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Imagine it is 2024 and Boris Johnson is running for another term as prime minister. He is up against the fourth Labour leader to try to win an election since Tony Blair resigned 17 years before. A combination of boundary changes and the loss of Labour heartlands in Scotland give the incumbent an edge. But why is everyone certain that the Conservatives are going to lose?

The answer is a united opposition, not just of Labour politicians but of people across the centre and left of British politics. United by agreement on a package of democratic reforms, including an elected second chamber with proportional representation (PR) as the cornerstone of a transformational agenda. This wouldnt be simple expediency but a reaction to the divisive, bickering politics of the Brexit years that had been fed by dark money and the manipulation of social media. It would give the Electoral Commission sharper teeth and enable electoral law to catch up with the digital age.

Its a dream, but a good one.

According to a new YouGov poll, three quarters of Labour members want the party to support PR, but it is yet to be mentioned in the run-up to Labours leadership election. This seems odd given that Johnson ended up with a massive parliamentary majority despite barely getting more votes than Theresa May in 2017. At the moment, Labour contenders are quickly unpicking the compromises of their Brexit policy and shifting blame one way or another, while ignoring the fact that most of the electorate voted for parties in favour of a second referendum. If we had PR, then that is what our new government would be organising right now. First past the post (FPTP) distorts the outcome of elections but those on the left have held on to the expectation that their turn will come.

So why is Labour the only socialist party in the developed world that supports FPTP? Some are worried it would mean no more majority Labour governments, and therefore an end to the advancement of equality and the redistribution of wealth. Except we are 32nd in the OECDs rankings of income equality, way behind the rest of western Europe, where all countries have PR. Of the top 39 countries on the OECD list, only Canada and the US share our love affair with FPTP. The US has awful extremes of rich and poor, while Canada does manage to come ahead of us in 19th place. Yet Canada has never had a majority socialist government. Meanwhile, progressive governments in Denmark, Norway, Germany, Iceland, Finland and Sweden have almost never been the result of a single socialist partys majority, but are made up of leftwing coalitions and they do OK.

As weve seen, the argument that FPTP delivers strong and stable government is nonsense. I know from my own experience on the London assembly, elected via a system of PR, that a more consensual and positive politics is possible. We fought each other in elections and then worked together between them.

PR doesnt guarantee that things will get better, but it enables us to generate a consensus about the direction of travel, whether that is ending austerity, stopping the NHS being privatised or ending domestic violence. As Friends of the Earth has pointed out, the electorate favoured parties who take the climate emergency seriously yet we have ended up with a government that doesnt. This is a failure of FPTP.

I hope that the Labour leadership will not only start discussing PR, but also debating how best to work with other parties to beat the Conservatives next time. Although I find compromise with other parties very hard, I didnt enjoy the constant battle of wills on social media about tactical voting between people who were all keen to see the Tories gone from government. The Greens, Liberal Democrats and Plaid did show that it is possible to work cooperatively, but while Labour was invited to talk, it wouldnt engage.

The other side did it better: the Brexit party stood down in Tory marginals and then split the Labour vote in the north to open up the red wall and allow a Conservative victory. The lesson is clear, if progressives want to win a FPTP election then we have to get our act together.

The only two things I can predict with certainty about 2024 is that the climate emergency will have got a lot worse and that the Conservative government will have done relatively little about it. To rekindle the politics of hope, progressive politicians need to talk about what we can agree on. When the Green partys Caroline Lucas and Labours Clive Lewis brought a bill to parliament to launch the green new deal, I felt real optimism that we could create something that is both popular and also radical enough to begin to solve the climate crisis. Lets do the same with renewing our democracy.

Jenny Jones is the former chair of the Green party and a former deputy mayor of London

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First past the post warped the election. Progressives need to fight it together - The Guardian

Debbie Wasserman Schultz has launched a bid for a coveted congressional post: the chairmanship of the all-important House Appropriations Committee.

Two months ago, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz hosted a panel discussion on Venezuela policy in her South Florida district. To her right sat the most powerful woman in the United States, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Also in the room, other members of Congress, Venezuelan community leaders and a platoon of media.

Wasserman Schultz surged in the spotlight, transitioning from the nuances of immigration policy to firing salvos at Republicans, deriding fellow Floridian Rick Scotts plan as "full of bull crap." Scotts spokesman returned fire accusing Wasserman Schultz of the "same old partisan nonsense we've heard from her for years."

