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HBOs Confederate, dreamt up by the producers behind Game of Thrones, hasnt even been scripted yet and some people already hate it. This is how the press release reads: The series takes place in an alternate timeline, where the Southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution. MSNBC host Joy Reid called the idea repugnant; film writer ReBecca Theodore said: black trauma is not for sale. The hashtag campaign on Twitter is #NoConfederate.

So, is this it? Has American TV - after years of cashing in on sex, violence and genocide - finally found the line it cannot cross? Is slavery the new taboo? Yes and no. The problem with Confederate might be less its content than its context, and while some say the protest is knee-jerk, its reasoning is just.

In defence of Confederate, its bizarrely...

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HBO's 'slavery fan fiction' Confederate is the work of liberals with the noblest of intentions but it's still a ... - Telegraph.co.uk

Do you see the problem? It's a common one in liberal defenses of affirmative action. We realize it in an admission a few sentences later in the story. The Justice Department document that The Times has obtained, you see, says nothing about white people. In fact, the document doesn't identify any specific victim of affirmative action, only the procedures of "intentional race-based discrimination."

The big surprise in the study was that Asians had to score significantly higher than whites, as well as blacks and Hispanics. Despite having a higher average SAT score, Asians have lower odds of admission than do "comparable whites."

Liberals can't absorb the Asian factor. It doesn't fit the whites vs. people of color setup. What is most frustrating to liberals is that advocates can't point to Asians as victimizers of blacks and Hispanics to justify the unequal treatment. The old argument of compensation-for-past-abuses doesn't apply to them, only to whites.

In other words, the element of white guilt disappears. And with it goes the most powerful moral argument for affirmative action. It is true, yes, that advocates have shifted their arguments for affirmative action from compensation-for-past-abuses to diversity -- that is, the contention that a more diverse classroom produces better learning -- but the diversity rationale doesn't impress most people except in a fuzzy way. They can't quite see how a student in calculus will improve his grades if he has a different race representative sitting next to him.

Nobody wants to take sides against the victims. Unless, that is, someone uncovers a new, nonwhite beneficiary to the elimination of preferences.

With legal efforts by Asian groups against affirmative action policies likely to continue as Asian high schoolers, foreign and domestic, flood the applicant pools, it is reasonable to expect that the Trump administration investigation will end up saying much more about the admission of Asians relative to blacks, whites, and Hispanics than it will about whites relative to Asians, blacks, and Hispanics.

In this narrow focus on affirmative action in America today, the Trump administration is once again crossing a progressive sacred principle, the division of educational achievement into whites and everybody else.

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Liberals can't handle the Asian factor in affirmative action - CNN

A new progressive coalition, the Not One Penny campaign, is launching today to build opposition to any Republican tax reform plan that lowers rates on corporations or the very wealthy.

Progressives have known for a while that tax cuts were the number two priority for Trump, after Obamacare repeal, said Nicole Gill, executive director of TaxMarch, one of the groups spearheading the new campaign alongside MoveOn and the Working Families Party. They havethe money, and we have the millions we have actual people who want to fight this.

Starting today, the Not One Penny campaign includes a seven-figure ad buy in eight Republican-held congressional districts,* all with large numbers of white voters without college degrees, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but have not historically been passionate about tax cuts. Its a fraction of what pro-tax reform groups like the American Action Network have pledged, but it mirrors what progressive groups and allies did during the effort to stop the Obamacare repeal in the Senate.

The competitive advantage of Not One Penny, say organizers, will be direct action and activism, building on the Tax March an April 15 rally to demand the presidents tax returns and on the victory of the anti-repeal campaign. In mid-July, as the fight to kill repeal was underway, more than 50 organizers from the resistance underwent training on best practices for organizing against tax cuts. Theyve fanned out to create anti-tax-cut presences in congressional districts over the long August recess.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spoke about the Democrats' "preferred path" for tax reform on Aug. 1. "The best tax reform is bipartisan tax reform aimed at helping the middle class," he said. (The Washington Post)

The goals of Not One Penny (as in, not one penny in tax cuts for the rich) are laid out in a pledge on the campaign website. The last thing we need is for the tax code to be even more rigged in favor of millionaires, billionaires, and corporate insiders, write organizers. Even more tax breaks for the super rich will undermine our commitment to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and make it impossible to invest in the middle class.

The anti-rigging rhetoric runs right into the messaging that tax cut supporters began using this week. At a series of events at the Newseum, two hubs of the Koch donor network Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity debuted a logo for their un-rig the economy campaign, which had been underway for a month.

Progressives see an opening in that message an admission, by the supporters of tax cuts, that reform cant be seen as a benefit only for the very rich. Polls this year from Pew and Gallup have found supermajorities of voters skeptical that corporations pay sufficient taxes. In April, 63 percent of voters said that the rich were taxed too little in the current system; 67 percent of voters said the same of corporations.

If its about whether or not the rich should get a tax cut, then conservatives will lose, said Michael Linden, a senior fellow at the progressive Roosevelt Institute. Its why they frame their plans as tax cuts for the middle class, or for competitiveness; if they talked about the distributional consequences, theyd lose.

