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My grandmother was effectively a single parent by 1930 after my granddad emigrated to New York in early 1929 when the bottom fell out of the cattle trade in County Down. She and the kids were to follow, but her long illness meant they couldnt.

After Id become a parent myself, my mum told me that every time a plate cracked granny would put it away in the kitchen press. Then when the kids got out of hand, shed go to the cupboard, take out the old plate, and smash it on the ground.

It commanded an immediate silence, and restored order. The sepia images that survive, show from thesmiles on her kids faces that they prospered despite such moments of percussive clarity. It may even have helped them to a better life.

Last Sunday, it was Eoghan Harriss turn to crack some Delft. His uncommonly direct column (even for him) calling for the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger to resign after recent revelations had an almost immediate effect.

Rusbridger now knows (if he didnt before) the Irish politics he once dabbled is a real bear-pit. If English politics is about materialism and class, ours is about culture and, until quite recently, it involved a quite lot of death, injury and mayhem.

Where you stand on that revolutionary bloodshed and later civil infractions of the legal and social codes still matters. Yet his resignation as chair of the southern governments Future of Media Commission was both sudden and unexpected.

His fellow commissioner Conor Brady put up the thinest possible defence on his behalf, but it did little other than reanimate Rusbridgers callous insouciance over Roy Greenslades cold partisan attack (now removed) on Mairia Cahill:

Greenslade did not try to deny Cahill had been raped by an IRA member.

The principal point in his blog was that the BBCs Spotlight programme lacked balance in that it did not take account of the fact that Cahill was a leading member of a dissident republican organisation with an anti-Sinn Fein agenda.

This meant vital information was denied to viewers, he claimed. Of course the innuendo, citing unnamed critics of the programme, was that her complaint was motivated by politics.

Note the repetition of that familiar old line, the anti Sinn Fin agenda and fair gaming of Cahillby Greenslades parti prix pen. Its routinely thrown at anyone who questions that partys right to do whatever it thinks is in its own interests.

Before I come to why he had to go, let me sayRusbridger had great convening power. I doubt anyone else would have brought in someone like Simon Kuper and his fearless and penetrating insight on the medias systemic failure on populism.

I never worked at the Guardian as such but from 2006 I was regularly commissioned by the late Georgina Henry, deputised by Rusbridger to run the papers Comment is Free digital platform to write online. It was fun and it took me places.

For instance to the Editors summer party on Londons South Bank in 2006. Being early I met and chatted with Ken Livingstone about a year or so before losing the Mayoralty of London to the man who is now the British Prime Minister.

He was, he argued to a small crowd of us, a policy man, and thought his Tory rival in 2008 would cowpe under pressure of his command of the detail. Turns out that this was a complacent view of the oncoming reality truck that was Boris Johnson.

And complacency is the word. In his book (H/T Tim) Evil Geniuses, Kurt Andersen tells how US liberals, who enjoyed hegemony back in the 60s and 70s, first indulged new extreme market ideologies. Then adopted those values as their own.

He connects thesesoixante-huitards with a new capital class that subsequently freed itself from any obligation to wider society or set its vastly privatised wealth to work. This accommodation with monied individualism was both easy and pain free.

Andersen recalls a moment from 1975 when journalists crossed the picket line of striking printers at The Washington Post, including Bob Woodward, from the start. It was the beginning of the end for the Pressmen, the US print workers union.

Forty years on watching journalists get washed away and drowned by the latest wave of technology induced change Andersen notes that if hed been one of those print workers hed have felt some schadenfreude.

Its odd to watch liberals co-opt themselves into defending ideologies that, on the face of it, are inimical to their professed values. With Greenslade (for many years Fleet Streets own watchdog) that means acceptingsome very odd behaviours:

In 1989 Roy Greenslade made a series of hoax phone calls to his own newspaper, writes Marcus Leroux . Putting on an Irish accent, he pretended to be the friend of an airline pilot who overheard SAS soldiers chatting about an operation in Gibraltar Nick Davies reported in the 2008 book Flat Earth News.

The Newsletter reported Kathryn Johnstons response to hearing a recording of the original conversation between Davies and Greenslade

As a self-appointed media scruineer it doesnt sit very well to hear him laughing and joking about making a fake phone call to pass on information which he says came from republican contacts and using a fake Irish accent to a colleague in the Sunday Times. It is deeply unethical.

