly focused on growth and how best to engender it, Reich explains in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Alison highlights the attempts of Sun TV to rally the most extreme reactionary movements in the country behind its bid for mandatory carriage. And the question of whether we want to publicly sanction a network beholden to such interest groups would seem to
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This and that for your Sunday reading. – James Galbraith compares the mindless drones carrying an increasing share of the U.S.’ military load, and those serving to try to attack social programs in the name of illusory deficit reduction. But sadly, Galbraith misses one of the most important similarities: in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Erika Shaker rightly tears into the special brand of FAIPOF demanding that First Nations protesters focus solely on their own community leaders rather than recognizing broader and more systematic inequality: Much is being made of Chief Spence’s Escalade (although I’m unsure if she
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that to start the new year. – Lynn Stuart Parramore discusses the dangers of needless means-testing for basic social benefits: When I spoke to Joseph Stiglitz, he discussed the idea that “means-testing is mean.” Programs like Medicare and Social Security, he explained, are matters of political economy. They
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford is the latest to point out that the Cons see accountability and transparency solely as punishments to be inflicted on their perceived enemies, not as values to be applied to their own decision-making: Following Mr. Hiebert’s logic, any organization in society
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – While far too many in the media seem to have glossed over what the Cons’ attacks on votes in Parliament this fall actually meant, Mia Rabson nicely sums it up: (F)or the government to simply reject every single suggestion the opposition makes as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Susan Delacourt writes that laughable conspiracy theories look to be the Cons’ stock in trade as they fight against any accountability for electoral fraud: (I)t may be true that Ford has left-wing opponents on council and that the Council of Canadians, which has
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week.- The U.S.’ budget negotiations are leading to some public lobbying as to whether wealthy Americans will make any contribution whatsoever to closing the country’s deficit. On the plus side, Warren Buffett is re…
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Assorted content to end your week.- Christopher Curtis and Stephen Maher break the news that the Cons have falsified donation records, claiming donations to their Laurier-Sainte-Marie riding association from individuals who deny ever making contributio…
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This and that to end your week.- Tavia Grant writes that at least one region of the globe – Latin America – is seeing some real progress in combating inequality. And the World Bank has some ideas to keep up the momentum:The bank still sees room for imp…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On unwanted imports
The Mound of Sound is rightly appalled at the revelation that JP Morgan is making money off of the U.S.’ food stamp program. But lest we think the problem is limited to our neighbours, let’s note that the Cons are doing their utmost to ensure that ever…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2013 Roundup
A quick look at the latest developments in the Saskatchewan NDP leadership campaign… – Erin Weir has unveiled an ambitious child care plan intended to make publicly-delivered daycare and early learning available to all parents. But perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Weir’s plan is that it may actually undersell
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On healthy choices
It looks like the federal NDP is starting to highlight some of its priorities as an alternative government in order to better frame Canada’s political debate. And while its first offering on health care includes some relatively low-hanging fruit (it’s truly sad that “not gratuitously boosting drug costs by billions”
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Armine Yalnizyan points to the Law Commission of Ontario’s proposals to make sure that labour laws don’t stack the deck against workers, and encourages citiznes to have their own say: The truth is, most people don’t know anything about their legal rights as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Stuart Trew comments on the Cons’ utterly implausible claims to try to impose the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the EU without the slightest bit of public scrutiny: CETA will also most certainly give European firms the power to challenge and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Janet Bagnall neatly dissects the Cons’ plan for dismantling public services: The Harper government is nothing if not predictable in how it goes about dismantling a program or service. It starts by denigrating the program and the program’s beneficiaries, and telling Canadians that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On parallel pursuits
Let’s follow on the theme of both Thursday’s column and the Mound of Sound’s post with a closer look at the corporatist “there are no bad jobs” philosophy – which serves as the obvious foundation for constant attacks on wages, unions and workers even if it’s been walked back as
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