Molecular diagnostics supernova on board at Congenica – Business Weekly

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One of the worlds most pre-eminent molecular diagnostics specialists has boosted the board of Cambridge digital health company Congenica.

Dr Heiner Dreismann has accepted roles as non-executive director and senior independent director. He has over 35 years experience in the global leadership of high-growth life sciences and healthcare businesses.

Dr Dreismann was previously president and CEO of Roche Molecular Systems, the world leader in molecular diagnostics, where he made significant contributions to the organisational and financial growth of the companys molecular business area.

Other senior positions he held in Roche included head of global business development, Roche Diagnostics and member of Roches global diagnostic executive committee.

Since leaving Roche he has served on the board of a number of private and public biotech and healthcare companies.

Dr Dreismann said: I am excited to join the board of Congenica, a company at the forefront of healthcare innovation that is bringing medical meaning to genomic data.

I look forward to helping the company in its next stage of growth and in supporting healthcare professionals with its technologies to expedite the diagnosis and treatment of conditions affecting millions of people worldwide.

Congenica enables genomic medicine with what it markets as the worlds leading clinical decision support platform for the interpretation of complex genomic data.

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Molecular diagnostics supernova on board at Congenica - Business Weekly

Press Release: New drug that breaks down the ‘barbed wire’ around some cancers – PRWire

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Perth researchers discover way to enhance immune response and drug treatment of stiff, difficult-to-treat solid cancers

Some solid tumours are so stiff they make a cracking noise when they are cut by researchers on the laboratory bench.

The fibrous nature of liver, pancreatic and some breast cancers make them difficult to treat. However, five years of research by a team of Perth scientists has resulted in the development of a novel, non-toxic agent that can deliver drugs to the cancer cells embedded in the fibrous matrix.

Research published in EMBO Molecular Medicine showed a non-toxic therapeutic agent boosted immune cells to selectively remove the fibrous scar tissue allowing cancer treatments to reach their target.

Dr Juliana Hamzah, head of the Targeted Drug Delivery, Imaging and Therapy Laboratory at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research said by breaking down the fibrous matrix of stiff tumours the patients own immune system paved the way for drug treatments to take effect.

The cancer is like a wound, and a way that our body tries to repair the wound is to grow a scar tissue around it, but that scar tissue makes it very difficult to get to the cancer cells to destroy them.

It is stiff, non-cellular, has very few blood vessels and impenetrable. The scar tissue is not only a physical barrier but it constricts blood vessels which are key pathways for delivering cancer treatment.

The barrier around some cancers, such as liver cancer, pancreatic cancer and some breast cancers is like barbed wire.

We have developed a non-toxic agent that does not affect surrounding healthy tissue.

The agent activates immune cells to release enzymes that digest the scar tissue. This allows more cancer killing immune cells to enter the tumour. Our results show that removal of the fibrous tissue dramatically eliminates the drug delivery barrier.

Tumours treated with the drug weve developed are more permeable to anti-tumour immune cells and cancer treatments, Dr Hamzah said.

The research data have been validated in four laboratories including the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Perth, the School of Engineering at The University of Western Australia, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, California, USA, and the University California Davis, California, USA.

Dr Hamzah says that now the drug has been proven to have a positive impact on fibrosis, or scar tissue, she is investigating whether it can be used to prevent malignant cancer by treating the early stages of fibrosis in liver cancer.

If you take liver cancer, it doesnt start immediately as cancer, it starts as fibrosis, cirrhosis, which then develops into liver cancer.

Because chronic tissue fibrosis can lead to cancer we aim to investigate whether early treatment with our drug of the pre-cancerous stage, such as liver fibrosis, could prevent development of malignant cancer.

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Press Release: New drug that breaks down the 'barbed wire' around some cancers - PRWire

AC Immune Q3 2019 Financial Results and Business Update – Yahoo Finance

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CHF 32 Million in Milestone Revenues

Multiple Upcoming Catalysts

Execution Across Clinical and Preclinical Neurodegenerative Development Pipeline

LAUSANNE, Switzerland, Nov. 13, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AC Immune SA (ACIU), a Swiss-based biopharmaceutical company with a broad clinical-stage pipeline focused on neurodegenerative diseases, today provided a business and clinical update and reported its consolidated financial results for the third quarter of 2019.

Prof. Andrea Pfeifer, Ph.D., CEO of AC Immune, commented: AC Immune, together with our leading pharmaceutical partners, is advancing one of the industrys broadest, most diversified development pipelines targeting neurodegenerative diseases. This quarter, we continued to demonstrate strong progress across our pipeline of potentially best-in-class small molecule, antibody, and vaccine therapeutics, as well as our cutting-edge diagnostic agents. This resulted in milestones achieved totaling CHF 32 million which were comprised of CHF 30 million from Eli Lilly and Company and EUR 2 million (CHF 2.2 million) from Life Molecular Imaging.

Prof. Pfeifer continued, We anticipate multiple catalysts in 2019 and 2020, highlighted by expected Phase 2 data for semorinemab, our anti-Tau antibody partnered with Genentech/Roche, which we anticipate will be the first Phase 2 data available for a Tau-targeted therapy in Alzheimers disease (AD). We also anticipate achieving further progress across our development pipeline with both early and late stage data readouts that we believe will build substantial value for the Company.

AC Immunes unique, multi-pronged approach is designed to address the full spectrum of neurodegenerative diseases. By selectively targeting misfolded pathological proteins both intracellularly and extracellularly, and by creating state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging agents that enable early detection of multiple disease pathologies and tracking of disease progression, AC Immune is pioneering a personalized medicine approach to deliver the right therapy to the right patient at the right time.

Research & Development Highlights

Analysis of Financial Statements for the Three and Nine Months Ended September 30, 2019

About AC ImmuneAC Immune SA is a Nasdaq-listed clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, which aims to become a global leader in Precision Medicine for neurodegenerative diseases. The Company is utilizing two proprietary discovery platforms, SupraAntigenTMand MorphomerTM, to design, discover and develop small molecule and biological therapeutics as well as diagnostic products intended to diagnose, prevent and modify neurodegenerative diseases caused by misfolding proteins. The Company's pipeline features nine therapeutic and three diagnostic product candidates, with five currently in clinical trials. It has collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies including Roche/Genentech, Lilly and Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.

As a strategic leader in the field of neurodegenerative diseases, AC Immune has developed a five-point Roadmap to Successful Therapies for Neurodegenerative Diseases that recognizes the importance of treating earlier, targeting Tau, focusing on more homogeneous patient populations, precision medicine and exploring neuroinflammation as a target.

For further information, please contact:

Forward-looking statementsThis press release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements are statements other than historical fact and may include statements that address future operating, financial or business performance or AC Immunes strategies or expectations. In some cases, you can identify these statements by forward-looking words such as may, might, will, should, expects, plans, anticipates, believes, estimates, predicts, projects, potential, outlook or continue, and other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements are based on managements current expectations and beliefs and involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, developments and business decisions to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. These risks and uncertainties include those described under the captions Item 3. Key InformationRisk Factors and Item 5. Operating and Financial Review and Prospects in AC Immunes Annual Report on Form 20-F and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and AC Immune does not undertake any obligation to update them in light of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable law. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.

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Balance Sheets

Statements of Income/(Loss)

Statements of Comprehensive Income/(Loss)

Reconciliation of Income/(Loss) to Adjusted Income/(Loss) and Earnings/(Loss) Per Share to Adjusted Earnings/(Loss) Per Share

(a) Reflects non-cash expenses associated with share-based compensation for equity awards issued to Directors, Management and employees of the Company. This expense reflects the awards fair value recognized for the portion of the equity award which is vesting over the period.

(b) Reflects foreign currency remeasurement gains and losses for the period, predominantly impacted by the change in the exchange rate between the US Dollar and the Swiss Franc.

(c) Effective interest expense for the period relates to the accretion of the Companys convertible loan in accordance with the effective interest method.

(d) Change in fair value of conversion feature that is bifurcated from the convertible loan host debt with Lilly.

For the three and nine months ended September 30, 2019, adjustments increased net income and decreased net income by CHF 0.6 million and CHF 0.9 million compared with decreases to the net losses by CHF 1.9 million and CHF 3.0 million for the comparable periods in 2018, respectively. The Company recorded CHF 0.9 million and CHF 2.0 million for the three and nine months, respectively, for share-based compensation expenses. There were foreign currency remeasurement gains of CHF 0.3 million and remeasurement losses of CHF 0.3 million, respectively, related to foreign currency fluctuations. The Company recorded nil and CHF 1.4 million for amortization of effective interest for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2019, respectively. Finally, the Company recognized nil and a CHF 4.5 million gain for the change in fair value of the liability related to the conversion feature.

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AC Immune Q3 2019 Financial Results and Business Update - Yahoo Finance

Antibiotic resistance: Scientists discover new toxin that promises to fight it out finally – International Business Times, Singapore Edition

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Scientists have discovered a new bacteria-killing toxin that can prove beneficial in combatting diseases infected by superbugs, a study has revealed. According to the new study, this growth inhibiting enzyme is injected by bacteria into rival bacteria to gain a competitive advantage.

A team of researchers led by author John Whitney, assistant professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University, and co-author Mike Laub, professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), explained that bacteria secreted antibacterial molecules when they came across a toxin, and the new toxin was an antibacterial enzyme that scientists had never seen before.

Whitney and Ahmad after determining the molecular structure of this toxin realized that it resembled enzymes that synthesized a well-known bacterial signaling molecule called (p)ppGpp, which helps bacteria survive under stressful conditions such as exposure to antibiotics. Ahmad stressed the 3-D structure of this toxin was at first puzzling because no known toxins looked like enzymes that made (p)ppGpp, and (p)ppGpp itself was not a toxin.

The authors earlier thought the toxin might kill bacteria by overproducing harmful quantities of (p)ppGpp. The findings published in the journal Nature suggested Boyuan Wang, a postdoctoral researcher in the Laub lab who specializes in (p)ppGpp signalling and examined the activity of the newly discovered enzyme, as concluding the toxin instead produced a poorly understood but related molecule called (p)ppApp, which is somehow harmful to bacteria.

The researchers found that the rapid production of (p)ppApp by this enzyme toxin depleted cells of a molecule called ATP -- the energy currency of the cell -- whose exhaustion killed pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. "This discovery has potential implications for developing alternatives to antibiotics, a global priority in the fight against antimicrobial resistance," stressed Charu Kaushic, scientific director of the CIHR-III and a professor of pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster.

