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Updated March 19, 2017 17:34:42

Western Australia's next Liberal leader Mike Nahan has rejected suggestions he will be an "interim leader" and will not be around to contest the 2021 state election.

The former treasurer has spoken for the first time since the Barnett Government's dramatic election loss, in which seven ministers lost their seats.

He described the result as "catastrophic" and "gut wrenching" and pointed the finger of blame at former premier Colin Barnett, telling another media organisation he was "tired" and "not up to" the campaign.

Despite being 13 days older than Mr Barnett, Dr Nahan, aged 66, insisted he was not too old to lead the Liberals.

He will be elected unopposed when the party's MPs meet to determine the leadership on Tuesday. Liza Harvey will remain deputy leader.

"Look around the world, I think Donald Trump is over 70, Hillary Clinton was older than I and she was going for the toughest job in the world and I'm very fit and able," Dr Nahan said.

"It requires energy, which I have, experience, which I have, but also a bit of maturity.

"I will be a leader of a team, not a boss, and that's what we need now.

"There is not any issue of policy that I haven't over the last 30 years come across."

Dr Nahan insisted there was no "Kirribilli agreement" to hand over the leadership to Ms Harvey mid-term.

Meanwhile, the former treasurer said there were a number of reasons why the Barnett government was "hammered", including the One Nation preference deal and a perception it was of touch with voter concerns.

"It's our fault. We failed to address the concerns of the public," he said.

Dr Nahan said the proposal to sell 51 per cent of Western Power to raise up to $11 billion was absolutely right and the Liberal Party would most likely stick with the policy.

"It was the right thing to do, it got rejected," he said.

"Labor will rue the day they allowed the unions to fund their campaign in the millions of millions of dollars because that asset will require major investment and will be depreciating in value."

"The sale of Western Power was poorly carried by us ... the public didn't understand it, they didn't understand what Western Power was or the benefits of selling it, or the risk of holding it in terms of depreciating value that's our fault."

Dr Nahan said he had not spoken to Mr Barnett since the election and did not know whether he planned to retire or stay on as a backbencher.

"He's been a contributor to Western Australian politics for many decades but I would expect him to move on from Cottesloe and vacate the seat sooner rather than later," he said.

But he insisted the Liberals would bounce back.

"I've been playing a lot of sports, some seasons you have a bad one but you can come back and the best thing is a bit of offence and we will come back aggressively," he said.

"Labor has a lot of weaknesses."

Topics: elections, state-parliament, wa, perth-6000

First posted March 19, 2017 16:44:03

See the original post:
WA election: Mike Nahan says he is leader Liberals need after 'gut wrenching' defeat - ABC Online

TORONTO-

The Liberal governments new ads on hydro rate cuts dont pass muster with Ontarios Auditor General.

However, Bonnie Lysyk says her office had no choice but to approve a slew of new taxpayer-funded radio spots from the Liberal government about its plan to slash hydro rates.

Under the old rules, she could have spiked anything she deemed partisan. But since the Liberals changed the regulations in 2015, her office has little choice but to rubber-stamp back-slapping radio and TV spots.

Our office approved the Hydro-related ads under the current version of the Government Advertising Act, Lysyk said in a statement to the Toronto Sun. However, they would not have passed under the previous legislation because we feel that these ads have the objective of fostering a positive impression of the government.

The ads, which began running on radio stations across the province this week, tell listeners that the Liberals made important investments in clean and green energy. That has come at a cost and the rate cut is about addressing the impact on hydro bills.

Weve heard you, a narrator says in one of the spots. Hydro needs to be fair for everyone across the province and weve made fundamental changes to ensure this in the long-term.

Colin Nekolaichuk, spokesman for Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault, defended the ads saying its the governments responsibility to communicate information about the program to Ontarians. He also stressed that the governments changes to advertising rules provided a clearer definition of partisan advertising.

Both opposition parties slammed the ads, calling on the Liberals to release the cost to taxpayers. Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown is also demanding Ontarios Liberals pull the plug on self-congratulatory spots.

Your government has no authority to be spending hard-earned taxpayer dollars on partisan radio and social media ads to promote a plan that has not yet been tabled, debated and voted on in the Legislature, Brown said in a letter to Treasury Board President Liz Sandals.

New Democrat energy critic Peter Tabuns said that party will file Freedom of Information requests to unearth the cost of the ads. He accused the Liberals of using taxpayer money to buy support ahead of the 2018 election.