It doesnt end there. The Mail reportsthat Greenslade accused Kathryns late husband and former colleague Liam Clarke of

colluding with the security forces to publish false stories about the IRAs commitment to a ceasefire. It was a malicious attack, based on no more than tittle-tattle, yet the damage was real, Mr Clarke later complained.

The allegations were wild, wrong and, for me, dangerous. For a journalist living and working in Northern Ireland to be accused of collusion with the security forces is life-threatening. Once a lie has been printed, it is repeated with regularity. Greenslade was unrepentant.

Journalists were not targeted during the conflict, though several were civilian casualties in the IRAs indiscriminate bombing campaign. The one obvious exception, Martin OHagan was killed by loyalists during the so call peace process.

But anyone who has read Malachi ODohertys Telling Year will know that journalists on the ground, were under constant pressure from one group or the other to turn their copy one way or the other. Murder was the backdrop rather than a threat.

In Rusbridgers final apologiathe Guardian editor recounts a bizarre conversation in 1999 between himself, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and a retired British spook James who told the two leading members of the Provisional movement

their silence on decommissioning the IRAs weapons was seriously damaging their credibility and was leaving Tony Blair and Bill Clinton looking increasingly exposed.

Rusbridger unquestioningly recalls the response from McGuinness If Gerry were to make a speech about decommissioning, said McGuinness, some young lad would come and shoot him tomorrow.

Months later the official deadline in the Belfast Agreement for IRA decommissioning passed in May 2000. As wenow know Adams was merely using that collapsed deadline as a bargaining chip for indemnity for IRA men.

You might think Rusbridger would have been aware of this when he committed those thoughts to paper but his willingness to accept the SF leaders at their word (or their, ahem,partial disclosure) is a too common feature within liberal media.

On both islands. Harris condemned the piece as both arrogant and self-absorbed. And further stated that

in a piece of 23 paragraphs, Mira Cahills name wasnt mentioned until the 21st paragraph.

He also tried the ploy of wrapping himself in the peace process this despite Mira Cahills ordeal having taken place well after the Good Friday Agreement. [Emphasis added]

He makes a further point too about the silencing of a woman who has not only undergone the original rape, but during this (post conflict) same time period that Rusbridger references was being actively re-traumatised by the IRA themselves.

Its not as though we dont have a problem getting rape prosecutions to where they need to be on these islands. In Northern Ireland the number of crown court cases for rape fell by about a quarter from 2017-18 to 2018-19.

And whilst the figure in the south increased by 35% last year

Chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Noeline Blackwell, welcomed the increase, but she said the number of rape prosecutions is still far too low and represents only a fraction of those reported to garda.

The support service estimates around 14 per cent of rape cases reported to garda are sent forward for trial, while it believes 90 per cent of rape victims do not report such crimes at all.

Some complain about the Cahill case as though it were just an inconvenience to the new politics-as-usual. But she only came forward (and later waived her right to anonymity) after Gerry Adams niece sought her own fathers prosecution.

Having heard Harris plate smash, Rusbridger has done the decent thing and walked. Ireland needs its media and in particular, its liberal wing. But that wing must reassess the gap between the values it professes and those it acts upon.

And to begin to consider the likely outcome of the stories they choose to print.

Photo by moritz320 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

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Ireland's liberal media must reassess the gap between the values it professes and those it acts upon - Slugger O'Toole

A WA Liberal MP has launched a scathing attack on his own party's performance, saying it failed to be a "credible opposition" over the past four years and calling its central election energy proposal "the stupidest policy" ever released by the party.

Upper House Member for the South West, Steven Thomas, who is on track to secure his seat for another term, unleashed a barrage of criticism against his party on ABC Radio Perth.

"When COVID came along Mark McGowan did a pretty good job with it and he's been rewarded for that," Mr Thomas told the ABC's Nadia Mitsopoulos.

"But at the other end of the argument, from a Liberal perspective, we lost our credibility.

"We didn't campaign hard enough for four years, we lost our connections to the community.

The politics, the policies and the people. We've collected all our coverage on the election campaign here.

