Fort McMurray, before the Bitumen Boom. Things have changed. Below: Conservative Fort McMurray-Athabasca candidate David Yurdiga, Liberal candidate Kyle Harrietha, NDP candidate Lori McDaniel, former Conservative MP Brian Jean. If the good people of Fort McMurray climb out of bed this morning and decide to elect a Liberal to represent
Continue readingTag: vote suppression
Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links – #VoteOn Edition
This and that for your Thursday (and Ontario election day) reading… – Joseph Heath makes the case against Tim Hudak’s PCs in particular, and the shift from public to private goods in general: (I)t’s fairly clear what the PCs are planning. They are proposing a general shift in Ontario away
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Tim Hudak, the GOP and Voter Suppression
I posted recently about an Ontario conservative scheme to suppress the vote in the upcoming provincial election. A Party calling themselves None of the Above could be traced back to Mike Harris. Recently it was also discovered that several Ontario households received letters from the PC Party with incorrect information,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Timothy Shenk discusses Thomas Piketty’s contribution to a critique of unfettered capitalism and gratuitous inequality: Seen from Piketty’s vantage point, thousands of feet above the rubble, the fragility of this moment becomes clear. Economic growth was a recent invention, major reductions to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On vested interests
Shorter Linda Frum: As one of Stephen Harper’s hand-picked counterweights to the troublesome democratic rabble, I refuse to acknowledge any difference between “encouraging voter turnout” and “abetting electoral fraud”. The less people with a voice in how this country is run, the better.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Cons’ explanations for the Unfair Elections Act reflect a disturbing attempt to rule out any voter motivation other than partisan interests – while excusing future Robocon-style deceit by placing all responsibility for accurate information on Elections Canada alone. For further reading…– Alison documents the Con MPs
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Doreen Massey observes that our political vocabulary has largely been hijacked by corporatist language: At a recent art exhibition I engaged in an interesting conversation with one of the young people employed by the gallery. As she turned to walk off I saw
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Mike Konczal discusses the distribution of U.S. tax breaks and incentives, and finds that measures normally presented as offering breaks for everybody in fact serve mostly as giveaways to the wealthy: (T)he government is very responsive to the interests of the top 20
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Andrew Coyne notes that the Robocon decision finding electoral fraud using the Cons’ voter database fell short of naming names – but recognizes that there’s still a glaring need for further investigation, a sentiment echoed by the Globe and Mail. Tim Harper explains
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – The Cons’ latest line of talking-point addiction isn’t passing without some substantial comment from Canada’s political press. Today, Jeffrey Simpson lambastes Stephen Harper and his party for trying to wipe out their own history and promises, while Dan Gardner considers the Cons to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Dr. Dawg responds to Andrew Coyne’s suggestion about cracking down on advocacy by charities with an entirely reasonable suggestion as to how to allocate our resources: Given that charities do essential work that the government does not fund—feeding and clothing the poor, defending
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – There’s still plenty more emerging on the Robocon election fraud scandal. The reporting combinations of McGregor/Maher and Chase/Leblanc/Mills have both discussed Elections Canada’s latest court filing showing that Con campaign officials openly discussed implementing U.S.-style vote suppression efforts – including exactly the forms
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michael Harris sums up the first year of a Harper majority by pointing out the overwhelming need for change from the government we’re stuck with now: The curtain has been well and truly whipped away from the PM’s self-promoting deceptions and he is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
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
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Susan Delacourt notes that while the NDP’s leadership convention points out some of the risks of online voting, the real problem lies in the people working to block democracy through any available means: While those who use computers have become accustomed to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Karl Nerenberg reported on Marc Mayrand’s Robocon testimony, featuring some much-needed discussion of what can be done to improve the Canada Elections Act to ensure fair elections rather than creating an incentive for electoral fraud: Mayrand fretted to the Committee that there are
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Fred Wilson weighs in on Thomas Mulcair’s mandate as the NDP’s new leader: (M)any progressives with no interest whatsoever in a “Blairist” agenda had found their way to the Mulcair camp. They supported Mulcair for two reasons — to maintain the party’s base
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to start your week… – Remember the Cons’ talking point that we should assume all of the Robocon calls which purported to come from Lib candidates could safely be said to have come from that source? Because Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher just shot a massive hole in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – On the Robocon front, Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher’s latest good work investigating the Cons’ electoral fraud got Maher expelled from the Manning Centre’s hive-mind-building exercise. And the robocalling firms themselves are being similarly aggressive in trying to shut down any discussion of
Continue readingTrashy's World: A course on…
… how to commit fraud? Interesting piece in the Vancouver Observer that is making the rounds on Facebook describing a course given through the conservative think-tank Manning Institute. Again, no smoking gun and I’m not drawing any conclusions about the CPC involvement, but give it a read and come to
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