Not one dime has come off peoples sky-rocketing hydro bills and Wynne hasnt tabled legislation, or even a credible plan to save us money, Tabuns said in a statement. Yet, shes spending more of peoples hard-earned dollars on ads claiming the problem is solved.

Premier Kathleen Wynne rolled out her plan to slash hydro rates by 17% two weeks ago. When combined with an 8% HST rebate, the savings total 25%.

That plan, which is supposed to take effect this summer, will cost taxpayers an estimated $25 billion in interest payments as the government re-amortizes electricity deals over 30 years to achieve the short-term savings.

sjeffords@postmedia.com

Excerpt from:
Liberals' 'self-congratulatory' hydro ads ripped - Shoreline Beacon

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Posted: Mar 18, 2017 12:01 AM

Its sad to see so many Americans turn into losers, pathetically demanding to be treated as victims, all so the emotional vampires on the Left can feel better about themselves for helping such pathetic sad sacks.

Liberals LOVE for people to think of themselves as victims. They love for people to go through life furious, upset over things most people wouldnt even notice. They need you alienated and angry so they can control you and turn you out at the polls, so they can get their sick little self-esteem boost for helping a poor little mediocrity like you.

If youre black or Hispanic and think white people hate you, if youre gay and think the Christians want to wipe you out, or if youre a woman who believes the patriarchy is keeping you down, youre going to have an unhappy life. It doesnt matter if things are going well or you have success; youre going to be angry. Youre going to feel mistreated. Youre going to walk around chalking up every normal event in the world to bias that primarily exists in your head. Youre going to nurse grievances. Youre going to be unhappy.

As consolation, you can half-ass your way through life and chalk up your failures to white racism, those hypocritical Christians, or the patriarchy. You can live with the illusion that, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, youre fighting for womens rights, or, like Martin Luther King, youre trying to reform a society teeming with racism -- but that only makes you sound like a joke. Stanton was fighting for womens right to vote. Today, feminists whine about having to pay for their birth control. Martin Luther King was fighting for equal rights, and today liberal black leaders spend their time bitching about whether hoop earrings are cultural appropriation. There are legions of liberal Don Quixotes jousting with windmills and pretending that the trivia they obsess over gives meaning to their victimhood-centered lives.

As an extra added bonus, you get to be the person who stops all the fun when you walk in the room. You get to be the one always accusing random white people of using white privilege or explaining that eating Chinese food is cultural appropriation. You get to be the one throwing out fake statistics (Theres a huge spike in wife beating on Super Bowl Sunday.) and constantly playing the Im more sensitive than you game. People have to hold back jokes and to walk on eggshells around you because they dont want to listen to your tedious lectures about how theyre not woke.

There are whole communities that have been governed by black liberals for decades that blame all their problems on white Republicans -- all because people grow to love that victimhood. They love that ready-made excuse for every problem in their lives. It isnt because they didnt go to college and they talk like theyre ignorant that they cant get a job; its racism. Black Americans arent going to jail in higher numbers because theyre committing more crimes percentage-wise; its racism! Americans are sick of Barack Obama? Must be racism. They can sniff out hidden racism like a drug-sniffing dog on a pack of cocaine, but they cant ever admit that 95% of their problems are self-created, just the same as they are with every white American.

Nobody of any race makes you choose to have unprotected sex and get pregnant at 16. Nobody makes you choose to have three kids by three different baby daddies. Nobody makes you flunk out of school. Nobody makes you spend money on partying instead of your rent. Nobody makes you assault a police officer. Nobody makes you rob a house and get a criminal record. Its not oppression. Its a sub-culture that says you can make every mistake in the world, but your screwed-up life is still someone elses fault.

There are women, gays, and minorities around the world dying to get into the United States. The ones that get the opportunity to do so legally spend thousands of dollars and put up with years of paperwork to come here. You think thats because its such a racist, sexist, oppressive country? Its ridiculous. Its silly.

Its not a white thing or a black thing, a male thing or a female thing, a conservative or liberal thing. If youre a conservative white male who blames all the problems in your life on black people, youre a loser. If youre a liberal black woman who blames all the problems in your life on white people, youre a loser. If youre a woman who blames all the difficulties in your life on the patriarchy, you are a loser. In life, if youre going to be not just successful, but happy, you hold yourself responsible and take care of your own issues. If you dont like how something in the world is, you try to change it, but you dont whine and cry and talk about how terrible life is for you because you were born the wrong race or sex. Hold yourself to a higher standard than that. Look for the opportunities that often get missed because they require some work. Be a better person and stop lying to yourself about oppression in the least racist, most welcoming country in the history of humankind.