It was vintage Wasserman Schultz equal parts policy wonk and combative firebrand. The very mix that catapulted the Broward County Democrats political career from the Florida Legislature to Capitol Hill to chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

>>READ: South Florida lawmaker leaned on mentor Elijah Cummings: He had do the right thing in his DNA

On Nov. 21, Wasserman Schultz launched a bid for a coveted congressional post: the chairmanship of the all-important House Appropriations Committee.

Fellow House Democrat U.S. Rep. Darren Soto of Winter Haven said it is time for a Florida member to sit in a leadership post.

"We are the third most populous state in the union, and yet we dont have any folks in leadership," said Soto, who believes his Florida colleague has the right mix of experience and youth for generational change compared to her rivals, who are in their 70s.

>>RELATED: Speaker Pelosi in Weston calls on Trump, Senate to give Venezuelans temporary protected status

Wasserman Schultz, 53, is currently a member of the committee, along with two other South Florida congressmen, U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, and U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami.

Provided Democrats retain control of the House after the 2020 election, the desired leadership position would become available because of the announced retirement by current chair Nita Lowey, D-New York, who has served on Capitol Hill for 31 years.

Its expected Wasserman Schultz will be competing against two other rivals: U.S. Reps. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.

"I think that Debbie Wasserman Schulz has built consensus wherever she has gone," said Florida Democratic supporter Mitchell Berger. "I think its a wonderful idea. I think it will be good for the nation, good for Florida."

>>PRIOR STORY: Protesters shout Shame on you! at Debbie Wasserman Schultz at Florida delegate breakfast

A stumble on the path for leadership

There was a time when Wasserman Schultz appeared to be on a fast-track to a top U.S. House committee chairmanship. One word changed that: WikiLeaks.

The trove of emails leaked during the summer of 2016 included communications that suggested DNC officials were favoring nominee Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders during that years Democratic presidential primaries.

As the chair of the DNC, and someone that Clinton herself had described as a "longtime friend," Wasserman Schultz took the brunt of progressives and Sanders delegates ire. When she appeared at a Florida delegate breakfast at the convention site in Philadelphia, Wasserman Schultz was loudly booed.

"All of a sudden, quite a number of folks in the room went up in the front, so it blocked my view," remembered Clinton delegate John Ramos, who was in the room when Sanders delegates successfully disrupted Wasserman Schultzs speech. "They were chanting and just made it difficult for her to speak."

The outcry forced Wasserman Schultz to resign as DNC chair and, as punishment, she was not allowed to publicly lord over what would have been a crowning achievement: Presiding over the first political convention to nominate a woman for president in the cradle of the countrys founding documents.

Whats more, Wasserman Schultz returned from the political torching in Philadelphia to face, for her, a serious, unprecedented primary challenger in that falls 2016 congressional election.

Wasserman Schultz survived that political disaster. But even after Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 blue wave, others got committee chairmanships. Meanwhile, The Squad, including U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, took center stage on setting the tone and influencing the direction of the party.

Wasserman Schultz and her allies on the Hill say the 2016 controversy will not factor into her bid for the Appropriations chair.

"I think its water under the bridge as far as the members are concerned," said Soto, praising the congresswomans "larger-than-life work ethic" and reputation. "There is a big concern right now about having new blood in leadership."

The congresswoman says she will compete on her merits.

"I wouldnt have made the decision to run if I didnt feel confident that I could be competitive," she said last month after speaking at an anti-Trump rally in Sunrise organized by the Florida Democratic Party. "I spent a month before I made a final decision on whether I was going to seek the chairmanship, talking to my colleagues, asking their opinion, getting feedback."

One Florida progressive leader said he is less enthusiastic about seeing her in a House leadership position unless she acknowledges key facets of the progressive agenda.

"If people felt that in your previous position as DNC chair that there was a lack of transparency, youre now trying to be in charge of all this money. You would hope that there would be, like, this exercise in the utmost transparency," said Dwight Bullard, a former state senator and political director for the progressive group New Florida Majority.

Ramos, in his third term as state committeeman and first term as DNC member, put it more bluntly.

"They really hold their grudges," he said, adding that he does not believe many progressives have forgiven Wasserman Schultz, even though she has the experience and connections for the powerful position. "Its not going to be an easy path."