The research concluded that it would be exciting to see whether other examples of this toxin were found across the bacterial domain or perhaps even in bacteriumhost interactions.

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Antibiotic resistance: Scientists discover new toxin that promises to fight it out finally - International Business Times, Singapore Edition

Fluoroscopy and Mobile C-Arms Market to reach USD 3,051.4 million by 2026 | Technology Development Trends, Business Growth Opportunities, Competitive…

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This Global Fluoroscopy & C Arms Market byData Bridge Market Researchbrings all the figures needed to corner the Global fluoroscopy and C-arms market by showing all the recent developments, product launches, joint ventures, mergers and accusations done by the key players and brands that are making a mark in the market. Besides it also pinpoints the market drivers and restraints with the help of SWOT analysis.

Global fluoroscopy and C Arms marketis expected to reach at a CAGR of 4.3% in the forecast period of 2018 to 2025.

The main perspective of the Fluoroscopy and Mobile C-Arms report is to support companies comprehend the customer in terms of approach, cultural trends, routine factors and how social framework impacts product selection and usage. It evaluates the quality of service that has been provided to the customer or to provide information about various operational aspects. The Fluoroscopy and Mobile C-Arms report serves with all inclusive, highly effective and thoroughly analyzed information in a well-organized manner, based on actual facts, the information of the market trends is mentioned in the report. The Fluoroscopy and Mobile C-Arms report presents the market competitive landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the major vendor/key players in the market.

Get Sample copy of this Report @https://databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=global-fluoroscopy-c-arms-market

Some of the prominent participants operating in this market are GE Healthcare, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Siemens AG, Canon Medical Systems Corporation, Shimadzu Corporation, Carestream Health, EcoRay, Eurocolumbus s.r.l., GEMSS Co., Ltd., Hitachi, Ltd., Hologic Inc., INTERMEDICAL S.r.l., ITALYRAY, PAUSCH Medical GmbH, Varex Imaging Corporation, Whale Imaging, and Ziehm Imaging GmbH among others.

Study Highlights

Request ForTOC@https://databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=global-fluoroscopy-c-arms-market

GE Healthcare founded in 1918, headquarters in New York, U.S., and focuses towards the manufacturing and developer of medical imaging, digital solutions, patient monitoring and diagnostics, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies and performance improvement solutions.

Access Full Report:https://databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-fluoroscopy-c-arms-market/

The company has its presence in U.S, Europe, Asia, Americas, Middle East and Africa.

Koninklijke Philips N.V.:

Koninklijke Philips N.V., founded in 1891 and based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The company focuses on improving peoples health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention to diagnosis, treatment and home care.

The company has its presence in Netherland, United states, China, Germany, Japan, France, India and Others.

Siemens AG:

Siemens AG, founded in 1896 and based in Munich, Germany. The company provides manufacturing, distributing and services of medical devices and pharma Services. Company is engaged in providing precision medicines, transforming care delivery, innovative technology in area of diagnostics, molecular medicine and many others. The company has its presence in Europe, C.I.S., Africa, Middle East, Americas , Asia, Australia.

Market Developments:

Inquiry Before Buying AThttps://databridgemarketresearch.com/inquire-before-buying/?dbmr=global-fluoroscopy-c-arms-market

About Data Bridge Market Research:

Data Bridge Market Researchset forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.

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Fluoroscopy and Mobile C-Arms Market to reach USD 3,051.4 million by 2026 | Technology Development Trends, Business Growth Opportunities, Competitive...

Henry Ford Health System Recognized as Center of Excellence by Sunquest Information Systems – Business Wire

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TUCSON, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sunquest Information Systems Inc., the leader in laboratory information solutions, announced today it has recognized Henry Ford Health System as a Center of Excellence for its superior commitment to laboratory innovation and for using Sunquest solutions to improve care for the patient community and drive greater efficiency for the organization.

The Center of Excellence program recognizes world-class health systems that utilize Sunquest solutions to support the strategic direction of their organization. This includes establishing and promoting best practices that improve patient safety, decrease the cost of healthcare, streamline provider care, and provide thought leadership and recommendations on new and existing Sunquest products. The Sunquest Center of Excellence program identifies those organizations that are committed to the Institute for Healthcare Improvements quadruple aim, which calls for the pursuit of lower costs, better outcomes and improved patient and provider experiences.

Our collaboration with Henry Ford Health System has demonstrated that the value of a strategically developed laboratory solution extends far beyond the four walls of the lab, said Paul Stinson, Chief Growth Officer for Sunquest. Henry Fords commitment to laboratory innovation along with the use of the Sunquest clinical and anatomic pathology laboratory information solutions platform allows them to efficiently deliver valuable laboratory data to stakeholders within the enterprise, as well as manage a complex core lab with outreach to physician offices and the community.

Henry Ford Health System, founded in 1915 by auto pioneer Henry Ford and now one of the nation's leading healthcare providers, is a not-for-profit corporation comprising six hospitals, 30 medical centers and one of the nation's largest group practices, the Henry Ford Medical Group, with more than 1,500 physicians practicing in over 40 specialties. The System's flagship, Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, is a Level 1 Trauma Center recognized for clinical excellence in cardiology, cardiovascular surgery, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, sports medicine, multi-organ transplants and cancer treatment.

Just as the auto pioneer Henry Ford exemplified innovation, we too are committed to continuous improvement, both today and for the future, stated J. Mark Tuthill, MD, Division Head of Pathology Informatics at Henry Ford Health System. Partnerships enable us to support the strategic direction of the Henry Ford Health System, our physicians, and provide us the opportunity to drive greater efficiency and collaboration throughout the enterprise, using laboratory data and resources that are supported by Sunquest technology.

Henry Ford Health System has been a Sunquest customer for more than 30 years and uses the following Sunquest solutions: Sunquest Laboratory, Sunquest CoPathPlus, Sunquest VUE, Sunquest Analytics, Sunquest Physician Portal, and Sunquest Advanced EMR Connectivity. These solutions are tightly integrated with Data Innovations for instrument connectivity, Epic EHR for registration and order capture, as well as numerous physician office EMRs to support the organizations large outreach program.

About Sunquest

Sunquest Information Systems Inc. provides diagnostic informatics solutions to laboratories worldwide. With our wide-ranging technical and cross-discipline expertise, and equally deep business acumen, no one is better equipped than Sunquest to transform your lab to meet todays complex healthcare challenges and deliver next-level performance. Since 1979, Sunquest has helped laboratories and healthcare organizations enhance efficiency, improve patient care, and optimize financial results. Our capabilities include multi-site, multi-disciplinary support for complex anatomic, molecular and genetic testing, and support engagement with physicians and patients outside the hospitals at the point-of-care. Headquartered in Tucson, AZ with offices in Calabasas, London, Dubai, Bangalore and Brisbane, Sunquest is a global leader in healthcare information technology. Visit http://www.sunquestinfo.com to learn more.

About Henry Ford Health System

Henry Ford Health System is a six-hospital system headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. It is one of the nations leading comprehensive, integrated health systems, recognized for clinical excellence and innovation. Henry Ford provides both health insurance and health care delivery, including acute, specialty, primary and preventive care services backed by excellence in research and education. Henry Ford Medical Group physicians and researchers are involved in more than 2,000 ongoing clinical research projects. Henry Ford Health System is led by President & CEO Wright Lassiter III. Visit HenryFord.com to learn more.

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Henry Ford Health System Recognized as Center of Excellence by Sunquest Information Systems - Business Wire

Why conservatives are better at dating than liberals – New York Post

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Its a Grand Old Party especially if youre single.

Conservatives are much better at dating than liberals, according to a new survey by the over-50 dating app Lumen.

The company found that right-wingers are more direct than their left-wing counterparts. They clearly state to potential lovers what they are looking for in terms of life and romance, according to the findings.

They also value family and friendships higher than liberals and have a smaller, more intimate group of friends. By contrast, liberals tend to thrive in larger social groups. But left-leaners have their advantages, too they are generally carefree and more fun than conservatives. And theyre more inclined to explore and travel the world than those who lean right, Lumen found.

Unsurprisingly, people who share the same political opinions flock together like birds of a feather.

Conservative women are twice as likely to chat with their right-wing peers than to initiate a conversation with their liberal counterparts, according to the survey. Left-wing women are similarly set in their ways, as are liberal lads, who are three times more likely to chat with fellow liberals than conservatives.

Lumen, owned by the same holding company as Bumble, made the findings after analyzing data from its 1.5 million user base.

The survey comes after The Post reported that dating can be difficult if you back Donald Trump, especially in blue cities such as New York and Los Angeles.

I think theres a special stigma when people say theyre supporting Trump because of some of the brash things that hes said, lifelong Republican David Goss, founder of TrumpSingles.com, told us in June.

That immediately gets [projected] on his supporters and makes it hard for them when trying to date.

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Why conservatives are better at dating than liberals - New York Post

Frustrated Remainers urge the Liberal Democrats to stand aside for Labour in a key election seat – INSIDER

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There is dismay among Remain voters after the Liberal Democrats refused to stand aside for a pro-European Union Labour candidate in a key general election seat.

Jo Swinson's Liberal Democrats and Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party are refusing to work together at the December 12 general election despite many of their own supporters urging them to do so.

On Tuesday, former journalist Tim Walker withdrew as the Liberal Democrat candidate in Canterbury, saying that standing would likely "divide the remainers" and hand victory to pro-Brexit Conservative candidate, Anna Firth.

The seat is being defended by Labour's Rosie Duffield, who like the Liberal Democrats wants a new referendum on Brexit and to stay in the EU. She is just 187 votes ahead of the second-placed Conservatives.

However, despite pressure from some of their supporters to follow Walker's suit, the Liberal Democrats said that they intended to find a new candidate to challenge Duffield before the nominations deadline on Thursday.

"We will be selecting a candidate in due course to contest the seat of Canterbury," a party spokesperson told Business Insider.

The decision exasperated anti-Brexit campaigners who want Labour and the Liberal Democrats to work together. One figure in the campaign told Business Insider it went down like a "cup of cold sick."

A number of Lib Dem supporters also expressed their frustration on Twitter, pleading with leader Swinson and other party figures to give Duffield a clear run at the seat.

Proponents of a "Remain alliance" say that Labour and the Liberal Democrats should work together in a number of seats in order to deprive Boris Johnson of victory and create a parliamentary majority for a new referendum.

Polls show that the Remain vote is split between Labour and the Liberal Democrats as the United Kingdom heads into the December election.

