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There were registered lobbyists who signed up and paid to attend a fundraiser featuring Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Montreal, but the Liberal party says they have since been removed from the guest list.

"Individuals who were registered to lobby the special guest were informed they would not be able to attend this event, in line with the party's commitment regarding such checks in advance of ticketed fundraising events," spokesman Braeden Caley wrote in an email Thursday.

Trudeau promised political donors would not get preferential access to his government, and now the Liberals are trying to show they mean it as they revive their high-profile fundraising efforts, including an appearance by Trudeau at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal for Thursday's party fundraiser.

Anyone can go, so long as they have up to $250 to spare for a ticket, want to give that money to the Liberal Party of Canada, and are not registered to lobby the Prime Minister's Office.

Caley confirmed fewer than five individuals who were registered to lobby the PMO had bought tickets.

It is a chance for Liberal supporters to get a word or a selfie with the party leader, but it will also be a time when the Liberals can once again rely on their surest bet for topping up the party war chest as they prepare for the next election.

The Liberals brought in a moratorium on fundraising events featuring Trudeau and other ministers earlier this year as they worked to develop new rules in the wake of accusations they were providing preferential access to the prime minister and his cabinet in exchange for dollars from wealthy donors in private homes.

"There was a pause on national fundraising events throughout the first quarter while stronger standards for open and transparent fundraising events were being prepared," Caley said.

Nathan Cullen uses unparliamentary language1:08

The new system involves holding fundraisers featuring Trudeau or ministers only in public places, announcing them in advance, allowing the media to attend and disclosing the guest list within the following 45 days.

Those measures are new, but the process of vetting fundraising lists to ensure no one registered to lobby the department of the "special guest" at the events is not.

Last November, as the stories about cash-for-access fundraising practices were piling up, Christina Topp, who was then interim national director of the party, detailed what the Liberal party avoids the perception it is giving preferential access to cabinet ministers, or placing them in a conflict of interest.

In a letter to cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries obtained by The Canadian Press, Topp said the Liberal party vets guest lists for fundraising events to "determine if any individuals are registered lobbyists with active files associated with the relevant department and, if necessary, take steps so that the individual does not attend the event."

The Liberals are calling on the opposition parties to bring in their own transparency measures.

"No other party has made a similar commitment and we challenge them to do so," said Caley.

Soon, they might not have a choice.

The Liberal government promised legislation that would require similar disclosure for events involving party leaders and leadership candidates.

"It's always possible to raise the bar and we will continue to work hard to make the government more transparent," Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould said Thursday during question period.

John O'Leary, her spokesman, said the government aims to introduce the legislation this spring.

One Liberal source said the legislation will be essentially the same as the measures the party brought in, which would prevent the party having to once again change the way they are doing things.

One significant difference, according to two Liberal sources, will likely be the lack of a requirement to open the events up to the media.

The Conservatives and New Democrats say they do not plan on taking any lessons from the Liberals.

"The reality is they weren't able to follow their own set of rules the first time," said Conservative MP Blaine Calkins.

New Democrat MP Nathan Cullen said his skepticism stems from the fact the Liberals deserted their promise to change how Canadians vote. "I have very, very low trust with this government when it comes to democratic reform."

Some Liberals are pointing to that as one reason for lacklustre fundraising figures in the first three months of this year, when the Conservatives raised nearly twice as much money from a larger pool of contributors, even though they are in the midst of a leadership race that ought to be siphoning would-be donations to the party.

"There's a small connection," Caley said when asked whether the lower profile played a role.

See more here:
Liberals removed lobbyists who signed up for Montreal fundraiser with Justin Trudeau - CBC.ca

Franklinton, N.C. A sign in a Granville County yard urging people to "kill liberals" is the latest in a string of fiery political messages posted by the homeowner, according to people in the area, who say they mostly ignore the rhetoric and the man behind it.

The sign, at the corner of Bruce Garner Road and Pocomoke Drive 2 in the southeast corner of the county reads "Civil War 'Now' Kill Liberals." The man who posted it wasn't home Wednesday when a WRAL News crew stopped by.

"This is quite offensive, and before the election, he had other offensive signs, too," said Ravinder Bindra, who runs a country store about a quarter-mile away on Bruce Garner Road. "I dont pay, most of the time, any attention."

Bindra said the sign's owner stops by his store almost daily, but the Sikh immigrant from India said the man never bothers him.

"He has not been any trouble to me so far," he said. "I dont know what his name is. See, nobody cares about him."

Some neighbors said the man, who also flies a Confederate flag, a "Don't Tread On Me" flag and a U.S. flag with only 13 stars, causes no trouble other than firing off guns in his yard and lighting bonfires with his buddies.

