Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Michael Harris comments on Stephen Harper’s reckless choice to gamble that Theresa Spence in particular and First Nations issues in general will go away on their own, rather than exhibiting any leadership whatsoever: Stephen Harper has placed his bet. It is clear from
Continue readingTag: Susan Delacourt
Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Murray Dobbin connects a pattern of economic trends which has seen more and more wealth concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people to the elimination of public discussion about work life: The neo-liberal revolution of the 1980s proposed unfettered capitalism
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
Assorted content to start your week.- Susan Delacourt comments on what’s often lacking from Canadian political coverage – and the challenge facing journalists looking to stop relying excessively on horse-race numbers which may miss what ultimately moti…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Yves Engler thoroughly discusses how the Harper Cons’ foreign policy has included bullying countries around the world into placing the profits Canadian mining interests over the needs of their own citizens – …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Stephen Maher follows up on this week’s Supreme Court ruling on Etobicoke Centre by pointing out where we should be most worried about our electoral system: Fraudulent voting is far from the biggest problem facing our democracy. Disengagement is. Voting rates are declining
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom comments on the Cons’ preference for low-wage, no-rights immigrant labour as a means of avoiding good jobs for Canadians: Theoretically, temporary work visas are supposed to be reserved for those with unique skills. But increasingly, the notion of skill has been
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – The Cons’ latest line of talking-point addiction isn’t passing without some substantial comment from Canada’s political press. Today, Jeffrey Simpson lambastes Stephen Harper and his party for trying to wipe out their own history and promises, while Dan Gardner considers the Cons to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Toby Sanger discusses how wealthy Canadians – especially in the financial sector – are making more and more use of offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share: The latest Statistics Canada figures show 24% of Canadian direct investment overseas in 2011
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher keep up their reporting on Robocon by noting that Elections Canada’s trail seems to have gone cold with the use of an unsecured wifi connection to hide the identity of Pierre Poutine. But as Susan Delacourt points out,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your Saturday. – Susan Delacourt’s mention of “likeonomics” as a branding strategy offers an interesting reference point for Canadian politics (particularly since our political scene has been radically reshaped by one obvious example of it in the 2011 election). But I’m not sure there’s much new
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman highlights the anti-social austerity agenda at work in the U.K. and U.S.: (T)he austerity drive in Britain isn’t really about debt and deficits at all; it’s about using deficit panic as an excuse to dismantle social programs. And this is, of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your long weekend reading. – While some of us may recognize that there’s little reason to lend much credence to the talking points spewed out by any Con spokespuppet, others have tried to give the benefit of the doubt as long as possible. But Lawrence Martin notes
Continue readingThe Leadership Narrative
Way back when, a few months after the last federal election, I replied to the Susan Delacourt’s “Is the Liberal Party dead?” question, echoed ad nauseum in the nation’s press, with a warning to be wary of forcing Canadian politics to fit a certain narrative. That narrative presupposes the inevitability
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: Saturday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your Saturday reading. – As much sympathy as I normally have for Linda McQuaig, I’ll argue that her premise in discussing Andrea Horwath’s call for the wealthy to pay a fair share of taxes is entirely off base. Even if it is easier to discuss such ideas
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading… – No, we shouldn’t read too much into the first wave of polling following Thomas Mulcair’s election as NDP leader. But there are a couple of points where the early returns are far enough out of line with expectations to be worth pointing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Frank Graves notes that for all the spin from the Cons and their enablers about public acquescience in program slashing, there’s actually another issue taking centre stage among Canadian voters: (I)f people prefer spending cuts to increased taxes and debt, they prefer “investment”
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to close out your weekend. – Erica Alini points out that the effect of the Cons’ lobbying on behalf of the tar sands has been solely to make sure that the absolute worst polluters force the public to pay the cost of their activities, as anybody actually operating
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The outrage against the Cons’ total online surveillance scheme continues, with Dan Leger, Mia Rabson and Michael Geist adding noteworthy comments to the mix. – Meanwhile, the Star rightly criticizes the latest legislation to hand Con cabinet ministers the power to make
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