Monthly Archives: May 2017

A number of participants are people who are considered to be 2020 presidential contenders: Senators Kirsten Gilibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Chris Murphy will all address the conference, as will Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Montana Governor Steve Bullock, who won a state Trump won by 20 points, will also address the conference, as will Obamas National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who has been accused of several offenses by the sitting president.

We should keep in mind that were in month four of the Trump administration, Tanden said about the shadow Trump will cast on the conference. Its reasonable for people to be focused on his actions because theyre such an assault on vulnerable people, on progressive values, on other Americans. There is a lot to criticize. But our expectation is that people will provide an alternative vision and that our speakers, whether theyre senators or governors or even a mayor, will provide a positive alternative as well.

No one who has already run for president was invited to speak at the conference, underscoring its goal of highlighting progressive rising stars. Our focus is really on trying to highlight people who other people dont see every day, Tanden said. People who are fighting and have positive ideas about how the country can move forward.

Unlike CPAC, the Ideas Conference will be much more focusedit has only one stage and lasts for only one day, unlike CPAC, which goes on for four. Like CPAC, the Ideas Conference aims to bring together grassroots and established organizationsTanden highlighted Indivisible, Swing Left, Town Hall Project, Digital Democracy, Democracy Lab, and Our Revolution, as well as Planned Parenthood and the ACLUwith political leaders. But the more modest scope also means, however, that the grassroots groups wont have the kind of prominence that they have at CPAC. Its panel on the resistance features Indivisibles Leah Greenberg, civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, and immigration activist and DREAMer Astrid Silva, but the majority of the other talks are more dominated by politicians.

Asked about the influence of the grassroots, Tanden highlighted the resistance panel and a training session CAP will be hosting for groups and activists attending the conference. But she also stressed that the Ideas Conference is trying to fill a leadership void on the progressive side. We wanted to have a mix of politicians and grassroots leaders, Tanden said. We really hear the deep demand for leaders and we definitely wanted to showcase them. We wanted to highlight the resistance. Youll feel that throughout the day. People are anxious for leaders to step up up right now.

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Will the Liberal CPAC Kick Off the 2020 Race? - New Republic

LONDON Emmanuel Macrons overwhelming victory over the right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen in the final round of the French presidential election by 66 percent of the votes cast to 34 percent for his opponent is good news for those who believe in liberal democracy. But the threats to democratic institutions in the West are real and increasing.

In France, President Macron, whose new party La Republique En Marche has yet to hold seats in parliament pending the June election, faces huge challenges to his proposals to reform the way the French economy operates. Both right-wing and left-wing extremists will fiercely oppose him.

In Germanys autumn elections, the right-wing AfD may gain representation in the Bundestag, but democratic processes in Germany are strong enough to cope with any threat from the right or from Russian attempts to manipulate the electoral process. Chancellor Angela Merkel remains Europes staunchest upholder of liberal democracy.

Some of the countries of Eastern Europe seem to be sliding into autocracy. Victor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, is a right-wing nationalist who is opposed to the democratic principles enshrined in the European Union treaties. The present Polish government has taken steps to enfeeble the judiciary and move toward a more autocratic regime.

In Britain there are a few right-wing Tories who denigrate liberal democracy and would support actions which in the past led to it being called the nasty party, as British Prime Minister Theresa May herself once famously described her party. A failure to achieve reasonable terms in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations would encourage some Tories who favor a hard Brexit to attack their opponents as enemies of the people, but liberal democracy will be safe in Britain so long as the media remain free and the judiciary keeps its independence.

The threats to liberal democracy from the autocrats of Russia and China are clear. The number of other countries that can claim to be liberal parliamentary democracies has significantly declined in recent years. In Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and in the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte have shown that they intend to rule as autocrats above the law. In Africa there is no country that can claim to be a liberal democracy.

The most worrying threat to democratic institutions and the rule of law is that posed by President Donald Trump in the United States, which in the past was intent on propagating democracy in areas that had no knowledge of what it meant.

