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Liberals Matriculate at Calhoun College Wall Street Journal (subscription) Over the weekend Yale announced that the university will rename its undergraduate Calhoun College to expunge the memory of John C. Calhoun, the 19th-century South Carolina statesman. Yale says it is acting in the name of social justice amid campus ... Yale to change Calhoun College's name to honor Grace Murray HopperYale News all 44 news articles »

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Liberals Matriculate at Calhoun College - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Updated February 15, 2017 17:21:57

The Barnett Government has pledged to lift the payroll tax threshold for business to $900,000, claiming the change will boost jobs and save small businesses millions.

The change would take effect from January 1 next year, lifting the threshold from the current level of $850,000, meaning any organisation with a total payroll below that figure will not pay the tax.

Treasurer Mike Nahan announced the planned change at a Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) function in Perth, telling the audience of about 200 the Government was committed to further reductions.

"We will look to increase that threshold even further subject to our revenue and expenditure control," he said.

"So we will commit to further tax reductions in payroll tax by increasing the threshold as we have done in the past and as the CCI has argued the case for repeatedly."

The CCI has long argued that payroll tax is a tax on jobs, and reducing or removing it will free businesses to expand and employ more people.

Treasurer Nahan and Premier Colin Barnett toured the depot of West Australian bus company Horizon West buses in Welshpool on Wednesday.

Company spokesman Greg Balla told the Premier and Treasurer payroll tax relief would allow him to expand his staff.

"There's the potential for us to put on another apprentice. Currently we have three apprentices. So this is an opportunity to give us some relief in the payroll tax and employ more people," Mr Balla said.

The Liberal-National government has already twice increased the threshold for payroll tax, from $750,000 to $800,000 and then from $800,000 to the current level of $850,000.

The change will hit the cash-strapped government's bottom line, costing $55 million in tax revenue.

But Dr Nahan said that money would be recouped through additional savings in government expenditure in other areas.

He said it would not be funded by additional debt.

The Government has also announced an increase in the land tax threshold from $301,000 to $360,000 which will cost $24 million over the next four years.

The Treasurer said that would also be funded through additional yet-to-be announced savings.

But WA Labor rejected the Treasurer's assurance the tax cut would be funded through savings rather than debt.

In a statement, shadow treasurer Ben Wyatt said after trashing the state's finances with record debt and deficits, the Barnett Government's claims on tax could not be believed.

"Mr Barnett has delivered an extraordinary increase in state debt and a record budget deficit - mark my words, any tax cuts offered by the Liberals will become just another broken promise," he said.

"This is just a desperate ploy, by a desperate Premier, looking to buy his way back into power."

Topics: elections, political-parties, small-business, tax, wa

First posted February 15, 2017 16:15:50

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WA election: Liberals push payroll tax cut to entice business - ABC Online

Ordinary black people cannot afford to go along with the liberal agenda that calls for undermining police authority. That agenda makes for more black crime victims. Let's look at what works and what doesn't work.

In 1990, New York City adopted the practice in which its police officers might stop and question a pedestrian. If there was suspicion, they would frisk the person for weapons and other contraband. This practice, well within the law, is known as a Terry stop. After two decades of this proactive police program, New York City's homicides fell from over 2,200 per year to about 300. Blacks were the major beneficiaries of proactive policing. According to Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald--author of The War on Cops--seeing as black males are the majority of New York City's homicide victims, more than 10,000 blacks are alive today who would not be had it not been for proactive policing.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other leftist groups brought suit against proactive policing. A U.S. District Court judge ruled that New York City's "stop and frisk" policy violated the 14th Amendment's promise of equal protection because black and Hispanic people were subject to stops and searches at a higher rate than whites. But the higher rate was justified. Mac Donald points out that while blacks are 23 percent of New York City's population, they are responsible for 75 percent of shootings and 70 percent of robberies. Whites are 34 percent of the population of New York City. They are responsible for less than 2 percent of shootings and 4 percent of robberies. If you're trying to prevent shootings and robberies, whom are you going to focus most attention on, blacks or whites?

In 2015, 986 people were shot and killed by police. Of that number, 495 were white (50 percent), and 258 were black (26 percent). Liberals portray shootings by police as racist attacks on blacks. To solve this problem, they want police departments to hire more black police officers. It turns out that the U.S. Justice Department has found that black police officers in San Francisco and Philadelphia are likelier than whites to shoot and use force against black suspects. That finding is consistent with a study of 2,699 fatal police killings between 2013 and 2015, conducted by John R. Lott Jr. and Carlisle E. Moody of the Crime Prevention Research Center, showing that the odds of a black suspect's being killed by a black police officer were consistently greater than the odds of a black suspect's being killed by a white officer. And little is said about cops killed. Mac Donald reports that in 2013, 42 percent of cop killers were black.

