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Labor Party faces a major blow, set to lose power in its last state of South Australia after the Liberals claim victory in Tasmania. Nine News.

The South Australian Liberal Party is pinning last-minute hopes on a record number of pre-poll and postal votes to scrape into government, but Labor believes it can still win the support of independents to retain power in the state.

Voters will have to wait days for Saturday's election to be decided, but the most likely prospect is a minority government relying on two independents.

The government and the opposition in Canberra are watching the wash-up with keen interest. If Labor holds on to government in the state after the Liberal Party swept to power in Tasmania at the weekend, South Australia would have denied the conservative parties a clean sweep across the federal and state landscapes.

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Liberals rely on early votes as South Australian election too close to call

Columnist Walter Williams typically claims that when things go wrong, liberals are to blame. In his latest screed (Liberals want blacks in perpetual state of grievance, Daily Reflector, Dec. 31), he also conjures a liberal conspiracy: keep blacks stirred up so they vote Democratic.

Williams apparently believes that to garner votes, liberals instigated voter suppression, opposed minimum wage hikes and prompted recent shootings of black men. I suspect that his delusional accusation is a paranoid reflection of Republicans strategy of keeping tea partiers in a state of agitation.

Williams claim that the National Education Association and New Yorks Mayor Bill de Blasio (whose wife is black and children are bi-racial) are aligned against black parents and students defies reason. Meanwhile he skirts the issue of public funding for private schools. Many conservatives want to abolish public education, and claim that vouchers offer poor blacks a way out of bad schools a debatable proposition. But resisting public funding of private schools is not a racial matter, even though Williams wants to make it one. (Mayor de Blasios action, affecting three privately-run charters, was not the hatchet job Williams implies.)

Williams says liberals want to undermine established authority, by which he means the police. Granted, conservatives tend to support recently publicized police actions while liberals tend to question them. Questioning authority is an inherent right sustained by the Constitution. Meanwhile conservatives continually criticize government, the IRS, most federal agencies and the president. Are they trying to undermine established authority?

Williams says that liberals often have demeaning attitudes toward blacks. Liberals support civil and voting rights for blacks against stiff conservative resistance. What conservative groups work to achieve rights for black Americans?

Yes, well-intentioned people can be condescending toward those they support. They should stop it. But stereotyping, political oppression and hate cause far more damage.

DON CLEMENT

Greenville

Read this article:
Letter: Liberals support civil rights

Upon returning from Hawaii this week, President Obama will confront a growing firestorm around a key Treasury nominee, with senators across the ideological spectrum seemingly ready to do battle with the White House in one of the first political fights of 2015.

The confirmation of Antonio Weiss tapped by Mr. Obama to serve as Treasurys undersecretary for domestic finance is in doubt, as liberals such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, have taken direct aim at the former investment bankers close ties to Wall Street.

The uproar highlights how some on the left, led by Mrs. Warren and also powerful progressive organizations outside Capitol Hill, now feel more emboldened to take on both the administration and so-called Wall Street Democrats.

SEE ALSO: Hillary rocked with left hook as liberals side with Elizabeth Warren for 2016

They argue the administration must move to the left, particularly on financial matters, and needs to break associations the Democratic Party has with powerful banks and other financial institutions. Mrs. Warren has, for example, made the case that the federal government should pursue harsher regulations on Wall Street and should seek to break up large banks.

The overrepresentation of Wall Street banks in senior government positions sends a bad message. It tells people that one and only one point of view will dominate economic policymaking, Mrs. Warren wrote in the Huffington Post late last year after the White House put forward Mr. Weiss.

It tells people that whatever goes wrong in this economy, the Wall Street banks will be protected first, she continued. Thats yet another advantage that Wall Street just doesnt need.

In recent weeks a number of other Democrats have voiced similar criticism, including Sens. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Al Franken of Minnesota and even Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.

It is important to send the message that we will no longer allow Wall Street to exclusively make our fiscal policy decisions, especially when they affect so many on Main Street, Mr. Manchin, one of the Democratic caucus more conservative members, said on the Senate floor last month.

Mrs. Warren, Mr. Manchin and other opponents have been joined by groups such as the Progressive Change Campaign Committee which has rallied liberals to oppose Mr. Weiss nomination and organizations such as the Independent Community Bankers of America, which argues the nominee would be yet another Wall Street voice in the federal government.

Continue reading here:
Elizabeth Warren, liberals pick fight with Obama over Treasury nominee Antonio Weiss

Laughing At Liberals Featured In KATU News Story
Joe Douglass of Portland #39;s KATU covers the "Deck The Halls With Rows Of Dead Cops" video, posted last week by LaughingAtLiberals ...

By: LaughingAtLiberals

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Laughing At Liberals Featured In KATU News Story - Video

ALBANY, N.Y. - With former Gov. Mario Cuomo's death, liberals have lost one of their last, best champions, a proud populist who represented an older breed of Democrat.

During his three terms as governor, the former minor league baseball player from Queens championed the working class, reproached Ronald Reagan and flirted - repeatedly - with a run for the White House. In his 1984 address at the Democratic National Convention, he talked of a nation of haves and have-nots, of a yawning disconnect between rich and poor largely ignored by Reagan.

"A shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well," he said. "Mr. President, you ought to know that this nation is more 'A Tale of Two Cities' than it is just a 'Shining City on a Hill.'"

The 82-year-old Cuomo died Thursday at his home in Manhattan of natural causes from heart failure just hours after his son, Andrew, began his second term as New York's chief executive. Services are planned for Tuesday morning at a Manhattan church.

Mario Cuomo's progressive legacy is reflected today by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose own 2013 campaign kickoff speech recycled the "Tale of Two Cities" image.

By contrast, Andrew Cuomo epitomizes the mainstream Democratic Party's recent tendency toward centrism. While Cuomo is socially liberal on gun control and abortion, he's seen as more fiscally conservative, willing to battle teachers unions and supportive of business-friendly tax cuts.

The elder Cuomo came from an older, more liberal strand of Democratic politics that included Franklin Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson. Like them, Cuomo combined public eloquence with an intellectual rigor. Unlike those two, however, he never ran for president, despite pleas to do so in 1988 and 1992.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who also spoke at the 1984 convention, said Cuomo's supporters "literally begged him to run." Jackson said Cuomo's brand of outspoken liberalism is needed now that "too few have too much and too many have nothing."

"He had room for everybody. There's so much polarization these days," Jackson said. "He was a big tent visionary."

Even those who disagreed with his policies respected Cuomo's passion and his rise as the son of Italian immigrants to the pinnacle of American politics. Republican state Senate Leader Dean Skelos called him "one of the great orators of our time."

See the article here:
Liberals lose champion in Cuomo