"I think a lot of our people somehow thought that everybody made a mistake in 2017 and it was going to come flooding back to the Liberal Party, but what we needed to maintain all through the last four years, and particularly the last four months, was our credibility that we could be a credible opposition.

"And we failed to do that."

The WA Liberals suffered a thumping defeat at Saturday's election, with WA Labor on track to claim a majority in both houses of WA's Parliament.

Mr Thomas rejected the suggestion the former Liberal leader Zak Kirkup, who lost his seat of Dawesville on Saturday, had been "thrown to the wolves".

Mr Thomas claimed there was a group of around six people who were "supposed" to make decisions about the campaign, policies and costings.

"But in the end it was a very small, select group around Zak (Kirkup) who made those decisions and I think he stands by his decisions," Mr Thomas said.

"He was the maker of his own demise in my view, because that little leadership team were the people who decided to put out that energy policy, who decided to admit defeat weeks out.

"Those decisions damaged everybody. While I wish him the best I think he is as responsible as everybody else."

ABC News: Andrew O'Connor

The WA Liberals yesterday said it would take steps to begin "a comprehensive review of the election, from 2017 through to and including the formal campaign period."

"The circumstances of this election and the events leading up to it made for the most difficult campaign in our party's history," a party statement said.

"History and timing were not on our side."

Mr Thomas said he had contributed to previous party reviews but they had "contained things that the leadership and the people in control of the Liberal Party didn't like, so none of it ever saw the light of day."

"If you are going to have another review, it actually has to result in change," Mr Thomas said.

"It has to look at going back to empowering those local branches, and not allowing them to be dominated by any one particular group.

"And it's not just the conservative Christian Lobby who seem to have an excessive amount of power in Perth, there are other groups as well that form around factions.

"It is time for the Liberal Party to take the power back from those groups."

Mr Thomas said the party needed to change "the selection process, the control process for the Liberal Party", suggesting plebiscite preselection to give the entire party a chance to contribute.

Mr Thomas said he had heard frequently from within his party over the past four years that "it would never get worse than 2017".

"The reality is it got significantly worse," Mr Thomas said.

Did you know we offer a local version of the ABC News homepage? Watch below to see how you can set yours, and get more WA stories.

(Hint: You'll have to go back to the home page to do this)

"For the two and a half years, I don't think any policy was developed. Nobody heard from the Liberal Party about issues.

"All of those things meant that people thought the Liberal Party wasn't present and wasn't in the debate."

Mr Thomas then drilled down on the election campaign, saying while some strong Liberal policies, including payroll tax reform, had been developed, they were largely undersold.

Instead, Mr Thomas said the party focused on a "couple of policies and decisions" he labelled "terrible" and made the Liberal "situation far worse", zooming in on its central renewable energy proposal.

"That energy policy was the stupidest policy I have ever seen the Liberal Party release," Mr Thomas said.

"It makes the Alexander Downer, 'The Things That Batter' domestic violence policy, look sensible by comparison."

Mr Thomas was referring to Mr Downer's comments as the leader of the federal opposition in 1996, when introducing a set of policies dubbed "The things that matter", he segued into the party's domestic violence policies by saying, "from the things that matter to the things that batter".

Mr Thomas said the politics of the Liberals' energy policy and what it aimed to achieved made it "foolish".

Read the ABC's election expert Antony Green's analysis of the WA election.

"The expectations that thousands of Greens supporters would suddenly jump onto the Liberal Party bus because of this greener-than-green policy was foolish politics," Mr Thomas said.

"But it also shredded our already damaged credibility because it was utterly undeliverable.

"You could not do it even if you wanted to."

Mr Thomas called himself the "greenest" member of the Liberal Party but said he thought the policy was "undeliverable".

"You couldn't have shut down the Collie Power Station by 2025 even if you wanted to, you couldn't deliver renewable energy down that pathway and get it to Albany safely without droppage," Mr Thomas said.

"If you decided to do it, it would cost billions.

"That energy policy, in my view, is the reason why our costings were such a debacle, because you could not afford to have that policy costed."

Outgoing Liberal MP Alyssa Hayden, who lost her seat of Darling Range, took aim at the party's former leader Liza Harvey and the role her leadership played in the party's thumping defeat.

