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Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks during a press conference in Toronto on Thursday, March 2, 2017. (Frank Gunn/THE CANADIAN PRESS) Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks during a press conference in Toronto on Thursday, March 2, 2017. (Frank Gunn/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Allison Jones

TORONTOThe Canadian Press

Published Monday, Mar. 06, 2017 7:19AM EST

Last updated Monday, Mar. 06, 2017 12:01PM EST

Ontarios budget watchdog is planning a report examining the Liberal governments plan to lower hydro bills.

Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown has written to the financial accountability office, asking them to investigate the plan with a full costing analysis.

A spokeswoman for the office says theyll take Browns letter under consideration, but they had already been planning to examine the hydro plan.

The recently announced 17-per-cent reduction in hydro bills comes this summer thanks to a move the Liberals say is like refinancing a mortgage over a longer period of time.

Premier Kathleen Wynne has acknowledged it will cost ratepayers more in the long run, but she says savings are needed now because people are struggling.

She has said the extra interest costs related to the plan would amount to $25 billion over 30 years, but the Tories say theyre not clear on how the Liberals arrived at that number.

Wynne defends Ontario hydro rate cut (The Canadian Press)

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Link:
Ontario budget watchdog to examine Liberals' hydro relief plan - The Globe and Mail

The first problem with these kinds of arguments is that the alt-left doesnt actually exist, at least not in the way that the lefts opponents would have it. As The New Republics Sarah Jones pointed out, the alt-rights goal, shared by neo-Nazis like Richard Spencer and the White Houses infamous Steves (Bannon and Miller), is to implement a white supremacist state. In contrast, the goals of the alt-left are not too different from that of a New Deal Democrat. Universal health care and a $15 minimum wage are not the lefts version of a Muslim ban, even if the rhetoric of the left is combative, uncompromising, and, yes, sometimes obnoxious.

As Eric Levitz points out at New York, one of the main problems with Wolcotts piece is that he cherry-picks a number of voicesmany of whom barely intersectto speak for a perceived group. Among them are a few writers he apparently dislikes (Michael Tracey, Freddie deBoer, Connor Kilpatrick), Susan Sarandon, Mickey Kaus, and Oliver Stone. While criticisms can be made of many of Wolcotts targets, to lump them together as representative of the alt-left is nonsensical. It conflates being Loud Online with actual politics. And crucially, unlike members of the alt-right, who are being actively wooed by the GOP, these people have almost no power.

Blair is positing a more dangerous idea: that liberalism should essentially reorient itself as a globalized technocracy, in opposition to anti-elite populism.

A graver sin is the adoption of a term that was created by conservatives to smear the left and discredit criticisms of the growing clout of the racist right. Richard Spencer coined the term alt-right for his own movement. In very stark contrast, alt-left is a strawman invention of far-right websites. As The Washington Posts Aaron Blake pointed out in December, The difference between alt-right and alt-left is that one of them was coined by the people who comprise the movement and whose movement is clearly ascendant; the other was coined by its opponents and doesnt actually have any subscribers. When alt-left is deployed by the likes of Sean Hannity on Fox News, it is a form of propaganda used to conflate groups like Black Lives Matter with the Ku Klux Klan. For Wolcott to ascribe to this notion only gives this right-wing smear more credence.

Blair invokes the specter of a dangerous left for different reasons. By equating the populist lefts hostility toward big business and the 1 percent with the populist rights hostility toward migrants and people of color, he is creating a false equivalence that undermines progressivism as a whole. The ultra-wealthy patrons of the Republican Party (and, to a lesser extent, the Democratic Party) are, in fact, much to blame for deep inequality we see in the United States. Globalization did gouge the working and middle classes in the West, most notoriously during the Great Recession, even as it lifted millions out of poverty in other parts of the world. Political elites did fail us, from the Iraq War to the financial crisis.

Yet this is how Blair frames the debate over these issues:

Today, a distinction that often matters more than traditional right and left is open vs. closed. The open-minded see globalization as an opportunity but one with challenges that should be mitigated; the closed-minded see the outside world as a threat. This distinction crosses traditional party lines and thus has no organizing base, no natural channel for representation in electoral politics.

The last half of Blairs op-ed argues for achieving radical change by reaching for voters who remain in the big space in the center. Tellingly, he calls for an alliance between Silicon Valleyan industry of socially liberal economic elitesand public policy. In his closing line, Blair states that we must build a new coalition that is popular, not populist.

