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The Canberra Liberals want nothing more than to frame October's vote around cost-of-living pressures. But they could be risking a repeat of the last election by keeping light rail in play this campaign. In 2016, Labor won what was dubbed a referendum on light rail. The party was particularly successful in the Gungahlin-based seat of Yerrabi, where eight of Labor's top 10 booths were located. No surprises there - it was the primary beneficiary of Labor's blue ribbon election promise in light rail stage one. Chief Minister Andrew Barr would be more than happy to run another light rail election. For many, this fact makes the Liberals' refusal to back the city-to-Woden line particularly perplexing. They want to make the election about the cost of living, but by not committing to continuing the work on stage two of light rail, they could risk de-railing their message. The Liberals say they want to extend the network, but would decide what the next route should be after conducting an independent study. Transport spokeswoman Candice Burch says the party hears a lot of feedback that Belconnen to Airport should be the next leg. It means all the work done on the city-to-Woden line so far could be thrown down the drain, and construction timelines delayed significantly. Woden - and the seat of Murrumbidgee - will be a central battleground in the October election. The Liberals must pick up an extra member in that seat to have a chance of forming government. The Liberals' decision not to neutralise the light rail issue suggests they believe Woden residents will not vote based on the tram. It is true Woden cannot be seen through the same lens as Gungahlin. Unlike Gungahlin, it is a relatively strong area for the Liberals. It also has not had the same congestion issues crying out to be fixed as Gungahlin had in 2016. There are also real questions to be asked about the speed of light rail in Woden, with a journey predicted to take up to 30 minutes compared to 15 minutes on some express buses. The Liberals may have misjudged the public's support for light rail in 2016 when they pledged to ditch the project before. But at least voters knew what their party's policy was. There are very genuine questions about whether Woden would be the best next stage. A Belconnen line would be far less costly and complicated. And they have a genuine point when they say the government has lacked transparency. The problem for voters going into this election is they don't really know whether a Liberal government would extend the system at all. There have been no dollar announcements, and no real vision for their version of light rail. Just a commitment to do an independent analysis. And we all know "independent reports" from government are not always as independent as the name suggests.

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ANALYSIS

September 17 2020 - 4:30AM

The Canberra Liberals want nothing more than to frame October's vote around cost-of-living pressures. But they could be risking a repeat of the last election by keeping light rail in play this campaign.

In 2016, Labor won what was dubbed a referendum on light rail. The party was particularly successful in the Gungahlin-based seat of Yerrabi, where eight of Labor's top 10 booths were located.

No surprises there - it was the primary beneficiary of Labor's blue ribbon election promise in light rail stage one. Chief Minister Andrew Barr would be more than happy to run another light rail election.

For many, this fact makes the Liberals' refusal to back the city-to-Woden line particularly perplexing.

They want to make the election about the cost of living, but by not committing to continuing the work on stage two of light rail, they could risk de-railing their message.

The Liberals say they want to extend the network, but would decide what the next route should be after conducting an independent study.

Transport spokeswoman Candice Burch says the party hears a lot of feedback that Belconnen to Airport should be the next leg. It means all the work done on the city-to-Woden line so far could be thrown down the drain, and construction timelines delayed significantly.

Woden - and the seat of Murrumbidgee - will be a central battleground in the October election. The Liberals must pick up an extra member in that seat to have a chance of forming government.

The Liberals' decision not to neutralise the light rail issue suggests they believe Woden residents will not vote based on the tram.

It is true Woden cannot be seen through the same lens as Gungahlin. Unlike Gungahlin, it is a relatively strong area for the Liberals. It also has not had the same congestion issues crying out to be fixed as Gungahlin had in 2016.

There are also real questions to be asked about the speed of light rail in Woden, with a journey predicted to take up to 30 minutes compared to 15 minutes on some express buses.

The Liberals may have misjudged the public's support for light rail in 2016 when they pledged to ditch the project before. But at least voters knew what their party's policy was.

There are very genuine questions about whether Woden would be the best next stage. A Belconnen line would be far less costly and complicated. And they have a genuine point when they say the government has lacked transparency.

The problem for voters going into this election is they don't really know whether a Liberal government would extend the system at all.

There have been no dollar announcements, and no real vision for their version of light rail.

Just a commitment to do an independent analysis. And we all know "independent reports" from government are not always as independent as the name suggests.