Trump appears to believe that as president he is above the law. He even ignores the law, which limits a president from accepting favors from a foreign country. He has refused to publish his tax returns or divest himself of his business interests, which could benefit from government contracts or foreign interests.

He has attacked judges who have ruled against measures that he wishes to take and seems to believe that federal judges are little different from civil servants bound to do as the president demands.

He has railed against members of Congress who held up and mauled his attempt to repeal Obamacare. He is contemptuous of congressional inquiries and privilege.

He regards the media as his enemies and has threatened to end official briefings. He prefers to work through social media, which he tries to manipulate with false news.

His recent dismissal of James Comey, the director of the FBI, was egregious. The method he used of sending a message delivered to Comey while he was speaking to members of the FBI was extraordinary and unnecessary. His language you are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately was grossly rude and suggested a playground bully.

Comey was leading an inquiry into Russian contacts with the Trump election team. This inquiry was based on leads and information, which had already led to the dismissal of Trumps first national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Comeys sudden dismissal suggested that the FBI might have found leads to the president himself. This suspicion was reinforced by the reception at the White House on the day of Comeys dismissal of Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and by the unconcealed glee in Moscow at the apparent Russian success in meddling in the U.S. elections.

Trumps ambition to Make America Great Again looks unlikely to be fulfilled. Americas reputation has been sadly undermined by what commentator Edward Luce (in his recent book The Retreat of Western Liberalism) describes as theater politics in which Trump will operate as a kind of Ku Klux Kardashian, combining hard-right pugilism with the best postmodern vaudeville.

Trumps unpredictability and emotionalism are dangerous characteristics in a president who is also commander-in-chief of what is likely to remain for some time to come the most formidable military machine in the world. We shudder at the thought of Kim Jong Un of North Korea having the capacity to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. But we should remember that Trump could destroy our civilization in a fit of pique unless restrained by responsible advisers.

Trump has called on State Department officials who disagree with his policies to resign, and he rejects and resents any attempt to get him to recognize unpalatable facts.

The most worrying aspect of recent developments in the U.S. is that according to opinion surveys Trump still has the support of the vast majority of members of the Republican party. There seems little readiness among Republican senators even to agree to the appointment of a special prosecutor to investing possible links with Russia, let alone to impeach the president for his flouting of the law.

The checks and balances in the American Constitution were designed to protect America from tyranny. But they will only work if individual Americans are prepared to speak truth to power and act to uphold and enforce the constitution. As Benjamin Franklin declared, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Hugh Cortazzi served as Britains ambassador to Japan from 1980-1984.

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Threats to liberal democracy - The Japan Times

The majority of British Columbians oppose the idea of a Liberal-Green coalition government, according to a newMainstreet/Postmedia poll.

The Liberals won atotal of 43 seats in last Tuesdays B.C. election, one short of the 44 needed to form a majority government. The NDP won 41 seats and the Greens won three.

If the situation after next weeks recounts and counting of absentee ballots continues to point toa minority, a poll conducted by Mainstreet Research indicates that just 27per cent of British Columbians would approve of a Green-Liberal coalition.

The majority of respondents,58 per cent, said they would prefer the Green party to work with the governing party on a issue-by-issue basis ratherthan joining a formal coalition.

If there were to be a coalition, however, the preference was overwhelmingly for the Greens to work with the NDP with57 per cent sayingthey would approve.

The poll indicateda large segment of voters are still unsure of how they feel about the outcome.

According to a poll conducted by Mainstreet Research over the weekend, nearlyone in five of B.C. voters (19 per cent) say they dont know how they would vote if they were given the chance to do so again.

InMetro Vancouver, where 37 per cent of voters said they would vote NDP (versus 30 per cent for the B.C. Liberals and 15 per cent for the Greens), 18 per cent said they were undecided on which party they would support if given another chance.

UBC political science professor Max Cameron saw two different possible reasons forthis post-election ambivalence.