*IA-01, IA-03, AZ-02, KS-03, ME-02, TX-23, AR-01, CA-49

Original post:
Liberals launch 'Not One Penny' campaign in effort to stop Trump tax cuts - Washington Post

Republican senators David Perdue (Ga.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.) introducedWednesday a proposal for a merit-based legal immigration system that was instantly derided by liberals.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) quickly bashed the RAISE Act:

From the start, President Trump has pushed a hateful, senseless anti-immigrant agenda that instills fear in our communities, weakens our nation, and dishonors our values. Whether unleashing a deportation force to tear apart families, or threatening the protections of DACA, or backing the tired cruelty of this bill, the Trump Administration continues to choose discrimination over smart policies that strengthen and enrich our nation.

Perdue responded to the criticism on "Fox & Friends" today, emphasizing that currently only one in 15 legal immigrants have skills and enter the workforce.

"The result is over half of immigrant households are in our social welfare system," he said.

"Any time a liberal politician starts fear-mongering, you know you're onto something good," said Perdue, arguing that the reform is based on what Canada has enacted successfully.

Perdue said Pelosi and other liberal Democrats have held up Canada as a "beacon of light" on the issue.

He said he is hopeful the bill will proceed through the Judiciary Committee and go to a vote and that a similar bill will be introduced in the House.

Watch the interview above.

Here is the original post:
Perdue on Immigration Proposal: If Liberals Are 'Fear-Mongering,' Then We're Onto Something - Fox News Insider

Canadians are justifiably appalled by the plight of thousands of employees and pensioners who are being victimized by the bankruptcy protection manoeuvring of Sears Canada. Thousands have been laid off and even more stand to lose the severance, benefits and pensions that they earned, while Sears pays millions in bonuses to executives and managers.

Sadly, however, Canadians should not be surprised by the Sears scandal and the scope of the devastation that so many will suffer. Successive Liberal and Conservative federal governments have allowed such scenarios to occur by repeatedly rejecting legislative reforms that would protect employees, pensioners and their families.

Members and retirees of my union, the United Steelworkers, know all too well the pain and anguish caused by unfair bankruptcy and insolvency laws that Liberal and Conservative governments have steadfastly maintained for decades.

Some of the most recent victims include more than 20,000 U.S. Steel Canada retirees whose crucial health benefits were eliminated and thousands of former employees and retirees of Cliffs Natural Resources who lost their health benefits and suffered deep cuts to pensions they earned over a lifetime of work.

Imagine a terminally ill pensioner who loses health benefits overnight and is forced to choose between buying food or potentially life-saving medication. Or retirees whose pensions were abruptly cut by $1,000 a month because their governments quite intentionally ensure they remain at the back of the queue in corporate insolvency cases, while the claims of big banks and wealthy investors come first.

Even the Supreme Court of Canada has noted that successive governments have made a deliberate choice to favour creditors such as banks and major investors over vulnerable pensioners and employees.

In a case that my union fought in the courts for several years, the Supreme Court sympathized with pensioners from the insolvent Toronto operations of multinational corporation Indalex. However, in its 2013 ruling, the Supreme Court determined that, under the terms of existing legislation, cuts to the Indalex retirees' pensions were lawful.

It was also noted that during the Liberal government regime of the early- and mid-2000s, Liberal-dominated committees in the House of Commons and in the Senate took turns studying reforms to bankruptcy and insolvency legislation. In both cases, the Liberals opted not to stand up for the interests of workers and pensioners.

But after being turfed from office, the same Liberals changed their tune. Then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff vowed that his party, if re-elected, would change the law to protect workers and pensioners and ensure they would no longer be "left at the back of queue in insolvency and bankruptcy."

"It's not right. We agree with you," Ignatieff famously told thousands of laid-off Nortel workers in 2009. Following the Liberals' return to power in 2015, that promise appears to have been all but forgotten.

So it is particularly galling to hear the current Liberal government express sympathy for "the difficult circumstances" now faced by Sears workers and retirees. At least one Liberal MP has unabashedly chastised Sears and publicly called on the company to "do the right thing" for pensioners.

Of course, there is no acknowledgement from the Liberal government that, with its overwhelming majority in Parliament, it actually could "do the right thing" by enacting legislative reforms to better protect Canadians' wages, pensions and benefits.

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Experts in bankruptcy and restructuring law have put forward practical and realistic legislative reforms that would protect employees and pensioners, without causing economic upheaval.

For example, amending the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA) to give priority to severance packages, retirement benefits and money owed to pension plans "would be the easiest thing in the world" and would not result in undue harm to the business climate, says one expert on pension and benefit issues in insolvency cases.

Ultimately, reforming laws such as the BIA and the Companies' Creditor Arrangement Act is primarily a political choice. In other words, whose interests does the government of the day truly want to serve? That is the question facing the current Liberal government.

Canadian workers and pensioners want more than hollow words of sympathy when their money is diverted from their pensions and benefits in favour of banks and wealthy investors.

Canadians rightfully expect their government to "do the right thing."

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Sears Mess Shows How Little Liberals Think Of Working Canadians - Huffington Post Canada