There are two ironies in Blairs column. The first is that Blair himself was partly responsible for his Labour Party losing a large chunk of its core working-class voters, thanks to the Iraq War and the Great Recession. The second is that huge pillars of Blairs British-style moderate liberalismsuch as universal health careare totally in line with what the American populist left is demanding. The populist left, in other words, is well within the mainstream of Western democratic tradition; it is apparently their anti-elitist rhetoric that really rubs Blair the wrong way. He is, after all, an elite himself.

One big lesson from Hillary Clintons loss to Donald Trump was her campaigns over-reliance on the mythical moderate voter. (Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer encapsulated this line of thinking in an infamously bad projection: For every blue-collar Democrat we will lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two or three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It didnt quite work out that way.) Wolcott and Blair do not address this problem. In different ways, they make a case for the center based on a bad-faith argument that the populist left is the same brand of scourge as the nationalist right.

In American politics at least, the political center is the space between a functional liberal democratic party and one hijacked by white nationalists. This is not a promising ground on which liberals can build out from, as Blair puts it. Whether he likes it or not, the case remains that the Democratic Party will need its left wing to mobilize working-class and young, progressive voters; the left will need institutions like the Democratic Party if it wants to win elections. Over the next few years, there will be time for arguments over strategies and priorities. But there is no time for liberals to try to delegitimize the populist left; it will only cut their own legs out from under them.

More here:
Liberalism Needs the Alt-Left - New Republic

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Posted: Mar 06, 2017 12:01 AM

This story has gotten so old, its sad that even conservative media spends time dissecting the insanity of the regressive, retreating left to promote this false narrative.

I was hoping that after Election 2016, the secular, globalist, demonic Left would finally get a hint and go away.

How nave I was.

President Trump faces the hardest fight yet against every corporate interest dedicated to turning the United States into a second-world placeholder or a third-world hellhole.

How does that phrase go again? The Left never stops, never rests, never sleeps.

Indeed.

But Trump supporters are restless, and have no interest in backing down.

For the past two months, I have counter-protested with Los Angeles for Trump along with We the People Rising throughout Southern California. Fascist, race-baiting hate groups have stormed LA streets and arranged protests to shame, stun, or scare of Trump supporters.

But even in Los Angeles County, Republicans for Trump will not be stumped.

In Downtown, mid-February, protests against ICE and in favor of illegal aliens marched throughout Downtown Los Angeles. One of the organizers asked to speak to me. Why are you here?

I support my President, I support his policies, and I want to represent against the negative protests which lie about him.

Then as soon as I asked him what he was doing there, he told me You are a racist.

Normally, people want to get into a war of proofs and logic on this. That is the wrong approachcompletely.

Instead, I just asked him to explain: Why am I racist?

Because you are racist. Yes, that was his answer.

I didnt let it stay there, though, so I asked Are you discriminating against me because Im white?

His answer: Yes.

Done. His little racist retort has gone viral since then. I am not surprised that another organizer behind him told the liberal, pro-amnesty swarms invading the thoroughfares Do not interact with the Trump supporters. They only want to get attention. Do not talk to them.

Since when have protesters taken to the streets and expected not to get any attention? Seriously.

The real reason for the more level-headed protesters to tell the aggressive leftist to be quiet? So that they do not expose to the world how ignorant and just plain foolish they are.

Too late!

Another man reached out to me when Los Angeles for Trump was staking a claim on First and Spring Street. He told me that his parents were immigrants and he does not oppose the ban. He asked me why I was there. After I gave him my set answers, he proceeded to tell me that he opposed President Trumps wall and the travel ban.

All he could tell me was that he opposed it. When I asked him to explain why he opposed it, he struggled for words, then I moved away.

What is it with these silly liberals? They dont know what they believe, and they cant explain why they hate President Trump. Of course, Hollywood liberals have gotten away with saying I dont like Reagan, Bush, Trump etc.

They got away with this middle-school mentality for the past thirty years since the only news media anyone watched was the Big Three and CNN. Clinton News Network is hitting the skids, and the rest of us our journalists in our right. No one can take that away.

Now I announce the biggest reason I show up to Trump rallies and counter-protest liberal protests:

1. I am tired of the lies.

2. I am sick of the media giving the liars full press while the truth-seekers and tellers get pushed to the margins.

3. I am determined to counter the false narrative with the truth.

Trump supporters cannot disappear, go back to their homes, and pretend like everything is going to flow smoothly from this day forward.

These liberal, pussycat creepy-hat wearing liberals have gotten away with their ignoble temper-tantrums for years, and they had full run of the national playground with Barack Obama in the White House for eight years.

