Community Groups Work to Provide Emergency Medical Alternatives, Separate From Police

When Jens Rushing was working as an emergency medical technician (EMT) for a 911 service in one small Texas city, he was dispatched on a call where he witnessed a man suffering during a mental health crisis. He remembers how the police officer who accompanied him wanted to cuff the man's hands behind his back and force him, face down, to the ground, until he "calmed down."

Empire States: On Pankaj Mishra

In the fun-house mirror of the present, the contours of the twentieth century have assumed a strange symmetry. It begins and ends with imperialism. The century opens with the West plundering the Rest, until one Asian nation, Japan, joins the action and becomes an empire itself. In the century’s last decade, the pattern repeats: the forces of liberal capitalism are again as dominant as ever, only this time China is the apt pupil of Western rapacity. The way historians speak of the present in terms of “imperialism,” ”anti-imperialism” and “the rise of Asia” makes the burst of decolonization after World War II seem like an interlude in a perpetual age of empire. The temptation to see Western colonials still lording it over hapless subalterns continues to guide our understanding of the relations between the “North” and “South” since the end of formal imperialism in the 1960s. But this perspective passes over the major structural changes in the history of the postwar decades, when the United States reconceived its mission in the world and new nations were no longer willing to support it on the same terms. Without grasping how this new configuration of forces reshaped the world order, we will continue to misidentify ways to change it.

Alternative Federal Budget would take investor rights, patent protection out of CETA and TPP

The 2013 Alternative Federal Budget, released this week by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, argues the Harper government's trade policy is not working for most Canadians. It describes the Canada-EU trade deal, Trans-Pacific Partnership and Canada-China investment treaty as "fundamentally illegitimate and anti-democratic" in how they "alter key domestic policies through the back door of international trade treaties." And it recommends that Canada "shift its focus from negotiating new bilateral and regional free trade agreements to the promotion of Canadian trade, especially high value-added exports of goods and services, including cultural services."

'Alternative' federal budget posits Flaherty's got it all wrong

 OTTAWA -- Canada's leading left-wing think-tank believes Canadians can have their cake and eat it too in the next federal budget -- more spending to create jobs while still moving toward balancing the books.

The proposals are contained in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' annual alternative federal budget, being released this morning, which Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has already dismissed out of hand, sight unseen.

An alternative budget: Balancing the books through stimulating growth, jobs

OTTAWA - Canada's leading left-wing think-tank believes Canadians can have their cake and eat it too in the next federal budget — more spending to create jobs while still moving toward balancing the books.

The proposals are contained in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' annual alternative federal budget, being released this morning, which Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has already dismissed out of hand, sight unseen.

Canada Budget 2012: Alternative Federal Budget Proposes Tax Hikes On Wealthy, Corporations

The federal government should create a new tax bracket for Canada’s biggest earners as a way to avoid cuts to social spending and "restore fairness to the tax system," a prominent public policy think tank says.

The "alternative federal budget" released by the progressive Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on Thursday does away with the Conservative government's spending cuts and replaces them with increased revenue in the form of higher corporate taxes and a new top income tax bracket.

The alternative budget would create a top income tax bracket of 35 per cent for people earning over $250,000, and would roll back a series of corporate tax cuts started under the previous Liberal government and continued under the Conservatives that has seen corporations’ federal tax burden drop from 29 per cent to 15 per cent. The alternative budget would raise that to 21 per cent.

The CCPA's budget comes two weeks ahead of the release of the Conservative government’s federal budget, on March 29, and is part of an effort by the budget’s authors to make Canada’s tax system more redistributive -- something they say has been lacking from the policies of the governing Conservatives.