Academic liberals and civil rights spokespeople make the claim that the disproportionate number of blacks in prison is a result of racism. They ignore the fact that black criminal activity is many multiples of that of other racial groups. They argue that differential imprisonment of blacks is a result of the racist war on drugs. Mac Donald says that state prisons contain 88 percent of the nation's prison population. Just 4 percent of state prisoners are incarcerated for drug possession. She argues that if drug offenders were removed from the nation's prisons, the black incarceration rate would go down from about 37.6 percent to 37.4 percent. The vast majority of blacks in prison are there because of violent crime--and mostly against black people.

That brings us to the most tragic aspect of black crime. The primary victims are law-abiding black people who must conduct their lives in fear. Some parents serve their children meals on the floor and sometimes put them to sleep in bathtubs so as to avoid stray bullets. The average American does not live this way and would not tolerate it. And that includes the white liberals who support and make excuses for criminals.

Plain decency mandates that we come to the aid of millions of law-abiding people under siege. For their part, black people should stop being pawns for white liberals and support the police who are trying to protect them.

------------v------------

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

Editorial on 02/16/2017

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Pawns of liberals - Arkansas Online

posted at 10:41 am on February 16, 2017 by Jazz Shaw

I first caught wind of this story on Morning Joe today and at first it seemed too good to be true. Rumors had been swirling for a while now about some newfound bravado among the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party and how they had begun to fancy themselves as a new and improved version of the Tea Party movement. But would they really go so far as to begin attacking their own for a failure to toe the most liberal party line? It seems that at least some of them have decided that its high time for a civil war. A new PAC has popped up and is threatening to launch a primary challenge against any incumbents who are seen as being too wishy-washy when it comes to Donald Trump. Lets take a look at how they are justifying their mission which goes by the rather obvious name of We Will Replace You.

Elected officials tend to take the path of least resistance on most thingsunless you create a political cost for them. Thats where we come in. The growing anti-Trump movement springing up at town hall meetings and protests across the country has already pushed Democratic strategy in the right directionbut not nearly far enough.

Three Democratic Senators voted yes to confirm Rex Tillerson, a Big Oil baron with close ties to Putin who conspired to destroy our climate by suppressing evidence about global warming. Fourteen Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to confirm Rep. Mike Pompeo to be our new CIA director, despite Pompeos past Islamophobic remarks and ties to far-right conspiracy theorists, his position in favor of unconstitutional surveillance on Americans, and his enthusiastic support for torture and secret detention. And Senate Democrats like Dick Durbin, Claire McCaskill, and Jon Tester have all voiced the opinion that Trumps Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch deserves a fair shakeafter Republicans refused to even meet with President Obamas nominee Merrick Garland for almost a year and effectively stole a Supreme Court nomination.

This cannot stand. We will only defeat Republicans on the local, state, and federal level if we go on the offensive.

That seems to be it in a nutshell. The new thought crime in Democratic circles is not simply agreeing to vote against Donald Trumps policies, but rather failing to be sufficiently enraged in each and every public statement. If you are not out there engaging in a scorched earth policy against the fact that Donald Trump even exists you are suspect and in line for replacement.

Their opening statement lays out the battle lines fairly clearly. It reads, Donald Trump is a threat to America and everything we believe in. Millions are rising up in resistance, but too many Democrats have been enabling and collaborating with him instead.

Ill confess that there is an immediate temptation to begin popping the champagne corks when you read something like that. The 2018 midterm elections are already looking like something of a horror show for the Democrats, given the large number of seats they have to defend including several in states that Donald Trump carried handily. Why on earth would anyone want to start a fight inside of the tent under these conditions? Splintering the party even further at the precise moment when they need to be unifying their forces sounds rather suicidal.

But before we get too comfortable with the idea of a Republican supermajority in the Senate, lets remember a bit of our own history. People said the same thing about the Tea Party in 2010. The GOP was knocked back on its heels in 2008 and was struggling to find a way out of the wilderness. I saw several experts at that time predicting the same sort of doomsday scenario which I just laid out above for the Democrats. Remember what happened next?

