Daily Archives: July 9, 2017

Welcome to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston

For nearly 50 years, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston (UUCR) has been home to liberal religion in our area. We strive to be a spiritual community where hearts and minds are encouraged to grow, question, discover, and learn.

UUCR has a long history of diversity and inclusion, of affirmation and advocacy. These beliefs and actions are at the core of Unitarian Universalism and are at the core of our church. We are a Welcoming Congregation; our church embraces people of any age, sex, race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, class, ability, language, or cultural background.

UUCR supports each person in his or her religious journey. We invite you to share your religious journey with us.

We invite you to visit.Sunday Services at the UUCR are at 10:00 a.m. To read a letter of welcome from our minister, click here.You will find information about this week's Sunday Service on the right. To learn more about our upcoming services, please click here. To read more about what to expect during your visit, please click here. For directions to UUCR, click here.

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Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston

LONDON Britain's scheduled exit from the European Union may never happen because its main political parties are too divided on the issue, said Vince Cable, a veteran lawmaker bidding to lead the fourth largest political party, the Liberal Democrats.

Prime Minister Theresa May's failure to win an outright majority in a snap national election last month has cast doubt on her capacity to lead Britain out of the EU, sharpening a debate on what sort of exit deal the government should seek. "I'm beginning to think that Brexit may never happen," Cable told the BBC on Sunday. "The problems are so enormous, the divisions within the two major parties are so enormous I can see a scenario in which this doesn't happen."

Cable served as business minister between 2010 and 2015 when the pro-European Liberal Democrats were the junior partners in a coalition government led by May's Conservative Party.

He is currently the only candidate in a contest for leadership of his party.

The Liberal Democrats' influence has waned since 2015, and they hold just 12 out of 650 seats in parliament.

They campaigned in the 2017 election to give Britons a second referendum on leaving the EU once a final deal had been agreed - something Cable described as a possible way out of Brexit.

The Conservatives are historically divided between a deeply eurosceptic faction and more pro-European members. That is expected to make life difficult for May when she puts Brexit legislation through parliament because she will need to unite the party to win key votes.

The second-largest party, Labour, is also riven by disagreement on what kind of deal would work best for Britain's economy.

Last month Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sacked three members of his policy team after they defied his wishes by coming down in favor of Britain staying in the single European market in a parliamentary vote.

(Reporting by William James; editing by John Stonestreet)

LONDON A post-Brexit trade deal with the United States would not be enough to make up for leaving the European Union, British justice minister David Lidington said on Sunday, tempering Prime Minister Theresa May's enthusiasm about the U.S. offer.

BRUSSELS The European Union and Canada said on Saturday they had agreed to start a free trade agreement on Sept. 21, paving the way for over 90 percent of the treaty to come into effect.

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Brexit may never happen, says top Liberal Democrat Cable - Reuters

In April, 500 workers and activists made the case in Detroit for $15 an hour.(Photo: David Guralnick / Detroit News)

Politicians on the left should take note: Advocating for expanded entitlements and a more caring government may make for good campaign sound bites but less than stellar policies.

Look at the impact of the Fight for $15 minimum wage push. Chances are youve seen these protests, which have popped up around the country. Detroit has hosted several.

Its been a hysteria sweeping the country, says Mark Perry, American Enterprise Institute scholar and professor of finance and business economics at the University Michigan-Flint.

In April, 500 workers and activists made the case in Detroit for $15 an hour. Michigans minimum wage jumped to $8.90 at the start of this year. At the federal level, it is $7.25 an hour.

Liberals have embraced this cause. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders certainly did as they competed for the Democratic nomination for president last year. And after announcing his bid for Detroit mayor earlier this year, state Sen. Coleman Young II said a $15 minimum wage would be on his to-do list. Several Michigan Democrats whove already announced their candidacy for governor have also made this a priority.

Clamoring for higher wages and free college tuition is popular these days. Even President Donald Trump, thanks to his daughter Ivanka, is pushing for a paid family leave mandate. While these may sound like positive developments, in practice they pose real problems. Someone has to pay for these benefits usually middle-class taxpayers.

Commenting on Youngs proposal, Michael Saltsman with the Employment Policies Institute, countered: Wayne County in particular cant afford this hollowing out of its entry-level workforce. Nearly two-thirds of young adults in the county arent in the workforce at all.

Thats the opposite effect Detroit workers need, especially those looking to build a resume. And Saltsmans argument lines up with new research out of Washington state that should give higher wage proponents pause.

Heres what $15 an hour actually looks like in practice. In 2014, Seattle passed a measure to raise its minimum wage to $15 (gradually), and it has provided researchers with excellent data of what each pay jump means for area employers and workers.

It doesnt look good. Researchers from the University of Washington have found that although employees are indeed making more an hour, they have also seen a 9 percent loss in hours worked. For workers in Seattle, that amounts to $125 a month. The research team also estimates a loss of 5,000 low-wage jobs (a 6.8 percent decline) because of the wage mandate.

In addition to the burden on employers, especially small businesses, these high wages are also harming low-skilled workers who need experience, as employers will aim to hire someone worth $15.

It takes away their bargaining power, Perry says.

And the study was only looking at the impacts of the $13 hourly wage. Expect more negative results as the city hits the $15 target. Seattle was one of the first cities to adopt this high a wage, which made it ideal to study. But others have followed suit, including San Francisco and Washington, D.C. and most recently Minneapolis.