Ms Harvey, who lost her seat of Scarborough at the weekend's poll, led the Liberal Party during the COVID-19 pandemic and came under intense scrutiny over her original call for interstate borders to open.

She stood aside months out from the election to effectively give the party a clean slate, and Zak Kirkup took over the reigns.

"If we'd swapped over to Zak a year out from the election, I think we would have been in a better position," Ms Hayden said.

"I don't think Liza did us any favours, certainly got us no runs on the board and we went backwards."

ABC News: Jacob Kagi

Ms Hayden said Ms Harvey's border comments hurt the party "immensely" and that there had been "no consultation in the party room" over the position.

She claimed under Ms Harvey's leadership, she and other Liberal MPs, "were frozen out".

"Silly things, like we were gagged in Question Time, we were not allowed to interject it just killed our morale and we were no longer a team," she said.

Ms Hayden said comparatively, former leader Mike Nahan and Mr Kirkup were both very inclusive.

Ms Hayden said in hindsight neither the Liberal's green energy policy, nor Mr Kirkup's decision to concede defeat weeks out from the poll, were the right moves but that Mr Kirkup had "done an amazing job".

"I had people stopping me congratulating me on changing leader.

"Zak ran an amazing Opposition line, he did an extremely good job in a very short timeframe with no resources."

One of what could be only two re-elected Lower House Liberal MPs, Libby Mettam, who is the acting party leader, said her colleague had made some valid points.

ABC News: Gian De Poloni

"The WA Liberal Party do need to take responsibility, not just for the fifteen weeks of the election campaign, which obviously could have been better," Ms Mettam said.

"But also the last four years where we had that time to really build and be in a better, more resilient position through this pandemic election."

Ms Mettam said being an effective Opposition would be "an enormous challenge" but it was not an insurmountable task.

"We do need to reconnect with our base, and do that very quickly, we do need to re-energise the party," Ms Mettam said.

"There is a public interest in ensuring that we have an effective working Opposition and we quite clearly need to do more to ensure that we meet that objective, numbers aside."

Ms Mettam laughed off a suggestion that "you could flip a coin" to determine the next Liberal Party leader, but said it would be determined with her party colleagues at a later time.

Excerpt from:
Liberal MP Steven Thomas lets fly at own party in wake of WA election catastrophe - ABC News

Volunteers load cases of water into the bed of a truck during a mass water distribution at Delmar Stadium on February 19, 2021. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Texas' massive freeze left Texans feeling abandoned not only by leadership but by critics of the state who jeered at victims of the winter storm.

Rather than judge the state by its politics, it's crucial to understand the state's diversity and history of voter suppression.

Regardless of party lines, no human deserves to freeze to death in their own home.

Jillian Goltzman is a freelance journalist covering culture, lifestyle, and social impact.

Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.

Winter Storm Uri tore through Texas with a vengeance that uncovered just how poorly out-of-touch some politicians are in a crisis - and how uncouth people on the internet can be. Texans were forced to endure subfreezing temperatures for days without electricity, heat, and water amid a deadly pandemic. Republican leaders like Governor Greg Abbott incorrectly blamed green energy, and Senator Ted Cruz, both literally and figuratively, left his constituents out in the cold by fleeing to Cancun. Of all the reactions to the downfall of Texas' electric grid, one rang loud and clear on Twitter: "we told you so."

It was 40 degrees inside my house when I saw the tweet from Stephen King. "Hey, Texas! Keep voting for officials who don't believe in climate change and supported privatization of the power grid," he jeered in a tweet. A succession of "too bad" and "they shouldn't have voted for Trump" tweets soon filled my screen. As a liberal living in Texas, I wanted to hurl my phone across the room, but I knew it would mean having to get up from under the layers of blankets keeping me warm.

The individualism that flows through the Lone Star State has suddenly become its demise. Our residents don't deserve your misplaced blame. If you've seen the map of the United States' power grid circulating online, you'll notice that the Texas Interconnection stands alone. Further isolating Texas, the Texas Senate Bill 7 - signed into law by George W. Bush in 1999 - ushered in Texas's opportunity to deregulate electricity and switch to a free-market approach. Despite a 2011 winter storm and the growing challenges of climate change, Texas energy plants failed to winterize their equipment for the future. Exactly a decade later, we learned the cost of that mistake.

