Wisconsin Republicans' Plan to Counter Liberals on Campus Inside Higher Ed Wisconsin's Republican leaders intend to create a new leadership center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, announcing Tuesday they will seek $1.5 million in annual public funding for what they said will be a bipartisan center offsetting liberal ... |
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Wisconsin Republicans' Plan to Counter Liberals on Campus - Inside Higher Ed
British Columbias Opposition New Democrats have increased their narrow lead in a riding that could deny the Liberals a fifth-consecutive majority government, but about half the absentee ballots in Courtenay-Comox have yet to be counted.
On election night, the New Democrats led in the riding with nine votes, a margin that see-sawed this week after a recount and with the addition of previously uncounted ballots. On Tuesday, Elections BC continued counting the almost 180,000 absentee ballots 2,077 of them in Courtenay-Comox. By the end of the day, the NDP had a 101-vote lead in the riding.
But another 1,000 absentee ballots must be counted on Wednesday.
Explainer: What you need to know about the final election count inB.C.
At the end of the day on Tuesday, with the results still not complete, the Liberals remained ahead in 43 ridings one short of a majority while the NDP held 41 and the Greens three. If those numbers hold, the future of the government will depend on whether the third-place Greens decide to prop up the Liberals or throw their support to the New Democrats. The last ballots are expected to be counted in 14 ridings on Wednesday. If the margin of victory in Courtenay-Comox is less than about 58 votes, it would go to a judicial recount.
Amid the uncertainty of whether Premier Christy Clarks BC Liberal government will stand, a coalition of activists assembled in front of the B.C. Legislature buildings on Tuesday to urge the Greens and the NDP to make peace, and together end 16 years of Liberal rule.
Environmental organizations, opponents of the Site C dam, advocates for child care and for public health care, and a senior First Nations leader are hoping the final count will deny a majority to Ms. Clark.
With the final election results still unclear, the calls for co-operation remain speculative but a reminder to both the Greens and the NDP that many of their supporters see them as natural allies.
If no party has a strong majority after the final ballots are counted, the NDP and the Greens have a historic opportunity to make good on the important policies they both campaigned on but only if they work together, said Lyndsay Poaps, executive director of Leadnow, the umbrella organization that delivered a petition with 25,000 names calling for an alliance between the two parties.
At the end of the day on Tuesday, with the results still not complete, the Liberals remained ahead in 43 ridings one short of a majority while the NDP held 41 and the Greens three. If those numbers hold, the future of the government will depend on whether the third-place Greens decide to prop up the Liberals or throw their support to the New Democrats.
The last ballots are expected to be counted in 15 ridings on Wednesday, and if Courtenay-Comox remains close, it will go to a judicial recount.
While the outcome remains unclear, the Greens have been negotiating with the NDP, and also with the BC Liberals, to determine where they will deliver their support when the Legislature is recalled.
The expectations of the different groups who joined the rally at the Legislature calling for a Green-NDP alliance are broad.
Terry Dance-Bennink, from the Rolling Justice Bus, said she wants construction on the partly built Site C dam halted. Jen Kuhl, spokesperson for the BC Health Coalition, wants a stronger public health care system and a plan to combat child poverty. Katie Harrison, managing director of Force of Nature, said she expects a Green-NDP alliance to put B.C. on a path for a low carbon future. Sharon Gregson, spokesperson for $10 a Day Child Care Campaign, said the two parties can together resolve a crisis in child-care affordability.
Stewart Phillip, Grand Chief of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said the opportunity for a change in government is tantalizingly close: As the final ballots are tallied, I pray that we will all be... celebrating the change that we have all worked so hard for over the last 16 years. I think we are on the brink of some pretty wonderful things here in the province of British Columbia.
Sven Biggs, a climate campaigner for Stand.earth, said only the Greens and the NDP together could stop Kinder Morgan from completing its oil pipeline expansion. Were hoping both parties will put aside their partisanship, any personal grudges they may hold over from the election, and come together and do whats right for British Columbians by finally protecting our coast.
Carole James, who is on the NDPs negotiating team, and newly elected MLA Sonia Furstenau, who is part of the Greens bargaining team, accepted the petitions for their parties. But as they stood side-by-side on the steps of the legislature, both declined to discuss whether an accord is possible.
The message that was given to us was that the people of British Columbia have spoken, they are looking for positive change, Ms. James said. But she would not say if the NDP would agree to the Greens demands for electoral reform without a referendum. We are in discussions.
Ms. Furstenau acknowledged the boxes of petitions contained a message from voters, but said: We are waiting for the outcome of the election before we really get into those kinds of specifics, and we are all anxiously waiting for those final ballots.
No ridings flipped between parties, but two tight races in Metro Vancouver were called early on Tuesday evening.
Former Global TV reporter and LNG lobbyist Jas Johal held on against NDP candidate Aman Singh, a civil rights lawyer, to win Richmond-Queensborough for the Liberals by 134 votes. That is about half the margin of 263 he tallied in the new riding on election night.
And in Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, Liberal candidate Joan Isaacs defeated NDP incumbent Jodie Wickens by 87 votes.
Two other Metro Vancouver races remain undecided with margins of less than 600 votes each: Maple Ridge-Mission (NDP lead by 369) and Vancouver-False Creek (Liberals lead by 406).
Follow us on Twitter: Mike Hager @MikePHager, Justine Hunter @justine_hunter
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BC Liberals maintain minority government in recount, with ballots still to count - The Globe and Mail
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.
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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.
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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.
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Trump's Budget Assumes Reasonable GDP Growth, Liberals Go Ballistic - Power Line (blog)