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Tony Abbott says NSW Liberals event looks like its an attempt to smother discussion and keep people out rather than welcome people in. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Tony Abbott has attacked a looming convention in New South Wales considering reforms to the state Liberal party, declaring there appears to be a move to lock out rank-and-file party members and smother discussion.

Abbott told 2GB radio on Wednesday night charging an admission fee for the July event of $199 was very discouraging for rank and file Liberals.

Rank and file Liberals are supposed to own our party. The party should not be owned by MPs staffers and lobbyists. It should be owned by the members, Abbott said.

He said the admission charge was turning the reform convention into a rich peoples convention. Thats the last thing we want.

Abbott said the party needed to reconsider the admission charge for the July convention because if ... the current proposal stands, a lot of people are going to feel cheated.

As things stand it does look like its an attempt to smother discussion and keep people out rather than welcome people in.

The former prime minister has been at the epicentre of a bitter rolling fight inside the NSW division of the Liberal party between conservatives and moderates over party rules in the state.

The July convention is being held to consider a range of proposals for democratic reform.

Abbott is pushing for the adoption of plebiscites to resolve preselections in NSW. NSW is the only state division of the Liberal party that does not allow each party member a vote on preselections.

Late last year, the former prime minister John Howard, used a National Press Club event to urge Malcolm Turnbull and the then NSW premier Mike Baird to change the membership rules of the NSW Liberal party.

Howard described the state division as being close to a closed shop.

Abbotts reform push will require a healthy attendance at the event if it is to have any hope of success. The democratisation push in NSW splits the party largely along factional lines.

The right is leading a push for change, the moderates have resisted the push. The NSW state executive is controlled by the moderates. With the factional relationships poisonous in the state, moderates have expressed concern that plebiscites will lead to branch stacking.

Read more here:
Tony Abbott says NSW Liberals reform event is 'rich people's convention' - The Guardian

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas speaks at the memorial service for his former colleague Antonin Scalia on March 1, 2016, in Washington, D.C.

Susan Walsh-Pool/Getty Images

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision holding that two congressional districts in North Carolina were racially gerrymandered in violation of the Constitution. The broad ruling will likely have ripple effects on litigation across the country, helping plaintiffs establish that state legislatures unlawfully injected race into redistricting. And, in a welcome change, the decision did not split along familiar ideological lines: Justice Clarence Thomas joined the four liberal justices to create a majority, following his race-blind principles of equal protection to an unusually progressive result.

Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers the law and LGBTQ issues.

Cooper v. Harris, Mondays case, involves North Carolinas two most infamous congressional districts, District 1 and District 12. In the 1990s, the Democratic-controlled state legislature gerrymandered both districts into bizarre shapes that appeared to be drawn along racial lines. A group of Republican voters sued, arguing that the state had used race to shape the districts in violation of the 14th Amendments Equal Protection Clause. North Carolina acknowledged that it had used race in redistricting, but argued that it did so for a constitutionally permissible reason: It wanted to comply with the Voting Rights Act, which bars states from diluting minority votes and, at the time, required the creation of majority-minority districts in historically racist states. To ensure compliance with the VRA, North Carolina asserted, it had drawn both districts to be majority black.

Clarence Thomas consistency handed Democratsand the principle of equalitya remarkable victory.

In 1996s Shaw v. Hunt, the Supreme Court ruled by a 54 vote that these districts violated equal protection. In this case, the conservatives formed the majority, while the liberal justices would have affirmed the constitutionality of the racially gerrymandered districts. At the time, progressives viewed Shaw and its predecessors as an assault on the VRAa Republican effort to prevent states from helping black voters choose their own representatives. The liberal justices, on the other hand, saw many racial gerrymanders as a kind of affirmative-action program. They insisted that North Carolinas districts were merely designed to accommodate the political concerns of a historically disadvantaged minority.

There was some truth to this idea, but also a great deal of navet. The majority-black districts that progressives defended were frequently drawn with the help of Republicans, who appreciated the clustering of Democratic voters around a few safe seats. By packing black Democrats into a handful of districts, Republicans made their own seats safer. Had the Supreme Courts conservatives held fast on Shaw, these majority-black districts might have been invalidated. But in 2001s Easley v. Cromartie, Justice Sandra Day OConnor unexpectedly flipped, siding with the liberals to ease restrictions on racial gerrymandering. Easley cemented the notion that states may gerrymander along partisan lines, even where race and political affiliation are intertwined. Since then, plaintiffs have struggled to prove that gerrymanders used race as a predominant factor (illegal) rather than party registration (legal).

