Monthly Archives: August 2017

Former British Columbia finance minister Kevin Falcon, who ran a close second to Christy Clark for the BC Liberal leadership in 2011, says the party might now be best led by a caucus outsider who could overcome criticisms of the partys record in government.

Mr. Falcon, whose name frequently comes up as a potential successor to Ms. Clark, says hes not interested in running, having retired from politics in 2013.

The BC Liberals are preparing for a leadership contest to replace Ms. Clark, whose resignation took effect last Friday. The campaign will likely focus on what factors reduced the Liberals to a minority in the provincial legislature, setting the stage for the NDP to take power, and what direction the party must go to recover.

Mr. Falcon said it would be difficult for anyone from the previous government to take over the party. Thats going to be the challenge for candidates that are coming from the existing MLA cast, he said in an interview. Its not impossible; it just makes it more challenging to be that change candidate. I think outside candidates probably have that advantage.

However, Mr. Falcon, an executive vice-president with the B.C. investment company Anthem Capital Corp., says he wont be seeking the job.

I am not going to be a candidate for the leadership of the BC Liberal party and while I appreciate all of the calls, e-mails, texts and people stopping me on the street and encouraging me to run, my circumstances are similar to what led me to retire in the first place, Mr. Falcon said.

I have two young daughters and a very satisfying career in the private sector.

Mr. Falcon quipped that his days are being destroyed by having to respond to all the people calling about a leadership campaign that is not going to happen.

Ill never get any work done if I have to return all the calls and e-mails.

Among the calls have been outreach from the leadership prospects, largely members of the BC Liberal caucus, who have said they are considering leadership bids.

Ms. Clark won the BC Liberal leadership with 52-per-cent support, compared with 48 per cent for Mr. Falcon, who had considerable support in caucus over the one MLA who backed Ms. Clark. Mr. Falcon had previously served as ministers of finance, health and transportation, as well as deputy premier. He spent a dozen years as a member of the legislature. Ms. Clark led the Liberals to a surprise win in 2013. Mr. Falcon did not seek re-election.

This past spring, the New Democrats and Greens joined together to oust the Liberals in a confidence vote, prompting the Lieutenant-Governor to ask the NDP to form a new government.

John Horgan is now Premier and the Liberals find themselves in opposition after 16 years in power.

As defeat in the legislature became a near certainty, Ms. Clarks beleaguered Liberals tabled a Throne Speech in June that offered a wholesale remake of the partys election campaign.

Mr. Falcon said that Throne Speech presents a challenge to the party.

That recent Throne Speech was not helpful at all, to say the least, Mr. Falcon said.

By adopting the NDP-Green platform holus-bolus, it went against 16 years of largely principled policy leadership.

Ms. Clark, asked about that issue in a final news conference as leader, said the partys next leader would be free to break with the Throne Speech she presided over a point that others in the party have also made.

Mr. Falcon said integrity and transparency need to be front and centre for all candidates seeking the leadership, making specific reference to campaign finance reform and how government operates.

He also advised boldness in policy to address legitimate issues of affordability, especially in the Lower Mainland.

That means really bold and new ideas in transit, in housing, in daycare all of those issues that are going to be important for urban-suburban voters.

He also said there needs to be a debate about how to raise government funds. People talk often about how we spend governments money, but people need to focus about how we generate it.

BC Liberal caucus members Sam Sullivan, a former Vancouver mayor, former advanced education minister Andrew Wilkinson, ex-transportation minister Todd Stone, former education minister Mike Bernier and Jas Johal, a former TV reporter elected to the legislature this spring, have said they are considering runs for the leadership.

Outside the caucus, Iain Black, the former labour minister who is now president and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, has said he may run. Tory MP Dianne Watts, formerly mayor of Surrey, says she is being urged to run, but has not made any decision.

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BC Liberals' new leader should be an outsider, former politician says - The Globe and Mail

9 Aug 2017, 6:37 p.m.

Liberal MPs have stood by embattled Opposition Leader Matthew Guy as pressure mounted on him over his lobster dinner.

Senior Liberal MPs declared their support for embattled Opposition Leader Matthew Guy on Wednesday as he came under intense pressure over his lobster dinner with alleged Mafia boss Tony Madafferi.

However, some expressed concern that Mr Guy's decision to stay at the table after learning Mr Madafferi was there showed a lapse of judgment.

And some believed further damning revelations could prove highly damaging for Mr Guy's leadership.

Mr Guy has repeatedly denied wrongdoing or discussing donations at the April meeting with Mr Madafferi and Mr Madafferi's cousin, long-time Liberal supporter Frank Lamattina, at the Lobster Cave restaurant in Beaumaris.

One senior Liberal MP said the party room was united behind their leader and so far there had not been any push for a leadership change.