One would be because it was an indecisive outcome, he said, pointing to thelacklustre nature of the overall campaign, with all three parties seemingly on script. Voters just dont know what the result is at the moment, and arent sure how they really feel.

The other was something analogous to sticker shock, he said. There might have been Greens who voted NDP out of fear of splitting the vote and now arent sure.

He also noted the frustration with the outcome among NDP supporters: 57 per cent said they were either somewhat unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with the outcome. (Overall, 49 per cent of British Columbians said they were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the outcome, with seven per cent not sure.)

Theyre feeling the victory was snatched away, he said. NDP supporters were done with the B.C. Liberals being in power and wanted to see a decisive switch in power. But Cameron cautioned against thinking the outcome came about because ofthe Greens splitting the vote.

My interpretation is theres more disaffected Liberal voters who found a home with the Greens than anything else, he said.

That is seen in the polls overall picture:an electorate that was verydissatisfied withthe Christy Clark government, as just 28 per cent of voters said they would like to see the B.C. Liberals returning to government. Instead, the clear preference is forthe NDP: 51 per cent said it was time for the centre-left party to form government, with a further 21 per cent calling for the Greens to be in charge.

Mainstreet surveyed a random sample of 1,650 British Columbians from May 11-13.The margin of error for survey results is plus-minus 2.41 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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British Columbians do not want a Liberal-Green coalition government: Poll - Calgary Herald

NewsBusters (blog)

'Criminalizing Immigrants' is New Catchphrase of Dems, Liberal Media NewsBusters (blog) In lock step with the Democrats, since the beginning of the Trump administration the liberal media have incessantly characterized Republican-led efforts to uphold and enforce the nation's immigration laws as amounting to the criminalization of ...

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'Criminalizing Immigrants' is New Catchphrase of Dems, Liberal Media - NewsBusters (blog)

BELLEVILLE-

Ontarios hydro rates have electrified another surge of partisan rhetoric a year ahead of the next election. Mere days after the Progressive Conservatives leaked cabinet documents in an effort to bore holes in the Liberals plan to reduce hydro rates by 25 per cent, the New Democrats, too, have come out swinging, with leader Andrea Horwath signalling they will not be voting in favour of the cuts. A little bit of temporary relief is going to turn into a huge increase, Horwath told The Intelligencer. At the heart of the contention is the Liberals announcement they will set up a special purpose financial entity to manage the borrowing of billions of dollars to fund the cuts. Interest payments would fall on the shoulders of Ontarians, with ratepayers picking up the tab for an estimated $25 billion in interest over 30 years, in an effort to lower rates this year. Prince Edward-Hastings MPP Todd Smith was behind the leak. We were the ones who released the cabinet document last Thursday. I had received them from a whistleblower who was upset the government was talking about providing instant relief when really what theyre doing is making the problem worse, Smith said. What the document shows is, after the next election, electricity bills will start to skyrocket again. Smith said the documents reveal the Liberals setting up a debt entity at Ontario Power Generation OPG. We will see the debt retirement charge returning to electricity bills in the mid-2020s, he said. Theyre taking the cost of the global adjustment off the bills and theyre moving that cost over to the new debt ($25 billion) entity at OPG. Customers are going to pay the interest on the new debt theyre creating. The Liberals say the aim of the proposed Fair Hydro Plan is to give people a break on rates now, but Horwath told The Intelligencer there is no concrete plan to put a lid on the root cause of the increases and the borrowing scheme is simply a political ploy to revive the premiers slumping ratings. Her plan is going to have those rates start soaring in about three or four years time, said Horwath. All shes doing is borrowing money to try to get her through the next election. Files from the leaked document suggest rates will fall this year, increasing by an average of about two per cent over the next four years, before jumping 6.5 per cent annually. Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault has called the leaked documents outdated, dismissing claims rates will only hike. Horwath has promised to cut hydro rates a minimum 30 per cent if she wins the June 7, 2018 polls. The Liberals havent wasted any time before taking shots at Horwaths plan. Their biggest idea buying more than $4 billion worth of Hydro One shares on the stock market will not take one cent off electricity bills, a release sent to The Intelligencer newsroom stated. Other alleged savings rely on a vague, yet-to-be determined expert panel to be convened sometime in the future. And theyre banking on lengthy, uncertain negotiations with the federal government for supposed reductions as well. Despite Ontarios Fair Hydro Plan helping families, businesses, and farms across the province including in Belleville Horwath said the NDP cant and wont vote in favour of this during a press conference this morning, the Liberal release stated. Horwath responded, saying selling off Hydro One is going to make hydro bills go up even further.

