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America and the world may be stuck with President Trump for now, but that doesnt mean progress is entirely on hold.

For many, the obvious approach is to fight Trump and his Republican allies each step of the way. But one of the progressive lefts most outspoken voices says that even in the age of #Resist, there are still opportunities to pass meaningful legislation even if that means handing symbolic legislative victories to Trump.

At least thats the view of Secular Talk host Kyle Kulinski, a popular figure in progressive politics, who says voters shouldnt completely abandon the Trump presidency, even as they plan to support their own slate of candidates in 2018 and 2020.

Image via Kyle Kulinski/YouTube.

When Donald Trump needs to be opposed, we will do everything to block hideous legislation from getting through, Kulinski tells GOOD. However, the 29-year-old pundit who supports a growing roster of anti-corporate candidates under the Justice Democratsbanner said there are several major issues where progressives can successfully lobby Trump, rather than simply oppose him.

On issues like infrastructure and trade, Trump made promises that at least on paper were music to progressive ears. The question now:Can and should activists like Kulinski lobby Trump in the hopes that hell get behind a popular idea like rebuilding the nations bridges and roads? Is it worth the time and energy to work with a president who has pushed back on somany other issues?

Of course you work with him on those issues, Kulinski says. Thats the kind of bipartisanship the American people are behind.

According to Kulinski, the problem is less about Republicans vs. Democrats and more about the bipartisan influence of corporate campaign donations and their alleged influence on public policy. Kulinski argues that the Democratic Party has fallen out of touch with the heart of its working class and progressive base by aligning with big business interests. Its a debate that was at the heart of the Democratic primary fight between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and continues within the party today.

Three days after Trumps inauguration, Kulinski and his Young Turks colleague Cenk Uygur teamed up with former members of the Sanders presidential campaign to launch Justice Democrats, a political action committee that supports congressional candidates who refuse to accept corporate campaign donations. The groups ambitious mission statement is to build "a unified campaign to replace every corporate-backed member of Congressand rebuild the [Democratic] party from scratch," beginning withthe 2018 midterm congressional elections.

Its been called the lefts equivalent to the Tea Party movement that launched a number of conservative Republicans into office during the 2010 midterm elections. So far, theyve raised over $1 million in small-donor contributions and have an elected Democrat in their ranks: Rep. Ro Khanna(California).[

Rep. Ro Khanna.Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The corporate wing is a house of cards, an illusion of successful politicians, Kulinski says. The proof is in the pudding. What are the results? Trump is president, Republican control in Congress. The Democrats have basically been wiped out at every level.

However, it remains unclear whether the left has the same kind of organized passion and anger that droveTea Party activists to the polls.

Since Trump took office, there hasbeen a handful of races where Democrats seemed primed to steal a congressional seat from a previously safe Republican. In each of those races, political analysts and Democratic leaders argued that such an upset would foreshadow larger losses for Trump and Republicans in the 2018 midterms. However, the Republican candidates have managed to squeak by in each of those races so far. Nonetheless, Kulinski says, candidates like Jon Ossoff show that an energized base is alive and well.

There was a colossal closing of a gap that no corporate Democrat would have been able to close, he says. Bernie is the most popular politician in the country. You have these ideas that are wildly popular, like a living wage, universal health care, and free college, but for a long time, the Democratic Party hasnt fought for them.

Ultimately, Kulinski says the key is for progressives to focus less on labels and more on broadly appealing issues in order to win over a majority of voters. In a sense, thats what worked for Trump,albeit with a very different approach:playing on voter resentment about jobs, free trade, and military interventionism.

Kulinski says this approach can work with someone like Sanders leading a new wave of Democrats committed to core principles. And with a little luck and lots of hard work, maybe they can even bring Trump along to support some of their more popular reform proposals.

People dont really care about labels, Kulinski says. People listen to Bernie talk about those issues, and even though they describe themselves as conservatives, they find themselves agreeing with him on the issues.

See the article here:
Why One Leading Progressive Says It's OK To Work With Trump - GOOD Magazine

Malcolm Turnbulls speech reminded his Liberal colleagues that he has not stolen the party and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

It is a sign of how serious the divisions have become in the Liberal Party that speaking the truth about Robert Menzies is now depicted as making a provocative attack on the Liberal right.

