Is it really an ER when it opens and closes constantly, or is it just a ‘room’?
Friday, August 12th, 2022
Ontario will “take bold action.” What else could this mean but the right-wing dream that never dies: privatizing public health care, on the model of highly profitable long-term-care homes… You can sense a new zeitgeist today in the rejection of neo-liberal globalization by the same parties in the U.S., U.K. and Canada that ushered it in. And in an openness to larger public activity on COVID and climate change.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
The Rogers outage, and other scenes from the death of neo-liberalism
Friday, July 15th, 2022
The premiers met in B.C. this week and wailed hysterically about needing more money to fix health care. I wouldn’t give them another cent till they pass a written test on what went wrong. They adopted the just-in-time principle from manufacturing (which led to bottlenecks and inflation now rampant) for health. They cut staff to a minimum. Why? Because it fit with the neo-liberal agenda to slash taxes and pay for it with decreased spending on public programs… Then when COVID hit, the system began to crumble.
Tags: economy, Health, ideology, jurisdiction
Posted in Debates, Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Run and hide! Lock your doors! The coalition government is coming for your democracy
Friday, March 25th, 2022
The true democratic disorder is when a party receives around 40 per cent of votes but gets 60 per cent of seats in Parliament, and then imposes their will on the country as if they’d received a true mandate. That’s delusional, yet it’s become our political normal. The last time a majority of seats accompanied a majority of votes was in 1984… Coalitions are by their nature improvisational and creative, so they don’t follow rule books. They’re also pretty inevitable now, since elections increasingly return minority governments.
Tags: child care, Health, housing, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Do pandemic income supports encourage people to stay off work? Of course — and that could be a good thing
Friday, June 4th, 2021
… this could really shake up capitalism for the better. How? If workers choose to stay in bed, employers might (rationally) choose to entice them back with higher wages… Higher pay though would also narrow the equality gap… People just don’t like bed that much. In fact, they like work, especially if it involves some satisfaction.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Spare some pity for right-wing premiers in the time of COVI
Friday, December 11th, 2020
… a global pandemic isn’t the best circumstance for invoking libertarian individualism and the all-purpose value of the private sector, then standing aside. Active government has its problems, but someone has to do something right now, not just wait for the invisible hand to generate profitable solutions… Doug Ford… more a right-wing populist than an ideological conservative… is about “the little guy,” by which he means small business owners, never their employees.
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Doug Ford’s love-hate relationship with the nanny state
Saturday, November 21st, 2020
If there’s any time not to demean “the state” in utterly clichéd terms, it’s now. He’s clueless enough to unsheathe the nanny-state weapon at the very moment when governmental action is the only recourse, in a time of virtual — and literally viral — war. There is no substitute for the state in a war.
Tags: economy, Health, ideology
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
It’s not an ‘affordability crisis,’ it’s a class conflict
Friday, August 30th, 2019
It’s not an affordability crisis, it’s a class conflict. It requires redistribution of wealth, not population… But they pin it on affordability, as if it’s a virus that calls for bed rest, rather than on the rich and their agenda since the 1980s, starting with with the panic over “deficits,” a word that came out of nowhere, too, so that public spending had to be slashed and taxes cut since “it’s your money and you should keep it” — as if you can build your own schools and public transit, once you’ve got a few more bucks in pocket.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Paul Ryan re-ignites old collectivism vs individualism debate
Sunday, August 26th, 2012
16 August 2012
… take the Internet, which is shredding hard-won dogmas about individual property and ownership created during capitalism’s three or four centuries. Just when you get rid of those pesky proletarian revolutionaries, along comes a new, essentially collectivist technology making similar trouble… Given the undeniable (it seems to me) collective underpinning of all our lives, what’s astounding isn’t claims for “collectivism,” which simply describes what we are; it’s the emergence of individuals and even individualism from such a powerful collective base.
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, rights, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Referendums at heart of Swiss political system
Wednesday, August 8th, 2012
July 21, 2012
… referendums aren’t just an aspect of Swiss democracy, they’re its most distinctive, beloved element. On a national level they’re usually held four times a year, with multiple items each time. On cantonal (provincial) or local levels, they’re even more common… there, voting happens constantly. Not just voting, but weighing and debating. “The whole society is in a constant state of discussion… The process has a moderating rather than radicalizing influence, leading to what’s called a negotiation or consensus democracy
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance History | 1 Comment »
Political obsolescence is in the eye of the beholder
Friday, March 30th, 2012
Mar 29 2012
Now, labour-hostile governments are all anyone under 40 has seen… I don’t blame the neo-liberals (also known as neo-cons) for having taken their shot… Their formulas turned out to lead directly to the crash of 2008 but, in the manner of true believers in all eras, they said we hadn’t done enough of what they prescribed. Our lack of faith in their creed was the problem; it was time for more austerity, deregulation etc… It suggests an opening for something different and genuinely new. Like what — activist, redistributive government?
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
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