Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Lynn Stuart Parramore offers five convincing pieces of evidence to suggest that the U.S.’ plutocrats are losing their minds in their effort to set themselves apart from the rabble. Kevin Roose tells a story about some awful, awful (and disturbingly wealthy and powerful)
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – The Star’s editorial board sees Canada’s woeful job numbers as a signal that it’s time for some economic management in the interests of people (rather than artificial manipulation of numbers): Economists used words like “dismal” and “ugly” for these results, and no wonder.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Tim Harper and the Star’s editorial board each offer up some hope that 2014 will be a more productive year in politics than 2013 was. And Nora Loreto offers a suggestion as to how to make that happen: Young workers, like all workers,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – The Star offers an editorial on the continued increase in wage inequality in Canada, highlighting the complete lack of any connection between accomplishment and executive compensation: (T)he country’s economic performance has changed dramatically. In 2007, when Mackenzie began, the Canadian economy was
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Toby Sanger highlights how the Cons (following in the footsteps of the Libs before them) have already slashed federal government revenues and expenses to levels not seen since the first half of the 20th century – even as they continue to call
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Tim Harper discusses Stephen Harper’s current list of distractions – with Rob Ford and his Senate appointees naturally topping the list. But sadly, while John Ivison may be right in noting that actual citizens are having trouble getting the Cons to bother administering
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – James Bloodworth discusses the most important challenge facing Ed Miliband and Labour in the UK – which largely matches the task for progressives around the globe: People have never put all that much stock in politicians of course, and the expenses scandal
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Matt Taibbi discusses how public pension funds are being looted for the benefit of a few well-connected banksters: Hedge funds have good reason to want to keep their fees hidden: They’re insanely expensive. The typical fee structure for private hedge-fund management is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Armine Yalnizyan points out that Canada has followed the global pattern in which income growth has disproportionately been directed toward the few people with the most to begin with: Canada’s story pales in comparison – and so does our access to comprehensive and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Joseph Stiglitz comments on the wider lessons we should take from Detroit’s bankruptcy: Detroit’s travails arise in part from a distinctive aspect of America’s divided economy and society. As the sociologists Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff have pointed out, our country is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Dan Leger points to the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion as an all-too-vivid example of the intersection of privatized profits and socialized risks: Are we tough enough on corporations that destroy, burn and kill? What’s happening at Lac-Mégantic suggests we aren’t. There’s a scramble on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Plenty more commentators are weighing in on the Harper Cons’ enemy list, including the Star, the Globe and Mail, and Lawrence Martin. But Robyn Benson makes the most important comment about the Harper with-us-or-against-us mentality that’s being applied to the federal government
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joseph Stiglitz makes the case for free trade talks to be based on the public interest rather than the further entrenchment of corporate power and siphoning of wealth to the top. But there’s little reason to expect a meeting of corporate and government
Continue readingLet Freedom Rain II: How to stop a media bias argument in its tracks, even with a Toronto Star journalist
The big myth in Canada is that there is a liberal media bias in Canada. That belief, honed by Canadian right-wing bloggers based on their southern counterpart’s laborious whine about their own ‘media bias’, is just silly, especially in Canada. Look at our national press. National Post and Postmedia are
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The Star makes the case for a serious crackdown on offshore tax avoidance: Thanks to a spectacular data leak Canadians are getting a glimpse into what some have dubbed the “black hole” of globalization: The $20 trillion or more in unreported income thought
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Plenty more commentators are taking a turn duly mocking the Cons’ Senate shenanigans. Here’s Tabatha Southey: In fact, Mr. Duffy lives and votes in Kanata, a suburb of Ottawa, in a home he purchased five years before he was appointed to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – The Star’s editorial board highlights why our elected representatives should be countering the effect of precarious employment (rather than exacerbating them as the Cons have done): Simply put, programs like Employment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan were created back in the days
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Joseph Stiglitz discusses how the U.S.’ extreme inequality is limiting its prospects for economic recovery: There are all kinds of excuses for inequality. Some say it’s beyond our control, pointing to market forces like globalization, trade liberalization, the technological revolution, the “rise of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Chrystia Freeland discusses the developing view that inequality can serve to stifle growth and development, while more equitable tax systems and social supports can encourage them:Set aside any moral or polit…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Another Insight From A Star Reader
Whenever I fall into the trap of thinking that the Canadian public is indifferent to the things that are going on both within our own country and abroad, I turn to the letters section of The Toronto Star. Admittedly, the majority of the sentiments expr…
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