"I don't get the sense that anyone genuinely wants change. It's a cohesive parliamentary party room," the MP said.

The MP said switching leaders was an "enormous risk", particularly with an election less than 18 months away.

"The party has to go through devastating convulsions to go there."

This week Fairfax Media revealed explosive secretly recorded phone calls in which a Liberal Party official discussed plans to offer undisclosed donations from the men who attended the dinner.

The official recorded in the phone calls, Barrie Macmillan, resigned from his party position on Wednesday.

The latest turmoil in Victorian politics is also facing scrutiny from Canberra.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, asked in Federal Parliament whether the Australian Federal Police had been asked to investigate the revelations, said, "Those reports will be carefully examined by federal authorities."

Despite the revelations, many Liberal MPs who spoke to Fairfax Media insisted Mr Guy retained their confidence.

Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger told ABC Radio none of the dinner guests had made recent disclosable donations to the party or given smaller sums to his knowledge.

Labor ministers made repeated references to Beaumaris and accepting money from mobsters in question time at Parliament on Wednesday.

And Deputy Premier James Merlino released a list of 17 questions for Mr Guy, including asking exactly how many people attended the dinner and whether he would release all correspondence to the corruption watchdog.

Earlier in the week Mr Guy said he was so confident he had done nothing wrong he would refer the matter to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission for investigation.

Opposition spokeswoman for children Georgie Crozier said the parliamentary party was united and strongly behind Mr Guy.

She insisted the revelations did not undermine the Coalition's strong campaigning on law and order in Victoria. "I think this is just white noise," she said.

Another opposition frontbencher, Ryan Smith, said Mr Guy could not have been more open about the dinner.

"His team sees that," he said.

Following the Coalition's 2014 election loss, shadow treasurer Michael O'Brien contested the leadership.

But on Wednesday Mr O'Brien insisted he supported Mr Guy to stay in the top job.

"Matthew Guy has done a great job in taking the fight up to Daniel Andrews on behalf of Victorians neglected by Labor," he said. "He will make a great premier and has my full support.

On Wednesday morning Coalition MPs including shadow energy minister David Southwick??? and Kew MP Tim Smith all said Mr Guy had their full backing.

"I'm behind him 1000 per cent," Tim Smith said. "He has my absolute support and he's doing a fantastic job."

Mr Southwick also stood by his leader.

"Matthew Guy has made his comments very clear here in terms of what has gone on. The situation really is that we need to get on with the real issues that matter in Victoria," he said.

The story Senior Liberals stand by Guy first appeared on The Age.

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Senior Liberals stand by Guy - Warrnambool Standard

They basically run the Internet. Their parent company dwarfs every other corporation on Earth. But they are more terrified of offending the Left than breaking the law.

On Monday, Google decided to trample free expression and possibly flout federal labor regulations. Afraid of viral outrage from the Left, the international corporation fired a software engineer named James Damore for writing and disseminating an unpopular opinion.

In a ten-page internal memo, Damore dared to question the company line on diversity. He asked instead whether biological differences explain why so many more men than women work in Silicon Valley. He argued that by "shaming into silence" different opinions, Google "has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed. And Google proved he was right by firing him.

Google purports to value "honest discussion." And reasonable people should be able to disagree about these things. Google just didn't want the bad publicity of having someone with such ideas on their payroll. But never mind the incongruity or hypocrisy. The more important problem is that litigation is around the corner.

"I have a legal right to express my concerns about the terms and conditions of my working environment and to bring up potentially illegal behavior, which is what my document does," Damore told the New York Times.

According to Dan Eaton, an attorney and ethics professor at San Diego University, the engineer certainly has grounds for a case on two fronts. "First, federal labor law bars even non-union employers like Google from punishing an employee for communicating with fellow employees about improving working conditions," Eaton writes.

And second, because the memo was a statement of political views, Eaton says Google may have violated California law which "prohibits employers from threatening to fire employees to get them to adopt or refrain from adopting a particular political course of action."

An international corporation with armies of both lawyers, Google knew all this. They decided to take their chances with state and federal law anyway rather than stick up for one of their employees and risk public backlash. That's an incredibly telling decision from a company that has mastered everything from artificial intelligence to self-driving cars.

In short, the tech titan is scared. Not of losing talent. Not of legal fees from the pending litigation. And not of a potential settlement. No, Google just doesn't want to stir up outrage from the left and so they squashed speech.

Since their founding they prided themselves on their corporate motto: "Don't Be Evil." Maybe this would be a better motto: "Don't Be Craven."

Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

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Google is more afraid of liberal outrage than federal law - Washington Examiner

Male graduate wearing cap and gown standing in campus archway at University of Pennsylvania.H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

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I love the title of the new book by veteran journalist George Anders, You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a Useless Liberal Arts Education, which goes on sale today.