Story continues

Contrary to what Twitter keyboard warriors think they know about Texas, the state isn't completely made of oil rigs and MAGA flags. To claim some sick version of schadenfreude for social clout isn't just uninformed; it's amoral. Our state felt abandoned by politicians but we also felt jilted by fellow Americans who turned Texas into the butt of a joke. The political affiliation of your state shouldn't be a death sentence. No human being deserves to freeze to death.

Misplaced opinions only undercut the massive trauma and loss Texans are experiencing. Homes were destroyed, people starved during food shortages, and residents tragically fell victim to hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning while struggling to stay warm. This is only magnified by the sad fact that we've already lost 43,341 residents to COVID-19. While the system that enabled the power grid's failure is evidently damaged, snide jabs won't help our community move past the devastation it's endured.

I was one of the 4.5 million people who lost power in Texas as the temperatures dipped into single digits across the state. For three days, my partner and I grappled with the surreal reality that Texas - a state that boasts of everything being bigger and better - could let this happen. It was sometime between my Googling symptoms of hypothermia and trying to unsuccessfully build a furnace out of a terracotta pot that I realized the weight of our situation.

When I moved to Houston six years ago, I could have never imagined a freeze paralyzing the state. My group chats turned into a survivalist manifesto as my friends shared tips, offered up supplies, and tried to keep each other informed with our single bar of cell service. One friend sent a photo of her lunch - a tin can of soup heating over a tealight candle - while another posted a photo of a frozen stream of ice escaping her kitchen sink. The visual that left me eviscerated was a video of a friend warming her baby's bottle using the heater in her car.

All of this, and we were the lucky ones.

Like most disasters, the winter storm disproportionately affected low-income and historically marginalized communities. This crisis is only compounded by a pandemic that has impacted Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities throughout the state. There have been 80 deaths accounted for thus far, with more predicted in the next three months as autopsy reports become available. Christian Pavon Pineda, an 11-year-old boy, died of hypothermia in the bed of his family's Conroe mobile home while trying to keep his brother warm. Did he or any other victim deserve this because he lived in a red state?

Petulant opinions like King's have only continued in the weeks following the freeze.

Earlier this week, Abbott made a shocking announcement that Texas would be reopening and lifting all COVID-19 restrictions, including life-saving mask mandates. This announcement came a day after Houston became the first city to have all COVID-19 variants.

Despite the backlash Abbott received from his constituents, notable progressives made sweeping generalizations that left us feeling worthless. Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann asked Twitter, "Why are we wasting vaccinations on Texas if Texas has decided to choose the side of the virus?"

Documentary maker Michael Moore went on to say Texans think COVID-19 is a hoax and don't need the vaccine. "We'll send it to ppl who are saving lives by wearing masks," he tweeted. The "Fahrenheit 11/9" creator - quick to point out how political decisions can devastate communities like Flint, Michigan - should know that no good comes from writing off populations in crisis.

The view that Texans keep voting for Republican officials is myopic at its best and dangerous at its worst. To say the state fully supports our privatized power grid is to disregard the grassroots movements that have steadily worked for progress in Texas and advocated for green energy.

The most populated cities in Texas, like Houston and Austin, are widely led by Democrat leadership. Last week Brittany Packnett Cunningham tweeted, "Texas isn't red - it's suppressed."

Republicans have held onto their 20-year majority, but it's difficult to turn a blind eye to the state's 150-year history of voter suppression, as documented by Texas Monthly. Most recently, the Texas GOP challenged the legality of 127,000 votes made at a drive-thru voting site in Harris County in the 2020 election but the move was thrown out by U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen.

Like the misunderstanding of Texas politics, people often misunderstand Texas' people.

More than cowboys and cacti, Texas is home to some of the most diverse cities in the United States. We have the second-highest Hispanic and Latinx population in the country, with that total growing by two million in the last decade. There are 145 languages spoken in Houston alone. Montrose, the historic Houston neighborhood that birthed the city's LGBTQ movement of the '80s, continues to be an eclectic haven known for pride.

In the 2018 midterms, 19 Black women were elected as judges in Harris County, celebrating with the group name "Black Girl Magic." In that same year, County Judge Lina Hidalgo made history as the first woman and first Latina elected to the role. My city is vibrant, progressive and teeming with a culture that outsiders rarely acknowledge or understand. Before you make generalizations, I challenge you to spend a day here.