Read the rest here:
The Liberals won't commit to Woden light rail, so will the 2016 election come back to haunt them? - The Canberra Times

A special presentation that was filmed earlier this summer observing quarantine guidelines intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Coastal Elites features five terrific actors, who deliver monologues reflecting their panic, anger and desperation as they attempt to deal with whats going on now. As that title indicates, playwright and screenwriter Paul Rudnick has created characters who tend to embody cliches associated with latte-sipping liberals.

Rudnick hits most of the usual stereotypes, and, as a result, Coastal Elites is less of a satire than it is an example of preaching to the converted. Sharp though some of the writing is, Coastal Elites never challenges the moral superiority of its characters, and so they mostly come off as predictable, making predictable points.

Originally intended as a stage work for New Yorks Public Theater, Coastal Elites evolved at the start of the pandemic, and was shaped to take into account current events. Jay Roach, whose credits include the movie Bombshell and the HBO fact-inspired political drama, Recount, directs.

Bette Midler plays a retired New York public school teacher, who reveres The New York Times (and insists on reading the print edition), carries an NPR totebag, and winds up in a police interrogation room after a conflict with a Donald Trump supporter. Dan Levy (Schitts Creek) is an actor talking to his therapist via video conference, about his hopes of getting a movie role as a gay superhero. Issa Rae is a woman who works with her affluent familys foundation, and has strong feelings about Ivanka Trump. Sarah Paulson hosts Mindful Meditations online, but loses her serenity after a visit with her family in the Midwest.

Most affecting is Kaitlyn Dever, as a young nurse who travels from Wyoming to help care for coronavirus patients in New York City. In this segment, Rudnick abandons any effort at humor, and Dever makes the nurses experience touching and sincere.

Throughout, Rudnick shows off his shrewd command of pop culture references as status markers. But its hard to find much complexity in characters who glibly assume the audience shares their world view, or to sympathize with their efforts not to be a snob when someone praises Trump.

Unfortunately, Coastal Elites will only reinforce already established opinions, which makes it yet another example of the chasms that exist between people.

"Coastal Elites debuts at 8 p.m. Sept. 12 on HBO; stream it on HBO Max.

More of our coverage:

Moments from summer TV 2020: Zoom fatigue, protest images as political football, and a few bright spots

-- Kristi Turnquist

kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist

Original post:
Coastal Elites on HBO: Satire of liberals freaking out over Trump and the pandemic preaches to the converted - OregonLive

The Southern Chiefs' Organization is calling the Manitoba government dishonourable in the way it treats vulnerable children in the province.

Southern Chiefs' OrganizationGrand Chief Jerry Danielssays Brian Pallister's Progressive Conservative government isattempting to present legislation that would prevent the government from being liable for taking hundreds of millions of dollarsintended for children in care.

Through the Children's Special Allowance, the federal government gives roughly $455 to $530 for each child in careto government child and family services agencies each month.

Beginning in 2010, Manitoba'sNDPgovernment began forcing the agencies to remit the money given, saying the province was paying for the maintenance of children in care and the money was therefore owed to them.

Thatmoney was put into general revenue. If agencies refused to remit it, the government withheld 20 per cent of the operating funds it gave the agency.

Daniels, who spoke at a press conference Wednesday alongsideManitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamontin the city's West End,says that between1999 and 2016, the NDP government diverted approximately $250 million. Since 2016, the PCs have diverted more than$100 million, Daniels and Lamont claimed.

The clawback prompted sixIndigenous child and family services agencies to suethe Manitoba government in 2018, but the SCO and Manitoba Liberals say the government has includedtwo provisions in its budget bill that would effectively end the lawsuit.

One clauseseeks to shield the province from being held responsible for clawing back the money earmarked for kids in care.

"Our children's resources are being stolen and Pallister is wanting to legislate himself out of being accountable for it,"Daniels said, calling the provisions in the budget bill"get-out-of-jail-free" clauses designed to shield the Tories.

"If the Pallister government believes they're right in taking the children's money, why does he not want the courts to decide?"

Unlike other bills, budget bills don't go before committees for public hearings, Lamont said, adding he is raising the issue now because the legislature is going back into session on Oct. 7.

"The Pallister PCs are using a budget bill to do an end-run around the courts," he added.

"The law is there to hold people to their word, and these measures set a terrible precedent."