Person in Custody after Driving Up toWhite House Checkpoint Claiming to Have a Bomb

View post:
Sorry, Liberals, There Are No Oppressed Americans - Townhall

What is happening in the courts right now goes beyond any debate over a ban on Muslim immigration. The courts have denuded the president of his plenary power over setting the refugee cap, which Trump applied evenly to every country included in his new executive order. Obviously, all the national security problems we have are from predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East. But lets put that aside for a moment. Even if this was a ban on Muslim immigration, it would be legal. That is settled law of a sovereign nation state.

We have already cited from endless case law and statements from our founders on the plenary right of a nation to determine who enters the country. Id like to add some new source material that speaks to the current constitutional crisis:

In Knauff v. Shaughnessy (1950), the Supreme Court made it clear that there is no right whatsoever to immigrate:

At the outset, we wish to point out that an alien who seeks admission to this country may not do so under any claim of right. Admission of aliens to the United States is a privilege granted by the sovereign United States Government. Such privilege is granted to an alien only upon such terms as the United States shall prescribe. It must be exercised in accordance with the procedure which the United States provides.

And yes, the exclusion could be because any consideration, even race. Remember, we are talking about law and Constitution, not politics, prudence, or morality. From Ju Toy v. United States (1905):

That Congress may exclude aliens of a particular race from the United States, prescribe the terms and conditions upon which certain classes of aliens may come to this country, establish regulations for sending out of the country such aliens as come here in violation of law, and commit the enforcement of such provisions, conditions, and regulations exclusively to executive officers, without judicial intervention are principles firmly established by the decisions of this Court. [emphasis added]

Thus, not only is the right to exclude even for bad reason deemed settled law in the most emphatic terms, resting on the most foundational principles of sovereignty, but it is not reviewable by the courts. Two years prior, in The Japanese Immigrant Case, the court used the exact same language and declared that, based on an uninterrupted stream of near-unanimous decisions, the constitutionality of such an exclusion is no longer open to discussion in this Court.

In 1904 (Turner v. Williams), the court made it clear that it is facially absurd to assert a religious liberty, equal protection, or freedom of speech right to affirmatively immigrate to this country. This case speaks directly to what the modern courts are ignoring:

We are at a loss to understand in what way the act is obnoxious to this objection. It has no reference to an establishment of religion, nor does it prohibit the free exercise thereof; nor abridge the freedom of speech or of the press; nor the right of the people to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. It is, of course, true that if an alien is not permitted to enter this country, or, having entered contrary to law, is expelled, he is in fact cut off from worshipping or speaking or publishing or petitioning in the country; but that is merely because of his exclusion therefrom. He does not become one of the people to whom these things are secured by our Constitution by an attempt to enter, forbidden by law. To appeal to the Constitution is to concede that this is a land governed by that supreme law, and as under it the power to exclude has been determined to exist, those who are excluded cannot assert the rights in general obtaining in a land to which they do not belong as citizens or otherwise.

It's amazing how liberals worship the concept of stare decisis (court precedent) once a single liberal court overturns years of common sense case law and the plain meaning of the Constitution. But they have no respect for case law that is most firmly embedded in our sovereignty in the most emphatic language, including the courts own admission that they have absolutely no jurisdiction over the issue. All of this case law remains unsettled and unexplained by the civil disobedience of todays modern judiciary. As Ive noted before, this case law survived even the liberal Warren-era right up to this generation.

Some critics might suggest that we cant draw any conclusions from the exclusion acts of the late 1880s because thats when America was evil and racist. Just like the courts upheld slavery and were wrong they are wrong about this, some might suggest. What about when the courts upheld the internment of the Japanese in the Korematsu case?

There is a one-word answer to these questions: Sovereignty.

What liberals are missing is that there is a difference between abridging the rights of Americans or even immigrants and a right to affirmatively enter someone elses country. Of course, we cant just throw people into labor camps and indefinitely detain them without due process. But we dont have to allow people into our country. Immigration is quite a different issue than indefinite detention. Its like saying because you are not allowed to kidnap a visitor of your house and lock him in your attic you must allow anyone into your house in the first place.

