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Trusting Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals to fix the hydro mess they've created is like trusting rabbits to guard the lettuce patch.

It requires an unshakeable belief, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that the same people who caused today's runaway electricity prices know how to fix them.

And that the Liberals will keep their promise to lower hydro rates if they win next year's election, this being the same party that came to power under Dalton McGuinty in 2003 solemnly promising not to raise our taxes.

McGuinty even signed a pledge during that election not to do so. And we all know what happened next.

Based on their record, I wouldn't trust the Liberals as far as I could throw them to keep any promise they've made, or will make, on hydro rates prior to the June 2018 election, if they win it with a majority government.

To be fair to Wynne and McGuinty, they didn't start the financial mess we see in today's electricity sector, where hydro prices have doubled in a decade, despite a surplus of electricity -- the exact opposite of how the market should work.

They inherited an expensive and aging power and transmission grid from the previous Progressive Conservative government, which inherited it from the previous NDP government, which inherited it from the Liberal government before that.

Electricity prices were going to go up substantially no matter who won the election that brought the Liberals to power in 2003.

But where the Liberals were responsible for putting the problems they inherited on steroids was in their mad, reckless and irresponsible dash into green energy, without any understanding of what they were doing or its consequences.

What Ontarians got in return was unreliable and inefficient power that wasn't needed, given the province's energy surplus -- energy which had to be backed up by new natural gas plants anyway, two of which the Liberals then infamously cancelled at a public cost of up to $1.1 billion over 20 years. Because of the Liberals' 20-year contracts with wind and solar developers, many of them major contributors to the Liberal party, Ontario hydro consumers and taxpayers were forced into buying their expensive and unreliable power first.

Even when it wasn't needed and even if doing so made the entire electricity system operate less efficiently and thus more expensively.

In 2015, Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk concluded the Liberals overpaid $9.2 billion for green energy that was never needed to replace coal-fired electricity.

McGuinty promised to eliminate coal in the 2003 election for health and environmental reasons, saying it would be completed by 2007. It fact it took the Liberals until 2014.

But the Liberals didn't replace coal, which provided 25 per cent of Ontario's electricity, with wind and solar power, which provided just four per cent and which, unlike coal, couldn't supply base load power to the grid on demand.

Instead, the Liberals replaced coal with nuclear power, which emits neither pollution nor greenhouse gases and natural gas, which burns at half the carbon intensity of coal.

Therein lies the ultimate Liberal blunder. They could have replaced coal power without spending a nickel on wind and solar, instead of creating the green energy mess they have.

Ontarians will be paying for that mistake for generations to come.

lgoldstein@postmedia.com

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Generations will pay for Liberal hydro blunders - Melfort Journal

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

As a black femme living under the United States first Orange administration, every piece of breaking news makes me feel like Im living in Groundhog Day. You know, that movie with Bill Murray?

Yeah, that one.

Not a day goes by when you wake up in the morning and dont hear that the Orange has done something despotic, or someone from his team has been caught in coitus with Russia (again). White liberals talk trash about resisting. They dont resist. They congratulate Trump for doing something normal.

Rinse, repeat.

This pattern was compounded Tuesday night when he gave his first address to a joint session of Congress. And because his speech was passable, certain mainstream (ahem, white) outlets called it a success. Others were pleasantly surprised by his pivot and by his acting presidential.

Of course, marginalized folks arent fooled. We know whats good, and as Maya Angelou once said, When someone shows you who they really are, believe them.

However, it seems that liberals still havent gotten the message, as they continue to work, knowingly or otherwise, to normalize the Orange. Here are some reasons why this is bad and could turn his already dangerous four-year tenure into an eight-year one:

I want to be very clear about this:

This is not going to happen. You will die waiting for this to happen. In fact, people who did not want or desire this administration will die if we wait for this to happen.