Naomi Smith, CEO of pro-referendum group Best For Britain, told Business Insider: "Rosie Duffield is a fantastic parliamentarian with a great record of voting for the public to have the final say on Brexit.

"Our data indicates Rosie is the best placed candidate in Canterbury to fight the Tories.

"The Lib Dems now mustn't stand another candidate and split the Remain vote."

Both parties came under increased pressure to put their differences aside and work together when Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said on Monday that his party would stand aside for Johnson in 317 Conservative-held seats.

Reuters

The Liberal Democrats have agreed to work together with the Greens and Plaid Cymru in 60 seats, under the terms of an electoral pact brokered by anti Brexit campaign Unite to Remain.

The Liberal Democrat president, Sal Brinton, said last week her party had approached Labour about working together earlier this year, but Labour responded by saying it would not stand aside for any other party at the next election.

The Liberal Democrats' current position is they will not stand aside for Labour candidates unless it is reciprocated.

On Tuesday night, the party's former leader Tim Farron tweeted: "It's worth noting that Labour aren't standing down in a single seat for anyone, and that the Lib Dems are standing down for Greens, Plaid and independents in a number of seats it is Labour nationally who have chosen not to play ball."

But the differences between the two parties do not end there.

The Liberal Democrats say that while some Labour candidates support staying in the EU, the party does not have a policy of remaining. Corbyn has said he would negotiate a new Brexit deal and put it to a referendum.

Swinson has repeatedly said that Corbyn is "unfit" to be prime minister.

Furthermore, Labour blames the Liberal Democrats for the austerity policies of the Coalition government, and has accused Swinson of being prepared to prop up a Conservative government led by Johnson.

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Frustrated Remainers urge the Liberal Democrats to stand aside for Labour in a key election seat - INSIDER

Liberalism According to The Economist – The New Yorker

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Liberalism made the modern world, but the modern world is turning against it, an article in The Economist lamented last year, on the occasion of the magazines hundred-and-seventy-fifth anniversary. Europe and America are in the throes of a popular rebellion against liberal lites, who are seen as self-serving and unable, or unwilling, to solve the problems of ordinary people, even as authoritarian China is poised to become the worlds largest economy. For a publication that was founded to campaign for liberalism, all of this was profoundly worrying.

The crisis in liberalism has become received wisdom across the political spectrum. Barack Obama included Patrick Deneens Why Liberalism Failed (2018) in his annual list of recommended books; meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has gleefully pronounced liberalism obsolete. The right accuses liberals of promoting selfish individualism and crass materialism at the expense of social cohesion and cultural identity. Centrists claim that liberals obsession with political correctness and minority rights drove white voters to Donald Trump. For the newly resurgent left, the rise of demagoguery looks like payback for the small-government doctrines of technocratic neoliberalismtax cuts, privatization, financial deregulation, antilabor legislation, cuts in Social Securitywhich have shaped policy in Europe and America since the eighties.

Attacks on liberalism are nothing new. In 1843, the year The Economist was founded, Karl Marx wrote, The glorious robes of liberalism have fallen away, and the most repulsive despotism stands revealed for all the world to see. Nietzsche dismissed John Stuart Mill, the author of the canonical liberal text On Liberty (1859), as a numbskull. In colonized Asia and Africa, criticssuch as R.C. Dutt, in India, and Sun Yat-sen, in Chinapointed out liberalisms complicity in Western imperialism. Muhammad Abduh, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, wrote, Your liberalness, we see plainly, is only for yourselves. (Mill, indeed, had justified colonialism on the ground that it would lead to the improvement of barbarians.) From a different vantage, critiques came from aspiring imperialist powers, such as Germany (Carl Schmitt), Italy (Gaetano Salvemini), and Japan (Tokutomi Soh). Since then, Anglo-American thinkers such as Reinhold Niebuhr and John Gray have pointed out liberalisms troubled relationship with democracy and human rights, and its overly complacent belief in reason and progress.

Yet the sheer variety of criticisms of liberalism makes it hard to know right away what precisely is being criticized. Liberalisms ancestry has been traced back to John Lockes writings on individual reason, Adam Smiths economic theory, and the empiricism of David Hume, but today the doctrine seems to contain potentially contradictory elements. The philosophy of individual liberty connotes both a desire for freedom from state regulation in economic matters (a stance close to libertarianism) and a demand for the state to insure a minimal degree of social and economic justicethe liberalism of the New Deal and of European welfare states. The iconic figures of liberalism themselves moved between these commitments. Mill, even while supporting British imperialism in India and Ireland, called himself a socialist and outlined the aim of achieving common ownership in the raw materials of the globe. The Great Depression forced John Dewey to conclude that the socialized economy is the means of free individual development. Isaiah Berlin championed the noninterference of the state in 1958, in his celebrated lecture Two Concepts of Liberty; but eleven years later he had come to believe that such negative liberty armed the able and ruthless against the less gifted and less fortunate.

Because of this conceptual morass, liberalism has, to an unusual degree, been defined by what it wasnt. For French liberals in the early nineteenth century, it was a defense against the excesses of Jacobins and ultra-monarchists. For the free-trading Manchester Liberals of the mid-nineteenth century, it was anticolonial. Liberals in Germany, on the other hand, were allied with both nationalists and imperialists. In the twentieth century, liberalism became a banner under which to march against Communism and Fascism. Recent scholars have argued that it wasnt until liberalism became the default other of totalitarian ideologies that inner coherence and intellectual lineage were retrospectively found for it. Locke, a devout Christian, was not regarded as a philosopher of liberalism until the early twentieth century. Nor was the word liberal part of U.S. political discourse before that time. When Lionel Trilling claimed, in 1950, that liberalism in America was not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition, the term was becoming a catchall signifier of moral prestige, variously synonymous with democracy, capitalism, and even simply the West. Since 9/11, it has seemed more than ever to define the West against such illiberal enemies as Islamofascism and Chinese authoritarianism.

The Economist proudly enlists itself in this combative Anglo-American tradition, having vigorously claimed to be advancing the liberal cause since its founding. In Liberalism at Large (Verso), Alexander Zevin, a historian at the City University of New York, takes it at its word, telling the story not only of the magazine itself but also of its impact on world affairs. Using The Economist as a proxy for liberalism enables Zevin to sidestep much conceptual muddle about the doctrine. His examination of The Economists pronouncements and of the policies of those who heeded them yields, in effect, a study of several liberalisms as they have been widely practiced in the course of a hundred and seventy-five years. The magazine emerges as a force thatthanks to the military, cultural, and economic power of Britain and, later, Americacan truly be said to have made the modern world, if not in the way that many liberals would suppose.

In terms of its influence, The Economist has long been a publication like no other. Within a decade of its founding, Marx was describing it as the organ of the aristocracy of finance. In 1895, Woodrow Wilson called it a sort of financial providence for businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic. (Wilson, an Anglophile, wooed his evidently forbearing wife with quotations from Walter Bagehot, the most famous of The Economists editors.) For years, the magazine was proud of the exclusivity of its readership. Now it has nearly a million subscribers in North America (more than in Britain), and seven hundred thousand in the rest of the world. Since the early nineties, it has served, alongside the Financial Times, as the suavely British-accented voice of globalization (scoring over the too stridently partisan and American Wall Street Journal).

According to its own statistics, its readers are the richest and the most prodigal consumers of all periodical readers; more than twenty per cent once claimed ownership of a cellar of vintage wines. Like Aston Martin, Burberry, and other global British brands, The Economist invokes the glamour of litism. Its lonely at the top, one of its ads says, but at least theres something to read. Its articles, almost all of which are unsigned, were until recently edited from an office in St. Jamess, London, a redoubt of posh Englishness, with private clubs, cigar merchants, hatters, and tailors. The present editor, Zanny Minton Beddoes, is the first woman ever to hold the position. The staff, predominantly white, is recruited overwhelmingly from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and a disproportionate number of the most important editors have come from just one Oxford college, Magdalen. Lack of diversity is a benefit, Gideon Rachman, a former editor who is now a columnist at the Financial Times, told Zevin, explaining that it produces an assertive and coherent point of view. Indeed, contributors are not shy about adding prescription (how to fix Indias power problems, say) to their reporting and analysis. The pieces are mostly short, but the coverage is comprehensive; a single issue might cover the insurgency in south Thailand, public transportation in Jakarta, commodities prices, and recent advances in artificial intelligence. This air of crisp editorial omniscience insures that the magazine is as likely to be found on an aspirant think tankers iPad in New Delhi as it is on Bill Gatess private jet.

Zevin, having evidently mastered the magazines archives, commands a deep knowledge of its inner workings and its historical connection to political and economic power. He shows how its editors and contributors pioneered the revolving doors that link media, politics, business, and financealumni have gone on to such jobs as deputy governor of the Bank of England, Prime Minister of Britain, and President of Italyand how such people have defined, at crucial moments in history, liberalisms ever-changing relationship with capitalism, imperialism, democracy, and war.

A capsule version of this thesis can be found in the career of James Wilson, The Economists founder and first editor. Wilson, who was born in Scotland and became the owner of a struggling hatmaking business, intended his journal to develop and disseminate the doctrine of laissez-fairenothing but pure principles, as he put it. He was particularly vociferous in his opposition to the Corn Laws, agricultural tariffs that were unpopular with merchants. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, three years after the magazine first appeared, and Wilson began to proselytize more energetically for free trade and the increasingly prominent discipline of economics. He became a Member of Parliament and held several positions in the British government. He also founded a pan-Asian bank, now known as Standard Chartered, which expanded fast on the back of the opium trade with China. In 1859, Wilson became Chancellor of the Indian Exchequer. He died in India the following year, trying to reconfigure the countrys financial system.

During his short career as a journalist-cum-crusader, Wilson briskly clarified what he meant by pure principles. He opposed a ban on trading with slaveholding countries on the ground that it would punish slaves as well as British consumers. In the eighteen-forties, when Ireland was struck with famine, which was largely caused by free tradethe British insisted on exporting Irish food, despite catastrophic crop failureWilson called for a homeopathic remedy: more free trade. With Irish intransigence becoming a nuisance, he advised the British to respond with powerful, resolute, but just repression. Wilson was equally stern with those suffering from rising inequality at home. In his view, the government was wrong to oblige rail companies to provide better service for working-class passengers, who were hitherto forced to travel in exposed freight cars: Where the most profit is made, the public is best served. Limit the profit, and you limit the exertion of ingenuity in a thousand ways. A factory bill limiting women to a twelve-hour workday was deemed equally pernicious. As for public schooling, common people should be left to provide education as they provide food for themselves.

