Assorted content for your weekend reading. – No, it isn’t much surprise that poll respondents may think we’ve moved to the right as a country: after all, Con propaganda (largely echoed by the media) has been declaring that for years. But as Warren Kinsella notes, that perception bears no resemblance
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Accidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012 Roundup
Apparently there have been a few developments in the NDP’s leadership race – and indeed enough that I’ll likely need to apply a bit more a filter on what I catalogue in my roundup posts. (In particular, I’ll generally stop pointing out survey or event-based coverage which doesn’t add much
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – David Olive highlights the complete lack of need for the Cons’ planned attacks on Old Age Security: Say what you will of Stephen Harper’s success in scaring Canadian seniors with his recent musings about cutting seniors’ benefits. It does not warrant the public
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom highlights the lesson we should draw from the economic devastation caused by the shutdown of an Electro-Motive plant which was supposed to serve as a poster child for corporate giveaways: Using tax breaks to encourage domestic production is a standard prescription.
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 readingPolitics and its Discontents: Protection, Patriotism and Punishment – the Harper Credo
By now, most have heard about Sun TV’s faux citizenship ceremony orchestrated by the Harper regime to help promote its brand of Canadian patriotism. Putting aside questions of the ethics of a Canadian broadcaster allowing itself to be a propaganda arm of a government increasingly hostile to the traditional values
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Vivian Belik looks at the long-ignored outcomes from a guaranteed income experiment in Dauphin, MB – and finds that the positive results of of providing a secure income to all citizens were well worth the investment: (T)he Mincome program was conceived as a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Stephen Maher reminds us that the Harper government now lecturing us about the need to attack social programs because of a federal deficit is the same incompetent group that caused the deficit in the first place through reckless tax slashing and vote-buying
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to end your weekend. – As Thomas Walkom notes, it’s an open question as to who will take up the cause of defending universal public health care in Canada – but easy to figure out who poses the greatest threat to it: Writing in The Globe and Mail
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Thomas Walkom puts the Cons’ anti-environmental hysteria in perspective by noting how our cabinet ministers are going out of their way to sound like the most fringy of lunatic Tea Partiers: America’s Exxon Mobil, Britain’s BP, France’s Total E&P, China’s SinoCanada Petroleum Corp.
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: Wednesday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Lawrence Martin notes that the Cons’ push for yet more layers of bureaucracy is based purely on a desire to cater to prejudice rather than any intention to improve the lot of Canada’s First Nations: Shortly after Stephen Harper’s Conservatives came to power
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – No, there’s no doubt that the Harper Cons’ position on greenhouse gas emissions has been both amoral in its disregard for climate change, and ill-founded in its pretence that Alberta’s failing “intensity” targets will do anything positive. Which makes it all the more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Thomas Walkom notes that based on the Cons’ Kyoto embarrassment, Canada is now the odd man out on the world stage when it comes to climate change discussions: (I)n terms of international efforts to curb global warming, Kyoto is the only serious
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – If you’re only going to read one analytic take on the NDP leadership campaign, make it Alice’s – featuring this take on Thomas Mulcair’s strategy in cultivating later-ballot support: I’m fairly sure I was privy to the exchange between Paul Wells and “Mulcair
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Gerald Caplan documents the U.S. Republicans’ refusal to live in a reality-based society, while hinting that the same philosophy is no less present in the Harper Cons. – Meanwhile, Bruce Johnstone comments on this week’s Canadian Wheat Board ruling as an indication that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Emily Dee takes a first look at what may be a highly important story about the Cons’ use of the notorious right-wing push-poller Responsive Media Group: I had been conducting some research into the last federal election campaign, which was probably the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Thomas Walkom rightly points out that the voters most affected by the Cons’ push for privatized pensions are the ones paying the least attention to the issue: For workers over 50, the pension reforms introduced by Canada’s Conservative government on Thursday mean virtually
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Thomas Walkom suggests that the systematic eviction of Occupy camps from Canadian cities may only help the movement to evolve from its first form: City administrations in places like Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver are inadvertently handing demonstrators something they desperately need —
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.- Purple Library Guy nicely sums up how the financial industry has become completely detached from anything that could be considered useful in generating real economic growth:When you abstract something, i…
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