Yet that is the situation in which Malcolm Turnbull found himself after giving his Disraeli Prize speech in London. As Turnbull pointed out in that speech, Menzies intentionally avoided calling the new party conservative in case that gave rise to misconceptions. Rather, Turnbull cites Menzies statement that they:

took the name Liberal because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea.

As the leading academic expert on Robert Menzies, Judith Brett, has pointed out, Menzies recognised when the party was founded in 1944 that there was a strong public sentiment in favour of building a progressive, new post-war society that was far better than the old.

In other words, it was a party that pledged to reject socialism, but wouldnt necessarily stand in the path of social progress.

In short, Turnbull is attempting to reclaim both Menzies and the Liberal Party he played a key role in founding, for a centrist rather than reactionary position. He is gently taking issue with Tony Abbott and those conservatives in the party who have focused on undermining, rather than working with him, regardless of the damage this might do to the partys electoral prospects.

I say gently because, as even the arch-conservative Eric Abetz acknowledges, Turnbull also cites Tony Abbotts earlier phrase that the sensible centre is the place to be. Nonetheless, Turnbull is reminding such conservatives that he has not stolen the party, and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

There is a long tradition of attempting to appeal to the centre in Australian politics, not least in the hope that centrist politicians will be able to harvest votes from both major parties. Turnbull can legitimately argue that many of the small-l liberal positions he is associated with (despite his more recent concessions to the right) are in line with popular opinion. Same-sex marriage is an obvious case in point.

There was also a vibrant small-l liberal tradition on issues such as homosexuality in the party in the 1970s, prior to John Howards conservative ascendancy.

Nonetheless, there were some elephants in the room in London when Turnbull gave his speech.

It is open to debate what a modern Menzian position would be in regard to issues such as same-sex marriage or racial equality. After all, Menzies, like Labor prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley before him, continued to support the White Australia Policy. Male homosexuality was illegal under state law for all of Menzies prime ministership.

Turnbull refers to Menzies forgotten people. However, the famous speech in which Menzies articulated that concept assumed (as Curtin and Chifley also did) that employees would continue to be predominantly male, and women would largely be in the home.

Turnbull clearly assumes that a modern sensible centre position would have kept pace with changing social attitudes. But at least on some issues, other Liberals will disagree.

The bigger elephant in the room is the issue of Menzies economic beliefs at the time the Liberal Party was founded, and what a modern day centrist position on economic policy would be. After all, contemporary Australian voters seem to be concerned about their economic futures, the power of big business, and cuts to social services.

Turnbull does briefly acknowledge in his speech that, by modern standards, Menzies:

was hardly an economic liberal. He believed in a highly regulated economy with high tariffs, a fixed exchange rate, centralised wage fixing and generally much more Government involvement in the economy than we would be comfortable with.

Indeed, Menzies was more of a Keynesian economically, not a market liberal like Turnbull.

Furthermore, Menzies characterised the middle class as the forgotten people partly because he believed that unskilled workers were not forgotten but were already well-protected by unions and had their wages and conditions safeguarded by popular law. Meanwhile, the rich were able to protect themselves.

While strongly supporting individual endeavour, he argued that the new politics should not return to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire. Rather, our social and industrial laws will be increased. There will be more law, not less; more control, not less.

Menzies was strongly anti-communist and anti-socialist, but he was not a neoliberal.

Voters could be forgiven for thinking that at least some of Menzies words sound more like those of the contemporary Labor Party than the modern-day Liberal Party. The Liberal Party itself acknowledges that a belief in social equality was one of the principles on which the party was founded.

However, despite some concessions in this years budget, Turnbull may have his work cut out trying to convince centrist voters that his economic liberalism can adequately address todays scourge of rising inequality. Keynesian-influenced solutions are on the rise again in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Turnbull argued in his speech that the terms left and right had begun to lose all meaning. However, there is another, more unpalatable truth that he may need to face. It may be more that left and right are moving conceptually, because the centre has shifted too.