"That mans posted all types of (stuff) out there in his yard," said Ronnie Keith, who lives up the road from the sign's owner. "Its probably just for entertainment."

Keith said most people have an attitude similar to Bindra's when it comes to the man and his signs.

"They dont care. Its their opinion, and they know they have the right to say it," he said. "Me, myself, personally, I dont really do politics."

Bindra said the signs don't signal local sentiment.

"(If it) was of a majority of the people, then Id be worried, but a single person like him, Im not worried about any mishappening or anything," he said.

View post:
Granville neighbors call man's 'kill liberals' sign hyperbole - WRAL.com

Rex Features via AP Images

Former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden walk through the the Capitol for Donald Trump's inauguration ceremony.

On Monday in this space, our columnist and colleague Paul Waldman addressed the subject of why liberals are upset about Barack Obama taking a $400,000 speaking fee from a Wall Street firm, Cantor-Fitzgerald, for a speech scheduled for September.

Waldman opined, You'd almost think Obama had begun lobbying for the repeal of Dodd-Frank, or maybe gone on a seal-clubbing expedition. He continued, in an affectionate reminiscence about the Obama presidency, that a lot of the liberal disappointment or anger reflected upset at the contrast between Obama and Trump.

I cant speak for other liberals or progressives, but here are some thoughts about my own disappointment.

As the contrast with Trump vividly reinforces, Barack Obama was one of the most principled, thoughtful, and honorable people ever to serve as president. He was a model of dignity and probity.

His biggest mistakeand in my view anyway, a mistake that undermined his presidencywas to turn to the very people who had deregulated Wall Street as his senior economic team. These were the protgs of former Citibank and Goldman chieftain and top Clinton economic official Robert Rubin, many of whom had led the parade to let Wall Street run wild.

These included Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke (a carryover Bush appointee reappointed by Obama), but also other denizens of the Wall Street-Washington revolving door who not only supported deregulation but also austerity, and deregulation disguised as trade, such as Peter Orszag and Michael Froman.

When Obama took office, Paul Volcker was sidelined by this crowd, as too radical on the subject of regulation. That noted Bolshevik, Paul Volcker!

This team was basically in place before the November election, when the banking system collapsed in September 2008. Obamas program was so closely associated with a politics of propping the financial system up rather than cleaning it out, that when a CNBC agitator, Rick Santelli, ranting from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (!), called for a Tea Party revolt, Santelli had more credibility as a populist than Obama did. This prefigured Donald Trump.

And when the Obama austerity team prematurely projected a recovery summer for 2010, killed legislation for a second stimulus, and warmly supported the Wall Street-inspired Bowles-Simpson Commission, Obama helped set himself up for the epic Democratic congressional defeat in the 2010 midterm elections.

Thus Wall Streets gift to Obama and the Democrats: a team of Rubins, austerity economics, and a Democratic Party that looked to Middle America like it represented somebody else.

So when Obama accepts a $400,000 Wall Street gig, this produces not just disappointment but a deep concern about a tactical tin ear and a continuing association that is politically toxic for a progressive reconnection with working people who turned to Trump. It reminds us of another leading Democratic figure with an even tinnier ear, one Hillary Clinton.

Obama, of course, has a perfect right to take the money. Thats not the question. The question is whether this is a good idea, both for Obama and for the Democrats.

Obama is now a wealthy man. His net worth is estimated around $13 million and rapidly rising. He will become much wealthier, from his books and from plenty of speaking engagements that will produce an annual income well into seven figures.

I dont object to the occasional high dollar speech, but lets see more speeches to groups seeking racial reconciliation, or to groups pursuing better job opportunities for working America, or to any venue other than Wall Street.

Obama taking that kind of money from Wall Street reinforces the impression that the very rich really do control it all; that maybe there is not so much difference between a thug billionaire former developer president and a polished former law professor ex-presidentthey are both too comfortable with the moneyed class.

One could understand and even condone Obamas walking on eggshells on the fraught subjects of race and class while he was president. But now he is free at lastfree to exercise constructive influence on the public debate. Free to personify a salutary contrast with Donald Trumpand with Wall Street.

So thats why this particular liberal thought it sadand sadly emblematicthat Obama takes a sum from Wall Street for one speech that is about ten times what the average American makes in a year. It had nothing to do with nostalgia, except maybe for FDR.

Read the original:
Liberals, Obama, and that Wall Street Speaking Fee - The American Prospect

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"Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil."