Fast forward to today, and it is overwhelmingly obvious that the logic of Cromartie has backfired on progressives. Republican-dominated state legislatures are now notorious for brazen racial gerrymanders, kicking black voters out of GOP districts and herding them into safe Democratic ones instead. The result is an extreme partisan imbalance in dozens of state legislatures: In Southern states especially, Republicans have granted themselves huge majorities and left Democrats with a few safe, often majority-minority seats. Black voters routinely sue and occasionally win, but time and again they face the same problem: The legislature claims it was using race as a mere proxy for partisanship, and the courts throw out the plaintiffs lawsuit, citing Cromartie.

That era ended on Monday. In a deft opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, the court essentially scraps Cromarties race vs. party distinction, replacing it with a more lenient rule. Kagan accomplishes this switcheroo in a footnote that will serve as the basis of innumerable future lawsuits, stating that courts may find proof of an unlawful racial gerrymander when legislators have placed a significant number of voters within or without a district predominantly because of their race, regardless of their ultimate objective in taking that step. Kagan continues:

Kagan then reviewed the evidence collected by the trial court, which had concluded that North Carolinas gerrymander was primarily driven by race and failed to meet strict scrutiny. This finding, Kagan writes, was not clearly erroneousthe standard of review in racial-gerrymander cases. Thus, the trial courts ruling striking down both districts must stand.

Amusingly, Kagan frames her opinion as little more than a pedestrian application of precedent. As election law expert and Slate contributor Rick Hasen writes, however, it is much more than that. The decision, Hasen explains, means that race and party are not really discrete categories in states where race is closely tethered to party, especially in the South. That means a legislature can no longer use race as a proxy for party in redistricting, then insist that it was really discriminating against Democrats, not blacks. This will lead to many more successful racial gerrymandering cases in the American South and elsewhere, Hasen speculates.

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Gerrymandering for purposes of party political advantage is one problem with gerrymandering. More...

Given the advantage that Harris could give to Democrats, it may seem puzzling that Thomas, of all justices, cast the deciding vote to give the liberals a majority. But really, his vote should not have been a surprise at all. Thomas is arguably the most consistent justice on racial gerrymandering: He opposes it no matter its ostensible purpose. In the 1990s, Thomas disapproved of race-conscious redistricting designed to empower black Democrats; today, he objects to race-conscious redistricting designed to empower white Republicans. While liberals and conservatives switched sides, Thomas stuck to his guns. And on Monday, his consistency handed Democratsand the principle of equalitya remarkable victory.

Unfortunately, Harris will not singlehandedly fix the problem of gerrymandering in America. So long as partisan gerrymandering remains legal, legislators will continue to draw districts that disfavor the opposing party, entrenching their own power for years. Next term, the Supreme Court will almost certainly hear Gill v. Whitford, a challenge to partisan redistricting alleging that the practice discriminates on the basis of political association, violating voters free-speech and equal-protection rights. The outcome of that case could permanently alter American politics by proscribing either party from using political gerrymanders to seize and maintain a legislative monopoly. Harris was a satisfying appetizer. But Whitford will be the main course.

Read the rest here:
The Decisive Vote to Strike Down Racial Gerrymandering Came From Clarence Thomas? - Slate Magazine

President Trumps first proposed budget was released today, to howls of outrage from the left. The New York Times issued an email breaking news alert:

The Timess claim that Trumps budget assumes improbable economic growth was mild compared to the reaction from most of the liberal commentariat. Slate, for example, initially headlined The Trump budget forecasts 3 percent growth for 10 years, is insane, but then backed off to Trumps Growth Forecasts Are the Budgetary Equivalent of Putting Your Fingers in Your Ears and Yelling, Na Na Na Na Na.

Yes, Trumps budget projects 3% annual GDP growth. That used to be considered the norm, with 4%, on average, the target. Now liberals think such budget assumptions are insane, or, more mildly, improbable.

At times like this, I like to ask: What did Barack Obama do?

Heh. As it happens, I have already written about this. In March 2015, I compared Obamas budget projections to what actually happened:

Is 2.2% an acceptable rate of economic growth? No, but dont take my word for it. By the Obama administrations own standards, it has been a failure.

