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By Greg Fingas, on May 17, 2013, at 9:38 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Paul Krugman draws a much-needed connection between austerity politics and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: What Smith didn’t note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through neoliberal policies even if these policies are essentially irrelevant to the sources of disaster. I have to admit that I was predisposed to dislike Klein’s book when it came out, probably out of professional turf-defending and whatever — but her thesis really helps explain a lot about what’s going (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 13, 2013, at 10:02 am Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.
- Michael Harris tears into the Cons for their latest set of Senate abuses: It is time once more to throw up on your shoes over the Senate. We all did that when Liberal Senator Andrew Thompson went missing in action for a decade at public expense — our man in Mexico. This stable of political studs put out to pasture at public expense for party loyalties costs Canada $92.5 million annually in salaries, senator allowances and administrative costs…
Each lottery winner in the Senate receives a base annual salary of $135,200. The (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 8, 2013, at 9:41 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Linda McQuaig discusses Stephen Harper’s class war: Canadians don’t like Harper’s anti-worker agenda — when they notice it. That’s why there’s been such a public outcry since the temporary foreign worker program was exposed as a mechanism by which the Harper government has flooded the country with hundreds of thousands of cheap foreign workers, thereby suppressing Canadian wages in the interests of helping corporations.
Apart from this clumsy fiasco, the Harperites have been adroit at keeping their anti-worker bias under the radar. Instead, they’ve directed their attacks against unions, portraying them as undemocratic (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on May 3, 2013, at 9:59 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Arthur Haberman argues that our universal public health care system helps contribute to a more democratic society: There is something that political philosophers — those like Tocqueville and Mill in the 19th century — have come to call living democratically. By this it is meant that voting is but a small part of what being in a democracy is about. It also includes volunteering in small ways to make our communities better, participating in decisions about what happens to your town or your neighbourhood, judging your fellow citizens by the quality of their (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on April 26, 2013, at 9:40 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Sadly (if perhaps unsurprisingly), the Trudeau Libs’ vote with the Harper Cons against civil rights has received relatively little notice compared to the two parties’ attack ad posturing. But there’s still plenty worth reading on the subject – including another post from pogge, a discussion led by David Ball, and Michael Harris’ assessment as to the likely targets of Con-fueled hysteria in the years to come: (W)ith S-7 the law of the land, some dark possibilities present themselves in this country.
The federal government already has established five Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams (Read more…)
By Greg Fingas, on April 18, 2013, at 9:49 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Ellie Mae O’Hagan and Nicholas Shaxson annihilate the claim that perpetually lowering corporate and upper-income tax rates offers any competitive advantage: Tax “competition”, it turns out, is always harmful. First, while people rarely move in response to tax changes – flighty financial capital does move. Governments “compete” for it by cutting tax rates on mobile capital (which means, in effect, cutting taxes on the rich.) And if you’re not taxing the rich, you’ve got to make that up elsewhere. How do you do that? You tax people who can’t afford to
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on April 15, 2013, at 9:28 am Miscellaneous material to start your week.
- Peter Gillespie discusses the problems with tax cheats (and the overseas tax havens which encourage them): Multinational corporations and banking and financial institutions routinely use tax havens to lower or eliminate their tax obligations, avoid regulation, and shield themselves from liability. Tax havens host more than two million “international business corporations,” often little more than shell companies with a postal address. The British Virgin Islands, with a population of 30,000, hosts an estimated 460,000 business corporations. One modest building in the Cayman Islands is home to more that 18,000 of these entities.
Last
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on April 8, 2013, at 9:53 am Miscellaneous material to start your week.
- Michael Harris takes aim at Stephen Harper’s thugocracy: There is little that Stephen Harper has done that other prime ministers before him have not. But no one has used closure, time allocation, committee secrecy or omnibus legislation to a degree that renders Parliament itself irrelevant.
And he has done some other things that no prime minister ever has. He is the only one to have been found in contempt of Parliament. And has any federal government ever tabled a budget without also tabling the Planning and Priorities report? If the government’s spending details
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 26, 2013, at 9:53 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- Michael Harris rightly points out that a steady stream of scandals and incompetence from the Cons says plenty about Stephen Harper’s own judgment (or lack thereof): Sooner or later, the country is going to realize that there is something terribly wrong with Stephen Harper’s judgment.