The Economist held that, if the pursuit of self-interest, left equally free for all, does not lead to the general welfare, no system of government can accomplish it. But this opposition to government intervention, it turned out, did not extend to situations in which liberalism appeared to be under threat. In the eighteen-fifties, Zevin writes, the Crimean War, the Second Opium War, and the Indian Mutiny rocked British liberalism at home and recast it abroad. Proponents of free trade had consistently claimed that it was the best hedge against war. However, Britains expansion across Asia, in which free trade was often imposed at gunpoint, predictably provoked conflict, and, for The Economist, wherever Britains imperial interests were at stake, war could become an absolute necessity, to be embraced.

This betrayal of principle alienated, among others, the businessman and statesman Richard Cobden, who had helped Wilson found The Economist, and had shared his early view of free trade as a guarantee of world peace. India, for Cobden, was a country we do not know how to govern, and Indians were justified in rebelling against an inept despotism. For Wilsons Economist, however, Indians, like the Irish, exemplified the native character... half child, half savage, actuated by sudden and unreasoning impulses. Besides, commerce with India would be at an end were English power withdrawn. The next editor, Wilsons son-in-law Walter Bagehot, broadened the magazines appeal and gave its opinions a more seductive intellectual sheen. But the editorial line remained much the same. During the American Civil War, Bagehot convinced himself that the Confederacy, with which he was personally sympathetic, could not be defeated by the Northern states, whose other contests have been against naked Indians and degenerate and undisciplined Mexicans. He also believed that abolition would best be achieved by a Southern victory. More important, trade with the Southern states would be freer.

Discussing these and other editorial misjudgments, Zevin refrains from virtue signalling and applying anachronistic standards. He seems genuinely fascinated by how the liberal vision of individual freedom and international harmony was, as Niebuhr once put it, transmuted into the sorry realities of an international capitalism which recognized neither moral scruples nor political restraints in expanding its power over the world. Part of the explanation lies in Zevins sociology of lites, in which liberalism emerges as a self-legitimating ideology of a rich, powerful, and networked ruling class. Private ambition played a significant role. Bagehot stood for Parliament four times as a member of Britains Liberal Party. Born into a family of bankers, he saw himself and his magazine as offering counsel to a new generation of buccaneering British financiers. His tenure coincided with the age of capital, when British finance transformed the world economy, expanding food cultivation in North America and Eastern Europe, cotton manufacturing in India, mineral extraction in Australia, and rail networks everywhere. According to Zevin, it fell to Bagehots Economist to map this new world, tracing the theoretical insights of political economy to the people and places men of business were sending their money.

The pressures of capitalist expansion abroad and rising disaffection at home further transformed liberal doctrine. Zevin fruitfully describes how liberals coped with the growing demand for democracy. Bagehot had read and admired John Stuart Mill as a young man, but, as an editor, he agreed with him on little more than the need to civilize the natives of Ireland and India. To Bagehot, Mills idea of broadly extending suffrage to women seemed absurd. Nor could he support Mills proposal to enfranchise the laboring classes in Britain, reminding his readers that a political combination of the lower classes, as such and for their own objects, is an evil of the first magnitude. Not surprisingly, The Economist commended Mussolini (a devoted reader) for sorting out an Italian economy destabilized by labor unrest.

Nonetheless, by the early twentieth century, the magazine was groping toward an awareness that, in an advanced industrial society, classical liberalism had to be moderated, and that progressive taxation and basic social-welfare systems were the price of defusing rising discontent. The magazine has since presented this volte-face as evidence of its pragmatic liberalism. Zevin reveals it as a grudging response to democratic pressures from below. Moreover, there were clear limits to The Economists newfound compassionate liberalism. As late as 1914, one editor, Francis Hirst, was still denouncing the shrieking, struggling, fighting viragoes who had demanded the right to vote despite having no capacity for reason. His comparison of suffragettes to Russian and Turkish marauderspillaging solemn vows, ties of love and affection, honor, romancehelped drive his own wife to suffragism.

As more people acquired the right to vote, and as market mechanisms failed, empowering autocrats and accelerating international conflicts, The Economist was finally forced to compromise the purity of its principles. In 1943, in a book celebrating the centenary of the magazine, its editor at the time acknowledged that larger electorates saw inequality and insecurity as a serious problem. The Economist disagreed with the socialists not on their objective, but only on the methods they proposed for attaining it. Such a stance mirrored a widespread acceptance on both sides of the Atlantic that governments should do more to protect citizens from an inherently volatile economic system. Since the nineteen-sixties, however, The Economist has steadily reinstated its foundational ideals.

In the process, it missed an opportunity to reconfigure for the postcolonial age a liberalism forged during the high noon of imperialism. The emergence of new, independent nation-states across Asia and Africa from the late forties onward was arguably the most important development of the twentieth century. Liberalism faced a new test among a great majority of the worlds population: Could newly sovereign peoples, largely poor and illiterate, embrace free markets and minimize government right away? Would such a policy succeed without prior government-led investment in public health, education, and local manufacturing? Even a Cold War liberal like Raymond Aron questioned the efficacy of Western-style liberalism in Asia and Africa. But The Economist seemed content to see postcolonial nations and their complex challenges through the Cold Wars simple dichotomy of the free and the unfree world. In any case, by the seventies, the magazines editors were increasingly taking their inspiration from economics departments and think tanks, where the pure neoliberal principles of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek were dominant, rather than from such liberal theorists of justice as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Amartya Sen.

In the nineteen-eighties, The Economists cheerleading for Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagans embrace of neoliberalism led to a dramatic rise in its American circulation. (Reagan personally thanked the magazines editor for his support over dinner.) Dean Acheson famously remarked that Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role. No such status anxiety inhibited The Economist as it crossed the Atlantic to make new friends and influence more people. After the Second World War, when the U.S. emerged as the new global hegemon, the magazinedespite some initial resentment, commonplace among British lites at the timequickly adjusted itself to the Pax Americana. It came to revere the U.S. as, in the words of one editor, a giant elder brother, a source of reassurance, trust and stability for weaker members of the family, and nervousness and uncertainty for any budding bullies.

This meant stalwart support for American interventions abroad, starting with Vietnam, where, as the historian and former staff writer Hugh Brogan tells Zevin, the magazines coverage was pure CIA propaganda. It euphemized the wars horrors, characterizing the My Lai massacre as minor variations on the general theme of the fallibility of men at war. By 1972, following the saturation bombing of North Vietnam, the magazine was complaining that Henry Kissinger was too soft on the North Vietnamese. A policy of fealty to the giant elder brother also made some campaigners for liberalism a bit too prone to skulduggery. Zevin relates colorful stories about the magazines overzealous Cold Warriors, such as Robert Moss, who diligently prepared international opinion for the military coup in Chile in 1973, which brought down its democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende. In Mosss view, Chiles generals reached the conclusion that democracy does not have the right to commit suicide. (The generals expressed their gratitude by buying and distributing nearly ten thousand copies of the magazine.) Zevin relates that, when news of Allendes death reached Moss in London, he danced down the corridors of The Economists office, chanting, My enemy is dead! Moss went on to edit a magazine owned by Anastasio Somoza, Nicaraguas U.S.-backed dictator.

After the fall of Communist regimes in 1989, The Economist embraced a fervently activist role in Russia and Eastern Europe, armed with the mantras of privatization and deregulation. In its pages, the economist Jeffrey Sachs, who was then working to reshape transition economies in the region, coined the term shock therapy for these policies. The socioeconomic rengineering was brutalsalaries and public services collapsedand, in 1998, Russias financial system imploded. Only a few months before this disaster, The Economist was still hailing the dynamism, guile and vision of Anatoly Chubais, the politician whose sale of Russias assets to oligarchs had by then made him the most despised public figure in the country. In 2009, a study in The Lancet estimated that shock therapy had led to the premature deaths of millions of Russians, mostly men of employment age. The Economist was unrepentant, insisting that Russias tragedy was that reform came too slowly, not too fast.

Who can trust Trumps America? a recent Economist cover story asked, forlornly surveying the ruins of the Pax Americana. The political earthquakes of the past few years perhaps make it lonelier at the top for the magazine than at any other time in its history; the articles celebrating last years anniversary were presented as a manifesto for renewing liberalism. Ten years before, when the financial crisis erupted, the magazine overcame its primal distrust of government intervention to endorse bank bailouts, arguing that it was a time to put dogma and politics to one side. It also continued to defend neoliberal policies, on the basis that the people running the system, not the system itself, are to blame. Now, finally chastened, if not by the financial crisis then by its grisly political upshot, the magazine has conceded that liberals have become too comfortable with power and wrapped up in preserving the status quo. Its anniversary manifesto touted a liberalism for the people. But soul-searching has its limits: the manifesto admiringly quoted Milton Friedman on the need to be radical, resurrected John McCains fantasy of a league of democracies as an alternative to the United Nations, and scoffed at millennials who dont wish to fight for the old liberal world order. A more recent cover story warns American bosses about Elizabeth Warrens plans to tackle inequality, and revives Friedmanite verities about how creative destruction and the dynamic power of markets can best help middle-class Americans.

The Economist is no doubt sincere about wanting to be more woke. It seeks more female readers, according to a 2016 briefing for advertisers, and is anxious to dispel the idea that the magazine is an arrogant, dull handbook for outdated men. Whereas, in 2002, it rushed to defend Bjrn Lomborg, the global-warming skeptic, this fall it dedicated an entire issue to the climate emergency. Still, The Economist may find it more difficult than much of the old Anglo-American establishment to check its privilege. Its limitations arise not only from a defiantly nondiverse and parochial intellectual culture but also from a house style too prone to contrarianism. A review, in 2014, of a book titled The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism accused its author of not being objective, complaining that almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains. Following an outcry, the magazine retracted the review. However, a recent assessment of Brazils privatization driveJair Bolsonaro is a dangerous populist, with some good ideassuggests that it is hard to tone down what the journalist James Fallows has described as the magazines Oxford Union argumentative style, a stance too cocksure of its rightness and superiority.

This insouciance, bred by the certainty of having made the modern world, cannot seem anything but incongruous in the rancorously polarized societies of Britain and the United States. The two blond demagogues currently leading the worlds two oldest liberal democracies bespeak a ruling class thatthrough a global financial crisis, rising inequality, and ill-conceived military interventions in large parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africahas squandered its authority and legitimacy. The reputation, central to much Cold War liberalism, of England as a model liberal society also lies shattered amid the calamity of Brexit.