Then there is another issue, in the 15 years since Wasserman Schultzs first election to Congress, the Democratic Party has shifted. The 2018 wave election ushered an era of progressive fervor embodied by The Squad. Thats been evident in the early stages of the presidential race among Democratic rivals, and in the five debates since June.

So, Bullard said, the issue isnt just a question of "forgiveness."

"Really the question of capability or forgiveness has everything to do with a recognition by Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz that this is where we are today as opposed to the narrative thats framed around what shes done in the past," said Bullard, a 2016 Sanders delegate.

That will include addressing issues like burdensome student loan debt, high healthcare costs, climate change and sea level rise in the face of government spending on endless wars and subsidies to fossil fuel companies, he added.

"AOC and some of the more progressive names that have popped up, theyre naming these things all the time theyre kind of screaming it from the rafters," he said. "There are people out there who live on the struggle bus every day, trying to make ends meet and thinking and hoping that someone will take an actionable step to give them some sense of relief ... Thats not a pie-in-the-sky kind of thing, thats real life."

Bullard, who served with Wasserman Schultz in the Florida Legislature, believes that she speaks out on issues important to people outside of her district and demonstrates that she has overcome past transparency problems, she could win the leadership position.

Ramos said he encourages the various factions of the Democratic Party to "play nice" especially headed into the crucial 2020 election year.

"Youre going to have discord, it comes with the territory. And since were a big tent party, it gets messy," he said. "Its sad because we need 2020 is so important and its all hands on deck."

Ramos said he is supportive of the congresswomans bid for the House Appropriations leadership job.

"You just have to walk away from that and just nod your head," he said. "Theres that saying, We eat our own."

At the end of the day, however, the decision will be made by House Democrats, if they retain their majority.

A steering and policy committee composed of about a third of the House Democratic caucus will recommend a candidate, and then the full caucus of Democrats will vote on the pick.

In her letter announcing her candidacy for the post, Wasserman Schultz stressed knowledge, experience and a commitment to reforms in the appropriations process so not to continue operating from continuing resolution to continuing resolution.

"We need to bring the appropriations process into the 21st century," she said. "You never take any election for granted. I have to seek and secure the support of my colleagues and Ill be working on doing that over the course of the next year."

Reporting contributed by Hannah Morse

The rest is here:
Wasserman Schultz seeks top House post, will progressives back her? - Palm Beach Post

Working in different locations presents various logistical problems for companies a problem Progressive TSL aims to tackle.

The company has been around since 2004 and focuses on various systems finance, procurement, inventory management with a focus on upstream companies.

What makes us unique is that we do everything around it as well. We have IT capabilities and weve got consultants who really know the oil and gas business, who understand the challenges. Companies often come to us when carrying out acquisitions when theyre looking at process challenges and having controls that are enforced, Progressives CEO Chris Walcot told Energy Voice. We have a vertical knowledge of the sector.

The nature of Progressives work has changed in response to the cycles in the oil prices. Before the crash, more of the companys work was driven by transactions, acquisitions, divestments, the CEO said. Progressive was able to provide an understanding of data and how to migrate information.

As prices fell, the company found it was more in demand to help companies make cost savings. This manifests in areas such as inventory and procurement control. When the oil price was $110 per barrel, some companies saw the solution to everything as being to write a cheque. When the crash came, everyone was suddenly very focused on maximising the effectiveness of expenditure.

With prices stabilising, companies must focus on how to hold on to those lessons that have been learnt. Organisations need to keep controls when expanding and managing it effectively this time, Walcot said.

Areas

The company has a rough 50:50 split between the UK and Africa, bringing knowledge of regional operational challenges to its work.

There are certainly different challenges in almost every location, Walcot continued. Regulatory burdens on UK operators have increased over the last 10-20 years. The challenges are there for good reason, with increased focus on health and safety, he said, while working in some remote areas in Africa poses its own difficulties.

There are unique challenges around working in deserts, for instance, environmental challenges, data connectivity, all those things have a unique aspect. Some countries have challenging regulatory requirements, things like complex tax requirements, which you need to be able to address and address effectively. If youve not done it before, that can be very daunting.

Progressive, Walcot notes, has largely done it before. Were able to take the learnings from previous project and reuse them and it means we can do them to a high quality but also be able to deploy systems and new processes and controls quickly.

Timing

Such speed is particularly useful when working towards a major event such as an IPO. While, ideally, companies begin working with Progressive early on sometimes opportunities dictate otherwise.