As Ive cited many times, Justice Robert Jackson, the famous Nuremberg prosecutor who was a champion of due process rights and wrote the dissent in Korematsu v. United States, said that Due process does not invest any alien with a right to enter the United States, nor confer on those admitted the right to remain against the national will. Shaughnessy v. Mezei, 345 US 222-223 (1953) (Jackson, J., dissenting).] Scalia, in his Zadvydas dissent, made this same distinction between indefinite detention and the right to enter or remain in the country against the national will. Even the majority opinion at the time only granted relief because the individual legal permanent resident was being held longer than six months in prison (but only because his home country would not repatriate him).

Some might feel uncomfortable with the notion that there are no limitations on discriminatory, absurd, or mean immigration selection criterion. But those are political or sensibility arguments, not legal arguments. By definition, any limitation whatsoever on the power to exclude necessarily means that a foreign national has some sort of affirmative claim to assert jurisdiction and adjudicate his way into entry. As John Marshall, the judicial strongman himself, said:

The jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself. Any restriction upon it deriving validity from an external source would imply a diminution of its sovereignty to the extent of the restriction and an investment of that sovereignty to the same extent in that power which could impose such restriction. All exceptions, therefore, to the full and complete power of a nation within its own territories must be traced up to the consent of the nation itself. They can flow from no other legitimate source.

But again, we are not even talking about a complete shutoff of Muslim immigration. We are no longer a sovereign nation and a sovereign people when courts, relatives of foreign nationals, taxpayer-funded refugee groups, and states can proactively demand any form of immigration they so desire.

Read more:
Yes, liberals, we can deny entry to any immigrant AND for any reasons - Conservative Review

For progressives, the on-going civil war among House Republicans over Obamacare has inspired delicious schadenfreude as Trump and Republican leaders suffer at the hands of that small band of ideological House Republicans so committed to their political purity that they may be on the verge of derailing the entire Trump-Ryan agenda.

But though it is entertaining to watch this GOP catfight, progressives and anyone else who supports democratic values had better hope the Freedom Caucus stays committed, refusing to give an inch. I strongly suspect they wont surrender, for they have an almost religious commitment to the notion of repeal and replace. Their rigidity might defeat Trump and House Speaker Ryans true master plan: of gutting health care to pass a huge, permanent tax plan for billionaires.

Confused? Dont befor Trump, Ryan, the House Republican leadership, and even the Freedom Caucus, this all goes back to the 2013 government shutdown and the 2015 budget reconciliation fight, which Obama largely won, outmaneuvering House Republicans to rewrite George W. Bushs tax cuts and restore modest tax increases on the wealthiest Americans. Obama could do this because the Bush tax plan had a 10-year expiration date unless the Bush administration could produce a credible budget document establishing that the tax cuts wouldnt increase the deficit after 10 years. They couldnt.

But give credit to Bush: at least his team was honest enough to admit that, as every standard economic test determined, deficit reduction under his plan would never happen.

Fast-forward to February 2017, when Trumps snake-oil-budget sales team was hoping to produce a document declaring they could fund a massive defense-spending increase along with the Ryan-Trump $3 trillion tax cut, with 97 percent of the gains going to the top one percent (Trumps team readily admits the wealthy get the most in his plan). So they went to town with cuts, slashing both the State Department and EPA nearly in half, gutting public housing, and eliminating medical research.

Problem is, all the snake-oil budget wonks in Washington werent able to find more than half the savings needed to invoke that Senate rule that would make Trumps tax plan permanent with only 51 votes. However, during the budget wars with Obama, then-House budget leader Paul Ryan and his flunkyer, right hand and future House Budget Committee Chair Tom Price, offered a plan to gut Obamacare to gain $1.2 trillion in savings. The savings were only on paper, but under Senate rules, that would be enough.

Progressives and anyone else who supports democratic values had better hope the Freedom Caucus stays committed, refusing to give an inch.

Ryan, of course, is now Speaker, Price is now Secretary of HHS and what most of the media fails to understand about the Ryan-Trump-Price AHCA plan is that it really doesnt give a good goddam about health care services in any meaningful sense. Rather it is simply a plan Ryans team designed to produce $1.2 trillion dollars on paper so they could get started on the tax plan. The media still didnt get it even after it was revealed that nearly 10 percent of the entire House health care bill was nothing but a detailed a plan to remove 377 PowerBall and MegaMillions winners from Medicaid, all to save a couple of million bucks.

