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Jason Kenney’s immigrant song sounds strangely off-key
Sunday, March 25th, 2012
Mar 08 2012
This is the Harper version of multiculturalism. They couldn’t have copied the outright anti-immigrant, anti-multiculti stances of admired figures like Germany’s Merkel or France’s Sarkozy…. Jason Kenney appears at (almost) every ethnic gathering yet sounds negative and hostile in most of his policies: denouncing levels of fraud in getting citizenship, changing the test, banning veils at the ceremony and this week attacking “birth tourism.”
Tags: economy, immigration, rights
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
The decline of deference [and the internet]
Friday, December 30th, 2011
Dec 29 2011
That sense of an alternative way to run things is what the Internet may have implanted. In its early years, flame wars and other epidemics of egomania obscured its potential for collective, lateral decision-making. But now there’s Wikipedia and it works. You don’t need the Encyclopaedia Britannica and its stable of authorities. Or at least: you needn’t defer to them; they’ve become another resource. The discovery of new ways to decide leads to a diminished need for authority… The power of authority diminishes when you can hear credible, contesting voices.
Tags: ideology, participation
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
The Bible and ethical economics
Saturday, December 24th, 2011
Dec 22 2011
In his book, Economics of Good and Evil… Sedlacek says, a moral thread runs through economics until the modern era, based on a sense of mutual human responsibility. With that moral element now eliminated, you wind up bailing out (“forgiving”) the biggest, most powerful debtor/sinners, i.e. the banks, but doing nothing for the poor and destitute, who were supposed to inherit the Earth… Nobody uses econometrics to calculate gifts they give or gratitude they feel. The whole process is uneconomic — but only in the withered, current sense.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
On More Street Politics
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Dec 13 2011
Star Columnist Rick Salutin says democracy isn’t something that happens just at elections. The most important fights take place between votes.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
New charity, same old cant
Friday, November 4th, 2011
Nov 03 2011
The Globe say these methods “could revolutionize” social programs by creating “a world in which profit motives and the greater good move in tandem.” That would revolutionize us all the way back to Dickens’ time… As for Philanthropy, it literally means love of man, or humanity. You don’t sense much of that in the New version, though there’s lots of self-praise, and a sense of power through the ability to micromanage the effect of your donation.
Tags: economy, ideology, philanthropy, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »
Where have all the PCs gone?
Saturday, October 1st, 2011
Sep 29 2011
Never mind whether they should be called “Red Tories.” They sought power in order to do something, not just punish certain demographics by cutting welfare (Harris), building prisons (Harper) or creating chain gangs (Hudak). They didn’t think government was “the problem” like Ronald Reagan, a hero of their right-wing conservative successors, or that society didn’t exist at all, like another such hero, Margaret Thatcher. Labels and ideology mattered little to them… It involved a sense of the usefulness of government and the importance of some kind of social solidarity, expressed largely through public institutions and programs.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Governance History | No Comments »
The sector that dares not speak its name
Friday, September 16th, 2011
Sep 16 2011
We are a society that has largely lost sight of the fact that there is anything to debate in politics except how to save money… It’s been drummed into the public ear for decades by think-tanks, pundits and politicians… So Mayor Rob says… “If the private sector can deliver them more efficiently, then why not have them?” … he assumes services are the same no matter who delivers them. They aren’t. Take libraries… Take health care… We’re now mired in this profiteering, privatizing mentality. It cuts off every alternative viewpoint.
Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »
The strange, and very political, death of hope
Friday, June 3rd, 2011
Jun 02 2011
Any rise in deficits came mainly from bailouts to banks, or needless warmaking. The point is: The catastrophe had/has no connection to government social or economic spending. Yet the only solutions proposed everywhere are public spending cuts. Ordinary people know, or sense, that this is stupid… But — and here’s where hope comes in, or flies out the door — governments slash anyway… This is how hope in public participation dies, or is killed off.
Tags: budget, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Enough with the right and the left
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
Apr 21 2011
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a French philosopher, psychologist and journalist… said progress “is not so much a movement toward a homogeneous or a classless society as the quest… for a life which is not unlivable for the greatest number.” What a modest, achievable goal. It’s strange how much harder it is to compose a phrase like that than to riff off some “liberal” or “conservative” clichés. If someone like Merleau-Ponty can get there, others should at least make the effort.
Tags: ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
The ultimate public school advantage: Democracy
Saturday, April 9th, 2011
Apr 08 2011
Is there anything public schools do that no other form of education can? Only this: Simply by being what they are, they can teach kids about the society they live in. That’s because public schools must let everyone in. What’s unique about public education isn’t the education part, it’s the “public.” Other schools can tell kids about their society but they don’t contain it and show it… public health care… [is] an achievement to take pride in… it’s about survival on a physical level and it’s similar for people everywhere. Education is more specific and social. It’s how we define the way we are, not simply that we are.
Tags: ideology, multiculturalism, participation, standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
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