Im not sure how you could still believe that some unicorn of a good Republican will emerge to do the right thing and slay his or her new lord and savior La Naranja if youve been around to witness the current events of his administration. In fact, while the Unstable Orange has no idea what he is doing, he has still managed to make the Republican Party his bitch.

Whats more, he and his squad were exposed for talking to Russia before the 2016 presidential election. The attorney general of the United States was caught speaking to Russia in the middle of an investigation he was supposed to head. Hell, lets talk about him and Betsy DeVos getting confirmed to begin with. Where were these good Republicans to stop that, huh?

Even those who try to prop up John McCain and the like as such figures, forget that ol dude and them voted to confirm all these jokers.

Moral of the story? Dont hold your breath.

In the headline of this piece, I invoked Maxine Waters, Patron Saint of Truth, Shade and Justice, for a reason. While I love her determination and iron will, I am semiflabbergasted that she remains the premier congressperson who is willing to oppose the Orange at every turn.

Of course, if you know black women, this will make some sense. We get shit done. And we hope to save the world. Yet, even with our will, that was not enough to save the country from itself. Nope. Seventy percent of white folk still voted to send the free world to hell.

Long story short, white liberals can attempt to sit back and let marginalized folk save the day, but the reality is, they are the only ones who can fix this mess and are responsible for this mess.

And if they refuse to do the heavy lifting? Well, then, they can get ready for eight whopping years of terrible orange tans, neo-Nazi proliferation, and death-inducing health and economic policies.

The number of people who were impressed that O-roma managed to passably stumble his way through a speech on a teleprompter was Too. Damn. High.

I could have done the same back on my high school debate team, but even then, my coach still wouldve given me a solid D-minus and called me a shame to my craft. Yet Trump was called truly presidential and congratulated on pivoting to a more sensible version of himself.

Mind you, he announced plans to publish the crimes of immigrants around the U.S. in a public database. On the same day. How very nice and presidential of him.

Still, I cant say Im shocked at the sharp heel turn of so-called progressives this time around. But their new tunes do reinforce one thing, however:

White supremacyand fascism, in this caseis always more digestible to people if it is nicer. More palatable. Presentable.

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3 Reasons Trump'll Be President for 8 Years Unless White Liberals ... - The Root

Four days after Donald Trump's surprising White House victory, the liberal organization CREDO Action fired off a frantic warning to its 4.6 million anxious supporters.

Their worry wasn't the new president. It was his opposition.

"Democratic leaders have been welcoming Trump," the email said. "That's not acceptable. Democratic leaders need to stand up and fight. Now."

Amid a national surge of anti-Trump protests, boycotts and actions, liberals have begun taking aim at a different target: Their own party.

Over the past few weeks, activists have formed a number of organizations threatening a primary challenge to Democratic lawmakers who offer anything less than complete resistance to the Republican president.

"We're not interested in unity," said Cenk Uygur, the founder of Justice Democrats, a new organization that's pledged to replace "every establishment politician" in Congress. "We can't beat the Republicans unless we have good, honest, uncorrupted candidates."

While party leaders have urged Democrats to keep their attacks focused on Trump, the liberal grass roots sees the fresh wave of opposition energy as an opportunity to push their party to the left and wrest power from longtime party stalwarts.

The intraparty pressure is reminiscent of the tea party movement, where conservative activists defeated several centrist Republican incumbents. Their efforts reverberated through the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, forcing candidates to the right on economic issues.

Like Uygur, many founders of the new groups are supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, eager to continue their effort to remake the Democratic Party.

Uygur's group says they've already found 70 possible candidates who will refuse corporate campaign donations while running for Congress_ challenging elected Democrats if needed. Those people are now going through candidate training.

Democratic officials from more conservative states worry that those primary contests will result in the party holding even less power in Washington.

Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat likely to face a tough re-election fight in a state won overwhelmingly by Trump, said the effort will make Democrats a "super minority" in the Senate.

FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2017 file photo, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. is interviewed by The Associated Press in his office in Washington.