Read this article:
Turnbull is right to link the Liberals with the centre but is the centre where it used to be? - The Conversation AU

Premier Christy Clark has announced the B.C. Liberals key staffers as the party transitions to its new role as opposition, the same day that Premier-designate John Horgan named six women who will help fill out his leadership team.

The Liberal appointments include seasoned staffers and communications professionals.

These appointments will support our strong and experienced team of 43 MLAs in the legislature. Together, I believe we will form an extremely effective opposition to hold the NDP-Green alliance to account on behalf of British Columbians, an email signed by Clark, which was sent to Liberal staff and caucus this morning, said.

Clark has appointed Nick Koolsbergen as chief of staff. Koolsbergen most recently served as executive director of communications and research for the Liberal caucus and previously served as director of issues management in the Prime Ministers Office under Stephen Harper.

Jessica Woolford will serve as deputy chief of staff under Koolsbergen. Woolford most recently worked as executive director of corporate priorities at government communications and public engagement. She previously served as chief of staff to Minister Todd Stone and as an adviser to Ministers Mary Polak and Shirley Bond.

Clarks press secretary, Stephen Smart, will move into the role of executive director of communications and issues management for the Liberal caucus. Smart previously worked as a CBC reporter and has 18 years of media experience.

Primrose Carson will serve as executive director of operations and MLA support for the caucus.

Now that our leadership team is in place, in the coming days we will move forward with interviews of those staff who have expressed an interest in continuing to serve British Columbians through the B.C. Liberal Caucus, the email said.

Premier-designate John Horgan also announced today more names in the NDP leadership team lineup.

The six women, many of whom played key roles in Horgans election campaign, will serve in roles ranging from press secretary to the head of a new office dedicated to delivering on the NDP-Green alliance agreement.

After 16 years, we have a lot of work to do to address the problems caused by B.C. Liberal choices. Im confident that the leadership team were building has the energy, drive and commitment to deliver the change we promised British Columbians, Carole James, Victoria-Beacon Hill MLA and transition spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Donna Sanford, senior policy analyst at the climate action secretariat, will move into the role of executive director of the confidence and supply agreement secretariat. The new office will be responsible for delivering on the agreement between the NDP and Green parties, which sets out key priorities like campaign-finance laws and electoral reform.

Sage Aaron will serve as director of communications in the Premiers Office, a promotion from the same role at union MoveUP.

Kate Van Meer-Mass becomes director of operations in the Premiers Office, which will involve tour planning, scheduling and other leadership responsibilities.

Jen Holmwood assumes the role of deputy director of communications in the Premiers Office; Sheena McConnell will serve as Horgans press secretary and Marie Della Mattia will work as special adviser to Horgan. All three held similar roles for Horgan as leader of the opposition.

asmart@timescolonist.com

See the original post here:
NDP, Liberals announce key staff positions - Times Colonist

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order to boost U.S. apprenticeship programs. These training programs convey skills to individuals for specific vocations.

Currently, 505,000 people have apprenticeships through 2,100 programs registered with the government. President Trump has committed to creating 5 million apprenticeships over the next five years.

I get nervous whenever I hear about any government initiative that claims to provide what our economy needs. The last thing we need is a new army of government bureaucrats pretending they are going to forecast what kind of jobs we need and then subsidizing businesses and unions to set up training programs.

But Trumps plan doesnt appear to do that. It establishes a wide berth for firms, or unions, or trade associations to decide on their own what they need to do, meaning those who are actually doing the work and the hiring.

Current data from the labor market screams out that we can do a better job building a workforce fitting what businesses need.

The U.S. Labor Department reported 6 million job openings in April and 5 million hires. So a million jobs are still open.

In April, there were 6.9 million unemployed. Sure, you say, they dont have the skills for those million jobs. But isnt that the point? Isnt this the work we need to do get those who cant find work trained and motivated?

And if we care about our nations future, weve got to look at the deeper social problems leading to pockets of chronic unemployment.

There are 1.7 million long-term unemployed. We have a growing population, disproportionately prime-age men, who have just dropped out of the labor force.

The black unemployment rate has been double the national average for the last half-century and that is roughly where it is today. Black youth ages 16 to 19 have an unemployment rate of 27.3 percent.