President Obama submitted his proposed budget for FY 2011 in February 2010. Its tone was triumphalist. Obama had the good fortune to take office in the wake of a financial collapse and a recession, and his budget predicted robust economic growth in the years to come. Table S-1 set out, among other things, the administrations projections of GDP in future years. Here they are, in billions of dollars, along with my calculation of the projected growth rate:

2012 16,203

2013 17,182 = 6%

2014 18,139 = 5.6%

2015 19,190 = 5.8%

2016 20,163 = 5%

The federal fiscal year runs from October to October, so it is not exactly coextensive with the calendar year, but that discrepancy is immaterial for this purpose. As you can see, the Obama administration expected its policies to produce GDP growth of 5% to 6% in 2014, far more than the 2.2% actually experienced, as well as the 3.1% attained in 2013.

As time went by, Obamas economists realized that the administrations policies were not producing the growth they had expected. Thus, in February 2012, when the administration released its proposed budget for FY 2013, its projections were revised as follows:

FY 2012 15,602

FY 2013 16,335 = 4.7%

FY 2014 17,156 = 5%

FY 2015 18,178 = 6%

FY 2016 19,261 = 6%

Note that the projection for FY 2013 was revised downward by $847 billion. Still, prosperity was just around the corner, as the administration still expected growth in 2014 to be 5% to 6%, with robust growth thereafter.

Two years later, the numbers had changed again. When the presidents FY 2015 budget was released in March 2014, these were the predicted GDP numbers:

FY 2013 16,619

FY 2014 17,332 = 4.3%

FY 2015 18,219 = 5.1%

FY 2016 19,181 = 5.3%

FY 2017 20,199 = 5.3%

But even then, just one year ago, the Obama administration predicted that economic growth in 2014 would be 4.3% or greatertwice the actual number. The administrations current projection for FY 2015 is nearly $1 trillion lower than what it expected in 2010. That is around $3,000 per person.

So dont take my word for it: the Obama administration is an economic failure, judged by its own criteria. Its policies have achieved only a fraction of the economic growth that the administration confidently predicted when it took office.

Through the whole Obama administration, there was never a prediction of GDP growth as low as 3%the level that liberals now deem improbable if not insane. In 2011, did the New York Times write that Obamas budget projection of 6% GDP growthexactly twice the prediction embodied in Trumps proposed budgetwas improbable? Just kidding.

With reasonable government policies, 3% growth is eminently obtainable. It is nowhere near what the Reagan administration achieved. Which is why the Democrats are determined to drive Trump out of office before his pro-growth policies (on repatriation, for example) can be implemented. A pro-growth administration would expose the Obama years for the economic fiasco that they were.

Read the original:
Trump's Budget Assumes Reasonable GDP Growth, Liberals Go Ballistic - Power Line (blog)

By Froma Harrop

"Rising to the bait" is a fishing term. Anglers lure fish hiding in the deep by positioning bait on or near the surface. Fish that rise to the bait usually end up on someone's dinner plate.

Conservative groups routinely try this technique on college liberals. Their lure is an inflammatory right-wing speaker. The catch comes in duping liberals to act badly as censors of free speech or, even better, violently. The public sees them as spoiled college kids.

Why else would Berkeley College Republicans invite the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on their famously left-leaning University of California campus?

Taking their cue in a play their enemies wrote, the offended ones made a big deal out of this cartoonish character. The cameras caught "protesters," some wearing masks, in full rampage. They trashed the campus before heading off into downtown Berkeley to smash some windows. (By the way, who exactly were these people hiding their identities?)

Over at the State University of New York at Buffalo, agitated students all but shut down a speech by Robert Spencer, an alleged Islamophobe. Spencer's claim to fame is his controversial Jihad Watch website.

Behind many such speaking engagements is a group called Young America's Foundation. And behind Young America's Foundation are the Koch brothers, Richard and Helen DeVos and other very rich financiers of the right. Their agenda relies on discrediting anyone to their left.

Frankly, I don't care enough about Ann Coulter to even dislike her. But the left seems determined to revive her career.

Coulter's scheduled speech at Berkeley was canceled after protests raised security concerns. It should surprise no one that the foundation was picking up her $20,000 speaking fee. College Republicans and the foundation are now suing Berkeley for allegedly violating Coulter's First Amendment rights.