The real question here is whether or not the success of the Tea Party among not only conservative but moderate voters in the heartland could potentially translate into a similar level of success when far left liberal tendencies are being placed on the table. Somehow I have a hard time buying that idea. The country remains a center right nation with the exception of some heavily populated progressive enclaves on the coasts. But even with that said, Im not going to get too cozy with the idea that this effort is doomed to failure. In any event, its going to be something to watch.

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It's happening, guys. Liberals gear up to primary Democratic incumbents - Hot Air

The Liberals and Conservatives are at odds over a private members motion that condemns Islamophobia, with the Tories pushing their own version that Heritage Minister Mlanie Joly calls weakened and watered down.

During a speech in the House of Commons on Thursday, Ms. Joly took direct aim at Conservative leadership candidates who oppose Liberal MP Iqra Khalids motion M-103, which calls on the government to condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and study the issue at the heritage committee.

Conservative MP David Anderson on Thursday proposed his own version of the motion, which condemns all forms of systemic racism and discrimination against Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus and other religious communities, but does not specifically mention Islamophobia. The Conservative motion will be voted upon in the coming days, while the Liberal motion will be dealt with in April.

Read more: Muslim leaders urge governments to fight Islamophobia after mosque attack

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Related: Conservatives argue motion to condemn Islamophobia impacts freedom of speech

Mr. Anderson has voiced his concern that Islamophobia is not defined in Ms. Khalids motion, and urged Liberals to support the Conservative version instead.

What stands out here is the inclusiveness of this motion, he told the Commons.

Every faith group has a story of being at odds with the culture around them. These stories often involve periods of persecution and discrimination.

Most Tory leadership hopefuls, including Kellie Leitch, Maxime Bernier, Andrew Scheer, Brad Trost, Chris Alexander, Kevin OLeary and Erin OToole, say they disagree with Ms. Khalids motion. Michael Chong is the only candidate who said he will support it.

Ms. Leitch, who started a website called Stop M-103, told the Globe on Wednesday that many Canadians are worried their freedom of speech will be stifled.

All religions, no matter how benign, have to accept that there will be people critical of their beliefs and tenants, she said.

I want every individual to know that under my leadership theyll be free to speak openly about issues that are important to them.

Ms. Joly told the Commons it boggles the mind that members who have put their names forward to lead political parties, would try to capitalize on fear and division for their own benefit.

Some have actually had the gall to use this as an opportunity to blast out emails and mailers to raise money for their campaigns, to use fear of Islamophobia to enrich their own success, she said.

Ms. Joly also criticized Ms. Leitch, Mr. Trost, Mr. Alexander and Pierre Lemieux for speaking at a Toronto rally on Wednesday night organized by right-wing website the Rebel.

Anyone tells Canadians that this motion is the first step toward restricting our right to criticize Islam or thought police in Ottawa dictating what we can and cannot say is misleading and undermining a real issue that is deserving of our attention, Ms. Joly said.

Former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler, who put forward an anti-Semitism motion in 2015 using an agreed-upon definition, said the Liberals could change the term Islamophobia to anti-Muslim bigotry in order to get all sides on board.

Has anybody spoken with them about the use of the terminology of anti-Muslim bigotry, which amounts to the same thing but is more specific and does not have what for some is seen to be a confusing term? he told reporters.

Ms. Khalid said Wednesday Islamophobia is the irrational hate of Muslims that leads to discrimination.

Even before the full day of debate began, Ms. Joly said the government would not support the Conservative motion.

The Conservative party is presenting a weakened and watered down motion, she told reporters.

The Conservatives have brought this motion forward in a cynical attempt to serve their political purposes and avoid addressing the real issue concerning Islamophobia.

The NDP have signaled they would support both motions, but NDP MP Jenny Kwan told Ms. Joly in the Commons that the party also wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to denounce U.S. President Donald Trumps immigration ban.

One might argue that President Donald Trump is perhaps one of the biggest promoters of Islamophobia right now with the immigration ban that he tried to bring forward, Ms. Kwan said. Does she agree that the Prime Minister also needs to stand up and denounce hate and discrimination against Trumps discriminatory and racist ban?

Last October, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair presented a motion sponsored by Liberal MP Frank Baylisthat called on the House to join the almost 70,000 people who signed an e-petition in condemning all forms of Islamophobia. After initially being blocked by Conservatives, it passed unanimously.

Follow Laura Stone on Twitter: @l_stone

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Conservative motion condemning racism too 'watered down' to support, Liberals say - The Globe and Mail