And sooner or later, the Conservative party is going to realize one-man bands are great until the tuba player runs out of breath.
At the moment, judged only by his record in Senate appointments, Harper’s eye for talent appears to be made of glass.
Patrick Brazeau and
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 23, 2013, at 10:47 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Chrystia Freeland points out why productivity doesn’t provide an accurate picture of economic development if it merely results in increased inequality rather than shared benefits: Productivity and innovation, the focus of policy makers and business leaders, no longer guarantee widely shared prosperity. “Digital technologies are different in that they allow people with skills to replicate their talents to serve billions,” Mr. Brynjolfsson said. “There is really a drastic winner-take-all effect because every industry is becoming like the software industry.” Classical economic theory isn’t entirely wrong. The danger isn’t — as it was . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 16, 2013, at 10:21 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Michael Harris concludes that we’re currently stuck in a golden age for political falsehood and deceit: (T)here are problems with blotting out inconvenient truths with self-serving Newspeak. It’s catchier than a flu-bug in a pup tent. Quite a few pairs of pants are on fire in Ottawa these days because cabinet ministers and senators have learned from the PM that the truth is what you need it to be. It can mutate, transform, even shed its skin. The trick is to say what you need to be true at a given moment.…Perhaps
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 13, 2013, at 9:02 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Carol Goar discusses Canada’s broken fiscal stabilizers – as unemployment insurance and social programs intended to assure citizens of at least a reasonable standard of living have been cut to well below that level: Canada’s economic shock absorbers are badly worn.
Employment insurance, which once softened the blow of losing a job, has dwindled to the point that only a minority of the unemployed are eligible for benefits.
Welfare, which once prevented people from hitting rock bottom, now leaves recipients 60 per cent below the poverty line.
The income tax system has become
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 8, 2013, at 8:56 am Assorted content to end your week.
- While we may sometimes lose track of the continuing differences between Canadian politics and those in the U.S., here’s a reminder of how we’re familiar with a far wider and more progressive range of public policy choices: while we’ve seen plenty of discussion about improving the standard for retirement benefits available under our national pension plan (even if public support for that expansion has been ignored by a right-wing government), Duncan Black’s call to do the same for Social Security is being raised as a voice in the wilderness: If the
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on January 21, 2013, at 9:01 am Assorted content to start your week.
- Dennis Gruending writes about the importance of Edgar Schmidt’s whistleblowing against unconstitutional legislation: Schmidt says that he has over a period of years raised concerns about what he considers the department’s flawed practices. He has done that through various official channels, up to the deputy minister level — in both Liberal and Conservative governments. He says he has never received a satisfactory response and that he has gone to court as a matter of last resort.
Schmidt says the consequences of the department’s failure to act appropriately are serious. The state should be
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on January 7, 2013, at 8:30 am Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.
- Michael Harris discusses the impending moment of truth for the Cons in owning up to their substantive failures toward Canada’s First Nations: Whether it’s Canada’s natives or its health ministers, Stephen Harper’s preferred place for his opponents is under his thumb. He has replaced the alternating current of democracy with the direct current of oligarchy. Ordinary people remain as invisible to him now as they have been since 2006.
For that reason, Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike has been a disaster for the man who doesn’t like to negotiate, let alone negotiate with
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 31, 2012, at 5:27 pm Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.
- Michael Harris comments on Stephen Harper’s reckless choice to gamble that Theresa Spence in particular and First Nations issues in general will go away on their own, rather than exhibiting any leadership whatsoever: Stephen Harper has placed his bet. It is clear from his strategy that he believes he will be going neither to a meeting nor a funeral and that sufficient pressure can be brought to bear on Chief Spence that she will voluntarily discontinue her hunger strike. That is why he has placed the prestige of Leona Aglukkaq and Patrick Brazeau
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 24, 2012, at 10:44 am Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.