A coalition named "WeWillReplaceYou" is urging Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York to remove Manchin from his new role in the party leadership after Manchin expressed openness to working with Trump.

"If you want to go ahead and beat me up in a primary then go ahead," Manchin said. "All it does is take the resources from the general."

Even without primaries, the party faces a challenging political map in 2018. Republicans will be defending just eight Senate seats, while Democrats must hold 23 _ plus two filled by independents who caucus with them. Ten of those races are in states Trump carried last November.

The activists say they're willing to trade power for conviction.

"I'd rather have 44 or 45 awesome Democrats who are lockstep together than 44 or 45 really awesome Democrats and three to four weak-kneed individuals who are going to dilute the party," said Murshed Zaheed, CREDO's political director.

They point to a postelection shift among Democrats as a sign that their efforts are working.

Initially, Schumer and even liberals such as Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren cautiously spoke of working with Trump on certain issues. After the wave of liberal fury, most Democrats have shifted into full opposition mode.

"Democrats have a reflexive instinct to compromise," said Ben Wikler of MoveOn.org, which has directed its members to protest at Democratic as well as Republican congressional offices. "At this moment of successive Trump crises, resistance rather than compromise is what the country needs."

Democratic leaders say the path to victory next year depends on a strong economic message, one that casts Trump as betraying the working-class voters who boosted him to victory.

"What we have in common, whether you're West Virginia or Massachusetts or Kansas is a commitment to economic opportunity," said Tom Perez, the newly elected Democratic National Committee chairman.

A memo this past week from Priorities USA gave Democrats a "10-point checklist" for criticizing Trump's economic policies and conflicts of interest, saying the party cannot simply count on the president to remain "his own worst enemy."

Many of the most vulnerable Democratic senators avoided town halls meetings during the congressional recess last week, hoping to evade politically damaging confrontations.

Party officials are trying to channel the new energy into more targeted electoral efforts.

In the weeks after Election Day, the Ohio Democratic Party held a series of meetings across the state with new activists. Since then, they've teamed up with some organizations for events.

"Our goal is to build good relationships so that come spring, summer of `18 everyone moves to an election mindset," said David Pepper, the state party chairman.

Last month, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee installed full-time organizers in 20 swing districts, with the goal of building stronger connections with activist groups.

Their message: "We can't add by subtracting," said the committee chairman, Rep. Ben Ray Lujn of New Mexico.

That may be a hard sell for some of the new anti-Trump organizations.

"Something the tea party was really smart about early on was not giving a big bear hug to the Republican National Committee," said Ezra Levin, the executive director of the new anti-Trump group Indivisible. "Keeping the political parties at arm's length is crucial to remaining an outside political force."

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Tea Party Parallel? Liberals Taking Aim at Their Own Party - Voice of America

Projecting optimism, WA Premier Colin Barnett helped in a charity fundraiser, the World's Greatest Shave, on Sunday.

West Australian Liberal Premier Colin Barnett says he is still in the game to win this Saturday's election, despite a new poll giving Labor an 11 per cent swing, enough to give it victory.

Mr Barnett said there werestill a large number of undecided voters which he put as high as one in five and, as a result, the Liberals were "still in this game".

"We are still in it," the Premier said.

Campaigning in Perth's working-class eastern suburbs on Sunday, Mr Barnett shook off suggestions it might have been wiser to concentrate his efforts in the city's northern suburbs to sandbag seats under threat from a barnstorming Labor.

A Galaxy poll published in The Sunday Times puts Labor ahead of the Liberals 54 to 46 per cent on a two party preferred basis. If uniform, it would deliver Labor 14 seats, more than the 10 it neededto seal victory on Saturday.

Mr Barnett said he was disappointed by the Galaxy poll result but, with plenty of chutzpah, he said the Liberals even had a strong chance for the seat of Midland, won by Labor by just 24 votes in 2013.