I was a school teacher, I even subbed for a few years. If the full-time teacher was indulgent, I spent the entire day disciplining kids. They werent used to someone saying NO! to them. Once a group of students understood they werent going ot get away with abusive antics in the classroom, they stopped acting upit wasnt worth the risk.

Liberals will not stop their Trumper-tantrums until We the People teach them that we will stand our ground and shout them down. We cant coast on our President to do all the fighting. He will only serve eight years, anyway.

When the left-wing crazies want to take over, we need to hold them accountable for what they say, post, and chant.

At the California Republican Party convention in Sacramento, I confronted a group of pro-Obamacare protesters. They want to save Obamacare? Really?! After about fifteen minutes going back and forth, they stopped shouting, started listening, then went away.

Thats how you do it!

Which leads me to one final anecdote. LA for Trump helps out demonstrations all over Southern California. Last weekend, we joined Ventura County Republicans. One lady had a poster with Donald Trump in a null sign with a swastika in his hair. First I pressed her to explain why Trump is a Nazi. Then I went for the jugular. Are you telling me that Trump helped exterminate 6 million Jews? Seriously?! Donald Trump has been the most vocal proponent of the state of Israel, and his nominee for ambassador is an Orthodox Jew who rejects the lop-sided Two-State solution.

For the next 15 minutes, fellow activists with me followed her and demanded that she defend her offensive insinuations. She could not, and she ran away from us.

Thats how you do it! Liberals will say stupid things, but we need to hold them accountable, for as long as Trump is in office, and long after Trump is no longer President.

More here:
How to Get Liberals to Stop Saying Silly Things Like "Obamacare is Great" and "Trump is a Nazi" - Townhall

When George W. Bush speaks, liberals are sure toreact. But then Bush defended freedom of the press in an interview withthe Today showsMatt Lauer:

I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy. We need the media to hold people like me to account. Power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive, and its important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power. The 43rd president also said that we need all the answers concerning possible Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 presidential election.

In aseparate interviewwithPeople magazine,Bush decried the countrys political toxicity, remarking, I dont like the racism and name calling.

Liberals reacted very differently to George W. Bushthan they ever have before.Heres a sample from Twitter:

Star Trekicon George Takei: You know things are bad when George W. Bush starts sounding like a member of the Resistance.

Former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom: I am typing these words: President George W. Bush is right. Freedom of the press is indispensable to democracy.

Glenn Greenwald: 2005: George W Bush is a pillaging, torturing war criminal who let a city drown.

2017: I may have disagreed with Bush but he was A Good Man.

Jedd Legum, editor,ThinkProgress:When did George W. Bush become a voice of reason?

It wasnt so long ago that liberals routinely claimed that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, said that he had had advance knowledge of 9/11, and compared him to Hitler.

These developmentsremind me of Mark Twains apocryphalquote about his father: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learnedin seven years. Could it be that liberals have finally grown up? In the case of George W. Bush, liberals are astounded at how much hes learned in eight years.

Nowliberals arent the only people who are taking a different look at President Bush. Conservatives who once fiercelydefended Bush are now looking askance at himwhile worshiping at the altar of Trump. Laura Ingrahamtweeted: George W. Bush doesnt criticize Obamain 8 years, yet takes thinly veiled swipes at @realDonaldTrump 6 weeks in. #LowerEnergy. Well, Donald Trumps swipes werent so veiled when in February 2016 heproclaimed that, if elected, you will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center. So now that Trump is in the White House,who do Ingraham and other conservatives think were responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001?

But there has been conservative discontent with Bush for some time now. Liberal praise for Bush is something new under the sun.Perhaps all those years he has spent painting portraits in relative silence during the Obama administration has softened liberals feelings toward Bush. Perhaps they are learning how a real demagogue acts. Perhaps they are learning that George W. Bush was never the fascist, racist, or Nazi they thought.

Of course, President Bush has always supported the freedom of the press that comes with liberty. It is easy to forget how much time President Bush devoted to the topic of liberty inhis second inaugural address, on January 20, 2005:

We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies....

Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of liberty though this time in history, four decades defined by the swiftest advance of freedom ever seen, is an odd time for doubt. Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of our ideals. Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery. Liberty will come to those who love it.

Of course, these words were uttered at the height of thewarsin Afghanistan and Iraq and of Lebanese resistance to Syrian occupation. The hope of democratization in the Middle Eastwas in the air. Sadly, liberty remains in short supply over there and seems sorely out of fashion over here. But the idealism that drove Bushs desire to spread liberty in the Middle East is the same idealism that has led him to defend freedom of the press. Could it be that President Bush has stayed the same while liberals (and conservatives) have changed?