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Liberal plan questioned - Belleville Intelligencer

President Trump's national security adviser says a Washington Post report that says Trump shared intelligence with Russia "is false." USA TODAY

A great deal has been written and said about the media divide in the United States or how Americans tend to follow news organizations that reinforce their political beliefs and that divide was clearly in evidence Monday in the wake of a Washington Post story alleging President Trump shared classified information with Russian diplomats during a meeting at the WhiteHouse.

For example, a glance at the three major cable news networks at 8:20 p.m. ET revealed the following banners on the bottom of the screen:

While CNN and MSNBC focused on the report from the Post and the reaction from Trump's opponents, Fox News focused on a perceived hysteria among liberals a tactic the network also employed in the wake of the firing of former FBI director James Comey.

Just under an hour later, Fox News ran a banner reading, "McMaster: Washington Post story on Russia meeting is false," while CNN's banner read, "Sources: Trump shared classified info with Russian foreign minister."

On the Fox News website, the top story at 9:30 p.m. ET was about Hillary Clinton and the launch of her "Onward Together" PAC. The story about Trump was programmed beneath that under the headline, "'It didn'thappen': WH denies report Trump revealed classified info."

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On Breitbart, the top headline read"Deep State Strikes: Leaks Classified Info To Washington Post To Smear Trump, LOL: Reporters Negate Oversold Headline In 7th Paragraph."

The "deep state" refers to a theory repeatedly propagatedby Breitbartsince Trump took office, which says a cadre of government officials loyal to former President Obama have been working behind the scenes to undermine Trump.

The 7th paragraph from the Post story that theBreitbart headline refers to reads,"As president, Trump has broad authority to declassify government secrets, making it unlikely that his disclosures broke the law." The headline implies since the president did not break the law, the story is of little importance.

Read more:

Is it legal for Trump to share classified intelligence? Yes, but risky, experts say

The second headline on Breitbart was, "McMaster: WAPO Story 'False' 'I Was In The Room, It Didn't Happen'."An accuratesummation of the denial issued by Trump's national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

On The Washington Times website, the top story was "Officials dispute report Trump revealed classified information to Russians."

By contrast, CNN led after obtaining their own unnamed sources with a wide, banner headline reading, "Sources: Trump shared classified info with Russians." Four other stories critical of the White House preceded a video of McMaster's denial.

On the Fox News showHannity,host Sean Hannityopened by attacking the sources of the leaks to the Post.

"No White Housecan sustain these types of constant leaks," he said. "So, if you're in the White House, and you're this, if you're not there to serve your country and all you're doing is hurting the country, well, then you might want to get out of the way."

Hannity proceeded to report on the Comey firing and "the worst liberal media feeding frenzy in American history" that followed. He went on to explain why he believes Comey deserved to be fired and why Clinton should have been prosecuted for her handling of classified material on a private emailserver.

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How the latest Trump headlines played out in conservative, liberal media - USA TODAY

Next month Im returning to Marthas Vineyard. Its a lovely place and, for progressives, the ultimate safe space. It sometimes seems that Republicans need a green card just to visit, and that the island only issues 10 per year.