Daniels and Lamont spoke on Wednesdayinfront of an Adele Avenue building, which was operated by the SouthernFirst Nations Network of Careas afacility for children in care until2019, when residents were evicted three months before the province introduceda bill in an effort to break its lease on the building.

The 20-year deal was signed in 2007under the NDP government to providean alternative to hotel placements of kids in care.

The province on Wednesday said it stepped in to help theSouthernFirst Nations Network of Care with the lease "at their request."

"They had signed an untendered, 20-year deal at a cost of $9.4 million and then determined the property would not meet their needs,"said a statement from Families Minister Heather Stefanson.

"The lease did not allow for an early termination, which meant a large portion of SFNNC's budget intended to support children and families was consumed by lease payments," the statement said, adding the government tried, unsuccessfully, to renegotiate the least.

"If the lease is not terminated, it will cost the province another $6.5 million over the next 10 years, plus maintenance costs," she said.

"We believe that is a complete waste of taxpayer money, which is why we are taking steps to end the lease."

The SCO and Liberals said the provincial government ordered the eviction of the home in February of 2019, and that children at the home were forced out in the middle of the night.

Stefanson's statement called that "a shameful falsehood." Plans werein place for the transition of every child at the Adele home, and notice was provided ahead of time, Stefanson said.

As for requiring agencies remit the Children's Special Allowance back to the province, that is ahistorical practice of the previous NDP government, Stefanson said, noting the proposed legislation will change that.

Since April 2019, agencies have beenretaining the allowance, as well as receivingsingle-envelope funding from the province, which will provide more than$400 million to the authorities and their agencies in 2020-21 a $15-million increase compared to what they received before, Stefansonsaid.

Visit link:
Southern chiefs, Liberals accuse Manitoba government of withholding millions intended for kids in care - CBC.ca

TORONTO -- While on the campaign trail a year ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised that a re-elected Liberal government would plant two billion trees over the next 10 years. But so far, none of those trees have gone in the ground.

Some federally-funded trees have been planted in 2020, according to Natural Resources Minister Seamus ORegans office, but the two billion promise referred to brand-new trees, on top of the usual replanting efforts.

Ian Cameron, press secretary for ORegan, says that COVID-19 is the cause for the delay.

Our government provided $30 million to businesses in the forest sector to ensure that they could safely continue their planting activities during COVID-19, he said in a statement to CTV News. We are also planting hundreds of thousands of trees through the Infrastructure Disaster Mitigation Adaptation Fund. These have been our priority in the past several months, and we were successful in those efforts.

Building off these efforts, we remain fully committed to planting two billion trees, and we look forward to sharing more on that soon.

Trudeau first made the promise in September 2019, after he met with Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, and before he participated in a climate march in Montreal.

The two billion trees were pitched as an important part of the Liberals plan to fight climate change and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The partys platform specified that it would create 3,500 seasonal tree planting jobs, and that it was all part of a $3-billion commitment to better conserve and restore forests, grasslands, agricultural lands, wetlands, and coastal areas.

Nature isn't just part of our identity as Canadians, it's also a part of the solution to climate change and it's a solution we can start using today," Trudeau told reporters in September 2019.

"Trees are remarkable. They pull carbon out of the atmosphere. They are renewable and they're sustainable and, eventually, they even recycle themselves. All we have to do is plant the first one."

When the plan was announced, officials specified that this would be in addition to the roughly 600 million trees that are already planted across Canada each year.

In order to have two billion trees planted by 2030, the government shouldve been planting 200 million trees a year starting in 2020, which breaks down to 547,945 trees planted every single day.

If they start planting in 2021, itll take 608,828 trees planted every day to make the goal.

View original post here:
Trudeau government hasn't started planting 2 billion trees promised in 2019 campaign - CTV News

Conservative thought in America is becoming more radical. Which means that it's reverting to the form it often took in other times in Europe in the wake of the French Revolution, in reaction to the liberalism of the Enlightenment.

Unlike the tamer conservatism of the postwar decades, today's conservative critics don't locate the source of their discontent within the liberal tradition with the Progressive movement or the New Deal, for example, or the sexual revolution of the 1960s and '70s. Instead, the most influential and cogent conservatives of the present among them Patrick Deneen of the University of Notre Dame, Adrian Vermeule of Harvard Law School, and Sohrab Ahmari of The New York Post take aim at the liberal tradition itself and suggest that our problems stem from errors that have marked it from the beginning.

