Archive for the ‘Liberals’ Category

Liberals Haven’t Lost Their Way On Immigration – Mother Jones

Kevin DrumJun. 21, 2017 10:51 PM

Over at the Atlantic, Peter Beinart laments that liberals have become too doctrinaire over the past decade in their defense of illegal immigration:

Prominent liberals didnt oppose immigration a decade ago. Most acknowledged its benefits to Americas economy and culture. They supported a path to citizenship for the undocumented. Still, they routinely asserted that low-skilled immigrants depressed the wages of low-skilled American workers and strained Americas welfare state. And they were far more likely than liberals today are to acknowledge that, as Krugman put it, immigration is an intensely painful topic because it places basic principles in conflict.

Today, little of that ambivalence remains. In 2008, the Democratic platformreferred three times to people entering the country illegally. The immigration section of the 2016 platform didnt use the word illegal, or any variation of it, at all.

Why did the left move even further left on immigration? Beinart chalks it up to politics: Democrats began to believe theyd dominate elections forever if they could sew up the Hispanic vote, and that motivated them to become ever less compromising on issues important to their Hispanic base.

I suppose thats part of it, but Im surprised that Beinart doesnt mention the obvious: there have been two big attempts in the past decade to pass a moderate, compromise immigration bill. The first time was in 2006, when both the House and Senate passed bills by large margins. But thanks to a backlash from talk radio and social conservatives, the bills never went to conference and the effort died.

The second time was in 2013. A bill passed the Senate by a large, bipartisan majority, but once again it hit a backlash from the tea-party wing of the Republican Party. John Boehner never allowed the bill to come up for a vote in the House, and the effort died again.

UPDATE: My initial post used the wrong numbers for the effect of immigration on wages. The estimates below, along with the chart, have been corrected. Thanks to Jason Richwine for pointing out the error.

These two episodes have made it clear that compromise on immigration is pointless. That being the case, why bother playing Hamlet about the effect of illegal immigration on the wages of low-skilled natives? Especially since its largely a red herring anyway: its true that undocumented immigrants have an impact on the wages of low-skill native workers, but the effect is pretty moderate. Beinart repeatedly mentions the findings of a National Academies of Sciences report on immigration and the economy, but never mentions the precise number it comes up with: for low-skill native workers, an average of all studies suggests that an influx of even a million immigrants would only lower wages about 4.6 percent in the short run.1

The same is true for state and local spending. The NAS report estimates that new immigrants cost states a net of about $1,600 per year.2 This means that an influx of a million immigrants would create a net burden of $1.6 billion. Thats less than one-tenth of one percent of all state and local spending. Its a rounding error.

These numbers are small, and are used mostly as intellectual cover by opponents of illegal immigration. They are not even remotely the reason for opposition to comprehensive immigration reform, which comes mostly from educated native whites whose wages and taxes arent impacted more than a hair by illegal immigration. The real reason is almost purely cultural: dislike of non-English speakers, an inchoate fear of crime, and a vague sense that white America is fading away. But hardly anyone wants to admit that these are the real terms of the argument.

Quite a bit of new research has been done over the past decade, and the result has been, if anything, a reduction in the perceived economic effects of illegal immigration. The wage effects are roughly zero overall, and even for low-skill workers are fairly small in the short runand get smaller over time. The fiscal effects are even smaller, and become zero over the long run. Given all this, its hardly a surprise that supporters of comprehensive immigration reform no longer give economic arguments much attention.3

1This is the average of all studies in Table 5-2 that focus on high school dropouts. The mean result was a wage effect of -0.56 percent for an increase in the low-skill labor supply of 1 percent, which amounts to about 120,000 workers. That comes to -4.66 percent per million new immigrants.

2Table 9-6.

3This is not the post I intended to write when I started out. But after reading the NAS report, its the one I ended up with. Maybe tomorrow Ill write the post I originally had in mind.

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Liberals Haven't Lost Their Way On Immigration - Mother Jones

Sam Bee Shuts Down Conservatives’ Attempts To Demonize Liberals – HuffPost

Full Frontal host Samantha Beewishes summer could be carefree, but she says conservatives efforts to demonize liberals are making it difficult.