For the young, in particular, old frameworks of liberalism seem to be a constraint on the possibilities of politics. It should be remembered, however, that these new critics of liberalism seek not to destroy but to fulfill its promise of individual freedom. They are looking, just as John Dewey was, for suitable modes of politics and economy in a world radically altered by capitalism and technologya liberalism for the people, not just for their networked rulers. In that sense, it is not so much liberalism that is in crisis as its self-styled campaigners, who are seen, not unreasonably, as complicit in unmaking the modern world.

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Liberalism According to The Economist - The New Yorker

The new Liberal voter coalition looks a lot like the last one – Maclean’s

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When John Brassard was knocking on doors in Barrie, Ont. in this falls election, he could sense that his Conservative partys platform was a winner. Brassard, the incumbent in Barrie-Innisfil, was confident voters would give him a second term on the strength of a tax cut the Conservatives said would save the average family $850 a year, a public transit tax credit that could save long-distance commuters almost $600 a year, and a childrens fitness tax credit that could save hundreds more.

And he did comfortably hold his riding, even after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid Barrie two visits during the 40-day campaign. If Trudeau didnt manage to oust Brassard, though, election results across the suburban swath that starts just south of his seat show why the Liberals tried so hard. Brassard, who represents plenty of Toronto commuters, was the exception, not the rule. His win says a lot about who voted for the Conservatives and who stuck with the Liberals.

GO Transit commuter trains reach the end of the line in Barrie-Innisfil, where thousands of Brassards constituents make the daily trek to downtown Toronto or nearby suburbs. The riding has the ninth-highest proportion of commuters who travel longer than an hour each way, according to census data. But the former city councillor and firefighter draws a distinction between the 705his ridings area codeand the 905 region just to the south.

READ MORE:Who wins Election 2019 under a ranked-ballot system

For one, outside of Barrie and a handful of other residential areas, Brassard represents farmers. And half of the commuters in his riding travel less than 30 minutes each waymeaning many arent lured away by the GTA. Brassard tailored his pitch to each constituent, pushing affordability measures like the transit credit in commuter-heavy areas, and slamming the federal carbon tax whenever he talked to a farmer who said their costs were through the roof. The Conservative platform may have inadvertently been tailored for a riding like Barrie-Innisfildense enough to be considered urban, pock-marked with suburban communities, stitched together by wide rural expansesat the expense of more densely packed GTA ridings.

The stark truth of the 2019 election was that fewer than one in five seats changed hands. The vast majority of Canada voted the same way as four years ago. Only 62 ridings flipped out of 338. The victorious Liberals were still the biggest losers. They shed 21 seats to the Tories and only gained two back; they watched eight of their seats fall to the Bloc Qubcois, a Fredericton seat go Green and a Vancouver district elect Jody Wilson-Raybould.

The opposition parties traded a handful of seats, but the enduring story was just how many voters, especially in the GTA, sent Liberals back to Ottawa. And the new Liberal coalition looks a lot like the last one, if a bit slimmer.

An avalanche of post-election analysis blames the Conservatives loss on Andrew Scheers social conservatism, the poor judgment of his senior staff, a lack of reliable voter data, an inadequate plan to fight climate change and an uninspiring set of platform promises. Tories have dispatched John Baird, a longtime Tory MP and cabinet minister, to assess the partys lacklustre performance. As he goes about his work, detailed Statistics Canada riding profiles with detailed census data on income, employment, ethnicity and age help to piece together the voter coalition that turned away from Scheer and gave Trudeau a second term. (Important caveats: The census data is from 2016, which means its three years oldparticularly relevant in fast-growing communities where demographics change. Also, data on journey to work, ethnicity and education were based on 25 per cent samples of private households in Canada.)

Liberals utterly dominated urban Canada. In 2015, the Liberals won 123 out of 176 ridings with a density of 300 per sq.-km., which our analysis defines as urban. In 2019, they held 107 of those ridings, bleeding 10 to the Tories and four to the Bloc. (Nine of those Tory swings were west of Ontario.) Conservatives struggled mightily to win in cities, managing only to win the 67th densest riding in the countryEdmonton-Griesbach. Rural Canada was, of course, a different story: Tories won 80 of 150 ridings after managing to win only 69 in 2015.

Trudeaus well-worn pitch to the middle class and those working hard to join it appears to have workedagain. Of the 152 ridings in which the median household income was between $40,000 and $60,000 in 2016, the Liberals held 73 and picked up four from the NDP. They lost only a smattering to other parties. The Tories fared better in the 138 ridings with median incomes between $60,000 and $80,000. They didnt lose an inch to other parties, holding 47 ridings and swiping 13 from the Liberals. The two parties split the 41 ridings, 20 apiece, with median incomes between $80,000 and $100,000. (Only four ridings had median incomes over $100,000, and Tories won three, each in Alberta. The fourth, Oakville on the GTAs western flank, went Liberal.)

Trudeau also won big where the most families are paying at least 30 per cent of their income on housing. Of 157 ridings where 40 to 50 per cent of households spend that much on rent, the Liberals won 93 to the Tories 44. In ridings where only 30 to 40 per cent of renting households pay that much, the Conservatives won 56 of 133 (and the Liberals won 50). The trend holds for homeowners, too. The Liberals won 52 of 68 ridings where 20 to 30 per cent of homeowners spent at least 30 per cent of income on housing. The Tories won more seats in ridings that spent less proportionally on their homes.

Liberals also dominate ridings with the highest proportion of lone-parent households: they won 35 of 55 ridings in which more than lone parents make up 20 per cent of households, and 79 of 152 ridings where 15-20 per cent of households have just one parent. Conversely, Tories won 64 of 129 ridings where that number is only 10-15 per cent.

The Conservatives didnt manage to win back many of the GTA seats with large immigrant communities they won in 2008 and 2011and lost in 2015after years of work spearheaded by then-cabinet minister Jason Kenney. Heading into the election, Liberals held five ridings in which Statistics Canada says visible minorities comprised more than 80 per cent of the population. The Tories held one. None of those ridings changed the way they voted. Before the election, Liberals held 20 of 23 ridings where visible minorities made up between 60 and 80 per cent of residents. The Tories held one. On election night, the Liberals won 18 and ceded two to the Tories. Conservatives only won a plurality of seats where the number of visible minorities was under 20 per cent.

On education, too, the electoral divide is clear. Liberals won 14 of 15 ridings where Statistics Canada says 80 per cent or more of adults aged 25-64 have completed post-secondary education. They won 43 of 75 ridings where that proportion is 70 to 80 per cent, and 62 of 126 where that number is 60 to 70 per cent. Tories won a plurality56 of 109where post-secondary rates dropped to 50 to 60 per cent.

Even if younger voters skew left, as post-election analyses often show, the median age of a Tory constituent, 41.3 years old, is roughly comparable to a median Liberal constituent, at 41.2 years old. The Greens three ridings are some of Canadas oldest, which explains their constituents median age of 47.3. The NDPs median constituent is the youngest, at 40.1 years old.

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The new Liberal voter coalition looks a lot like the last one - Maclean's

The Law Schools With The Most Conservative And Liberal Students (2020) – Above the Law

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(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The country has never been more divided politically, and whether theyre strongly in favor of or adamantly opposed to President Trumps policies, people have been inspired to go to law school to somehow save America.

As our readers know, the latest Princeton Review law school rankings are out, and today, well be focusing on what are perhaps the most important rankings of them all: the law schools with the most conservative students and the law schools with the most liberal students. During these times of political division and strife, why not attend a law school where theres a high likelihood that your classmates will share your political ideology?

Which law schools do you think came out on top of these lists?

First, well begin with the methodology Princeton Review used to determine which law schools had the most conservative and liberal students. A single question was asked of respondents to determine the political bent of each schools student body: If there is a prevailing political bent among students at your school, how would you characterize it? Answer choices were: Very Liberal, Liberal, Middle of the Road, Somewhat Conservative, Very Conservative.

Per Princeton Review, these are the law schools where you can wear your MAGA hats with pride, otherwise known as the law schools with the most conservative students:

Note that the majority of these law schools are in Southern states. You can pwn those libs and discuss the latest witch hunt here. And always remember, NO QUID PRO QUO!

According to Princeton Review, these are the law schools where youll be able to plan how youre going protect Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at all costs and stop the country from being ripped apart at the seams the places that are also known as the law schools with the most liberal students:

Note that the majority of these law schools are on either the East or West coasts, and one of them is a T14 institution. These damned liberal elites.

Did your law school or alma mater make the cut? If it did, do you think it was ranked fairly? If it didnt make the list for best career prospects, do you agree with that assessment? Pleaseemail usor text us (646-820-8477) with your thoughts. Thanks.

Most Conservative Students 2020 [Princeton Review]Most Liberal Students 2020 [Princeton Review]

Staci Zaretskyis a senior editor at Above the Law, where shes worked since 2011. Shed love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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The Law Schools With The Most Conservative And Liberal Students (2020) - Above the Law

Liberals Hate the Police – Townhall

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There was a time when any candidate for any office with a background in law enforcement would proudly talk about their record and make it a cornerstone of their campaign. In the last few years, however, the Democratic Party has not only moved away from this former truth, but theyve actually embraced an anti-police hatred that is dangerous and destructive.

It started on a large scale in Ferguson, Missouri, with Michael Brown. This was the guy, who all the evidence showed was the aggressor who went after officer Darren Wilson, who was shot and killed while charging the officer for round two. The death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, sped up the process. From there, no incident involving police was too insignificant to make national news, as long as the victim was black. White or Hispanic confrontations with police, regardless of fault, dont register.

From this, the police are racist and hunting young black men mantra was born. And the birth of a liberal narrative is the only birth they dont want to abort.

It led to the Ferguson Effect; police doing the bare minimum required of their job because they know if things go sideways, even if its not their fault, politicians and the media will demonize them if the circumstances fit their narrative.

This caused countless lives to be damaged, as police defensively ignored obvious signs of crimes because they werent called in to dispatch. But its not the only damage liberal policies and attitudes have done.

Confronting police which is the polite way of pointing out people being complete a-holes to cops is now a point of pride on the left. Why not? When youve been told police are racist monsters who start their shifts hoping to be able to harass minorities, why wouldnt you view them as the enemy?

In the last few years, videos have gone viral countless times with some leftist screaming in the face of police, calling them every name you can imagine, launching projectiles toward them at a tantrum described as a protest, and worse. None were followed by mass condemnation in the media. Antifa, the Brownshirts of the Democratic Party, regularly attacks police and everyone else and is met with praise from the likes of CNN.

