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By Greg Fingas, on May 4, 2013, at 12:34 pm This and that for your weekend reading.
- Helene Leblanc argues that we should make sure the Internet is treated as a commons accessible to all, rather than a privilege denied to many (particularly in rural areas): Many Canadians living outside urban centres do not have access to high speed broadband Internet and a significant number connect at speeds of 1.5 megabits per second — only marginally faster than dial-up.
In the year 2000 Estonia declared Internet access a fundamental human right, something essential for life in the 21st century, and launched a program to expand rural access. Finland (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on April 24, 2013, at 9:35 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- George Monbiot discusses the fallout from decades of corporate-controlled governments abdicating their responsibility to consider the public interest: In other ages, states sought to seize as much power as they could. Today, the self-hating state renounces its powers. Governments anathematise governance. They declare their role redundant and illegitimate. They launch furious assaults on their own branches, seeking wherever possible to lop them off.
This self-mutilation is a response to the fact that power has shifted. States now operate at the behest of others. Deregulation, privatisation, the shrinking of the scope, scale and spending (Read more…) the state: these are now seen as the only legitimate policies. The corporations and billionaires to whom governments defer will have it no other way.
Just as taxation tends to redistribute wealth, regulation tends to redistribute power. A democratic state controls and contains powerful interests on behalf of . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Guest Blog, on March 29, 2013, at 6:42 pm By: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives | Press Release: OTTAWA – Canada’s economy is experiencing a “carbon bubble” that could have significant consequences for Canada’s financial markets and pension funds, according to a new study released March 26 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Between two-thirds and four-fifths of known [...]
The post Fossil fuel divestment necessary to avoid “carbon bubble”, says study appeared first on The Canadian Progressive | News & Analysis.
By opseudiablogue, on March 19, 2013, at 4:22 pm Officially Ontario ended its recession in 2009, but the effects still linger in 2013. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimates the “great recession” of 2008-09 and the slow recovery has taken the Ontario economy $70 billion off course. That … Continue reading →
By Greg Fingas, on March 12, 2013, at 9:12 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has unveiled its alternative federal budget – which highlights the choice between the Cons’ needless austerity, and the 200,000-300,000 extra jobs which could be created alongside important social improvements which could be brought about through well-placed public action.
- Meanwhile, Murray Dobbin worries that the use of interest rates alone as an economic growth strategy is feeding an unsustainable housing bubble – offering anpther indication as to why we should work on expanding socially productive activities rather than hoping that unfettered (and indeed exacerbated) market forces
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 22, 2013, at 8:53 am Assorted content for your Friday reading.
- Michael Moss writes about the amount of time and money spent by corporate conglomerates to push consumers toward eating unhealthy food: The public and the food companies have known for decades now — or at the very least since this meeting — that sugary, salty, fatty foods are not good for us in the quantities that we consume them. So why are the diabetes and obesity and hypertension numbers still spiraling out of control? It’s not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 15, 2013, at 9:03 am Assorted content for your Friday reading.
- Zoe Williams questions when being poor became grounds for deliberate discrimination and ritual public humiliation (h/t to Mound of Sound): What I cannot help noticing is a failure of normal human respect for the people at the bottom of the heap – Tuesday’s ruling in favour of Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson has had its bones picked over for what it does or doesn’t say about slavery, and yet the judges were clear: these people were treated dishonestly. They were treated as though, being unemployed, they could be parcelled about at the
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By Greg Fingas, on January 29, 2013, at 8:29 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- The CCPA looks at Statistics Canada’s latest income data and finds that inequality has been growing steadily across the country over the past few decades. The Canadian Labour Congress notes that corporate tax cuts have led to cash hoarding rather than increased jobs or productivity. Needless to say, the Village requests in all seriousness that observers not draw a connection between the two or any associated economic theory.
- Meanwhile, George Monbiot comments on how the removal of a privileged class from society at large serves to explain the disconnect between the
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on January 10, 2013, at 8:53 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Karl Flecker discusses how the Cons’ push to encourage employers to use temporary foreign workers will affect wages for everybody: In fact, what Kenney said was untrue. He has conveniently forgotten that his government significantly changed the wage rules for employers hiring high-skilled migrant workers. On April 25, 2012, after direct consultations with a select group of employers, Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources Skills Development Canada, announced a new “Accelerated Labour Market Opinion” to provide employers with “greater flexibility.” “Wages,” she said, “that are up to 15 per cent below
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on January 3, 2013, at 9:56 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Barbara Yaffe lets Hugh Segal make the case for a guaranteed annual income to end poverty in Canada: (Hugh Segal) says it could be arranged by way of a tax credit through the income tax system, to top up income of anyone falling below Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cutoff (LICO).
LICO for a single person is about $22,200; for a family with three children, roughly $47,000.
“In other words,” writes Segal, “being poor would become a problem we all buffered in the same way as we buffer all Canadians relative to health
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By Greg Fingas, on December 30, 2012, at 12:02 pm Assorted content for your Sunday reading.
- Pam Palmater explains the historical background to Idle No More: (M)ost Canadians are not used to the kind of sustained, co-ordinated, national effort that we have seen in the last few weeks — at least not since 1969. 1969 was the last time the federal government put forward an assimilation plan for First Nations. It was defeated then by fierce native opposition, and it looks like Harper’s aggressive legislative assimilation plan will be met with even fiercer resistance.
In order to understand what this movement is about, it is necessary to understand how
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 29, 2012, at 11:03 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Lana Payne discusses the contrast between Theresa Spence’s selfless efforts to improve the lives of First Nations citizens, and Stephen Harper’s callous indifference: Is a hunger strike the answer? I honestly do not know, but then I have not known Chief Spence’s anguish. After all, she says her act is not about “anger, it is about pain.”
