Harry Belafonte: Trump Is Standing in Our Way

Four years ago, when Donald Trump first ran for president, he urged Black people to support him, asking us, “What have you got to lose?”

Four years later, we know exactly what we had to lose. Our lives, as we died in disproportionate numbers from the pandemic he has let flourish among us. Our wealth, as we have suffered disproportionately from the worst economic drop America has seen in 90 years. Our safety, as this president has stood behind those police who kill us in the streets and by the armies of white supremacy who march by night and scheme in the light of day.

The Fate of American Democracy Is in the Hands of Cable News

The 2020 presidential election could very well be messy, complex, and slow, defined by an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots, legal challenges, and possibly recounts reminiscent of the fiasco in Florida in 2000. And cable news, which millions of people will be watching throughout election night, is pathologically incapable of dealing with messy, complex, and slow stories. The networks are designed for easy answers that feed simple narratives, and they have shown a tendency to be short-circuited by Donald Trump’s chicanery. He will undoubtedly spend Tuesday evening desperately spinning a victory, and how cable networks respond may profoundly impact the result of the election.

Republicans Don’t Want the “Wrong Kind of People” to Vote

On November 22, 2000, a phalanx of chino-clad Republican operatives descended on Florida’s Miami-Dade County polling headquarters, where local officials were scrambling to complete a manual recount of ballots cast in the presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Swarming the lobby of the government high rise, the GOP protesters chanted and banged on the glass wall as local officials inside attempted to review ballots. Faced with an increasingly dangerous situation, the county canvassing board abandoned its recount, which had seemed poised to deliver a substantial number of votes for Gore.

Poland delays abortion ban amid nationwide protests

Poland’s rightwing government has delayed the publication and implementation of a high court ruling that tightens the abortion law and has triggered almost two weeks of nationwide protests.

Trump Readies Lawyers for Election Battle, Led by Ex-Pence Aide

President Donald Trump is pledging a legal fight over vote counting that drags on after polls close -- all but guaranteeing an ongoing struggle over pandemic-related voting rules if the election result is close.

Matthew Morgan, a longtime adviser to Vice President Mike Pence and now the Trump campaign’s general counsel, is leading the litigation strategy, which has so far been largely aimed at curtailing Democratic efforts to loosen rules for voting by mail.

Deficit hawks’ blind spot on fair taxation and inequality

The global pandemic still very much with us, yet conservative pundits and think tanks are already setting the stage for fiscal austerity once the economy recovers to something like normal.

On October 20, the C D Howe Institute published a study by prominent academic economist and former senior finance official Don Drummond. It echoed a recent call for fiscal restraint after the pandemic by former deputy minister of finance and governor of the Bank of Canada, David Dodge.

Drummond presents four scenarios for the growth of federal public debt based on different levels of government spending in the future, and draws some fairly dismal policy conclusions.

CBC Ombudsman Says Teenage Journalists Who Criticized Transphobia Violated CBC’s Journalistic Standards

An internal CBC review of a youth current affairs show has concluded that a group of teenage journalists violated CBC’s journalistic standards when they unanimously criticized transphobia without giving equal airtime to other “viewpoints.”

RECAP, which is described as a “digital-only news roundup show,” posted a video earlier this summer discussing a widely-reported backlash over transphobic tweets from Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/house-prices-quantitative-easing-government-spending_ca_5f9d9279c5b616c2f315323d

Canada’s House Prices Are Soaring Because Reality Doesn’t Matter Anymore To Things Like That

Many people have been scratching their heads lately trying to understand how it is that Canada’s average house price jumped more than 17 per cent during the worst economic crisis to hit the world in decades. On its face, it seems senseless.

There is an answer, but to get to it, you have to learn the same uncomfortable lesson that the head of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (and some of us who write about economics) learned this year. And that lesson is that we are living in an illusion created by central bank money-printing and profligate government spending. If house prices seem detached from reality, it’s because they are.

BC’s Liberals Appear Headed for an Ugly Divorce

I was having second thoughts about an election night column saying the BC Liberals faced an existential crisis.

Later reports from Elections BC seemed to offer some hope for the Liberals, suggesting the party’s supporters didn’t desert it for a new love. They just stayed home. Which would mean, theoretically, that they could be wooed back by 2024.

But as the week went on, the party’s dire — perhaps hopeless state — become evident.