No interaction with police is beyond turning into an outrage. The latest happened in feces and needle covered streets of San Francisco.

A man reported as D. McCormick was found to be eating on a commuter train, which is against the law. Rather than simply acknowledge he was wrong and apologize, an argument ensued with a string of profanities tossed at the officer. Of course, it was filmed.

Liberals immediately sided with McCormick.

Anti-Semitic professor and cable news talking head Marc Lamont Hilltweeted, Police stopped this man for eating a sandwich. How can anyone defend this? Homophobic MSNBC host Joy Reiddeclared, We really need to address the overpolicing of people of color in this country. Seriously.

The problem isnt over-policing and has nothing to do with race, it has to do with what most problems have to do with liberal lawmakers.

Democrats love creating new laws. As the saying goes, whatever they dont want to ban they seek to make mandatory. And theres a problem with rodents in big cities, people dont want rats on public transportation, so they saw an opportunity to ban eating food. McCormick was unambiguously breaking the law. But because of the narrative the left constructed, aside from the liberal outrage, the incident sparked an independent review.

The officer could face discipline, not the lawbreaker dropping f-bombs on the cop. By the way, he was arrested for resisting arrest, not for the eating. His attitude got him arrested. Had he not been a jackass he likely wouldve just been warned.

But the main point is the police officer was enforcing the law. Elected officials, who will probably exploit the video to further advance their fraudulent narrative, passed the law. If they didnt want it enforced, why did they pass it?

That question could be asked of every law Democrats gleefully cheer the breaking and ignoring of. (Immigration comes to mind.) Liberalsdecriminalize crime and criminalize enforcing the law They pass laws so they can tell voters theyre doing something about whatever any particular problem is, then condemn it when the people charged with enforcing their laws actually does their job. Police take the heat, politicians and media figures condemn the police, the angry mob gets angrierand they vote, which is why the cycle exists in the first place. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Democrats are responsible for most of the problems they claim exclusive domain over solving. Keep that in mind next time you see one of these outrage-spirals. And thank a cop. Lord knows liberals wont.

Derek is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show onWCBM in Maryland, and author of the book,Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses.

Originally posted here:

Liberals Hate the Police - Townhall

Liberals have public support for both TMX pipeline and carbon tax, suggests new poll – The Globe and Mail

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Pipeline pipes are seen at a Trans Mountain facility near Hope, B.C., Thursday, Aug. 22, 2019. Justin Trudeau will hold individual meetings with the four opposition leaders between Tuesday and Friday of this week to hear their priorities for Canadas new minority Parliament.

JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press

A new poll suggests the Liberal government has support for its pipeline and climate-change strategy as the Prime Minister prepares a legislative agenda that will factor in the views of the opposition parties amid a growing sense of western alienation.

Justin Trudeau will hold individual meetings with the four opposition leaders between Tuesday and Friday of this week to hear their priorities for Canadas new minority Parliament, which is expected to focus much of its attention on environmental and economic issues. The meetings will come after Alberta Premier Jason Kenney ratcheted up his calls over the weekend for greater autonomy for his province in response to increasing separatist sentiment.

The Liberal Party of Canada came under fire in the last election for its position in favour of the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which earned the rebuke of progressive voters, and for the carbon tax, which was vigorously opposed by conservatives.

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Still, a new poll by Nanos Research suggests that going forward with both projects is the most popular option across the country. The polls found that 46 per cent of Canadians are in agreement with the governments plan to continue with the pipeline expansion and to continue imposing a carbon tax in provinces that dont have an equivalent measure in place.

By contrast, 25 per cent of Canadians want the government to only stick with the pipeline project, and 20 per cent would cancel the pipeline project while forging on with the carbon tax.

Support for the cancellation of the carbon tax is highest in the Prairies (45 per cent), while support for the cancellation of the pipeline expansion is strongest in Quebec (37 per cent). Ontarians are the strongest proponents (55 per cent) of continuing with both the tax and the pipeline.

Its pretty clear a significant proportion of Canadians just want to move forward on this. For many Canadians, there is probably a sense of fatigue on both issues, pollster Nik Nanos said.

The poll also found that 59 per cent of Canadians were pleased or somewhat pleased with the results of the Oct. 21 election. The poll showed a polarized country, with residents of Quebec (68 per cent) and Ontario (66 per cent) being satisfied with the outcome of the election, compared with only 34 per cent of residents of the Prairies.

The Liberals won a minority with 157 seats, ahead of the Conservatives (121 seats). The Liberals will mostly rely on the Bloc Qubcois (32 seats), the NDP (24 seats) and the Greens (three seats) to win confidence votes.

The poll of 1,017 Canadians was commissioned by The Globe and Mail and conducted between Oct. 27 and Oct. 30. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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Mr. Nanos said the Prime Minister will have to tread carefully in coming months to deal with anger over his governments policies in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Mr. Trudeau is set to meet Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe in Ottawa on Tuesday.

He is facing a country with more significant regional divisions than we have seen in the past, he said. If there is one clear message for the Liberals, it is that Canadians dont want the same as they saw in the first mandate of Justin Trudeau.

The federal government has imposed a carbon tax, which comes with a tax rebate for consumers, in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick. The measure is scheduled to be imposed in Alberta in January.

On Saturday, Mr. Kenney appointed former Reform Party leader Preston Manning to a new panel that will consider a wholesale rewriting of the provinces relationship with Canada.

The Premier said the Fair Deal panel will now consider the establishment of a provincial revenue agency, withdrawing Albertas workers from the Canada Pension Plan and removing the RCMP in favour of a provincial police force. Alberta will even consider whether it should write its own constitution. Mr. Kenney laid out his vision during a speech in Red Deer, saying the move toward greater autonomy is needed owing to increasing separatist sentiment and the re-election of Mr. Trudeaus Liberals.

With a report from Justin Giovannetti

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Liberals have public support for both TMX pipeline and carbon tax, suggests new poll - The Globe and Mail

Liberal official admits Chinese language signs were meant to look like they came from AEC – The Guardian

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The former acting Victorian state director for the Liberal party has admitted in court that signs written in Chinese at polling booths on election day were designed to look like official Australian Electoral Commission signage.

The full federal court is hearing the challenges to the elections of Liberal MP Gladys Liu in Chisholm and the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, in Kooyong over three days. The cases have been brought against the two candidates by climate campaigner Vanessa Garbett and unsuccessful independent Kooyong candidate Oliver Yates.

On Wednesday, Simon Frost, who authorised the signs, said under questioning from Lisa De Ferrari, the barrister for the applicants, that the two signs one in traditional Chinese characters, and one in simplified Chinese characters were intended to appear as though they were AEC corflutes.

The signs that were used in seven electorates in Victoria said, according to an English translation, that the correct way to vote was to put 1 next to the Liberal candidate.

You intended to convey the impression that this was an AEC corflute, didnt you? De Ferrari asked.

Frost, now an adviser to Frydenberg, took a long pause before replying: It was similar to the AEC colours, yes.

So the answer to my question is yes? De Ferrari pressed.

Yes, Frost replied.

Frost had already confirmed that the signs were intended to say to make your vote count but the meaning was lost in translation to the correct way to vote. He said on Thursday it could be a problem that the signs said different words than he authorised.

He also conceded he had not thought at the time about whether the signs were likely to mislead or deceive voters.

He told the court that the signs were proof-read the day before the election in May but the mistake was not picked up. He indicated the Liberal candidate for Hotham, George Hua, also proof-read the signs before the election.

On the day of the election, Frost said he became aware of concerns about the signs once the AEC tweeted replies to people raising issue with the signs, but decided the Liberal partys opponents were merely making a political point out of the signs.

He said at no point on election day did Frydenberg or Liu contact him about the signs, and there would have been no time to print off and distribute more than 500 of the new signs with the correct wording through seven Victorian electorates on election day.

De Ferrari said the ruling being sought is to void the election result in both electorates, causing byelections, which would come at a cost, but the principle was more important.

[It] would put a stop to a developing and illegal practice that is really troubling, she said. The principle is too important to have those considerations of practical inconvenience take over.

The hearing continues.

This story was amended on 7 November 2019 to correct the name of the petitioner Vanessa Garbett. The petition was originally lodged under a different name.

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Liberal official admits Chinese language signs were meant to look like they came from AEC - The Guardian

Implementation of new NAFTA will be ‘important priority’ for Liberal government as U.S. negotiations progress – The Hill Times

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With MPs set to return to Ottawa on Dec. 5, progress is being made towards implementation of the new NAFTA south of the border, highlighted by the recent visit to Parliament Hill of the chairman of the important U.S. House Ways and Means Committee.

The implementation is viewed as an important priority by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland (University-Rosedale, Ont.), according to a spokesperson for her office.

Liberal MP Wayne Easter (Malpeque, P.E.I.) said the new NAFTA should be implemented as soon as possible.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, is pictured with U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence on May 30. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

The signing of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)called the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) in Canadawas signed on Nov. 30, 2018, after being agreed upon two months earlier. It has yet only been implemented in Mexico, as U.S. House of Representatives Democrats are in the midst of negotiations with U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lightizer before the pact is brought to the House floor for a vote. The Canadian government has maintained it will proceed with implementation in tandem with the U.S. The agreement doesnt come into force until all three countries have implemented it.

Ive been in some meetings with the Americans lately and CUSMA is on their agenda as well, and I think were trying to find ways to ensure that they move ahead on it and we dont want to move in advance of that, said Mr. Easter, chair of the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group and chair of the House Finance Committee in the last Parliament, but we should have this implemented as soon as possible.

Adam Austen, press secretary for Ms. Freeland, wouldnt say the level of legislative priority of the implementation bill in the coming Parliament, but said Ms. Freeland and the government as a whole view the ratification of the trade deal as an important priority.

The future of implementation in Canada, Mr. Austen said, will become clearer once the new cabinet is sworn in on Nov. 20.

Before Parliament was dissolved at the call of the election, the USMCA implementation bill had passed at second reading and was referred to the House Committee for International Trade.

Brian Kingston, vice-president of international and fiscal policy at the Business Council of Canada, said Canada should wait until there is a clear signal that there has been an agreement between the House Democrats and Mr. Lightizer in order for Canada to make the necessary changes needed before tabling a new implementation bill.

He added that tabling the bill would have no impact on the speed in which the process unfolds on Capitol Hill.

Canada moving now wont do anything and, if anything, it actually just complicates the process, because if we move ahead with the implementation bill as it exists and changes are made at a later date, we would have to go back and amend the agreement, Mr. Kingston said.