Like many generalizations, this "fundamental law" of American politics, as outlined by conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer some 15 years ago, is overly broad. But it nonetheless captures something important and true about our world. Let's focus on the latter half of this maxim. It's true that liberal writers, journalists, and policy intellectuals have long expressed a level of moral outrage and even disgust about their ideological opponents that rivals and often surpasses what one typically encounters on the other side. (At the grassroots, the reverse has tended to be true, with conservatives often directing greater animosity at their ideological opponents.)

As President Trump has moved the Republican Party away from conservatism and in the direction of right-wing populism, nationalism, and anti-globalism, the liberal tendency toward moral denunciation hasn't diminished. On the contrary, it's only intensified, leading progressives to double down on their longstanding habit of seeking wherever possible to excommunicate the right from the realm of democratic argument and debate.

If liberals hope to regain the ground they've lost in recent years, they really need to change these tactics, which as often as not are self-defeating.

As I've argued on previous occasions, declaring opponents unacceptable, illegitimate, and out of bounds is a perennial temptation. That's because politics always takes place on two distinct levels. On one level is the back and forth of partisan conflict, involving persuasion, argument, electoral battles, triumphs, and defeats. On this level, pretty much anything goes as long as it abides by the rules of the political game. But there's also a second, more fundamental level of politics that involves a competition over who gets to set those rules, the boundaries of what is publicly acceptable and precisely where those boundaries will be positioned.

Far more than conservatives, liberals love to rule certain positions out of bounds in this second-order sense. They do this by appealing to the courts the branch of government that reviews, alters, and overturns the rules of the political game. They also do it in the important institutions they control within civil society such as mainstream media outlets, universities, corporations, movie studios, and other arms of the entertainment industry. When these institutions informally decide that an issue, or a specific position on an issue, is simply unacceptable because it crosses a moral line that leading members of these institutions consider inviolable, they render it beyond the pale. As I wrote in a previous column on the subject, "Over the past several decades, a range of positions on immigration, crime, gender, and the costs and benefits of some forms of diversity have been relegated to the categories of 'racism,' 'sexism,' 'homophobia,' 'white supremacy,' or 'white nationalism,' and therefore excluded from first-order political debate."

Trump's presidential campaign succeeded in part because the candidate challenged these second-order taboos (especially as they show themselves in the phenomenon of political correctness) and liberals have responded in part by attempting to reinforce the taboos, mostly through name-calling that boils down to the assertion, "You can't say that!"

Sometimes this assertion is merely rhetorical. But at other times, in the statements of various courts that have blocked Trump's policies on immigration and sanctuary cities, it's backed up by the force of the judiciary. (In France, Marine Le Pen faces a similar dynamic, with nearly the entirety of the French political establishment closing ranks against her to convey the message to the electorate that voting for the National Front is simply unacceptable.)

The problem with telling people that they're not allowed to get their way on certain issues is two-fold. First, as we've seen with the Trump phenomenon, controversial opinions don't just disappear when members of the establishment rule them out of bounds. They often reassert themselves later, more powerful and more radicalized than before. And second, the excommunicators may become fond of the tactic and apply it to an ever-expanding range of issues.

For a vivid recent example of what can happen to political thinking and debate when one side becomes wedded to upholding rigid and exceedingly narrow strictures on permissible opinion, take a look at the blistering (and bizarrely disproportionate) reaction of liberals to Bret Stephens' debut column in The New York Times. Now, I was no fan of Stephens' writing in The Wall Street Journal, where he recently resigned, especially when it came to foreign policy. Neither did I appreciate his stance on environmental issues, which struck me as overly dismissive of evidence for climate change.

But in his first Times column, Stephens came right out and described global warming, along with evidence of "human influence on that warming," as "indisputable." That sounded unobjectionable to me as did his overarching point, which was that those who favor policies to combat climate change would convince more people to go along if they sounded somewhat less absolutely, positively, unwaveringly, indisputably certain in their predictions about what is always, after all, an all-too-uncertain future.

Stephens himself predicted in the column that his humble case for humility would cause heads to explode, and sure enough they did. Liberals on Twitter sputtered in indignation, as did several center-left news sites. The Times had hired an apologist for climate change "denialism," proclaimed Slate. According to Vox, he was a "climate change bullsh--ter." (The Week, too, was not immune.) No wonder climate scientists and many others lined up to cancel their subscriptions to the newspaper in protest.

Except that none of it was true. Stephens didn't deny the reality of climate change. He merely dared to advocate a slight rhetorical adjustment to the way environmental activists and their cheering sections at websites like Slate and Vox, and newspapers like the Times, go about making their case to the wider public. What followed was not a reasoned debate about the rhetorical effectiveness of claims to modesty and certainty, dispassionate concern and outright alarmism. Instead, there was simple, pure, satisfying, but politically impotent condemnation: "You can't say that!"