"[Liberal candidate Daniel Parasiliti] is running a fantastic campaign in Midland," Mr Barnett said.

"I reckon there'll be 12 people out there who will change and vote for you, Daniel, so he has a really strong chance."

Despite several polls pointing to a Labor victory, many analysts are unwilling to call the election because of the increasing number of voters who will choose minor parties, makingdetermining preference flows more difficult. Veteran political analyst David Black said it is the most difficult election to call in nearly 50 years.

Pauline Hanson will spend the week campaigning in Western Australiaand willtargetregional areas and seats on the Perth'sfringe.

The Liberalspreference deal with One Nation where One Nation will preference the Liberals ahead of Labor in the lower house has come at a cost, as two One Nation candidates vehemently opposed to the deal weredisendorsed while another quit over the issue last week.

Polls also suggest support for One Nation is not as high as it is in Queensland, with the Galaxy poll putting theparty's primary vote in WA at 9 per cent whileFairfax's ReachTEL pollput it at 8.5 per cent.

Mr Barnett said he had no regrets over the preference deal.

"That was an arrangement done by the Liberal Party," he said. "I support the decision they took. It doesn't in any way mean I support One Nation candidates or One Nation policies.

"The public of Western Australia is not fascinated by One Nation and preferences,they are not. They are interested in who will be their local member of parliament."

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is expected to campaign in Perth this week, following on the heels of former prime minister Bob Hawke who campaigned in Perth over the weekend.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, whose first and only campaign visit a fortnight ago fell flat over a GST blunder,will not return to WA before Saturday's election.

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WA election: Colin Barnett says the Liberals can still win as polls tip a Labor victory - The Australian Financial Review

By Jennifer Burns By Jennifer Burns March 3

Jennifer Burns is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Ayn Rand is dead. Its been 35 years since hundreds of mourners filed by her coffin (fittingly accompanied by a dollar-sign-shaped flower arrangement), but it has been only four months since she truly died as a force in American politics. Yes, there was aflurryofarticles identifyingRand lovers in the Trump administration, including Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo; yes, Ivanka Trumptweetedaninaccurate Rand quotein mid-February. But the effort to fix a recognizable right-wing ideology on President Trump only obscures the more significant long-term trends that the election of 2016 laid bare.However much Trump seems like the Rand hero par excellence a wealthy man with a fiery belief in, well, himself his victory signals the exhaustion of the Republican Partys romance with Rand.

In electing Trump, the Republican base rejected laissez-faire economics in favor of economic nationalism. Full-fledged objectivism, the philosophy Rand invented, is an atheistic creed that calls for pure capitalism and a bare-bones government with no social spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare. Itsnever appeared on the national political scene without significant dilution. But there was plenty of diluted Rand on offer throughout the primary season: Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz all espoused traditional Republican nostrums about reducing the role of government to unleash American prosperity.

Yetnone of this could match Trumps full-throated roar to build a wallor his protectionist plans for American trade. In the general election,Trumpsought outnew voters and independents using arguments traditionally associated with Democrats: deploying the power of the state to protect workers and guarantee their livelihoods, even at the cost of trade agreements and long-standing international alliances. Trumps economic promises electrifiedruralworking-class voters the same way Bernie Sanders excited urban socialists.Where Rands influence has stood for years on the right for a hands-off approach to the economy,Trumps America first platformcontradicts this premise by assuming that government policies can and should deliberately shape economic growth, up to and includingpunishing specific corporations. Likewise, his promise to craft trade policy in support of the American worker is the exact opposite of Rands proclamation that the essence of capitalisms foreign policy is free trade.

