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One of the questions I get asked most often these days by friends and acquaintances is whether Premier Kathleen Wynne is going to resign to give her OntarioLiberal Party a fighting chance in next year's election.

Rumours certainly abound that there is a concerted movement to push Wynne out.

The people involved (according to the whispers)rangefrom ambitious cabinet ministers who want to be premier, to backbenchersworried about losing their seats, to grassroots Liberals who believe Wynne has irreversibly become a lightning rod for voter anger.

But if there truly is a movement among Ontario Liberals to topple Wynne so that someone else can lead the party into the 2018 vote, I can't find it.

I've spoken to a range of people who you'd think would delight in seeing the back of Wynne: strong supporters of SandraPupatello, her chief rival in the last leadership race;longtime Liberal backroomers who've been frozen out by Wynne's inner circle;and senior officials whose greatest loyalty is to the party, not to Wynne.

Even given the opportunity to speak off the record, none of them purports to smelleven a whiff of an imminent revolt.

The strongest statement I could coax out of a senior Liberal (not a Wynne loyalist) is that some key activists in the party are giving her until summer to show signs of a turnaround in the polls.

Deputy Premier Deb Matthews (left) is one of Wynne's staunchest allies. (Geoff Robins/The Canadian Press)

"The knives are not out," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But these people arein the tool-shed and they're sharpening the knives. Whether they use them or not depends on where things go from here."

He said that Wynne would only step down if there is pressure from "a combination of caucus members and the party executive." He addedthat he sees no evidence of such pressure now.

One of Wynne's staunchest allies, Deputy Premier Deb Matthews, dismissed talk of dissension in theranks.

"Kathleen Wynne has really strong support in our caucus, in our party membership,"said Matthews in an interview.

Matthews is also co-chair of the Ontario Liberal re-election campaign and insistedthat Wynne is the best person to lead the party into the 2018 vote "because she's smart, really hard working, cares deeply about issues that matter to people and gets the job done."

Another senior party official who also said he sees no sign of a desire to dump Wynne called her "our best weapon."

Here's something else that makes me skeptical there really is a movement to push Wynne out: the fact that the PCs are loudly insistingthere is one.

From the PC candidate in the Ottawa-Vanier byelection:

Earlier this week, I received anemailpurporting to be from a group of Ontario Liberal Party members, past and present, calling for Wynne to resign.

The message's credibility quickly crumbled upon closer inspection.

There was no name or contact number. Nobodyresponded to my reply asking for an interview. It contained numerous sloppy grammatical errors and typos, referredto Hydro One as "Ontario Hydro" and spelledSt.Catharineswrong.

But the final straw was the message's rant against Wynne's plan to cuthydro rates by a further 17 per cent.

The plan may indeed have some long-term negative consequences for the province, but in the short term, it can bring only political benefits for the Liberals. Knowing how intense the hydro price backlash has been, and how relieved the Liberals are that the plan could neutralize what was the hottest political issue in the province, I can't imagine any real party member would see the move as a reason to push Wynne out.

Yes,the Liberals are jittery about polls putting them on average 14 points behind the ProgressiveConservativesand putting Wynne's personal approval rating at near-record lows.

But polls only indicate how voters feel right now. Theelectionis 15 months away, an eternity in politics. The Liberals were sagging at similar points ahead of the elections in 2007, 2011 and 2014 and won them all.

It's also unclear that any other leader would be able to magically produce a surge in the polls. No matter who the premier is, the party will almost certainly have to battle against sentiment that it's "time for a change" after 14 years of Liberal governments.

It's simply a little early to write Kathleen Wynne's political obituary just yet.But if you are a Liberal party member and youdo wanther gone, please do let me knowthat you're out there.

The rest is here:
No sign that Liberal knives are truly out for Kathleen Wynne - CBC.ca

Not all liberals are bullies, but a great many are. Where liberals are in the majority, the bullies among them try to make life miserable for those who fail to conform. Almost every college campus is in this category. A case in point, one of many, is St. Olaf College, where my youngest daughter is a sophomore. The college newspaper has a commendably balanced story on the intolerance that prevails there:

Of the 12 students interviewed by the Manitou Messenger, several have been violently threatened because of their political beliefs, and almost all of them feel as though they cant speak up about politics on campus in class, online or with their friends. *** Reagan Lundstrom Warner 20 is a political science major who has learned how to keep [her] mouth shut. While faculty are encouraged to remain unbiased, she said that one of her professors used class time to expound upon personal views.

[A professor] started every class with basically just ridiculing Trump for about 20 minutes, Lundstrom Warner said. She plans to transfer to St. Thomas University next fall.

