This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Tessa Jowell writes that we need to treat inequality as a disease which can be cured through effective public policy, but the Star points out that the Cons have instead gone out of their way to make it worse. Fair Vote Canada
Continue readingTag: u.s. politics
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Robin Sears offers his theory that the upcoming federal election could represent a meaningful referendum on competing visions for Canada – and Paul Wells seems to expect much the same. But while that might make for a useful statement of the actual consequences
Continue reading350 or bust: Saturday At The Movies
What a way to go! The Colbert Report says goodbye in style: * You will be missed.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Tom Sullivan’s advice for Democrats south of the border that it’s essential to reach out to dispossessed voters of all types of backgrounds with a compelling alternative to the status quo is equally relevant to progressives in Canada. – But the good news
Continue reading350 or bust: The KXL Ad TransCanada Doesn’t Want You To See
Following yesterday’s defeat of the push to okay the Keystone XL Pipeline across the continental United States, here’s a video that the company trying to construct the tar-sands-oil-carrying “black snake” doesn’t want you to see. * TransCanada has made a series of videos entitled “Straight Talk about KXL” that seeks
Continue reading350 or bust: Pro-Keystone Vote Fails in US Senate
More good news on the climate front, after last week’s announcement of a US-China climate agreement. A few years ago, pro-Keystone XL pipeline legislation was depicted as a “no-brainer” by Washington insiders. It looks like our climate isn’t the only thing that’s changing; so is the political climate with regards
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Rob Nixon’s review of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything nicely sums up why the book – and the fundamental clash it documents between corporate profit-seeking and the health of people and our planet – should be at the centre of our political
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jim Stanford points out that the choice to leave drug development to the market resulted in a promising ebola vaccine going unused – and indeed untested – for years until the disease threatened a wealthy enough target population: Canada’s outstanding work to invent
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman look into the spread of wealth inequality in the U.S., and find that it may be worse than we already knew. And Paul Krugman discusses how toxic anti-government ideology is preventing the U.S. from both getting its
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On soft support
Ezra Klein discusses Ray LaRaja and Brian Schnaffer’s graph of U.S. donor policy preferences against political donations: Klein’s take involves a comparison between the graph and the U.S.’ discussion about political polarization. But it’s worth wondering to what extent the same theory might apply in Canada – and how they
Continue reading350 or bust: Senator Inhofe Destroyed By Colleague Versed In Science
In the U.S. Senate this week, Senator Klobuchar called for Unanimous Consent to pass a resolution acknowledging that climate change is occurring and that it will continue to pose an ongoing risk. Senator James Inhofe objected to the resolution. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse offered this in cogent, informed response. * Whitehouse.Senate.gov
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Katrina vanden Heuvel criticizes the U.S. Democrats’ move away from discussing inequality by in favour of platitudes about opportunity for the middle class. And while Matthew Yglesias may be correct in responding that the messaging change hasn’t resulted in much difference in
Continue reading350 or bust: Get Ready To Dial In For Climate Action
If you live in the United States, and you are concerned about climate change, circle Monday June 23rd on your calendar. From the comfort of your own home, you can support action on climate change and the over 600 climate-concerned citizens who will be on Capitol Hill that day meeting
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Margaret Somers and Fred Block write about Karl Polanyi’s critique of the free-market myth and its increased relevance today: (F)ree-market rhetoric is a giant smokescreen designed to hide the dependence of business profits on conditions secured by government. So, for example, our
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, discussing what Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found (PDF) in looking at which preferences actually shape U.S. public policy – and what needs to happen for the needs of the general public to be given some actual weight in government policy choices. For further reading…– Again, Larry Bartels, Kathleen
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Paul Krugman expands on the Republicans’ insistence on privileging inherited wealth over individual work: (N)ot only don’t most Americans own businesses, but business income, and income from capital in general, is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people. In 1979
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Edward Robinson laments the willingness of European centre-left parties to abandon any attempt to argue against austerity even when the evidence shows that’s the right position to take: Centre-left parties in Europe appear to have completely lost the argument for pragmatic fiscal
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: On Arizona’s Odious Anti-Gay Bill
That people who claim to be civilized and intelligent could support such odious legislation that panders to the worst in human nature shows how much farther our species has to travel up the evolutionary ladder: George Takei rips ‘extremist’ Arizona Repubs: ‘How do people like that get elected?’ (via Raw
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: An Epidemic of Stupidity
Starting with Tim Hudak and then progressing stateside, this post will attempt to merely display the range of prodigious stupidity that North America seems to be cursed with. First, to young Tim. It seems that each time the beleaguered leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives opens his mouth, one of his
Continue reading350 or bust: 350 or bust 2014-01-30 08:21:22
* Thank you, President Obama, for using your “bully pulpit” to publicly confirm the accuracy of climate science. Now, what the world needs is action based on the science, not business as usual: Obama’s Hopelessly Wrong On The Environment: Here’s The Reality of What We Face. (Alternet.org)
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