Case in point: A PAC ad supporting Republican Karen Handel in her ultimately victorious Georgia congressional campaignagainst Democrat Jon Ossoff exploited last weeks shooting at GOP Congress members during a baseball practice. The incident left Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.)with serious injuries.

The commercial warned that the unhinged left is endorsing and applauding shooting Republicans and theyre the same ones backing Ossoff.

Bee had enough of that noise.

Oh! That must be why he lost. The cheering-last-weeks-shooting demographic is basically zero, she said on her show Wednesday. The unhinged left is even less powerful than the hinged left, which is saying a lot.

Bee didnt stop there. She explained how conservatives are also framing art as a bogeyman.

Watch her full monologue above.

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Sam Bee Shuts Down Conservatives' Attempts To Demonize Liberals - HuffPost

Liberals FREAK OUT as MSNBC Gives Conservative Hugh Hewitt a Show – NewsBusters (press release) (blog)


NewsBusters (press release) (blog)
Liberals FREAK OUT as MSNBC Gives Conservative Hugh Hewitt a Show
NewsBusters (press release) (blog)
MSNBC is giving a show to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and liberals are predictably freaking out. The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday explained that Hewitt's first show will air on Saturday, June 24. Writer Jeremy Barr added, In giving Hewitt ...

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Liberals FREAK OUT as MSNBC Gives Conservative Hugh Hewitt a Show - NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

BC Liberals elect speaker to begin historic session – Surrey Now-Leader

Kelowna-Mission MLA has been chosen as the new speaker for the B.C. legislature. (Hansard)

Speaker to resign if government defeated by NDP and B.C. Greens

B.C. Liberal MLA Steve Thomson of Kelowna-Mission was elected Speaker of the B.C. legislature Thursday to begin a historic session that will determine whether the NDP and B.C. Green Party take over as government or whether voters head back to the polls.

Thomson resigned as forests minister Wednesday evening to take on the new role. Aboriginal Relations Minister John Rustad has added responsibility for forests, lands and natural resource operations to his cabinet duties.

Premier Christy Clark has said the B.C. Liberals will put forward one of their 43 MLAs to stand as speaker, but if the 44 opposition MLA join forces to vote non-confidence in Thursdays throne speech, it will be up to the new government to name its own speaker.

Elections to the speaker position, the referee of the legislature, are a secret ballot vote by all MLAs. In practice there is rarely more than one candidate put forward.

The throne speech sets out the governments goals for a new session, and Clark has disclosed most of its highlights in advance, adopting main elements of the B.C. NDP platform. Wednesday she announced that the B.C. Liberals pre-election budget will be amended to include a $1 billion boost to child care, and the intention to create an anti-poverty plan, after a decade of she and former premier Gordon Campbell maintaining that the best anti-poverty plan is job creation.

On Monday Clark announced she wants to meet another key NDP demand, to ban corporate and union donations to political parties.

Social Development Minister Michelle Stilwell then announced a $100-a-month increase in temporary income assistance payments, another measure taken from the NDP platform in the May 9 election.

Whether the B.C. Liberal government survives long enough to implement any of these measures remains to be seen. Rules of the house require four days of debate before a confidence vote can begin, and the B.C. Liberals may extend that period by introducing legislation for debate.

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BC Liberals elect speaker to begin historic session - Surrey Now-Leader

Trudeau’s Liberals reach the midway point amid booze-tax brouhaha and Senate suspense – CBC.ca

There were questions about the government's overhaul of national-security laws,Chinese encroachment,and the decision to remove the name of Hector-Louis Langevinfrom the executive building across from Parliament Hill.

But on the last day of the spring sitting a sitting that began with questions about the prime minister's Christmas vacationwhat most animated the House of Commons was the price of booze.

Specifically, whether Parliament should legislatethat the excise tax on alcoholic beverages will henceforth increase annually at the rate of inflation.

According to Trevor Tombe, an economist at the University of Calgary, in the next year that might cost the average household an extra two dollars. In future years, more than that.

"Mr. Speaker, Canada Day is just around the corner and many middle-class Canadians will be celebrating with a great craft beer or a nice glass of wine," Conservative MP John Barlowsuggested.

"The Liberal plan is to crash Canada's party with a never-ending, always-escalating tax increase on beer, wine and spirits."