St. Olaf is an expensive school. Do parents know that they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars so that their children can be subjected to irrelevant political tirades?

My daughter was among those who were threatened with violence:

Many conservative students felt that the campus became more hostile during election season, and some students received violent threats. On the night of the election, a student in the Pause threatened to beat up [College Republican President Emily] Schaller, calling her a f***ing moron. Over the next couple of days, she overheard multiple students threaten to hurt the next conservative or Republican they saw. Vice President of St. Olaf College Republicans Kathryn Hinderaker 19 had a similar experience.

I think one of the hardest things was, the second day, I went into Buntrock and someone yelled from the bottom, if you voted for Trump, you better be f***ing scared. Everyone clapped and applauded, Hinderaker said. Obviously, it didnt feel super safe.

Facebook was another venue for threats against those suspected of voting for Donald Trump:

[Former student Katie] Ivance noted that the insults continued on social media.

People were saying [things] like F-you and I wish you were dead, she said. Ivance isnt the only one who has faced harassment online due to political beliefs. On Feb. 18, a student posted an unsolicited photo of a group of students that supposedly included Trump supporters and encouraged fellow students to remember their faces.

Ivance transferred to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities after the fall semester, citing harassment as her primary reason for transferring.

Schools cannot continue to permit this level of harassment and discrimination against non-left wing students. Public universities will not be supported by legislatures, and private colleges will not be supported by donors and parents, if the situation persists.

It is striking that this borderline fascist behavior by Democrats is occurring precisely as the Democratic Party slides toward irrelevance. Democrats try to enforce the view that voting for Donald Trump is beyond the pale, but Trump won the election. It is not as though Republicans are members of some obscure splinter faction. They control the presidency, both houses of Congress, thirty governorships and two-thirds of state legislative bodies.

Democrats are at a historically low ebb. You might think that this would cause liberals to re-examine their premises rather than try to bully others into submission. But thinking is not what liberals are best known for.

Continue reading here:
Liberal Bullying On Campus: A Case Study - Power Line (blog)

New York Times

Ouster of South Korean President Could Return Liberals to Power New York Times Now, after being out of power for almost 10 years, the South Korean liberal opposition is on the verge of retaking the presidency with the historic court ruling on Friday that ousted its conservative enemy, President Park Geun-hye, who had been ... and more »

Read more:
Ouster of South Korean President Could Return Liberals to Power - New York Times

Our country is broken. This proposition is so uncontroversial nowadays that it is regarded not with a sense of shock or tragedy but as a banal fact. Many worry that we are beyond repair too divided politically; too different in our views about morality and culture; too unwilling to compromise.

Call me an optimist. I know that, despite all the bickering, Americans across ideological lines share a common ideal. We all want to live in a place where people get the things that they deserve.

But conservatives, too, argue on grounds of merit the best-qualified applicant deserves the job, but affirmative action provides less-qualified minorities an advantage over better-qualified white people.

While liberals and conservatives disagree on this issue, it is only about a superficial fact whether affirmative action does, in fact, distort merit-based hiring. On the tough question the underlying, moral question there is no disagreement: the best-qualified applicant deserves the job.

Or consider the state of our economy. We have all heard the statistics the top 1 percent of Americans have the same share of national income as the bottom 50 percent, and the top 0.1 percent has the same total wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

Is this just? Conservatives say yes because they believe that meritorious and hard-working people deserve the fruits of their labor. They also believe that the rich in America have shown merit and effort in this way.

But liberals who say no rely on the very same moral premise meritorious people do deserve the fruits of their labor, but in America today, they point out, you get rich through family influence, cronyism, or by exploiting the system; not through merit.

Again, all we disagree about is a factual question whether wealth is tied to merit or not. That we can answer. When we do, and when we adjust public policy accordingly, liberals and conservatives alike will feel that justice has been done.

This is all well-known. Researchers have tested how human beings think about justice, and a deservingness principle like the one described reigns supreme across contexts and cultures. For example, if you pay a person less than she thinks she deserves for her work, or more than she thinks she deserves, she is less satisfied with her job than if you paid her what she thinks she deserves.

We know that the deservingness principle has an evolutionary origin. According to Political Scientist Michael Bang Petersen, it helps us distinguish cheaters from reciprocators. We have also discovered that it is hard-wired into the striatum the part of the brain that regulates moral decision-making. We have even seen evidence of the principle in other species, like capuchin monkeys.

In this way, liberals and conservatives are united, deep down, by a powerful moral premise. Both sides should think about what it would mean to take the deservingness principle seriously and rebuild our country around it.