It just doesnt make sense, Perry says. It sells politically, but very few economists would support a $15 wage anywhere. Hopefully this will sober people up a bit.

ijacques@detroitnews.com

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Jacques: When liberal policies flop - The Detroit News

So the film footage which features lots of moody shots of desolate French housing estates includes a clip of Gordon Browns excruciating moment on the 2010 campaign trail when he dismissed a Labour pensioner as bigoted for airing her concerns over immigration. Meanwhile Bush is presented as an arty, right-on liberal, yet is a closet chauvinist and has yet to pay any money to his sound technician.

Its all very self consciously un-theatrical: the first third consists simply of Hoss narrating extracts although thanks to the hypnotic clarity of Eribons prose and the cool susurrations of Hosss voice, that brings its own pleasures.

It is at its best when it disrupts itself. Hosss real life late father was a true working class hero who created a trade union for guest workers (immigrants) in Germany and, disenchanted by party politics, went to Brazil to establish environmental farming policies for an Amazon village. His story forms the final third of the show.

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Thomas Ostermeier tackles liberal hypocrisies in Returning To ... - Telegraph.co.uk

Since the inauguration of the Trump administration, the United States appears to have abdicated from a role it has fulfilled since the end of World War II namely, that of defender of the liberal international order. For example:

The U.S. is forcing Mexico and Canada to renegotiate the North America Free Trade Agreement to the detriment of the pact.

The administration has expressly stated that the U.S. will never again return to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The U.S. has opposed the inclusion of words vowing opposition to protectionism in Group of Seven and Group of 20 statements.

The administration favors a bilateral approach to trade negotiations and no longer accepts multilateral trade talks.

The Trump administration has deliberately refused to confirm to European allies that it will observe its mutual defense obligations.

Not one to mince words, U.S. President Donald Trumps policy adviser Steve Bannon has said that the globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. In the Trump administration, the only way to attack a political enemy is to spread rumors that he or she is a globalist. A friend of mine, now a political appointee to an important White House post, is one of those exposed to such attacks.

The economic landslide that is gutting the working class will likely continue over the long term. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans appear to be preparing a fundamental response to address the problem.

Moves that significantly influence this landslide namely Chinas export offensive, disregard of World Trade Organization rules, monopolistic industrial policy and pursuit of an exclusive China-led order have only just begun. Trumps America First politics is likely to end in failure.

If the U.S. decides to close its doors and erect new walls, the countries of Asia will begin to build a regional order without the U.S. The world will not come to a halt even if the U.S. declares it can no longer engage with it. And China will be all too happy to fill a vacuum left by declining U.S. involvement in Asia.

In the past, the U.S. once attempted to construct separate regional orders in Europe and Asia. After the end of World War I, the U.S. turned its back on the League of Nations, and, in the process of disengaging from Europe, turned to the Asia-Pacific region with the intent of developing a regional order centered on a policy of cooperation with China and disarmament. This was known as the Washington system since the Nine-Power Treaty regarding China was concluded at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922.

This experiment ended in failure. The U.S. advocated an open door policy and the equal rights of all nations to trade with China as the guiding principles of this new order. However, Chinas dissatisfaction with its unequal status in the international order led to an outburst of Chinese nationalism.

Meanwhile, despite being one of the victors of World War I, Japan was not accorded first-class power status under the Washington system. Coupled with Japans frustration with racial discrimination evident in the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, this prevented the creation of a strong domestic base of support for the Washington system.

The fundamental problem, however, was the U.S. governments lack of commitment to defend at all costs the principles and pacts upon which the Washington system was based.

By contrast, the U.S. was deeply committed to the post-World War II liberal international order, which centered on the Bretton Woods system, and maintained and further developed this system with solid bipartisan support at home.

However, Michael Anton and other anti-globalist theorists in the Trump administration have called for disturbing changes to this tradition. In their view, trade policies should be considered a matter of national defense. The forward deployment of U.S. troops, including overseas American military bases, should be reduced to the minimum. The U.S. should no longer use foreign policy to promote democratization abroad.

To be sure, Anton and his colleagues have a point: In the post-Cold War period, the democracy-promoting foreign policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations failed (as illustrated by Americas policy in the Middle East) in part due to the misguided belief that the U.S. could create a global community comprised of like-minded states.

At the same time, the liberalism, internationalism and multilateral rules and organizations shared by like-minded democratic states, if maintained, can become the cornerstone of peace and prosperity indeed, they have performed this function. Despite its hegemonic status, the post-World War II U.S. managed this system in a user-friendly manner.

This version of the U.S. is nowhere in evidence today. The liberal international order now finds itself without a leader. Princeton University professor John Ikenberry says that when it comes to preserving the liberal international order, Much will rest on the shoulders of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. Specifically, he says, Abe should keep promoting liberal trade agreements, modeled on the TPP, and Merkel, as the leader of the country that perhaps most embodies the virtues and accomplishments of the postwar liberal order, is uniquely positioned to speak as the moral voice of the liberal democratic world.

While this may be too much to expect, Japan could treat the new American absence as a historic opportunity to pursue a proactive Asian foreign policy. Rooting the Asian regional order in the principles of liberal international order will be vital to the establishment of long-term strategies for Japans trade, national security and its approach to the regional order.

Now is not the time for Japan to compete with China, but to develop a long-term vision for engaging with China. There should be areas in which Japan can cooperate with China for regional development in the Asia-Pacific region. Japan must couple these cooperative efforts with power-balancing measures. What is needed for Japan is a broad-minded and dogged form of diplomacy.

Yoichi Funabashi is chairman of the Asia Pacific Initiative and former editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun. This is a translation of his column in the monthly Bungei Shunju.

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It's time to protect the liberal international order - The Japan Times