Sarah Goldfeder, a former U.S. diplomat and current Earnscliffe principal, said the Americans are going to move at their own pace.

Theyre not going to get sped up by anything [that Canada would do]. The Mexicans passed it and the Americans still didnt move, she said.

The recent visit of U.S. House Democrat Richard Neal, chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee which has jurisdiction over trade agreements, to Ottawa is a sign that progress is being made towards ratification, trade specialists say.

The new NAFTA was signed on Nov. 30, 2018. White House photograph by Shealah Craighead

The chairman wouldnt take the time to come up to Ottawa unless there is genuine progress being made, and a real sense that theyre getting to a place that there may be an agreement between House Dems and the USTR, said Mr. Kingston.

Democrat Collin Peterson, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, told U.S.-based agriculture-focused podcast D.C. Signal to Noise last week that Mr. Neal told him that the implementation may be forwarded when the House sits this week or next.

[Mr. Neal] told me he is going to try and move it when we get back, Mr. Peterson said on Nov. 7. The U.S. House of Representatives is sitting from Nov. 11 to 15 and 18 to 21. It will return in December to sit from Dec. 3 to 6 and Dec. 9 to 12.

The question [is if it is] going to get done in those two weeks or it gets down in December. I think its going to get down by the end of the year barring some other thing that comes along and blows it up outside of the USMCA, Mr. Peterson said.

Eric Miller, president of the Rideau Potomac Strategy Group and a former senior policy adviser at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., said the visit signifies that the deal is coming into the home stretch and the House Democrats are making sure that the changes being agreed to in D.C. are agreeable to the Canadian government.

This is essentially signal checking that what they would see as more or less the outlines of the final agreement are acceptable to Canada, Mr. Miller said, who serves on the external advisory committee on international trade policy to the deputy minister of international trade.

Mr. Neal and a Congressional delegation made a similar trip to Mexico last month.

The sticking issue from getting a U.S. House vote on the USMCA is the labour issue, Ms. Goldfeder said.

Ms. Goldfeder said a goal of Mr. Neals Ottawa trip was to make enforcement provisions less about Mexico and more about all three partners, and to find out if Canada could be helpful resolving outstanding issues between the U.S. and Mexico on labour.

The white smoke signalling a deal is close to completion, Mr. Kingston said, will be the words of AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.

In an October speech to the University of the District of Columbias law school, Mr. Trumka questioned, according to Politico, the need to have a House vote before the end of the year. Politico reported that support of Mr. Trumka and other U.S. labour leaders is key to getting enough Democrats to vote for the new NAFTA.

nmoss@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

Neil Moss is a reporter at The Hill Times covering federal politics, foreign policy, and defence.- nmoss@hilltimes.com

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Why the next Liberal leader faces a daunting task of historic proportions – TVO

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For much of the past three and a half decades, being the permanent leader of the Ontario Liberal Party has been a pretty good gig. In fact, David Peterson, Dalton McGuinty, and Kathleen Wynne all became premiers. Only Lyn McLeod didnt.

But the next Liberal leader, wholl be crowned at a convention on March 7, 2020, will undoubtedly take on the most daunting mission of any leader the party has had since George Brown became its first standard bearer in 1857.

The most obvious headache will be money. The party is pretty much broke. And, thanks to the more restrictive fundraising rules put in place by Wynnes government, its become significantly harder to raise cash if youre not the government (with only five seats in the Ontario legislature, these guys are a long way away from being government). Theres only so much begging head office can do with party loyalists, of whom there are now precious few. The last estimate put the Ontario Liberal membership at 10,000 hardy souls. Compare that to the reigning Progressive Conservatives, who may no longer have the 200,000 the party boasted of two years ago but are surely miles ahead of the Grits.

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One way the parties can stay relevant on the ground is by putting in place a permanent organization attached to the local riding association. Thats another problem the Liberals have. There are 124 ridings in Ontario, and Ive heard estimates that the Liberals are just plain dead in one-third to one-half of those ridings. That means no riding association president, no treasurer, no money in the bank, no volunteers. The situation is dire.

The next Liberal leader will also have the most difficult job ever finding candidates. Even when parties lose elections, they tend to elect a decent-sized caucus. In 2011, the PC official Opposition had 37 MPPs; in 2014, it was 28 MPPs; in 2018, the New Democrats elected 40 MPPs to become the official Opposition.

The point is, the more members you elect, the fewer candidates you have to find the next time. The Liberals have five MPPs today. That means finding 119 people who are prepared to put their lives on hold for a year to run in the 2022 election. No Liberal leader has had to find that many candidates before. Ever.

So, thats what the inbox for the next Liberal leader looks like. And whats worse, they will have to accomplish all that at a time when politics in the nations capital is very much uncertain. The lifespan of a minority parliament is, by definition, unknowable. Who knows when the fragile truce that currently exists among the national parties could come apart, sending the whole gang back onto the hustings and into another election? That would further strain the resources the provincial party needs in order to rebuild, because all the interest would shift to their federal cousins.

Whats perhaps startling is that, at the moment, there are five people who actually want this job: current MPPs Michael Coteau and Mitzie Hunter, former MPP Steven Del Duca, and defeated 2018 election candidates Kate Graham and Alvin Tedjo.

The cutoff to join the Liberal party to vote for one of these contenders is December 2. After that, party members will have some huge questions to answer:

I cant recall a leadership contest in which the winner wound up envying the losers. But this may turn out to be just that.

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Why the next Liberal leader faces a daunting task of historic proportions - TVO

Back to a liberal future or forward to progress with Labour? – Morning Star Online

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EVER since Jeremy Corbyn was first elected as leader of the Labour Party, so-called centrist columnists and politicians in Scotland and across Britain have sneered at the very idea of an avowed socialist holding that position.

In 2018, a columnist in The Herald denounced Labour as the fruitcake opposition without any apparent need to justify this. Jo Swinson, the new Liberal Democrat leader, recently deployed the term socialist against Jeremy Corbyn as an insult and declared that the left-right divide is no longer relevant.

There is a persistent reflex from the centrist tendency to deny the legitimacy of the very expression of socialist thought. History, from this perfunctory glance, is an Eraflix platform with passing fads through the ages. The old tales of struggle and socialism are so passe when the Lib Dems have a flashy new drama to sell.

Even a passing acquaintance with the real world shows that history, on the contrary, is embedded in the social landscape which is the constant backdrop to our lives. The legacy of that history is continuing struggle and the continually renewed relevance of socialist ideas to support us through this.

The town of Boness in east central Scotland is a classic example of this. The timelines of history converge on the town, leaving behind evidence of how we reached the present. The central point of this temporal vortex is the Kinneil Estate in the town.

The route of the Antonine Wall runs right through the estate. This northern border wall of the Roman empire was made up mainly of soil held in place by turf so the wall has long since returned to the earth from which it came. Whats left of a global empire built on conquest and held together by force is trampled underfoot.

Nearby a section of the old wall stands the grand Kinneil House. The Kinneil Estate was granted to Sir Walter Fitz Gilbert as a reward for switching sides to Robert the Bruce. The bold Walter was great at social climbing, a skill that was passed down to his descendants who became the dukes of Hamilton, a title harking back to their ancestral plot down south.

The family built a small tower house on the estate in the 15th century. The building was improved on by subsequent generations until it reached palatial proportions in the 17th century. Behind the stately pile lay the humble village of Kinneil. All that remains of the village now is a gable end of its 12th-century church. The Hamiltons were profiting from developing the nearby Boness from a once sparsely inhabited area to a major harbour town.

Much of the population of the village had already been pushed to move to Boness for work but the road to what was left of the village was a frightful impediment to the landscaping of the grounds in front of the house.

In the latter half of the 17th century, the Hamiltons enlisted Parliament to put an end to the parish of Kinneil and incorporate it into a new united Boness parish. By 1691, the village was formally at an end. The road to Kinneil was closed and the Hamiltons could landscape to their hearts content. And they also had the old church as their private chapel.

The Hamiltons eventually repaired to even plusher premises in Lanarkshire, letting out the estate to rich industrialists. Some distance north of the estate today lies the site of the old Kinneil coal mine. In 1858, workers from the pit formed their own brass band, using their own savings. Miners emerged from the hard slog of underground toil to don elegant uniforms and play beautiful music.

In 1894, the Kinneil Band led a march of striking miners. The mine owners were affronted at the gall of those miners and banned them from practising in a hall belonging to the owners. The miners shook the coal dust from their feet and built their own hall.

More than a century earlier, James Watt came to Boness to work on improving the steam engines used to pump water from the mines in the town. One mine was known as The Schoolyard Pit, for obvious reasons. The pupils used to complain about steam coming in through the school windows.

Real life history like this can be found across Scotland and the rest of Britain. This history demonstrates that the most significant factor influencing the nature of society is the question of who holds the major share of wealth and power, a question that is still highly relevant.

Boness today, like many areas up and down Britain, has a busy foodbank serving people on inadequate benefits and those in paid work but on unfair contracts with low pay and limited employment rights.

Centrists like the Liberal Democrats are culturally incapable of grasping the fact that there are poor people because there is a division between those with the majority of wealth and power and those without it. Those without include not just people in crisis now but the mass of people who depend on a salary or whose seemingly reasonable income would be wiped out if they had to pay for health services.

The heirs of the old Liberals, whose mine-owning financiers suppressed any radicalism in the party, cannot perceive this divide. They are prepared to tinker with late and modest offerings to the workers after colluding with the Conservatives in coalition to impose the extremism of austerity.

Labours programme of making wealthy individuals and corporations pay a greater share of tax, giving all workers the right to a 10 an hour minimum wage now, giving workers improved rights and a share of the wealth of their companies, public ownership and investment in public services and infrastructure is about giving all of us a share of wealth and power.

Such a programme is not worthy of a centrist scream of horror but, rather, three cheers from the people and a celebratory blast from a brass band.

Thomas Lewis Russo is a public-sector worker who has assisted community projects across the Central Belt of Scotland.

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Back to a liberal future or forward to progress with Labour? - Morning Star Online

Diamond and Silk decry alleged liberal war on Thanksgiving – Salon

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Diamond & Silk decried the so-called war on Thanksgiving with Ainsely Earhardt on President Donald Trumps favorite morning show Fox & Friends, a continued battleground for the conservative culture wars.

Social media personalities and political activists Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, who go by the names Diamond & Silk, told Fox and Friends they were upset by a recent HuffPost editorial, which called on Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving to do so in a way that reduces their carbon footprint in order to account for climate change.