Liberals should recognize that conservative opposition to affirmative action, welfare and taxation is not due to racism, callousness, or greed. The truth is that conservatives worry that these programs penalize merit and effort and reward the undeserving.

As evidence of conservatives good will, consider the Earned Income Tax Credit. It is a payment to poor Americans who work, and one of the largest components of our welfare system. It was enacted under Gerald Ford, expanded under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and has always enjoyed strong support from Republican legislators. Why? Because these welfare recipients show that they are deserving through their work.

On the other hand, conservatives need to understand that our economy is failing to give people what they deserve. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is now the worst in the developed world. Roughly 60-80 percent of a young persons income potential is predetermined by his parents wealth. Merit and effort matter little. The top 1 percent richest Americans inherit, on average, $3 million.

Moreover, corporate executives have gained power over their own pay-setting, reaping rewards whether or not they are deserved. A prime example is Stan ONeal, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, who posted a $2.3 billion quarterly loss the worst in Merrills history and then floated away on a $162 million golden parachute.

We are rewarding failure, enriching the incompetent at the expense of the talented, and undermining competition, and that should worry all of us.

The deservingness principle is neither a liberal nor a conservative ideal. Therein lies its potential to unite Americans once again, around the common cause of justice.

Thomas Mulligan is a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethicsat the McDonough School of Business.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

Read more from the original source:
Liberals, conservatives have more in common than they think | TheHill - The Hill (blog)

The Liberal government is proposing major changes to the way Parliament functions, including limiting the delay powers of opposition MPs, allowing electronic voting and ending Friday sittings.

Government House leader Bardish Chagger released the proposals in a discussion paper Friday afternoon as MPs headed home for a break week, arguing that it is time to recalibrate the balance of power between the governments duty to pass legislation and the oppositions right to be heard.

We really need to bring the House of Commons into the 21st century, said Ms. Chagger in an interview. The minister said the changes are aimed at making Parliament more predictable and productive.

Opposition MPs immediately slammed the proposals, warning that it would curb their ability to challenge the government.

The proposals echo some of the Parliamentary reform promises made by the Liberals during the election campaign. They include changes to the daily Question Period by having one day a week where the Prime Minister answers all of the questions, as is the case in Britain. Ms. Chagger said the committee should debate whether the Prime Minister should also attend Question Period on other days.

However, the Liberals have already made two failed attempts since the election to change the House of Commons rules. Last May, the government withdrew a controversial motion that would have given it new powers to limit debate. Also last year, a study by the Procedure and House Affairs committee aimed at making Parliament more family friendly held hearings on the idea of eliminating Friday sittings but found no consensus for a change. That same committee is being asked to consider the governments latest proposals. A Liberal motion has circulated that proposed that the committee complete its review by June 2.

Ms. Chagger suggests in her letter that in lieu of Friday sittings, the House of Commons could add more sitting days in January, June and September.

Concern from the opposition Friday focused on changes that would limit the ability of opposition MPs to delay legislation in the House or in committee with long speeches known as filibusters. One section of Ms. Chaggars letter recommends limiting speeches in committee to 10 minutes.

Committees can, at times, become dysfunctional, she wrote. The principle of deliberations in the House and in committees should be to engage in substantive debate on the merit of an issue, not to engage in tactics which seek only to undermine and devalue the important work of Parliament.

Conservative deputy house leader MP Chris Warkentin said his party will strongly oppose changes that limit the ability of MPs to challenge the government.

The idea that they would suggest that MPs bringing the concerns of their constituents forward is somehow an unacceptable use of time for the House of Commons is absolutely reprehensible, he said. To remove those opportunities is really an abuse of power and something that we will definitely oppose.

Mr. Warkentin said his party will not support the elimination of Friday sittings. He said the government appears to be using calls for improved work-life balance as an excuse for limiting accountability.

We believe MPs should work five days a week, and frankly its the experience of most of us that we work seven days a week, he said. I know that theres a lot of Canadians that would suggest that if the Liberals wanted to do less work or if they dont like the job that theyve been elected to do, that there might be somebody else who would replace these members of Parliament.

NDP MP Ian Rankin said the Liberal proposals would be a setback for Canadian democracy that would limit the oppositions powers to hold the government to account.

We do look forward to a healthy debate on this discussion paper, even if it appears healthy debate may be severely restricted around here in the future, he said in a statement.

Follow Bill Curry on Twitter: @curryb

Read the original here:
Liberals' new parliamentary reform plan angers Tories, NDP - The Globe and Mail