A variety of companies come to Progressive for assistance, with Walcot saying the sweet spot was the small to mid-caps. Putting in place the right processes early on helps companies as they go through that initial growth period, he said, helping with the various transitions along the way.

Often a company going through a period of change will seek particular assistance. Seplat Petroleum, for instance, came to Progressive about 18 months before listing. Nigeria-focused Seplat wanted to be able to demonstrate that it had the required systems and controls in place before making its pitch to the market.

We helped them initially to put a finance system in place and, as theyve evolved, weve helped them move through a series of other stages, with procurement and inventory management, Walcot said. We get engaged at different stages but we aim to get involved as early as we can.

Maurel et Prom signed Progressive up in September to provide finance and asset management work, in Paris, Gabon and Tanzania. Maurel, which is majority owned by Pertamina, has a stake in Seplat. Maurel is making sure that they have the things in place to help them with their future growth plans.

Not all companies have the ability to work with Progressive over the long term. The company worked with Chrysaor on its $3 billion acquisition of a package of assets in the North Sea, from Shell, which completed in 2017. This type of work has much tighter deadlines, with Walcot saying there is a date in the diary when it has to be completed and you have to make sure what they have to make sure that everythings in place.

Complexity

Companies are becoming more and more aware of the amount of data that can be produced from operations and, with this, is a new awareness of how this is stored and owned. If a company outsources its operations and maintenance (O&M) to a service provider the ownership of the data that comes from that work is an important note.

Companies we work with want to hang onto the data that a provider is using. If, in three or five years time, you want to change supplier, and you dont have that data, you have a problem. If you have the data and theyre accessing the data on your systems and you want to change your supplier, you could just change your supplier. Theres not so much pain around transition, Walcot said. Having that data, having access to it and being able to analyse it is critical.

The industrys ability to adopt to new technology is a challenge, the Progressive CEO said, but even more is that of changing peoples behaviour. Having a system can be great, and theres amazing things that can be done with artificial intelligence for instance, but if no one is going to use it, it doesnt change anything.

See the rest here:
Making progress with Progressive TSL - News for the Oil and Gas Sector - Energy Voice

By ANN BROWN

The day before the Independence Day holiday last summer, local progressivesfiled a petitionironically named Alaskans for Better Elections, which would destroy the integrity of Alaskas elections. If passed, the ballot initiative would bring us ranked-choice voting. The petition was sponsored, in part, byformer District 22 Rep. Jason Grenn.You may remember that Mr. Grenn wassoundly defeatedby now-Rep. Sara Rasmussen in 2018. Are sour grapes on the menu here?

In a ranked-choice general election, voters would rank their choice of four candidates for a given office. Candidates garnering more than 50% of the vote in the first ranking would win office immediately. If no one person wins a majority, candidates are whittled away and ranking continues until one individual is declared the winner.

This initiative is backed nearly entirely by Outside donations; its major supporter is a Colorado-based organization thatgave $500,000 in one pop last month.

Progressives will say this election system brings more moderate voices to the Legislature. Perhaps that is the way Mr. Grenn sees himself. When viewed in practicality, however, this initiative can largely be seen as a plan by progressives to take control of Alaskas political system. Ranked-choice voting has been implemented in Maine, as well as in municipalities in California and Michigan, locations which can hardly be considered strongholds of conservative political thought.

Perhaps what is probably most appealing to Mr. Grenn and his initiative supporters is, however, that ranked-choice voting enables candidates with limited voter support to win elections. Maybe Mr. Grenn believes he could have defeated Rep. Rasmussen in 2018, even without support from his constituents, under this system. All Mr. Grenn would have had to do to continue to be considered is not be the candidate with the lowest votes received; he could have persisted in the race long after his expiration date.

Consider this a 2015 study of four local elections in Washington and California using ranked-choice ballots found that the winner in all four elections never received a majority of the votes. This is because voters usually do not rank all possible candidates.

For the sake of expediency and their own sanity, voters typically only list their top two or three candidates. If those candidates are eliminated, then so are the votes of these individuals. Under a ranked-choice system, ballots that do not include the ultimate victors are summarily cast aside.

While this creates the appearance of a majority of votes in favor of the winner, it obscures actual voter choices; its a system that fundamentally disenfranchises voters.

In Maines2018 federal congressional race, the conservative incumbent was thrown out, despite receiving a plurality of votes in the initial election. Maines Secretary of State eliminated more than 14,000 ballots that didnt rank the remaining candidates and handed the win to the liberal challenger.