I get tired of people that have lived their life and have eaten meat telling us not to eat meat, Hardaway said. Dont tell us what we can and cannot eat. If you have a problem with climate change, stop driving cars ride on your horse to work. You do everything you can to fix the climate, but dont infringe upon my right to have Thanksgiving with my family.

The Fox News personalities were criticizing a HuffPost article titled "The Environmental Impact Of Your Thanksgiving Dinner," which was written by Alexandra Emanuelli. In the op-ed, Emanuelli gave various advice for reducing ones climate footprint on the annual holiday, including replacing meat and meat byproducts with plant-based alternatives, purchasing ingredients from vendors who provide local materials, not wasting food and traveling shorter distances for Thanksgiving dinner.

Despite characterizing the article as an attempt to cancel Thanksgiving, Emanuelli writes that no one should be discouraged from enjoying the holiday or celebrating with family and friends, but were here to provide insight into the ingredients and dishes that have the largest ecological impact. The researchers we interviewed shared suggestions and alternative ingredients that cause less environmental damage.

A separate reason why some Americans have criticized Thanksgiving through the years is because of the holidays problematic roots. Thanksgiving celebrates a feast between the Puritan colonists of Massachusetts and the Wampanoag people whose land they colonized. However, the Fox News talent altogether ignored the issues of race and imperialism.

Salon spoke with David J. Silverman, the author of the new book This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving last month about the true story of the first American Thanksgiving.

I'm placing Wampanoag people at the very center of the story, Silverman explained. Typically in the Thanksgiving myth, the identity of the native people goes unremarked. They're just the Indians, and they're torn out of their long historical context. They seem like people without history until the English arrive. What's more is, after the famous feast between the Pilgrims and the Indians, the Indians then somehow disappear, and the entire point of the myth is to make it seem as if native people voluntarily ceded their country to colonists.

In terms of what they ate, Silverman said that it included mostly wild foods: venison, which the Wampanoags contributed, eel, various fish. It's quite possible that they were eating turkey, but we're not sure about that. What we do know is that they were eating fowl. He said that his guess would be that they were eating turkey, duck, goose and the like. And then there would have been some basic crops that the English raised: corn, beans, fundamentally Indian crops rather than English crops. There was no sugar so there were no desserts.

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Diamond and Silk decry alleged liberal war on Thanksgiving - Salon

Trudeau likely to face more assertive caucus in first meeting with Liberal winners, losers – National Post

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OTTAWA Re-elected, newly elected and defeated Liberal MPs will gather Thursday on Parliament Hill for the first time since Canadians clipped the wings of Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government in the Oct. 21 election.

The two-hour get-together is not a formal caucus meeting, just a chance to congratulate winners and commiserate with losers.

Nevertheless, it will doubtless give Trudeau a taste of the mood in what is likely to be a more assertive Liberal caucus, one less inclined to obediently follow the lead of a prime minister who no longer exudes an aura of electoral invincibility.

Trudeaus reputation as a champion of diversity and tolerance took a beating during the bruising 40-day campaign when it was revealed hed donned blackface repeatedly in his younger days.

His grip on power was ultimately weakened; the Liberals won 157 seats 13 shy of a majority in the House of Commons and were shut out entirely in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where Trudeaus name is now political poison.

Unlike Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, Trudeau does not face a potential revolt over his leadership but returning Liberal MPs do expect him to make some changes.

Among them: pay more attention to the views of caucus, bring more diverse voices into his inner circle, drop the nasty personal attacks that dominated the campaign, return to more positive messaging and, in particular, concentrate more on communicating the Liberal governments successes on the economic front.

I really think theres an opportunity here for caucus maybe to be heard more, Prince Edward Island veteran MP Wayne Easter said in an interview. We were four years in government and the strong voice of caucus and avenues for caucus to be heard maybe in a more substantive way must be found.

Vancouver MP Hedy Fry said the people who have their finger on the pulse of the nation are the MPs.

As a physician, I can say if you dont take vital signs, you make mistakes. The centre isnt getting that.

Montreal MP Alexandra Mendes hopes the minority government, which will require more collaboration with opposition parties, will result in all parliamentarians, not just cabinet ministers, getting more input into bills during Commons debates and committee study.

Many of us were elected on our merits, and not just because of the party, and people expect us to prove that trust is warranted, she said in an interview.

I really think theres an opportunity here for caucus maybe to be heard more

Along with the demand to engage more with backbenchers is a widespread feeling that Trudeau can no longer rely solely on advice from his tight inner circle what one MP refers to as the triumvirate echo chamber of Trudeau, chief of staff Katie Telford and former principal secretary Gerald Butts.

Telford is staying on as chief of staff. However, Butts, who resigned in the midst of the SNC-Lavalin affair, has no plans to return to the PMO, although he was a key player during the campaign. That leaves an opening for a new principal secretary and some LiberalMPs see that as an opportunity to bring in a senior adviser from the West and maybe also from Quebec, where a resurgence of the separatist Bloc Quebecois is cause for concern.

I do think that there have to be more diverse voices around the PM, in terms of not just having a very Ontario-centric team, said Mendes.

A number of Liberal MPs bemoan the nasty tone of the campaign, including the Liberal attacks on Scheers social conservative values rather than a more positive campaign promoting the Liberals economic record: robust growth, historically low unemployment, 900,000 lifted out of poverty as a result of the Canada Child Benefit.

Fry, who just won her ninth election, said she never saw such a nasty campaign that revolved so heavily around personal attacks on the leaders.

The result was that people didnt know who to vote for because they thought they were all scoundrels, she said. And they didnt know what the government had done on big issues like affordable housing because the leaders were too busy screaming at each other about how terrible the other human being was.

Easter said all leaders have to give our head a shake and stop this political rhetoric. The elections over, lets get on with governing like Canadians expect us to do.

Like other MPs, Easter believes the government must do a better job of communicating its accomplishments on pocket-book issues, which he said nobody seemed to know about when he knocked on doors during the campaign.

One of Trudeaus difficulties is, he so wants to do the right thing and so wants to see the political correctness and so wants to do right on the gender balance and Indigenous (reconciliation) that he puts himself in such a position that it maybe compromises his leadership position, Easter said.

Hes out there on those issues and maybe not out there on the bread-and-butter issues and I think he has to emphasize the other side more.

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Trudeau likely to face more assertive caucus in first meeting with Liberal winners, losers - National Post

Liberal Policy Failures Are the Reason for Socialism’s New Appeal – Daily Signal

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Multiple forms of socialism, from hard Stalinism to Europeanredistribution, continue to fail.

Russia and China are still struggling with the legacy ofgenocidal communism. Eastern Europe still suffers after decades ofSoviet-imposed socialist chaos.

Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Venezuela are unfree, poor, and failed states. Baathisma synonym for pan-Arabic socialismruined the postwar Middle East.

The soft-socialist European Union countries are stagnant andmostly dependent on the U.S. military for their protection.

In contrast, current American deregulation, tax cuts, and incentives, and record energy production have given the United States the strongest economy in the world.

So why, then, are two of the top three Democratic presidential contendersBernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warreneither overtly or implicitly running on socialist agendas? Why are the heartthrobs of American progressivesReps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.calling for socialist redistributionist schemes?

Why do polls show that a majority of American millennialshave a favorable view of socialism?

There are lots of catalysts for the new socialism.

Massive immigration is changing the demography of the United States. The number of foreign-born U.S. residents and their children has been estimated at almost 60 million, or about 1 in 5 U.S. residents. Some 27% of California residents were born outside of America.

Many of these immigrants flee from poor areas of Latin America, Mexico, Africa, and Asia that were wrecked by statism and socialism. Often, they arrive in the U.S. unaware of economic and political alternatives to state socialism.

When they reach the U.S.often without marketable skills and unable to speak Englishmany assume that America will simply offer a far better version of the statism from which they fled. Consequently, many take for granted that government will provide them an array of social services, and they become supportive of progressive socialism.

Another culprit for the new socialist craze is the strangeleftward drift of the very wealthy in Silicon Valley, in corporate America andon Wall Street.

Some of the new progressive rich feel guilty about theirunprecedented wealth. So they champion redistribution as the sort of medievalpenance that alleviates guilt.

Yet the influential and monied classes usually are so welloff that higher taxes hardly affect them. Instead, redistributionist taxationhurts the struggling middle classes.

In California, it became hip for wealthy leftists to promote socialism from their Malibu, Menlo Park, or Mill Valley enclaveswhile still living as privileged capitalists. Meanwhile, it proved nearly impossible for the middle classes of Stockton and Bakersfield to cope with the reality of crushing taxes and terrible social services.

From 2008 to 2017, the now-multimillionaire Barack Obama,first as candidate and then as president, used all sorts of cool socialistslogans, from spread the wealth around and now is not the timeto profit to you didnt build that and at a certainpoint youve made enough money.

Universities bear much of the blame. Their manipulation ofthe federal government to guarantee student loans empowered them to jack upcollege costs without any accountability. Liberal college administrators andfaculty did not care much when graduates left campus poorly educated and unableto market their expensive degrees.

More than 45 million borrowers now struggle with nearly $1.6 trillion in collective student debt, with climbing interest. That indebtedness has delayedor endedthe traditional forces that encourage conservatism and traditionalism, such as getting married, having children, and buying a home.

Instead, a generation of single, childless, and mostly urban youth feels cheated that their high-priced degrees did not earn them competitive salaries. Millions of embittered college graduates will never be able to pay off what they oweand want some entity to pay off their debts.

In paradoxical fashion, teenagers were considered savvy adults who were mature enough to take on gargantuan loans. But they were also treated like fragile preteens who were warned that the world outside their campus sanctuaries was downright mean, sexist, racist, homophobic, and unfair.

Finally, doctrinaire Republicans for decades mouthed orthodoxies of free rather than fair trade. They embraced the idea of creative destruction of industries, but without worrying about the real-life consequences for the unemployed in the hollowed-out, red-state interior.

Add up a lost generation of woke and broke college graduates, waves of impoverished immigrants without much knowledge of American economic traditions, wealthy advocates of boutique socialism, and asleep-at-the-wheel Republicans, and it becomes clear why historically destructive socialism is suddenly seen as cool.

Regrettably, sometimes the naive and disaffected mustrelearn that their pie-in-the sky socialist medicine is far worse than theperceived malady of inequality.

And unfortunately, when socialists gain power, they dont destroy just themselves. They usually take everyone else down with them as well.

(C) 2019 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

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