What should smart lefties do? Three things.

One is develop a very thick skin. Many of you are unable to distinguish between merely provocative and totally offensive. You can simplify by dropping such distinctions. Both kinds of speech are protected. If right-wingers choose to invite promoters of disgusting views, let them own it.

Two is to understand this about the opinion business: Success can come from drawing a positive response or a negative one. Failure is no response. Thus, the most effective way to block an obvious attempt to bait you is to swim away. Don't petition. Don't attend.

Wit, meanwhile, makes for a great offense. As the writers at "Saturday Night Live" have taught us, mockery is a more fearsome weapon than raw rage.

Three, when campus conservatives book speakers custom-designed to enrage you, try this clever tactic: Host a sensible conservative to give a talk at the same time. The growing ranks of anti-Trump conservatives offer a pool of highly promising candidates.

Such speakers would draw audience and attention away from the flamethrower across campus. Finding common ground is good for the civic culture, and joining forces enhances power. Importantly, you would come off as open-minded and also be open-minded. We'd all do well to listen more to opinions contrary to our own.

Resist the flashing lures. The choice for campus liberals comes down to this: Either you frustrate those who would provoke you or you become their dinner.

Froma Harrop (fharrop@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist and a former member of The Providence Journal's editorial board. She can be followed on Twitter: @FromaHarrop.

See more here:
Froma Harrop: Conservatives bait college liberals - The Providence Journal

British Columbia's final ballot count starts today to determine which party forms the province's next government almost two weeks after election day, barring judicial recounts.

Christy Clark's Liberals held a slight lead heading into the final count, needing only one riding to change in their favour for the slimmest of majority governments in the province's 87 seat legislature.

But the prospect of a minority government also looms large.

After the May 9 vote, the Liberals had 43 seats, New Democrats 41 and the Greens three.

All eyes over the next few days will be on the Courtenay-Comox riding on Vancouver Island where the NDP currently holds a nine vote lead.

The riding is the focus of an official recount, as is Vancouver-False Creek, won by incumbent Liberal Sam Sullivan by more than 400 votes.

Once the results are known, political horse trading between the Liberals, NDP and Greens is expected to intensify as the parties manoeuvre towards co-operation agreements in what could be a minority government or a bare majority.

Clark and NDP Leader John Horgan have reached out to the Greens since the election.

Green Leader Andrew Weaver has appointed a negotiating team and articulated three major demands: official party status along with electoral and campaign finance reforms.

"Andrew Weaver, I would say, is almost giddy with anticipation of a chance to play a role I don't think he even dreamed about," said Prof. Michael Prince, a social policy expert at the University of Victoria.

"To get this split, 43-41, is kind of like a Hollywood movie for him."

Weaver was the only elected Green in the legislature prior to the election, but he was re-elected along with Vancouver Island Greens Sonia Furstenau and Adam Olsen, making Canadian history for the party.

Prince said the Liberals have their fingers crossed that the vote changes in Courtenay-Comox, giving them a one-seat majority, but Clark has already signalled she's preparing to work with the Greens to preserve her government.

"But the overlaps between the NDP and the Green platforms are much more obvious and substantial than they are for the Liberals," he said.

Weaver and Horgan have butted heads personally in the past and during the campaign, but the possibility of forming a government and wielding power has the adversaries looking to work together, Prince said.

"This is politics," he said. "This is about policy and having an opportunity for influence."

Glen Sanford, the NDP's deputy director, said 60 per cent of B.C. voters rejected Clark's Liberals and people want change.

Sanford said his own family's political history is repeating itself in the current election drama.

His mother, Karen Sanford, served as the Courtenay-Comox member of the legislature for the NDP in the 1970s and '80s. The riding was also subjected to a recount when her mother was in office.

At the time he was working on a fishing boat and voted in Ucluelet. Sanford said his absentee ballot was among those that gave his mother the victory.

"I remember my skipper saying it was a good thing it was a slow day for fishing, because if we had been catching lots of fish there was no way he'd have stopped to come in and vote," he said.

Elections BC, the government agency that administers provincial elections, said almost 180,000 absentee ballots must be counted.

The final count will take place from Monday to Wednesday. Elections BC said the results will be posted and refreshed on the agency's website starting on Monday.

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Final BC vote count starts today, stakes high for Liberals, NDP, Greens - CBC.ca