And theres little hope that Trumps closest confidants will reverse his decidedly anti-Randian course. Theconservative Republicanswhocame to powerwith Trumpin an almost accidental processmay findthey have to exchange certain ideals to stay close to him. True, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence have been able to breathe new life into Republican economic and social orthodoxies. For instance, in a nod to Pences religious conservatism, Trump shows signs ofreversing his earlier friendlinessto gay rights. And his opposition to Obamacare dovetails with Ryans long-held ambitions to shrink federal spending. Even so, there is little evidence that either Pence or Ryan would have survived a Republican primary battle against Trump or fared well in a national election; their fortunes are dependent on Trumps. And the president won by showing that the Republican base and swing voters have moved on from the traditional conservatism of Reagan and Rand.

What is rising on the right is not Randian fear of government but something far darker. It used to be that bright young things likeStephen Miller, Trumps controversial White House aide, came up on Rand. In the 1960s, she inspired a rump movement of young conservatives determined to subvert the GOP establishment, drawing in future bigwigs such as Alan Greenspan. Her admirers were powerfully attracted to the insurgent presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, whom Rand publicly supported. They swooned when she talked about the ethics of capitalism, delegitimizing programs like Medicare and Medicaid as immoral. They thrilled to her attack on the draft and other conservative pieties. At national conferences, they asked each other, Who is John Galt? (a reference to her novel Atlas Shrugged) and waved the black flag of anarchism, modified with a gold dollar sign.

Over time, most conservatives who stayed in politics outgrew these juvenile provocations or disavowed them. For example, Ryan moved swiftly toreplace Rand with Thomas Aquinaswhen he was nominated in 2012 for vice president, claiming that the Catholic thinker was his primary inspiration (although it was copies of Atlas Shrugged, not Summa Theologiae, that he handed out to staffers). But former Randites retained her fiery hatred of government and planted it within the mainstream GOP. And it was Rand who had kindled their passions in the first place, making her the starting point for a generation of conservatives.

Now Rand is on the shelf, gathering dust with F.A. Hayek, Edmund Burke and otheronce-prominentconservative luminaries. Its no longer possible to provoke the elders by going on about John Galt. Indeed, many of the elders have by now used Randian references to name theiryachts,investment companiesandfoundations.

Instead, young insurgent conservatives talk about race realism,argue that manipulated crime statisticsmask growing social disorderand cast feminism as aplot against men. Instead of reading Rand, they take the red pill, indulging in an emergent internet counter-culture that reveals the principles of liberalism rights, equality, tolerance to be dangerous myths. BeyondBreitbart.com, ideological energy on the right now courses through tiny blogs and websites of the Dark Enlightenment, the latter-day equivalent of RandsObjectivist Newsletterand the many libertarian zines she inspired.

Once upon a time, professors tut-tutted when Rand spoke to overflow crowds on college campuses, where she lambasted left and right alike and claimed, improbably, that big business wasAmericas persecuted minority. She delighted in skewering liberal audience members and occasionally turned her scorn on questioners. But this was soft stuff compared with the insults handed out by Milo Yiannopoulosand the uproar that has greeted his appearances.Rand may have accused liberals of having a lust for power, but she never would have called Holocaust humor a harmless search for lulz, as Yiannopoulos gleefully does.

Indeed, the new ideas on the right have moved away from classical liberalism altogether. American conservatives have always had a mixed reaction to the Western philosophical tradition that emphasizes the sanctity of the individual. Religious conservatives, in particular, often struggle with Rand because her extreme embrace of individualism leaves little room for God, country, duty or faith. But Trump represents a victory for a form of conservatism that is openly illiberal and willing to junk entirely the traditional rhetoric of individualism and free markets for nationalism inflected with racism, misogyny and xenophobia.

Mixed in with Rands vituperative attacks on government was a defense of the individuals rights in the face of a powerful state. This single-minded focus could yield surprising alignments, such as Rands opposition to drug laws and her support of legal abortion. And although liberals have always loved to hate her, over the next four years, they may come to miss herdefense of individual autonomy and liberty. Ayn Rand is dead.Long live Ayn Rand!

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Ayn Rand is dead. Liberals are going to miss her. - Washington Post