Unfortunately for Ryan (and Trump) the Freedom Caucus remembers the 2015 reconciliation fight differently; at that time Ryan, Price, and Republican Senate leaders agreed to Freedom Caucus demands to repeal every penny of government funding for Obamacare. Today, they want it all and they want it now, not in a gradually implemented repeal that wont take effect for several months (intended to give both Trump and Congress enough time to pass a tax cut and a new health care systemor so they say). Caucus members see Trump and Ryan as only seeking savings for their tax cut, while trying to score political points to preserve as many popular (or, as the Freedom Caucusers say, pro-government) Obamacare programs as they can.

Even more bizarre was the House leaderships reaction to the fierce opposition from the Freedom Caucus, and Senators named Paul, Cruz, and Cotton. Ryan and his cohorts insist they were surprised by the Caucuss reaction. That sounded a lot like Captain Renault telling Rick he was shocked, shocked to find there was gambling going on in the Caf Americain in Casablanca. Because every Republican in Congress is well aware that the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus are the culmination of American right-wing ideology, and have no interest in compromising on their ideological principles.

The story goes back 70 years and involves two groups wholly dissatisfied with the post-WWII mainstream Republican Party: the anti-union/anti-communist corporate faction that included Charles Koch, Robert Welch, and Joseph Coors, all co-founders of the John Birch Society. And the religious fundamentalists, like Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell. There is no need to recount this history here, especially with so many excellent accounts of the Kochs, the rise of fundamentalism in the GOP, and the many sideshows, like the influence of Ayn Rand on conservative thought. Much of this is documented in the outstanding work of Washington Spectator contributor Rick Perlstein, who has brilliantly documented the rise of the new American right in his books.

But in the 1980s-1990s, as right-wing ideologues gained influence in the White House and Congress, they had a new problem: how to govern. Two individuals best represent what happened next, Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist. Both advocated a form of what comparative political scientists call managed democracy. To give you an idea what that means, most political scientists classify Putins Russia as an highly advanced managed democracy, i.e. not quite a full authoritarian state, because a few dissenting voices are still tolerated, but it is getting there.

Norquists version of managed democracy was essentially government by ideology: as he told his Harvard classmate, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, he would stamp out liberalism by recruiting politicians who will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat. To the pure at heart, Republicans were as big a problem as liberals: thus, Norquists Americans for Tax Reform, along with groups like the Heritage Foundation that today define authentic conservatism for the party. More recently, the Koch brothers Americans for Prosperity was established to purge ideologically impure Republicans in primaries. Their decades of work inevitably led to the congressional Freedom Caucus, which stands for those who believe in governing from an ideological foundation.

Significantly, Norquist has never held public office. Newt Gingrich has, so his approach to managed democracy relied more on fixing the system, through gerrymandered districts, voter ID laws that both limit voting rights while controlling who is permitted to vote, and most important, Gingrichs 1995 decree that House Republicans would govern by a majority of the majority. Today it is misnamed the Hastert Rule, but there is a better known and more appropriate term for majority of the majority and that is one-party rule.

In todays Republican House, no bill passes unless a majority of the Republican House majority supports it. Thus the Obamacare battle now comes down to Ryan and Trump using their majority of the majority tactics to cow both the House and Senate into passing a bill masquerading as health care reform to finance their wet dream of a tax plan for the super rich. Meanwhile, a small clique of ideological purists who insist the Ryan-Trump bill is a political sell-out that protects too much of Obamacare is standing in the way. So despite universal opposition to their bill being loudly expressed by medical societies, hospital associations, the AARP, and dozens of other interest groups, House Republican leaders are doing all they can to strongarm the bills passage. And a few Freedom Caucus leaders are invoking their version of Martin Luthers message to the Diet of Worms: Here I shall make my stand, I can do nothing else.

The irony here is that progressives or anyone else who opposes Trumps larger agenda now have no choice but to cheer on the Freedom Caucus. While its members may not support a single principle progressives believe in, they are political insiders, and for now, the only hope America has of derailing the train before it leaves the station.

Peter Lindstrom is a political consultant and writer living in Washington, D.C.

Original post:
Liberals Learn to Love the Freedom Caucus - The Washington Spectator (blog)