So, if I am nervous about government bureaucrats planning out apprenticeship programs, what can government do?

Trump is proposing the federal government put up $200 million to help firms make these apprenticeships happen. Good, but we cant rely on new government spending to be the answer.

The answer is removing barriers. Here are two ways.

For one, consider vocational schools and training as part of education choice.

Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee introduced a bill, the Enhancing Educational Opportunities for All Students Act, in the last Congress that would permit use of funds that the federal government gives to school districts to help low-income children and use it to enable them to be able to attend the school of their choice.

Why should that $14 billion be locked in the public school system? Give a poor child a voucher, or the equivalent, that can be used to go to a vocational school. Businesses could joint venture and help finance and build the programs to train these kids.

So lets dust off and pass the Enhancing Educational Opportunities bill. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is the right person in the right place to help make this happen.

Second, let businesses use the funds they spend on training to count toward salary for purposes of the minimum wage. This would allow a firm to hire a young person and pay below minimum wage but also provide training, the value of which would hike the wage above the minimum. This is a way around the damage that the minimum wage causes and provide a platform for unskilled youth to get trained.

If we use government to make the marketplace more free and flexible, apprenticeships can help build a 21st-century American labor force.

Here is the original post:
Apprenticeships can win out over bureaucrats, liberals - MyAJC.com - MyAJC

Two groups of people who had been less than enthused about Trump as our president had two very different reactions to his July 6 speech in Poland.

One group was conservative columnists who had long disliked Trump. Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks and Rich Lowry were relieved at his pledge of backing for NATO; thrilled by his praise of the Poles and their courage; encouraged by his harsh words for Russia and its treatment of Poland, pleased by his defense of the West as a cultural and political unit.

It was good news to them that he should stand for values of enormous importance that were well worth defending by force. Trump's Warsaw speech, in short, meant he was becoming more like a standard Republican president of the Reagan-Bush eras big on values, defense, and the Western alliance.

The other group was liberal critics of Trump. For them, this speech embodied the problems with his presidency. In the 1980s, most Democrats had believed less in the West than in moral equivalence; they showed no interest in Poland or courage in general. Today, as then, they think Republicans lack nuance, finesse, and in most cases intellect and that probably every third word they utter is a dog-whistle code word for race.

"The West is a racial and religious term," wrote Peter Beinart in The Atlantic, saying that "to be considered Western" a country must be white and be Christian and that what links the American and Polish people and government is not democracy (nor their historical conflict with Russia) but their hostility toward Muslims and immigrants. Trump, they maintain, sees himself less as an American president than as the head of white Christian tribe.

To us therefore falls the task of telling the Beinarts and others that the state of Israel Jewish and just barely in Asia is considered "Western" in provenance (and deeply beloved by the right in this country). America is quickly becoming a mixed-race and a cross-ethnic culture. It has already had a black (or a biracial) president and will no doubt have several more.

Let us remind them too that the Democrats' field last year was a portrait in pallor, whereas the Republicans had two sons of immigrants from the island of Cuba and a black millionaire folk-hero-surgeon who is now in the Cabinet. This country's spokeswoman in the United Nations is the tawny-skinned daughter of Indian immigrants, who was born into a non-Christian home.

If this is what white Christian racism looks like, we should have some more of it. It is the Nikki Haleys and Marco Rubios of the world who are the living proof of the GOP's claim that the liberal project, which began in England in 1215 and was institutionalized in America in 1787, finds takers in people of every persuasion, from places all over the globe.

On March 8, 1983, Ronald Reagan uttered the words heard round the world when he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," outraging the Beinarts of the moment to no end. "Anthony Lewis complained that the speech was outrageous' and primitive,'" Steve Hayward tells us. "What is the world to think,' Lewis wrote, when the greatest of powers is led by a man who applies to the most difficult human problem a simplistic theology?'"

Natan Sharansky, in prison in Russia at the time, expressed a different opinion. "The leader of the free world had spoken the truth," he said. In the long run, the world thought so, too.

Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families."

Read the rest here:
Trump spoke in Warsaw, and liberals just didn't get it - Washington Examiner