I am defensive of Texas not because it's perfectly run, but because it's my home.

I finally understand the pride that so many Texans feel because of the unpredictable challenges we've faced. I've seen good Samaritans raft through floodwaters to rescue strangers during Hurricane Harvey. I've witnessed neighbors grocery shopping for one another during a deadly pandemic. Last week, I saw Texans jump at the chance to share their electricity to provide warmth and a hot shower to others.

We are not 38 electoral votes or a red body of land on a map. We are more than 29 million of your neighbors. We are not fodder for your 280 characters - we are human beings who need your support.

Jillian Goltzman is a freelance journalist covering culture, lifestyle, and social impact. You can follow her work on her website and Twitter.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Liberals who made fun of Texas need to understand that your political party shouldn't be a death sentence - Yahoo News

However, as many Americans noticed, on Friday as the Senate voted on whether to raise the federal minimum wage, one senator decided to make a little spectacle out of her vote.

Kyrsten Sinema gave a dramatic thumbs down moments after literally bringing a chocolate cake to the Senate (reportedly as a gift for the Senate staff who worked through the night to read the entire COVID-19 relief bill out loud). Among the eight members of the Democratic caucus who voted against raising the minimum wage, Sinema has by far the most constituents who are currently earning the minimum wage, which in Arizona is $11.

While Sinema didnt sink the bill alone, her antics made her a focal point of wrath from those on the progressive left.

Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib tweeted about the Sinema thumbs down, saying no one should ever be this happy to vote against uplifting people out of poverty.

But Tlaib probably knows a thing or two about Sinema, as everyone does in Washington these days. She has crafted herself to be one half of a pair of Democratic senators who seem to have the ability to derail the entire Democratic agenda in the next two years.

Yes, Democrats amazingly took majority control of the Senate by winning two seats in Georgia, but any bill still has to get a thumbs up from Sinema and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

The thing is that while Manchin is politically forced to be a centrist given that he represents such a deeply Republican state, he actually is a centrist. He was centrist even in his earliest days in state house politics when Democrats ran everything in Charleston. During his time in the Senate, he has been a leader for centrist organizations, like No Labels.

In other words, he has always been this way.

Sinema, however, has not.

Sinema began her career in politics working in Ralph Naders Green Party. Her politics were so far to the left that she ran as an independent the first time she ran for state representative before later running as a Democrat and winning. Soon, she was in the Arizona state Senate, where she once said she was the most liberal member of the body, and that was probably true. She also led the fight against a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in her state.

When she won a seat in Congress for 2013, she did so as a barrier breaker, becoming the first openly bisexual woman to ever serve. And guess what? It was a year later she tweeted that raising the minimum wage was a no brainer because, she argued, no one should work full time and live in poverty. This is the same argument advocates have made about the current minimum wage.

While there were some grumblings on the left about her bipartisan approach when she ran for Senate in 2018, she faced little opposition from Democrats for the open seat.

In 2020, however, Sinema came into her own nationally. She became known as the woman who wore colorful wigs on the staid Senate floor (since she wasnt getting her hair cut during the lockdown.) When she presided over the Senate wearing a shirt reading Dangerous Creature, Mitt Romney was overheard telling her that she was breaking the Internet.

To which, she replied, good.

As a human and not a politician, Sinema is deeply impressive. For a while, she grew up in an abandoned gas station, she graduated from college in two years, and holds an M.B.A., a law degree, and a Ph.D. doctorate in justice studies. She also competes in Ironman competitions and has qualified for the Boston Marathon.

But by going to the middle, her shift in ideology and outlook has disappointed liberals. Still, it may have been logical enough given that she is representing all of Arizona, which retains a strong conservative bent despite voters there recently electing Democrats.

Though, while Sinema was giving her thumbs down, Arizonas other Democratic Senator, Mark Kelly, did vote for the minimum wage increase. And, unlike Sinema, he is up for reelection next year.

James Pindell can be reached at james.pindell@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jamespindell.

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The senator who is breaking the Internet (and liberal hearts) has a wild backstory - The Boston Globe

Both major political parties have been criticised for running online advertisements which direct users to websites to find out where they can vote early in the WA election, without disclosing their links to either site.