But this creates a problem: What passes for political wisdom can become, shall we say, insular. As a journalistic eminence murmured after enduring a dinner party where, in his view, progressive piety strangled reality by the throat: As Marthas Vineyard goes, so goes Cambridge, Berkeley, and the upper West Side of Manhattan.

Which puts me in mind of certain Democratic liberals and lemmings.

Hold the outrage, please. I like to think Im as progressive as the next guy, including ardent support for voting rights, LGBT rights, reproductive rights, racial justice, and preventing dangerous people from slaughtering innocents with guns. Over the years, Ive devoted considerable energy to these issues. But, for me, the current ideological fratricide among Democrats evokes the mythic rodents who commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs.

This years contest for DNC chair in essence, a tiresome rerun of the fight between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders featured lemmings galore. Among them were the raucous activists who booed the liberal Tom Perez for beating the even more liberal, and more controversial, Keith Ellison, perpetuating the ongoing divide between the merely progressive and the truly pure.

Inescapably, this spectacle raised questions. What slice of the populace do these folks represent? At this critical juncture, were Perez and Ellison the best choices Democrats had? What about Pete Buttigieg, the young and appealing mayor of South Bend, Ind. who, having succeeded in a red state, emphasized expanding the partys appeal in middle America? And what does all this fractiousness portend for the Democrats ability to reverse their electoral fortunes?

Nothing good. To heal the wounds, Perez and Sanders launched a unity tour. Quickly, it foundered on their support of the Democratic candidate for mayor of Omaha, Neb., Heath Mello who, it transpired, had taken anti-abortion positions as a state legislator. Quickly, abortion-rights groups pounced, asserting that the partys support for Mello was unacceptable.

Progressives like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended the right of a local candidate to hold views at odds with theirs, sensibly distinguishing between a would-be mayor of Omaha and, say, a Supreme Court nominee. But the head of NARAL denounced this as politically stupid. Swiftly, Perez capitulated, asserting that Democrats commitment to abortion rights is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.

Lets be clear. The Democratic Party firmly embraces reproductive rights and should. And, yes, the anti-abortion movement is tainted with misogyny, patriarchy, and fundamentalism. But, unavoidably, the debate over abortion includes a genuine ethical issue regarding how we define life. And, as a practical matter, a significant minority of Democrats oppose abortion; some are women who support maternal leave, better child-care policies, and wage equity.

Abortion rights should not, in itself, be a litmus test of decency or of who gets to be a Democrat in Nebraska.

But doctrinal purity is contagious. Shortly, Sanders stumbled, when asked if Jon Ossoff a Democrat opposing an antiabortion GOP zealot in a bright-red Georgia congressional district was a progressive. I dont know, Sanders flatly stated. Really? When did Georgia become Vermont? And when did progressive orthodoxy become so rigid and exclusionary?

But among Democrats, this ideological Stalinism is all too common. A few years ago, a friend and leader in the gun-control movement refused to support the incumbent Democratic senator from Arkansas, deeming him too compromised on guns. He lost to a Republican who opposes everything my friend cares about. Now Republicans control the Senate, and Neil Gorsuch sits on the Supreme Court.

This illustrates the complex relationship between moral urgency and political actuality. The civil rights movement was not driven by political exigency, but by the uncompromising commitment of brave men and women who transformed our national conscience. But translating civil rights into law required a Democratic president working through a Democratic Congress.

Too many activists fail to grasp this or that their desire to thwart Donald Trump exceeds their partys ability to do so. Thus some on the left threaten primary challenges against Democrats they perceive as insufficiently militant.

This is political self-immolation. The Democrats are defending Senate seats in red or purple states like Montana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania all of which Trump carried. Do these petulant purists really think that a Warren-style Democrat could win in Montana? Or care that they risk losing the last bastion of legislative resistance to Trump even, perhaps, the filibuster?