More technically, there is a concern that Parliament should have to approve a new tax increase each year.

This much wasstill an open question because the Senate, in another example ofits newfound vigour, amended the budget bill to remove the excise tax, the end result of Justin Trudeau's own efforts to put the upper chamber beyond his immediate purview.

The prime minister was unmoved by Conservative pleas on behalf of the nation's imbibers. And, shortly after question period was concluded, the government moved to tell the Senate the relevant clausesshould be put back in the bill.

But senators, apparently put out by the government's tone, decided they wanted to take a night to think about their response. Only the Liberals had already moved to adjourn the House. Leaving open the possibility that the House will have to be recalled to deal with a stand-off.

It was, as these things go, very dramatic. Even ifit is hard to imagine the ballot question in 2019 will be the price of a two-four or the proper place of the Senate in our constitutional democracy.

Two years removed from the last election and two years out from the next one, it is difficult to say with any certainty what will end up mattering, at least in the political sense. But the basic parameters of both the election debate and the Liberal government's fate are probably here somewhere.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer criticized Wednesday the Liberals' track record. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Indeed, with the summer recess in sight, Conservative leader Andrew Scheeraimed for summation on Wednesday.

With his fifth question, he alleged "unprecedented multiple investigations into his unethical behaviour, selling off of strategic Canadian assets to communist China, dangerous criminals going free because of judicial delays, out-of-control spending, and new tax hikes on the middle class, lavish vacations, and moving expenses paid for by the taxpayer." Not to mention"alitany of partisan appointments."

As luck would have it, Scheer had a copy of the Liberal platform nearby and picked it up, the former Speaker nearly violating the prohibition against props.

"The Liberals campaigned on a lot of things, but could the prime minister tell me on what page of his platform I can find a list of all these things that I just mentioned?"

The Conservatives stood to cheer.

The prime minister was apparently moved to match his counterpart's spirit.

In Trudeau's telling, Liberals have "delivered" on a platform to support the middle class.

"We lowered taxes on the middle class and raised them on the wealthiest one per cent," he said."We delivered a Canada Child Benefit that gives more money to nine out 10 Canadian families and will lift hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty. We have made massive investments in infrastructure so Canadians can get to and from work on time; investments in social housing; investments in child care; investments in our seniors."

The prime minister pumped his arm and leaned forward to punctuate his points.

Going next, the NDP's Tom Mulcairexplained how the government had fallen short on several fronts: improving the welfare of Indigenous communities, political reformand the infrastructure bank.

Trudeau responded by defending what has been done and speaking of what more will come.

The Liberals have done all sorts of thingsenshrining rights for transgender Canadians, committing funding to mental-health services, empowering the parliamentary budget officer, approving several new supervised consumption facilities.

But then there are the things they haven't done electoral reform, achieving parity in funding for Indigenous education, pay-equity legislation. The parliamentary agenda has not been particularly robust.

Trudeau must now decide whether he has the cabinet and the machinery to fill in as many of the remaining blanks as possible, particularly if they want to hold off New Democrats, who will no doubt promise to go further and faster.

There have been expense scandals and odd stumbles. Looming are potentially significant challenges, like negotiating a trade deal with Donald Trump or dealing with a housing bubble or building a pipeline.

The Conservatives are eager to worry about taxes and balancing the budget, but the potency of those concerns will depend on Canadians feeling overburdened or eager to cut spending by October 2019. A few examples of gross mismanagement would boost Conservative chances.

In the midst of fretting about the price of beer, some Conservatives mentioned carbon, which the prime minister happily used to frame a debate about climate change that the Conservatives still aren't quite ready to fully deal with.

If the government has not yet done anything that seems obviously fatal, it's still probably true that governments ultimately defeat themselves. And if you're so inclined, you might see warning signs in this one: ethical blind spots, inattention to detail, clumsy execution.

Possibly the seeds of this government's defeat are already being sown. But it's too soon to say whether that defeat will be intwo years or 10.

But even if it is to be another decade of annual increases in the price of beer, one might hope the government figures out how to spare the nationfrom regular outbreaks of Senate-related drama.

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Trudeau's Liberals reach the midway point amid booze-tax brouhaha and Senate suspense - CBC.ca