The indictment runs like this: The original liberal theorists including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and the American constitutional framers aimed to inspire the creation of individualistic societies in which people actively cut themselves loose from tradition and other moral constraints in pursuit of a life of ever-purer liberation. Many if not all of our challenges and difficulties from moral decay to capitalist decadence to widespread anxiety and depression flow from this original liberal goal, which has largely been achieved. The only effective way to respond to these challenges and difficulties is therefore to reject liberalism from top to bottom and look for another basis on which to found political and social life.

It's a powerful critique. But what would it mean to see it through to truly break free from liberalism, to create a fully post-liberal society? How would our lives change? What would our fellow citizens believe? How would they think and live?

The answer, I fear, is that they would think and live an awful lot like that portion of the American population today that sees the ongoing pandemic largely as an act of God that we should just accept without doing much by way of control or mitigation. A reporter at a recent Trump rally spoke to attendees who expressed this outlook. One is quoted as saying "I'm not afraid to die. The Good Lord takes care of me. If I die, I die.

That is the pre-liberal outlook that would be more fully revived and encouraged if today's radical right-wing critics of liberalism get their way.

The early modern proto-liberals who helped to inspire the Enlightenment had several aims, but a key one was the promulgation of an account of human origins that could serve as an alternative to the biblical narrative. The Bible describes the original human beings as created by God and placed in paradise. With their first sin disobeying the command to refrain from eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden to make their way in the world. But they are not abandoned by God, who continues to take a keen interest in his creation.

The remainder of the Hebrew Bible tells the story of one specially favored group of human beings as they oscillate between pious obedience and a mixture of disobedience and indifference toward the divine. At no point is God's providence and overarching concern withdrawn. The Christian New Testament expands on this story, adding the promise of redemption from sin at the hands of humanity's savior and the gratuitous gift of eternal life after death.

The first liberal thinkers were convinced that the biblical outlook had landed Europe in a mess. With most people certain their fate was in the hands of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and transcendentally good God, the norm was passivity before nature, priests, and princes. As a result, European life was marked by poverty, ignorance, violence, and tyranny. To change this, people needed to be persuaded that it was unwise to put their faith in divine providence. They needed to recognize an imperative to take matters into their own hands to devote themselves to a kind of humanistic self-help program.

"God will provide, said the pious. To which the proto-liberals responded, "No, he will not.

These writers helped to effect this change of view by proposing an alternative to the biblical account of human origins in a Garden of Eden. In this "state of nature, men and women are alone, struggling to survive and prosper without a divine overseer, needing to protect ourselves in a harsh and indifferent universe. It was up to us to devise a foundation for government that would secure minimal social goods life, liberty, property, and (in the most fortunate of circumstances) the "commodious living made possible by the division of labor and commercial activity.

The early liberal promise was this: If you stop passively expecting God to provide for you, it will become possible to create a world far more hospitable to human flourishing with good (or at least less predatory) government, tolerance for freedom of worship, an economy that over time produces increasing prosperity for all, education that allows for scientific, technical, and medical advances to make life longer, easier, less painful, and more pleasurable. All of this and more is within our reach. But no one will provide it for us. We need to take responsibility for ourselves and act to achieve it.

This vision of a self-reliant human future helped to inspire the Enlightenment and ultimately transformed the world, creating societies shaped by leaps in scientific knowledge, wealth, travel, communications, and health care. It made a world in which a new virus could arise and spread across the globe in a matter of weeks but also a world in which most of us knew it was coming, could try to prepare for it by changing our behavior, and begin working to devise therapeutic treatments and a vaccine to hold down the death toll.

But of course all of that depends on people maintaining the early liberal's disenchanted outlook on the human situation. If large numbers of people begin to reassert a biblical view in which the proper existential stance is one of obedience to higher powers that are presumed to reward and punish us if we start once again to treat such misfortunes as viruses, hurricanes, and wild fires as providential acts of God we must passively accept we will lose our edge in the battle to defend and expand the boundaries of a world made more habitable by human effort and ingenuity.

A post-liberal world would be an awful lot like the pre-liberal world. Remember that the next time you read an author making the case for a more radical, even revolutionary, form of conservatism or hear an unmasked person at a public rally say, "The Good Lord takes care of me. If I die, I die.

That's the sound of the post-liberal world being born.

Read more from the original source:
The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment - The Week