Australias 2010 election had a strikingly similar outcome; the liberal party took over the House, despite receiving 38% of the initial vote. The conservative party received 43% of the vote, but was somehow denied victory.

One can see why progressives are so excited about this proposal. It reeks of elitism and is engineered to pad the fortunes of liberal candidates. Alaskan voters, dont let yourselves be taken in. If this initiative reaches your ballot next year, vote it down.

Ann Brown, formerly of Fairbanks, now lives in Anchorage. She is an experienced trial lawyer who was the managing partner of her firms branch office, with a focus on labor and employment law. Currently retired, she is the vice chair of the Alaska Republican Party.

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Originally posted here:
Ranked choice voting? Why progressives want it here - Must Read Alaska

All the while their representatives in the House of Representatives endured a marathon debate coming after painstaking, months-long investigations through various committees before voting for impeachment, their arguments coming in impassioned bursts about this "solemn day" and Trump's "travesty of law".

To be fair, Trump's six-page stream-of-consciousness letter to Nancy Pelosi, proclaiming his looming impeachment a declaration of war, was an atypical display of sustained exertion. But back in Congress his unwavering Republicans reverted to the less-is-more template the sort that countered Hillary Clinton's deluge of forgettable policy offerings in 2016 with pledges to build a wall and make things great again. They rose briefly to their feet for a moment's silence to honour the Americans who voted for Trump at that election. These voters being dead, apparently.

To the Democrats' claims that Trump's dealings with Ukraine and Congress undermined the rule of law, the Republicans effortlessly flip the accusation to allege with genius timing that even Jesus enjoyed more due process before he was nailed. Some might see this assertion as a metaphor for Democrats killing Christmas. For at the same time the Democrats in Congress were opening their veins in defence of the constitution:Trump was in Michigan addressing the very much alive blue-collar workers he lured into his camp in 2016, bearing a cheerful message for them and for the roughly half of the population still in his camp Merry Christmas! (And, OK, a rather lengthy, "I did nothing wrong.")

In the near future, Senate Republicans will almost certainly embrace simplicity when, after a trial and formal deliberation, they'll carefully consider the articles of impeachment and on each and every one of them declare: Nyet.

Whatever his outsize flaws, Boris Johnson does not deserve to be lumped with his so-called conservative counterpart across the Atlantic. But as a rallying cry, "Get Brexit Done" rendered with faint backing vocals about raising spending on services has that pared-down Trumpian quality.

As journalist Andrew Sullivan observed in New York magazine, Johnson plotted a course that might actually bring the UK out of the "epic, years-long, once-impossible-looking mess he helped make." What more did Johnson need than three plain words?

Well, he was helped immeasurably by a Labour "Opposition" that responded with a mammoth utopian manifesto. Corbynites being so remote from a cynical and jaded public, it never occurred to these apparatchiks that the very idea of policy volume would be enough to send terrified workers into the arms of an avuncular toff.

To "Get Brexit Done", Labour answered: "Hail the new Green Industrial Revolution, free full-fibre broadband for everyone, the workers collectively owning 10 per cent of companies, nationalisation of rail, mail, water and energy, giving the people of the Chagos Islands and their descendants the right to return to the lands from which they should never have been removed."

In Australia, after its shock election loss in May, Labor finally embraced brevity in a 500 word post-mortem that acknowledged "a cluttered policy agenda", and the "size and complexity" of its spending announcements contributed to the party's defeat. To its shopping list of promises on negative gearing, childcare, education, franking credits (I still have no idea what that was about), Scott Morrison responded, broadly speaking, with tax cuts. Tax cuts and a lump of coal. Tax cuts and religious freedom.

I can only agree with those who warn that conservative and right-wing populism is likely to keep winning in the near future. Not because the "workers" are dumb. Not even because their would-be saviours are too clever, though they are too energetic. Too optimistic. The broad left correctly diagnoses societal ills such as economic inequality and wage stagnation; it just can't offer a credible cure.

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So while presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders gives himself a heart attack blitzing America's trailer parks, perhaps America's left-behinds would be better helped by progressives finding a few choice words to swing an election. Say: "Crooked Donald." And: "Merry Christmas."

Julie Szego is a Melbourne writer.

Original post:
Sorry, progressives, we can expect the right to keep marching onwards - Sydney Morning Herald