Yet chances are thatliberals havent learned anything. Well know they havent if they start praising President Trump when another Republican sits in the Oval Office. On the other hand, theres probablya better chance of seeing liberals one day praising President Trump than of him praising the press as indispensable to democracy.

Aaron Goldstein was a contributor toThe American Spectatorfrom 2009 to 2016. He lives in Boston, where he works as a paralegal.

More:
George W. Bush, Liberals' New Hero - National Review

These are highly polarized times, but there are still some things that cut across party lines. Like sexism.

Were seeing evidence of this now, for the millionth time, courtesy of Chelsea Clinton and Kellyanne Conway. The former first daughter took to Twitter last week after Conway, an adviser to President Donald Trump, was subject to a disgusting joke from Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) about a photo of Conway sitting on a couch in the Oval Office with her legs curled under her.

The whole incident has been portrayed as a man bites dog kind of moment on the left OMG, progressives can be sexist, too!

The right, meanwhile, has held it up as evidence that leftists are hypocrites, willing to be sexist when it suits their political agenda.

Sadly, theres some truth to that. While many progressives are genuinely committed to the causes of feminism and womens equality, some are perfectly happy to take a page from the misogynist playbook in the name of politics.

Remember the Bernie Bros? During the presidential primary season, some of the most ardent supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pounded former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a gendered hammer. They criticized women for supporting Clinton because ofher gender as thoughit was somehow invalid to want to see a Democratic woman land the Oval Office and end centuries of male domination. There were critiques to be made of Clinton as a candidate, but its clear that some Bernie or bust types were openly animatedby misogyny. Like the guy who registered a Bern the Witch campaign event in New Jersey.

Liberal sexism predates the 2016 presidential campaign, of course.New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd famously won a Pulitzer for work that slut-shamed Monica Lewinsky as a crazy bimboand a ditsy, predatory White House intern. And in the early 90s, then-Sen. Joe Biden(D-Del.) and his male colleagues did littleto help Anita Hills claims of sexual harassment get a full hearing during the Supreme Court confirmation of Clarence Thomas.

Fast-forward to the aughts and you cant help seeing the sexism underneath criticisms of Sarah Palin, in so many ways the female precursor to Trump, as ditzy. No one calls Trump a ditsy bimbo though hes on his third wife, has had a well-publicized string of affairs and demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of a good deal of policy.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

More recently, we shouldnt have been surprised that the one Trump Cabinet nominee to face serious pushback from Democrats was Betsy DeVos, one of only three women nominated to Trumps Cabinet. The education secretary is just as radical, dangerous and unqualified as Scott Pruitt, who now heads the Environmental Protection Administration. But only she was derided as a dimwit.

Betsy DeVos Is a Stupid, Stupid Person, reads a headline on The Root, a progressive website. The URL for that story is less subtle: betsy-devos-is-a-stupid-bitch.

Critics on the left men and women have been going after Conway for months. Deservedly so: Shes lied on behalf of the Trump administration, wholesale making up a terrorist attack that never happened. Speaking more broadly, shesdistanced herself from the idea of feminismand her job involves defending a man whos been repeatedly accused of sexual assault, whos signed executive orders hostile to women and whos put together an overwhelmingly male administration.

But not all criticism is created equal. And some progressives have shown no qualms about using sexism to go after Conway. Until Richmond crossed a line with his crude remark, though, no one seemed to care.

Richmond unleashed a wave of Conway defenders women stepping up to explain that while they may disagree with her tactics and her politics, the 50-year-old political strategist doesnt deserve to be run through the misogynist mill that processes so many powerful women. In fact, no one does. (Richmond apologized on Sunday.)

Bill Pugliano via Getty Images

Like Clinton and Palin and countless other women in politics, Conways been criticized for her looks, had her tactics dismissed as crazy and had her lust for power parodied in a Saturday Night Live sketch.

And thats the core issue, of course. Women who want power arent normal. Theyre crazy.

Men who want power? Well, theyre just boys being boys.

Women who aspire to office are seen as overstepping the bounds of what girls are expected to do. And for that, theyll almost always face sexist pushback from all corners.

There are ways to change that, of course. You could sit back and wait for a massive cultural shift in the expectations and assumptions that start as soon as a little girl gets her first Barbie doll. Or, more women could run for office and win until their sheer numbers make sexist critiques harder to level.

The rest is here:
Liberals Are Sexist Too, Of Course - Huffington Post