Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Joan Walsh discusses how employers are exploiting the U.S.’ wage supplement policies by taking the opportunity to severely underpay their employees – resulting in both insecure income and employment, and significant public expense to reduce the poverty suffered by full-time workers. And Lana
Continue readingTag: Susan Delacourt
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – David Simon laments the division of the U.S. into the few who are rewarded by market forces and the many who are constantly under siege – while also pointing out that concentration of wealth may prevent democratic forces from offering a counterweight: The
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ish Theilheimer writes about the opportunity progressives should recognize in the scandals engulfing Rob Ford, Stephen Harper and other conservative leaders: (W)hile you’d think the (Ford) situation would be a golden opportunity for Toronto left-wingers to win back the public, this isn’t necessarily
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Chris Dillow discusses how a shredded social safety net may turn into a vicious cycle – as voters are more prepared to cast ballots based on resentment when their own livelihood is less secure: Marko Pitesa and Stefan Thau first manipulated subjects’ perceptions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrew Coyne highlights the ultimate issue in the Cons’ Senate patronage, scandals and cover-ups: (I)f the prime minister sets the standard, then we are entitled to ask: Why has this standard been so inconsistent? On essentially the same set of facts, the senators
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Time For Pushback From The Public
Despite the fact that Stephen Harper is ‘toughing it out’ in The House of Commons under the relentless grilling of Thomas Mulcair, probably believing that the majority of Canadians are either incapable of or unwilling to follow the byzantine path of the Senate scandal, a wealth of letters in today’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how Michael Ignatieff’s empty vessel politics might become the norm if voters don’t respond with due skepticism to increasingly sophisticated vote-swaying tactics. For further reading…– The year’s two must-reads on the evolution of politics are Sasha Issenberg’s The Victory Lab (referenced in the column) and Susan Delacourt’s Shopping
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Agence France-Presse reports that even the IMF has reached the conclusion that higher taxes on wealthy citizens are a necessary part of competent economic management – even as the Harper Cons and other right-wing governments keep trying to peddle trickle-down economics to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The National Post offers an excerpt from Susan Delacourt’s Shopping for Votes discussing the role branding played in the election of John Diefenbaker. And Jeffrey Simpson discusses the continued drift toward consumer politics.– But in commenting on the Nova Scotia provincial election, Ralph
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jordon Cooper writes about the dangers of growing income inequality in Saskatchewan and around the world: Income inequality is driven largely by market forces. Technology has changed the job market, and globalization has moved markets overseas or driven down wages. It’s also driven
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Simon Lewchuk makes the case for genuine participatory budgeting in contrast to the little-known and unduly-narrow means for Canadians to even make suggestions for our country’s public spending priorities: Operating under the guise of “consultation,” in June the federal finance committee announced
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Gerald Kaplan discusses how the privileges of power have contributed to the utterly callous response to the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion by Stephen Harper and Ed Burkhardt: For me, of all Burkhardt’s outrageous statements nothing surpasses his public accusation that the train’s engineer, Tom
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Upworthy and the Equality Trust both provide fascinating examples of greed in action. – Rank and File discusses the relentless wage-slashing that has led to a perpetually smaller number of workers with sole responsibility for dangerous cargo, while Leo Panitch makes a similar
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Murray Dobbin writes about the crisis of extreme capitalism: (T)he “free economy” romanticized by Friedman and his ilk is anything but. Completely dominated by giant corporations whose wealth outstrips all but the richest nations, economic freedom does not exist for anyone else, including
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: The unengaged majority
Samara has released a study on the sadly limited level of public participation in Canadian politics and community activities. And Susan Delacourt and Misty Harris both follow up – with Harris catching what looks to me like the most important point: Sixty per cent of Canadians say they haven’t discussed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot writes about the dangers of allowing wealthy and privileged individuals to speak as the voice of the poor and downtrodden: As the UK chairs the G8 summit again, a campaign that Bono founded, with which Geldof works closely, appears to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David Cay Johnston and Miles Corak both discuss the results of a study which compares economic outcomes in technologically advanced countries, and shows that tax giveaways to the wealthy exacerbate inequality without doing anything at all to contribute to economic development. – And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Susan Delacourt comments on the role of robocalls in turning citizens away from politics – though it’s worth pointing out that the Cons may well see that as a desirable result to capitalize on a modest base of support: What may need more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Raz Godelnik challenges the all-too-conventional wisdom that corporations (and indeed individuals) should see tax avoidance and evasion as virtues: One of the most common arguments is that the tax-avoidance techniques used by corporations like Starbucks or Google are legal and therefore they’re not
Continue readingThe Equivocator: The 2012 “You Go Girl!” Awards. Presented by: The Equivocator
Context: I don’t like to think of this blog as existing in a vacuum. You may not be aware of it but I am also an avid user of the twitter and the facebook (my twitter feed is there on the right side of my blog btw.) On twitter (you can
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