This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robyn Benson offers her take on the importance of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as an election issue. Peter Mazereeuw notes that the nominal labour protections in the TPP – which were of course negotiated without workers having a seat at the table –
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Armine Yalnizyan sees the Volkswagen emissions test cheating as a classic example of the dangers of relying on business to do anything toward the social good without facing strong and effectively-enforced regulations. And George Monbiot describes just a few of the preposterous new
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Stephen Marche discusses the Cons’ ongoing efforts to make Canada a more closed and ignorant country: Mr. Harper’s campaign for re-election has so far been utterly consistent with the personality trait that has defined his tenure as prime minister: his peculiar hatred for
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Brendan O’Neill writes that the UK Cons are following in Stephen Harper’s footsteps by pushing the concept of thought policing. And George Monbiot rightly criticizes the gross inflation of supposed terror threats and simultaneous neglect of far more serious risks: A global
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Miscellaneous material for your Friday reading. – Matthew Melmed examines how poverty early in life is both disturbingly widespread, and likely to severely affect a child’s future prospects. – Lawrence Mishel and Alyssa Davis track the extreme gap in wage growth for CEOs as opposed to workers. Robert Skidelsky argues
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jim Stanford highlights how the Cons are focused on exactly the wrong priority in pushing for cuts at a time when Canada’s economy is in dire need of a jump-start: In the grand economic scheme, a deficit incurred as the economy slows
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The Star’s editorial board writes that five years after police committed serious human rights violations at Toronto’s G20 summit, nobody seems to have learned any lessons from the abuses. And David Lavallee tells his story of being interrogated for a “precursor to terrorist
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The Ottawa Citizen rightly slams Stephen Harper for failing to take climate change and energy policy seriously, while Mel Hurting points out Harper’s general economic failures in relying on dirty resource extraction rather than trying to build a cleaner and stronger economy. And
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Here, on the many problems with building social benefits and employment policies alike on a foundation of distrust. For further reading…– Rick Mercer rants about the obstacles the Cons are throwing in the way of veterans. And the CP follows up on the Cons’ response to Paul Franklin’s case here.–
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Garfield Mahood and Brian Iler discuss the challenge facing charities as compared to the special treatment of businesses in trying to advocate as to public policy: (T)he solutions to many of society’s problems do not need more research and the criticism-free public education
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Sarah Lazare reports on UNICEF’s research showing an appalling increase in child poverty in many of the world’s richest countries: “Many affluent countries have suffered a ‘great leap backwards’ in terms of household income, and the impact on children will have long-lasting repercussions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Gerald Caplan suggests that Rogers and Bell might be ripe for nationalization – though it’s also worth pointing out that we don’t have to guess what happens when a Crown delivers telecommunications services: The British Labour Party has begun to make the case
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Rebecca Vallas, Melissa Boteach and Shawn Fremstad write about the need for a new social contract. And Drew Nelles takes a look at the role of a guaranteed basic income in ensuring a fair standard of living for everybody: Although implementing basic income
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Harry Stein discusses how government policy is currently designed to exacerbate inequality by subsidizing the concentration of wealth: This issue brief puts aside the question of whether new policies, such as a global wealth tax, should be enacted to reduce economic inequality.
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Buttonwood weighs in on the disproportionate influence of the ultra-rich when it comes to making policy choices which affect all of us: But the analysis backs up earlier work by Larry Bartels of Princeton, author of a book called “Unequal Democracy”, and the
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Gary Engler explores Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century from the perspective of a reader who’s far more skeptical than Piketty about the prospect of tinkering around the edges of our current corporatist economic system. And Seth Ackerman writes that Piketty’s
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Crawford Kilian discusses the growing influence of Thomas Piketty’s observations about wealth inequality and the unfairness of a system which inherently perpetuates privilege: What I take away is this: We are playing in a rigged game. The deck has always been stacked
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Michael Harris observes that the Cons’ vote suppression tactics match the worst abuses we’d expect from the Tea Party: Stephen Harper would make a good governor of Arizona. In addition to the lies and sleaziness his government has been serving up during its
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Dan Leger and Leslie MacKinnon both theorize that 2013 represented a new low in Canadian politics. But while the Cons may have taken some new steps in petty scandals and cover-ups (and Rob Ford’s clown show managed to attract an unusual amount
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman comments on the role of fear in boosting employers’ authority over workers: The fact is that employment generally involves a power relationship: you have a boss, who tells you what to do, and if you refuse, you may be fired. This
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