But I do so worry about this brave woman who starves herself while waiting for a meeting with the prime minister. I worry because Stephen Harper is a very stubborn man.
And Chief Spence is
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 18, 2012, at 10:08 am Simon Enoch’s study mapping corporate power in Saskatchewan may be one of the most important pieces of research I’ve seen in quite some time – and I’ll highly encourage visitors to give it a thorough read. But I’ll quibble with one aspect of Enoch’s conclusion – he’s done more work to tie together multiple stands of corporate influence than his proposed policy prescription could possibly hope to accomplish.
After analyzing the board and executive structures of corporations, interest groups and government structures alike and demonstrating the striking correlation between them, Enoch’s headline takeaway is this: As record amounts of corporate
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: On revealed connections
By Greg Fingas, on November 30, 2012, at 8:46 am Assorted content to end your week.- Thomas Walkom discusses what the Cons’ attack on unions through bill C-377 is ultimately designed to do:Finance department figures show that the tax exemption for union and professional dues does indeed cost the fed… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on November 17, 2012, at 12:04 pm Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Bill Curry reports on the Cons’ latest public-sector slashing. But there hasn’t yet been much discussion of the most alarming number: upwards of 30% of the Cons’ cuts are coming from the Canada Revenue Agency… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By opseudiablogue, on October 12, 2012, at 11:48 am Economist David MacDonald and Ontario Health Coalition director Natalie Mehra will be among panelists speaking at a public meeting in Kingston October 26 on the privatization of proposed replacement for St. Mary’s of the Lake Hospital and the Providence Care Mental … Continue reading →
By Greg Fingas, on September 27, 2012, at 9:46 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- The CCPA’s Christopher Schenk offers up a detailed response to the Sask Party’s attacks on workers, featuring this conclusion: In a period of widening inequality restrictive labour laws are blatantly unnecessary and regressive. Indeed, their consideration is shocking when one considers that 34% of the workforce has neither full-time work nor job security, but occupies jobs that are termed contingent or precarious, including casual employment, irregular part time work, contract work, temporary work and self employment… This growing percentage of the workforce, which generally receives low pay and no benefits, needs an
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on September 19, 2012, at 12:09 pm Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Tim Harper weighs in on the Cons’ latest campaign of coordinated lies, and notes that the NDP looks to have learned one important lesson in how to respond: The NDP may be here at the federal level for the first time, but they appear to have learned the first lesson when dodging such volleys — respond.
No charge is too ridiculous or over-the-top to be ignored.
The term Swiftboating entered the North American political lexicon because John Kerry took a holiday in 2004 rather than respond to Vietnam Swiftboat vets who questioned his
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By opseudiablogue, on September 19, 2012, at 10:21 am In February we attended a forum hosted by the Centre for Policy Alternatives looking at the manufactured crisis the Liberals are using to bring in a far-reaching austerity agenda. At the time, we noted that Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has … Continue reading →
By Greg Fingas, on September 15, 2012, at 11:24 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Jon Wisman and Aaron Pacitti put a price tag on the upward redistribution of wealth in the U.S.: Between 1983 and 2007, total inflation-adjusted wealth in the U.S. increased by $27 trillion. If divided equally, every man woman and child would be almost $90,000 richer.
But of course it wasn’t divided equally. Almost half of the $27 trillion (49 percent) was claimed by the richest one percent — $11.7 million more for each of their households. The top 10 percent grabbed almost $29 trillion, or 106 percent of the
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By elementalpresent, on June 9, 2012, at 8:23 am Quebec student group CLASSE has come forward with an offer of what it would take to end their almost four-month strike: the elimination of tuition fees by 2016. The plan is based on taxing banks, starting at 0.14 per cent per cent this year, and rising to 0.7 per cent over the next four. According [...]
By Greg Fingas, on May 22, 2012, at 9:37 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- Dana Flavelle and Rachel Mendleson both cover Lars Osberg’s study on the harmful effects of inequality. But let’s highlight the key conclusion from the original source: (T)he continuation of a divergence in income growth trends necessarily creates changing flows of consumption and savings. Although aggregate demand can be maintained in the short run if the savings of the increasingly affluent are lent to those with stagnant incomes, their increasing indebtedness leads inevitably to financial fragility. The trend in the U.S. and Canada to rising income inequality thus leads to periodic financial
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Obert Madondo, on May 1, 2012, at 9:03 am The Harper Conservatives are fond of touting Canadian banks as more stable than other countries’ big banks. They claim all the credit for Canada’s stability during the 2008-10 global financial crisis. And, we’re often told that our banks needed no … Continue reading →
By Greg Fingas, on April 18, 2012, at 6:57 pm Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- In an excerpt from the Occupy Handbook, Paul Krugman and Robin Wells discuss how a right-wing obsession with exacerbating inequality led to the U.S.’ disastrous response to the 2008 crash: How did America become a nation that could not rise to the biggest economic challenge in three generations, a nation in which scorched-earth politics and politicized economics created policy paralysis?
We suggest it was the inequality that did it. Soaring inequality is at the root of our polarized politics, which made us unable to act together in the face of crisis.
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
By Greg Fingas, on March 20, 2012, at 2:32 pm This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher uncover an apparently-fictitious employee listed as one of Con contractor RackNine’s key contacts – nicely paralleling the obvious coverup behind “Pierre Poutine”. And Dr. Dawg places the latest revelations in context with the rest of the Cons’ misdirections and coverups.
- Meanwhile, the Cons are applying their theory that “the less anybody knows, the better” on the international stage as well.
- Hugh Mackenzie deconstructs the questionable assumptions used in Don Drummond’s report to try to foist massive cuts onto the province without any real assessment of
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
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