I would say that, as a history and political science graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the renowned computer-science school. Anders, for many years a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, also is a member of the humanities club: He studied economics at Stanford.

My bias notwithstanding, this book arrives at a critical time. For a couple decades now the stars of Silicon Valley have been engineers and coders, nerds whose skills have been highly prized. Yet more and more the technology industry is suffering from an empathy deficit. Enter Anders, who argues that "creativity, curiosity, and empathy are the job skills of the future."

You Can Do Anything is part how-to for humanities types. It offers practical advice, like the relative uselessness of sending out blind resumes and the huge value of networking among alumni and acceptingand then crushingpart-time and other entry-level positions.

Anders also tells stories about liberal arts students made good. These include Josh Sucher, an anthropology graduate whom Etsy ( etsy ) put to work interviewing customers to learn what crafts might sell well. He explains how IBM ( ibm ) turned to Oliver Meeker, a sociology major, to explain to non-technical corporate clients the dastardly difficult-to-understand concept of the blockchain. "You dont want an engineer on this," says Anders. He revels in the story of Andy Anderegg, an English major who wrote snappy copy for Groupon ( grpn ) on her way to becoming a highly paid digital audience development consultant.

Anders isn't so much arguing that a humanities background is better than more practical educational pursuits as he's making the case that the liberal-arts-inclined needn't panic about their lack of hirable skills. More, he wants to persuade fellow parents of college-age children not to hem in their future job seekers by pushing them to study subjects that don't interest them.

These are important words of wisdom by a skilled storyteller and a sharp observer of the human condition.

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Liberal Arts Education Remains Valuable, New Book Says | Fortune ... - Fortune

German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Bundestag, lower house of Parliament, on June 29, 2017 in Berlin | John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images

CDU and FDP would only get 47 percent of the vote, poll suggests.

By Cynthia Kroet

8/9/17, 10:48 AM CET

A coalition between Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) would fallshort of a majority in parliamentif federal elections were held today, according to an opinion poll published Wednesday.

The conservative CDU together with its Bavarian sister party CSU remained stable compared to last weeks survey with 40 percent of the vote, while the FDP led by 38-year-old Christian Lindner lost 1 percentage point and fell back to 7 percent, according to the Stern-RTL Wahltrend.

Together, the possible coalition partners would only get 47 percent of the vote.

The FDP hasnt seen the inside of the German parliament since 2013, when they suffered a humiliating general election thrashing that left the party without any seats in the Bundestag for the first time since 1949.

Lindner, credited by some for reviving the liberal party,has said he would pursue a softer line on Brexit, called for Greece to be granted debt relief and temporarily forced out of the eurozone, and suggested Germany consider the Russian annexation of Crimea a permanent provisional solution.

Martin Schulzs Social Democratic Party (SPD), the current junior coalition partner in government, rose slightly in the polls to 23 percent after stagnating for four consecutive weeks. The Greens, leftist Die Linke and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) are all projected to get 8 percent of the vote.

Asked who they would prefer as chancellor, half of the respondents opted for Merkel, while 21 percent chose Schulz, marking his lowest level of support since his nomination as the SPDs candidate in January.

Germany goes to the polls on September 24.

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German liberal-conservative coalition short of parliamentary majority: poll - POLITICO.eu

DODGE CITY, Kan. (KSNW) PenAir, which serves Dodge City and Liberal, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the search is on for a new airline.

It is a long process, thats for sure, said Corey Keller, who manages Dodge City Regional Airport.

PenAir will be in Dodge and Liberal for the next 90 days and possibly longer until the airport can find a new airline.

Dodge City resident Andrew Priest flies to Denver for work several times per year and says he was happy with PenAirs direct flight to the city.

The next best option is you have to go through Dallas out of Garden City and its just a pain, so this is a lot more convenient, he said.

For Dodge City, which has a large tourism industry, reliable air service is crucial to keep the town accessible for tourists.

If people cant get here to Dodge City, then it affects all aspects of tourism, said Keller.

In their search for a new airline, a major thing the airport is looking for is what flight times theyll be able to offer. Officials say theres a connection between the current flight times and the low ridership numbers.

With the schedule and two afternoon flights, said Keller, if we had morning and afternoon, we would see better numbers than that.

Its a possibility that excites passengers like Priest.

That would be nice, said Priest, because it would be much more convenient to be able to get there in the morning rather than get there the day before, just because of how the flights are. That would be nice if the new one did that, itd be great. Id use it a lot more often probably.

Theres a lot of uncertainty. A new airline will need to balance the needs of two communities.

Were still working with Liberal to find something that will work for both cities, said Keller.

Theres isnt a date set yet for when PenAir will stop serving the region. Anyone who bought a ticket for a flight after a new airline takes over should contact PenAir to ask about refunds.

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Airline leaving Dodge and Liberal - KSN-TV