This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Heather Scoffield reports on the Canadian Index of Wellbeing’s stunning finding that Canadian quality of life declined by a quarter between 2008 and 2010, while the Vancouver Sun and Lindor Reynolds comment on the collapse in well-being far beyond the economic damage
Continue readingTag: The Star
Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Star recognizes the danger facing anybody who tries to convince a Con MP to listen to constituents’ concerns – as the Cons don’t care enough to respond to specific appeals, but will be happy to use whatever information they can gather
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Labour Day Links
Assorted content for your Labour Day reading. – The Star comments on the place of the union movement in the face of a determined push to silence workers: Given the challenges ahead, and all the ground that’s been lost so far, it remains to be seen if the new union
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Tim Harper suggests that the Cons are running out of options to try to push the Gateway pipeline on a thoroughly-opposed public in British Columbia. But in keeping with the Cons’ general view of the world as nothing but a public relations problem
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Upper Class Twit of the Year?
I have long given up trying to fathom the ‘mind’ of America. The behaviour of its political leaders, both Democratic and Republican, and the following such behaviour inspires, leaves me particularly perplexed. However, Mitt Romney’s recent foray abroad to display his foreign policy bona fides has at least provided me
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Another Salvo Against Teachers
Just came back from a rather tiring two-hour plus bike ride against a head wind. Because I am too tired to write a lengthy post, and as a follow-up to yesterday’s entry, for those interested in what is going on with teacher contract negotiations in Ontario, may I recommend Martin
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: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michael Harris sums up the first year of a Harper majority by pointing out the overwhelming need for change from the government we’re stuck with now: The curtain has been well and truly whipped away from the PM’s self-promoting deceptions and he is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – For much of the relatively recent past, one of the areas of relative consensus in economic theory is that productivity increases would find their way to workers. But Paul Krugman shows that hope to be utterly misplaced: Where did the productivity go? The
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Susan Delacourt wonders whether the Cons plan to launch an attack on the environmental movement to match the schism which helped the Libs and the Bloc to divide up the Quebec political pie over sovereignty. But it’s worth keeping in mind that even
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The Star makes the case for Canada’s wealthiest citizens to pay their fair share: Apart from their hefty pay packets, the top-earning CEOs are sitting on $2 billion in stock options that are treated as dividend income, and taxed at half the value.
Continue readingA peek at Canada’s Conservative media monopoly
If you ever want a glimpse of just how far right 90 percent of our media has become, look no further than National Newswatch. It’s all encapsulated there. For example, take a look a today’s “Featured Ink” column. Notice anything particular? All but one article referenced are from Conservative media,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Trish Hennessy is on board for an Occupy Canada movement:To my friends adopting a wait-and-see approach, I say: The least they can expect from progressives who have been criticizing the system (some since Woodstock) …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Dan Gardner rightly points out that the Cons’ continued efforts to trash our parliamentary institutions now that they have a majority shouldn’t come as any surprise – even if they still demand plenty of outrage:Got t…
Continue readingPew Research: trust in news organizations hit new low
It’s no wonder. When you consider this yesterday from the ‘liberal’ New York Times:The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
– Lee Berthiaume and David McGrane both discuss the team and the strategy that helped the NDP to build to its current level of support and success. And it’s worth noting that since the NDP is still in …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: More Layton Links
Another day, another set of commentaries on the life of a great Canadian leader.
– Chantal Hebert notes Layton’s contribution to Canada’s broader political scene:
(Layton) taught Canada’s jaded chattering class that retail politics and the attending a…
Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.
– Chantal Hebert offers up the definitive response to the Cons, Libs and media outlets still going out of their way to attack the NDP for winning support in Quebec:
Given the context, to retroactively portray La…
Accidental Deliberations: A response in kind
Shorter Toronto Star:
We’re *outraged* that our transparently systematic attempt to cause trouble for the NDP was met with an equally systematic refusal to play along.
Update: pogge has more.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Rick Salutin on Rupert Murdoch
For those exulting in the ongoing misfortunes of Rupert Murdoch (and I readily and enthusiastically admit to being one of them), Rick Salutin has a thoughtful column in today’s Star warning us that we really have little room for self-righteousness when…
Continue reading