An ad for the website VoteWA.com.au appears as the first or second result under a number of Google searches, including "vote early Perth".

A similar ad for WhereCanIVote.org.au appears on some searches, including "vote early Liberal WA".

VoteWA.com.au is run by WA Labor and WhereCanIVote.org.au was setup by the Liberals.

In some cases, the websites appear above links to official pages run by the WA Electoral Commission (WAEC).

In both instances, it is not until users are on the websites that they are presented with a small disclosure at the bottom of the pages revealing the sites' owners.

Supplied

WhereCanIVote.org.au also contains the Liberal Party's logo as the site's icon.

It comes as a record number of Western Australians vote early, with the WAEC reporting yesterday that about one in five electors, or 343,796, had already cast their ballot.

VoteWA website

That is compared to the 214,242 people who voted early in the 2017 state election.

It is not suggested that either party is breaking WA's electoral laws or regulations.

Once on the VoteWA.com.au site, users are asked to enter their home address, which the site uses to display a page showing their nearest early voting centre and a photo of Mark McGowan with their electorate's Labor candidate.

Further down the page, alongside how to vote cards, are options for users to have "free directions" sent to their mobile phone or email address.

The politics, the policies and the people. We've collected all our coverage on the election campaign here.

Both require the user to enter their first and last names to receive the instructions.

A link to WA Labor's privacy policy, which was until last week only accessible from the site after entering an address, states any information provided to the party "will only be used for the purpose for which it was provided".

WA Labor did not directly answer questions from the ABC about how the website collected data, or about its failure to disclose the ownership of the site in Google ads.

"The VoteWA.com.au website is an easy way for people to access how to vote material for WA Labor candidates, and to find their nearest early voting centre," a party spokesperson said.

Similarly, the WhereCanIVote.org.au website asks users to enter their postcode, which it uses to display their Liberal candidate, as well as polling places open before and on election day.

There is also an option to download a how-to-vote card, which is the first time the Liberal Party logo clearly appears in any of the site's content.

Supplied

In response to questions from the ABC, a Liberal Party campaign spokesperson said the site did not track the postcodes entered by users.

"The website WhereCanIVote.org.au is provided as a service to electors to assist them in finding local polling places and Liberal candidates," they said.

"It is authorised in accordance with electoral laws."

The websites have raised the eyebrows of internet and political experts, who said their links to their respective parties should be made more clear.

Supplied

"These purport to show how-to-vote sites, which look like public utilities, but they're actually effectively advertising websites for the state political parties," professor of internet studies Tama Leaver said.

"It really wouldn't be difficult to make it clearer on either page that this is a website designed and run by a political party.

"I think it would do a great deal for peoples' trust in political parties if they were more upfront with what they were doing."

Mr Leaver said the situation was another example of why WA needed to better regulate internet advertising during elections.

ABC News: Gian De Poloni

"I think both parties are being as transparent as currently required by law and not a single step further," he said.

"We've got incredibly clear rules around when you can and can't advertise in print and on television, we've got quite clear rules about what you can and can't say and how much you need to disclose.

"Tightening up political advertising regulations so that it clearly applies online and clearly applies to social media would certainly make it a more transparent, and a more democratic system."

Political analyst Peter Kennedy agreed that while the websites appeared to comply with WA's Electoral Act, their affiliations could have been more obvious.

Google

He said the parties would not have created the websites unless they believed they could affect how individual voters might cast their ballot.

"They might be influenced by a party's how-to-vote card, or they could ignore it," he said.

"The political parties do it because they think their might be an advantage in it, and there may well be some political advantage.

"I don't think it would be a very marked advantage though."

Check out our quick 5-minute guide to what all the parties in the WA election actually stand for.

Data from Google reveals the WA Liberals have spent $33,450 on political advertising since the middle of November last year, making them the highest-spending organisation in the nation among those listed.

That accounts for more than half of the total amount spent on political advertising through Google and its other services, including YouTube, over that period.

Most of it has been spent on ads since February 7 around $20,000.

The WA Greens spent the second highest amount, forking out $23,700 for their ads.

WA Labor does not appear in the data.

See the article here:
Labor and Liberal parties criticised for running WA election online ads without disclosing links - ABC News