Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Gary Mason writes about the combination of fatigue and outrage which is producing a particularly toxic mix for anybody attempting to limit the damage caused by COVID-19. Phil Tank laments the sense that protecting people from avoidable infection and death has become controversial,
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Linda McQuaig writes about the myth that we have no choice but to pursue privatization – and notes that electric vehicle production represents an ideal opportunity to build public economic capacity: Is it feasible to save the once-vibrant Oshawa complex and transform it
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how right-wing provincial governments across Canada are deliberately denying benefits to their constituents solely to try to avoid any credit going to the federal level in advance of this fall’s election. For further reading…– Murray Mandryk, Sarath Peiris and plenty of letter writers have already pointed out the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Ed Miliband writes that there’s no contradiction between a climate change plan and an effective economic strategy – and to the contrary, they can and should be entirely aligned. And the Guardian’s editorial board recognizes the need to get to net zero emissions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- David Crane identifies the good news in the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report on climate change – which is that we can meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets through readily feasible policy choices as long a…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on what the Trudeau Libs’ first budget tells us about the difficulty turning around a government – and how Saskatchewan voters should take the lesson to heart in deciding whether to settle for four more years of an anti-government governing party…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Lana Payne discusses Jordan Brennan’s research showing that corporate tax cuts have done nothing to help economic growth (but all too much to exacerbate inequality). And Andrew Jackson sets out the main fisca…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Pop quiz
Michael Den Tandt and John Geddes are convinced that Tom Mulcair’s speech to the Economic Club of Canada yesterday represents both a massive sea change in Canadian politics, and a response to the NDP’s newfound lead in the polls. So let’s offer a pop quiz to see if that theory
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On foundational assumptions
Shorter John Geddes: Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. And so the miserable results of Stephen Harper’s consistent privatization, free trade obsession and corporate tax slashing don’t count as a conservative record.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrew Coyne sees the powerful impact of local forces on nomination contests as evidence that grassroots democracy is still alive and well in Canada – no matter how much the Cons and Libs may wish otherwise: What’s common to both of these stories
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Robert Reich discusses the Koch brothers and their place in the U.S.’ new plutocracy: The Kochs exemplify a new reality that strikes at the heart of America. The vast wealth that has accumulated at the top of the American economy is not itself
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Jeremy Nuttall discusses why the Cons’ temporary foreign worker program is ripe for abuse, as it ensures workers have every incentive to avoid reporting employer wrongdoing since the employer can singlehandedly ship the employee out of Canada in retaliation. – But the good
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On consensus positions
I won’t break down in detail the bevy of reviews of the current position of Tom Mulcair and the federal NDP – including pieces by Bruce Stewart, John Ibbitson and John Geddes. But it’s worth highlighting the areas where I’d see no need to challenge the consensus reflected in those
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman highlights why inequality is indeed an issue which demands action – both for its own sake, and for its impact on other goals such as economic sustainability. And Bill Moyers discusses the difference between a government responsive to its people and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Aviva Shen looks at Monsanto’s history of regulatory capture – with the recent “Monsanto Protection Act” serving as just a minor example in a long list of control over U.S. law: Monsanto insists that its revolving door is in overdrive because Monsanto employees
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Tabatha Southey rightly turns Brad Trost into a poster boy for the Harper Cons’ deliberate aversion to critical self-evaluation: We shouldn’t be too quick to judge. Let’s instead take a cue from Conservative MP Brad Trost, who, when questioned regarding the calls, said,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Paul Dechene interviews Marc Spooner about Saskatchewan residents left behind in the province’s boom: One way that our growing income gap can be hand-waved away is by pointing to the fact that every other province that goes through an economic boom faces this.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Richard Thaler criticizes Mitt Romney’s obsession with upper-end tax cuts by pointing out the factors which actually serve to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship: Romney wants to cut top rates by 20 percent, maintain the favorable treatment given to capital gains and dividends,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that to end your Saturday. – As pointed out by Paul Krugman, Kathleen Geier recognizes an obvious possible cause of a declining life expectancy for some less-wealthy Americans: I will offer an alternative hypothesis, one which is not explicitly identified in the Times article: inequality. In the U.S.,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Frances Russell comments on how the Harper Cons are ready to impose exactly the kind of centralized and unresponsive decision-making they’ve long loathed – but only when it comes to favouring Alberta’s interests over B.C.’s real environmental concerns. But Michael Harris notes that
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