Already, Democrats are ceding most of America with alarming celerity. Since 2006, the party has lost 10 percent of its seats in the Senate, 19 percent in the House, 20 percent in state legislatures, and 36 percent of governorships. The 16 percent of counties won by Hillary Clinton resemble, demographically, a cocktail party on Marthas Vineyard urban, affluent, well-educated, and, increasingly, politically homogenous and sociologically isolated. In such circumstances, political antennae rust, litmus tests flourish, and a vision of deplorables sets in that mirrors the intolerance of the right.

No surprise, then, that many middle-class and blue-collar Americans including former Obama voters feel that national Democrats favor the wealthy. Programmatically, this simply isnt so. No doubt this misperception owes much to the GOPs rank dishonesty. But ideological rigidity and cultural condescension surely do not help nor, frankly, do enormous speaking fees from Wall Street.

So what should Democrats do? Some think the party should focus on turning out its core demographic well-educated whites, women, young people, and minorities; others on winning back some of the voters it lost to Trump. But this is a false choice. Nor is it sufficient for Democrats to define themselves merely by opposing Trump. Instead, the party needs to prioritize engaging voters rather than excluding them.

This requires what went missing in 2016: a compelling and unifying vision of how Democratic policies improve the lives of more Americans, helping unleash the potential of every person wherever and whoever they are to lift themselves and their country. This message of inclusion and economic opportunity transcends geography and demographics and, as well, any single issue or constituent group no matter how important. It says, rather, that every American is not merely worthwhile, but valuable.

That is what a national party looks like.

Richard North Pattersons column appears regularly in the Boston Globe. His latest book is Fever Swamp. Follow him on Twitter @RicPatterson.

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The Democrats' Liberal Lemmings - HuffPost

The bad news is that Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in modern American history. The good news is that Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in modern American history.

He was too incompetent to understand his own health care bill, or accurately describe the direction in which the armada designed to intimidate North Korea was heading, or restrain himself from disclosing highly classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. But hes also too incompetent, it appears, to destroy liberal democracy.

When Trump fired James Comey a week ago, many Republicans denied that he had done so to shut down the FBIs inquiry into his campaigns Russia ties. Trump, they said, could not have been that stupid. He could not have been stupid enough to believe that firing Comey would quash the Russia investigation.

But, increasingly, it appears that Trump was. Rather than building a high-minded pretext for firing Comey, Trump, according to the New York Times, invited Comey to dinner in January and demanded his personal loyalty. If that wasnt incriminating enough, in February he baldly asked Comey to end the investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Then, after Comey asked for more funding to investigate the Trump campaigns Russia ties, Trump fired himessentially asking the man he had handed a loaded gun to fire it at his head.

In the hours after Comeys firing, the Trump cant be that stupid caucus globbed onto Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteins memo, which offered justifications for Comeys firing that did not reek of self-interest. But in an interview with NBC News Lester Holt, Trump admitted that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he made the decision to fire Comey, thus discarding Rosensteins fig leaf and exposing his political nakedness for all to see.

Thank goodness. The Kremlin, it turns out, is not the only institution able to outwit Donald Trump. American law enforcement and the American press can too. Comey, who unlike Trump knows the art of political CYA, reportedly kept a record of the Presidents efforts to obstruct justice. Trumps own White House is sabotaging him daily through massive leaks. And at both the Times and the Washington Post, the best reporters of their generation are participating in the journalistic equivalent of a dunking contest.

In retrospect, it was predictable. During the campaign, Trump advertised his hostility to liberal democratic norms. But he advertised his incompetence too. He slandered judges for their ethnicity and vowed tax investigations into the publishers of newspapers that criticized him. But he also let Texas Senator Ted Cruz give a prime time speech at his own convention that did not include an endorsement.

As a result of his own ineptitude, Trump is politically weaker than he was on Inauguration Day even though the economy is stronger. And its harder to mount a populist assault on the rule of law when youre not even that popular.

Yes, Trump can still do grave damage. Yes, hes exposed the fragility of Americas system of liberal democracy. But that system has one key advantage: The people protecting it are good at their jobs.

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American Institutions Strike Back - The Atlantic