But of course he can. And he will.

Which means the all-important question for liberals remains: What then?

Here is the original post:
Liberalism's self-defeating howl - The Week - The Week Magazine

The only people who cant recognize that our nation has a smug liberal problem are smug liberals. Case in point, smug liberal (and television comedienne) Samantha Bee. On Sunday, CNNs Jake Tapper asked Bee to react to a pre-election Ross Douthat column that called out Bee and other late-night comics in part for creating a comedy world of hectoring monologues, full of comedians who are less comics than propagandists liberal explanatory journalists with laugh lines.

Were all familiar with the style. It features the generous use of selective clips from Fox News, copious amounts of mockery, and a quick Wikipedia- and Google-search level of factual understanding. The basic theme is always the same: Look at how corrupt, evil, and stupid our opponents are, look how obviously correct we are, and laugh at my marvelous and clever explanatory talent. Its like sitting through an especially ignorant and heavy-handed Ivy League lecture, complete with the sycophantic crowd lapping up every word.

Bee, the host of TBSs Full Frontal, of course, couldnt see the problem and not only told Tapper that she didnt think there was a smug-liberal problem, she also howlingly added that in her own show, We always err on the side of comedy.

Yep, they sure are hilarious (language warning):

The irony is that at the exact moment when Bee was denying Americas smug-liberal problem, smug liberals were in full meltdown mode over Bret Stephenss first column for New York Times. Stephens is a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist, anti-Trump conservative, and a former columnist for the Wall Street Journal. In his essay for the Times, Stephens had the audacity to gasp address the possibility of scientific uncertainty in the climate-change debate.

Lets be clear about what Stephens actually said. Heres his summary of the current state of climate science:

While the modest (0.85 degrees Celsius, or about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the Northern Hemisphere since 1880 is indisputable, as is the human influence on that warming, much else that passes as accepted fact is really a matter of probabilities. Thats especially true of the sophisticated but fallible models and simulations by which scientists attempt to peer into the climate future.

Heres the translation: Science teaches us that humans have helped cause global warming, but when we try to forecast the extent of the warming and its effects on our lives, the certainty starts to recede. In addition, the activism has gotten ahead of the science. Indeed, Stephens even quotes the New York Times own environmental reporter, Andrew Revkin, who has observed that he saw a widening gap between what scientists had been learning about global warming and what advocates were claiming as they pushed ever harder to pass climate legislation.

Not only did the hyperbole not fit the science at the time, but Stephens writes censoriously asserting ones moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts.

As if on cue, parts of liberal Twitter melted down. Stephens was instantly treated as, yes, an imbecile and a deplorable. Not only did the vast majority of commentators ignore his argument, they treated it as beneath contempt. But can anyone actually doubt that climate predictions are uncertain? Does anyone doubt that climate activists rhetoric has far outstripped not just the scientific consensus but even the bounds of good sense? This 2008 Good Morning America report is just too funny not to repost:

Note that GMAs dystopian future with Manhattan sinking under the waves is set in 2015.

Bizarrely, even the commentary calling for Stephenss head inadvertently make his point. For example, David Roberts writes in Vox that the New York Times should not have hired climate change bullshitter Bret Stephens, but buried in the middle of Robertss harangue is this to be sure paragraph:

Of course we are never certain about anything. Of course scientists have been wrong before. And of course climate science especially when it tries to project damages at smaller temporal and geographic scales, like the next several decades is filled with probabilities and uncertainties.

Umm, yes, and thats exactly why we need to ask hard questions about proposed solutions rather than simply accepting environmentalist propaganda at face value.

Liberal dogma is rapidly becoming a secular religion, a faith that conspicuously omits any requirement that one love his enemies. Christians have long struggled to keep one of Christs most difficult commands, but many leftists dont even try. To many, its not even a virtue. Indeed, the same kind of vitriol is a hallmark of the post-religious Right and is part of the explanation for extreme polarization. Post-Christian countries eschew Christian values, including the very values that can and should prevent even the most ardent activists from becoming arrogant...and intolerant.

Yes, there is a smug-liberal problem in America, one that smart liberals recognize. Stephens is right. You dont win converts with mockery. You can sometimes win grudging compliance, but you mainly make enemies especially when your mockery reveals your own ignorance and inconsistency. But as we know, the smug liberal doesnt care. They want to make enemies. After all, how do they measure their own virtue? When the Right rages, they rejoice. The unbelievers deserve their pain.

David French is a senior writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and an attorney.

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America's 'Smug-Liberal Problem' - National Review