- Michael Harris asks why Stephen Harper is afraid to look Theresa Spence in the eye: (Harper) believes that the government’s lying about all these things is far less important than the fact that it is the government. Incumbency is a magic potion. Under its influence, people are supposed to swoon. All too often, they do. That’s the way oligarchs think. Richard Nixon put it in a nutshell when he famously said that if the president did it, then it wasn’t a crime.
Stephen Harper has arrived at the exalted position of Tricky Dick.
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 21, 2012, at 8:50 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Jim Stanford is the latest to point out that the Cons see accountability and transparency solely as punishments to be inflicted on their perceived enemies, not as values to be applied to their own decision-making: Following Mr. Hiebert’s logic, any organization in society that benefits from a tax expenditure (no matter how indirect) should be required to post similarly detailed and intrusive financial and expenditure data on a government website. Here is the current listing of federal tax expenditures. Every organization connected to any expenditure listed in that catalogue (whether the personal, corporate,
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 10, 2012, at 10:00 am Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.
- Paul Krugman discusses two theories behind the ever-growing divergence between soaring profits and stagnant wages. But it’s particularly important to note that neither of them calls for “free money for rich people” as a rational response: Why is this happening? As best as I can tell, there are two plausible explanations, both of which could be true to some extent. One is that technology has taken a turn that places labor at a disadvantage; the other is that we’re looking at the effects of a sharp increase in monopoly power. Think of these
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 5, 2012, at 8:56 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Martin Kirk discusses the role governments play in allowing and facilitating the extraction of a substantial portion of the world’s wealth to tax havens (h/t to thwap): Tax theft is endemic all over the world. It is organised through an intricate system of tax havens; the PR around it is astonishingly good, as evidenced by the fact that most people have no idea of its scale and can get distracted by the misdeeds of a few bad apples rather than seeing the barrel they came in; and one of the most vibrant
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on November 8, 2012, at 8:25 am This and that for your Thursday reading.- Barbara Yaffe writes about the continual rise in food bank use and the underlying political choices which have brought it about:(I)n the last decade food banks have been helping Canadians through both good time… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Richard Hughes, on October 22, 2012, at 11:18 am Richard ‘Hub’ Hughes – Political Blogger
Those of us who fall into the news/political junkie slot scan the media in its many variations. Searching for relevance can be an exhausting effort but every once in awhile a refreshing, independent and insightful source appears and is relished.
The following is such a column written by Michael Harris. His assessment of a shaky level in the top down control that Harper has, until recently, enjoyed is well worth a read.
In part this is what he sees developing with the Conservative level of obedience and solidarity.
Nathan Cullen NDP MP Skeena – ‘Harper’s
. . . → Read More: Cowichan Conversations: Here Is A Brilliant Examination of Harper’s Crumbling Control of Caucus
By Greg Fingas, on October 22, 2012, at 10:17 am Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.
- The Toronto Star’s Public Editor Kathy English discusses the wall being built around information by the Harper Cons. But at least as interesting to me is the Cons’ determination to put up roadblocks in the way of information which can obviously be obtained through other means – such as this example from a report on their axing of Harold Leduc from the Veterans Review and Appeal Board after he exposed their breaches of privacy: An outspoken member of a veterans appeal board, who said his privacy was violated and that the federal agency
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on October 5, 2012, at 9:19 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Michael Harris follows up on the previous activism to save the Experimental Lakes Area by noting that efforts to work with the Harper Cons are providing both divisive and disastrous: (J)ust a few months after the Death of Evidence rally, another event is playing out behind the scenes that is partly the way of the world and partly full-blown tragedy. If those same scientists held a rally today, they would have to call it by another name. Judging from what is happening in that penumbral zone where idealism and power politics collide,
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on August 2, 2012, at 9:55 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Mitchell Anderson reports on how Norway has assured itself of long-term fiscal security by saving a fair share of its oil resources: Norway produces 40 per cent less petroleum than Canada and has one-seventh our population, but has saved more than $600 billion in oil revenue and counting. This is equivalent to about 140 per cent of Norwegian GDP, or about $120,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. In contrast, every Canadian is in the red about $16,000 due to our $566-billion national debt. While Canada is eliminating
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
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