I’m Having a Hard Time Taking Elizabeth May Seriously
March 31, 2011 | 2 Comments
There I said it. Don’t get me wrong – she’s bright, she’s very nice, and she’s got some solid political chops. Nonetheless, because of the way she and the Green Party have responded to the debate non-troversy, I just can’t take them that seriously. And I can’t get too worked up over her exclusion from [...]
A Debtor’s Prison for Tamils
March 31, 2011 | 1 Comment
That’s what our government seems to be turning our prisons into. The Tamil refugees who arrived last summer have experienced the invocation of regulation 245 (f), which allows refugees to be detained until they pay all their debts to human smugglers… yes, the same human smugglers that the Tory government supposedly wants to crack down [...]
Would you rather pay more and get less?
March 31, 2011 | 1 Comment
Okay, you should be reading The Globe and Mail‘s Economy Lab on your own, but just in case you’re not, here’s the latest from Stephen Gordon. Prof. Gordon is writing about a subject that is very dear to me, trade deficits. Specifically, he is, again, demonstrating that the conventional notion that trade deficits are bad [...]
All Politics is Local
March 31, 2011 | No Comments
Our attention over the past few days has been rightly focused on the current federal election. The questions on people’s lips range from whether Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals can ride the wave of government scandals into office, to whether the Conservatives will be able to squeak out a majority via battleground Ontario, to whether [...]
Tweet of the Day
March 30, 2011 | No Comments
From Dan Gardner: I finally realized that this “Heather Mallick” is a very clever conservative spoof of deranged liberals. How droll. http://bit.ly/eXEFw6 We all know how I feel about Heather Mallick.
I’m Having a Kim Campbell Moment
March 30, 2011 | No Comments
I’m sure we’re all loving the fact that some actual policy is being presented during the opening days of the election campaign, but it seems to me we’re still being inundated with a bunch of non-stories. To wit: Everything started with the dreaded C word. So politicians might do whatever necessary to gain power? I’m [...]
The Opening Moves: Shoring Up the Base
March 30, 2011 | 4 Comments
The opening election moves by our three major federalist parties have been pretty predictable, base-solidifying efforts, but they give me a greater degree of hope for the ultimate usefulness of this election than I had last week. The Conservatives bolstered their family value and fiscally responsible images by proposing an income splitting measure for married [...]
Self-Incriminating Quote of the Day
March 30, 2011 | No Comments
In a navel-gazing column decrying navel-gazing columns (and, somehow, talking about female pundits), Jonathan Kay comes up with this beaut: Our special genius is to organize the miasma of commonly known news tidbits into an impressive-seeming argument, then we hunt out sources that confirm what we think we already know. To be fair, he covers [...]
Quote of the Day, August 19, 2009 ed.
March 30, 2011 | 1 Comment
Via Twitter, Stephen Gordon links us to an old post of his at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, explaining how progressive economic policy need not be linked to a high Corporate Income Tax rate. There’s lots of charts and graphs, but, to me, here’s the money line (for context, he’s noting that an increase in the CIT [...]
“On the side of the people”
March 30, 2011 | No Comments
Sun TV will launch in Canada on Apr. 16. Hmmmm…interesting timing. At that point, there will be roughly two weeks left in the federal election campaign. I’ve heard some people musing that they chose this date on purpose based on the premise that their coverage could help sway the election results. That seems like a [...]