Assorted content to end your week. – I wouldn’t want to take Dan Gardner’s conclusion as to the effects of power as an immutable truth – as he himself notes in pointing out means of minimizing its risks. But it’s certainly an apt description of what’s happened since the Harper
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Erika Shaker points out how Quebec’s student protests are a natural and justified reaction to the policy choice to saddle young workers with debt: (T)he effects of student debt are not exactly “character building”. Postponement of owning a home or starting a family.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, expanding on this post as to the importance of a functioning federal system as a means of counterbalancing regional declines – and the forces working to limit anything of the sort in Canada. For further reading…– Frances Russell also laments the Harper firewall model based on the need for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andrew Jackson raises an absolutely devastating point to refute anybody trying to use “it’s all about growth!!!” as an excuse for slashing social supports and handing free money to the rich: In this age of austerity, we are constantly told by governments that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Dr. Dawg responds to Andrew Coyne’s suggestion about cracking down on advocacy by charities with an entirely reasonable suggestion as to how to allocate our resources: Given that charities do essential work that the government does not fund—feeding and clothing the poor, defending
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: A Healthy Society – Chapter 7 Discussion
Chapter 7 of Ryan Meili’s A Healthy Society focuses on health care – with a heavy emphasis on ideas such as improved rural access and a Crown pharmaceutical manufacturer which should sound familiar to those who have followed Meili’s previous political involvement. But I’ll highlight Meili’s link between health care
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – When even free-trade warrior Barrie McKenna can only respond incredulously to a message campaign on behalf of the wealthy, you know it’s gone too far. So here’s McKenna answering the contrived outrage over the NDP’s proposal for a slight increase in income tax
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Murtaza Hussain nicely sums up why we should be pushing for businesses and wealthy individuals to contribute their fair share through a progressive tax system rather than through self-aggrandizing charity: The private social safety net, provided by corporate donors as compensation for the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – David Climenhaga marvels at the fact that the Fraser Institute manages to claim charitable status while serving as an entirely political organization: The Fraser Institute is serious all right, although its research is not serious in the normal sense of transparency and lack
Continue readingConservatives create problems, not solutions
#cpc #gop #lpc #ndp #cdnpoli #politics In the news; the appeals court in California overturned a ban on same sex marriage. This ban was a citizen inspired law triggered by the then legalized gay marriage laws in California. The court found essentially that rights, once given, cannot be taken away.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Yes, the fraudulent collaboration between the Harper Cons and Sun TV should offer nothing but reason for suspicion about both portions of the right-wing noise machine – and Dr. Dawg, Heather Mallick, Simon Houpt and the Star have all had plenty to say.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Erin nicely challenges Brad Wall’s efforts to tilt the playing field against poorer provinces when it comes to Employment Insurance and equalization. – But I’m not sure we can expect much change to EI in any event. After all, as Dr. Dawg notes,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On developing reputations
Yes, there’s room to quibble about the credit Heather Scoffield gives the Cons for the At Home pilot program. But in the spirit of encouraging better policy from each possible corner, let’s not focus on that for now. Instead, the real question is whether the current pilot project will lead
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom tries to be optimistic about the year ahead, and likely settles on the best reason for hope that Canada’s politics will see some change for the better: Canada, like Australia and Brazil, is getting by on sales of raw materials
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Parliament In Review: October 25, 2011
Tuesday, October 25 saw another day of discussion about the Canadian Wheat Board. But this time, the topic of debate was set on the opposition’s terms, as the proceedings focused on Niki Ashton’s motion calling to allow grain producers to vote for them…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
Assorted content for your evening reading.- Murray Dobbin nicely summarizes what the Cons are hoping to do in prioritizing big-money “philanthropy” over a functional state and civil society:Ideology is meaning in the service of power, and the Conservat…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Rick Salutin nicely describes what’s behind the “charity” model of top-end wish fulfillment that the Cons are pitching in place of actual social programs:The Old Philanthropy, aside from a few big foundations…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Abacus’ Canadian polling on the Occupy protests suggests that there’s loads of public sympathy for the view that there’s a need for change in how wealth and power is distributed – with the main concern being …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading.- Jim Stanford rightly says that it’s long past time for the Occupy movement to refocus our economy in the wake of a free-market-induced crash and stagnation:In the 1930s, the last time capitalism failed so dest…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Regina Food Bank’s current crisis demonstrates the need for a social safety net that isn’t so easily shredded. For further reading…- The Leader-Post has more about the problems now facing the Food Bank.- The number of current Food Ba…
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