Daily Archives: March 23, 2017

Street art photo from The Federalist (online) December, 2016

The left has killed public art slashed her with a thousand cuts and bled her of meaning and dignity. Our generation allowed art to be chained to leftist dogma, and her identity is changed beyond recognition. Public art is only allowed to spout meaningless leftist drivel at this point. She is a conscript in a forced American cultural revolution. Should President Trump be allowed to bury her or can she be revived?

Listening to major media, the nation is in grave peril. Or at least our art is. Threats to slash funding to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) and Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) are causing alarm. Anti-Trump protestors were just as infuriated before this announcement, and had some other reasons Trump was a threat to all interplanetary life. Its difficult to separate hysteria from fact at this point, but lets try.

The NEA and NEH were begun in 1965, in commemoration of the Kennedys, and part of the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities Act. They do some excellent things and arent always divisive. The NEA brings musicians to rural schools, and commission public monuments. In 2012, the NEH paid for 13 one-hour dramas weaving together lives of the (presidential) Adams family between 1750 to 1900, based on 300,000 historical documents. I doubt many Americans will mind that, but they did have issues with Robert Mapplethorpe.

Although Mapplethorpe described his motifs as bondage, S&M and gay porn, the NEA still made a $30,000 grant in 1989 for a retrospective of his work. This was at the end of the Reagan era and signaled the onset of poor relations between many conservatives and the NEA. Previously it was generally good, with President Reagan particularly interested in the arts.

Reagan was part of the art world, and claimed the arts were one of the most important forms of human expression. Yet at the end of his term he said this: When it comes to the arts and humanities, the nation is best when government intrudes the least. Proving his sincerity for both statements, Reagan proposed cutting NEH funds, but also sought to change tax law so lower-income individuals could make tax-deductible contributions to the arts.

Author of gay kiddie propaganda, Leslea Newman, received NEA grants after publication of Heather Has Two Mommies

Spanning the time between Reagan and now, the NEA, NEH and CPB have become politicized and drifted far left. Almost no traditional print media or talking heads even touch on this. Since it is the only reason a host of conservatives are willing to see art funding disappear, they are missing the entire story. As usual.

The LA times doubled down on this, with a flurry of articles. Dana Gioia solemnly warns: They [Trump administration] are mounting a partisan battle that will do the nation no good. Yet Gioia either doesnt comprehend or care that leftist partisans have been running the NEA for at least twenty years.

Through the Bush presidencies, the NEA waged random war against conservatives, and attacked GOP politicians. G.W. Bush was their favorite whipping boy until Trump came along. Proving that conservatives are the only tolerant ones, Bush made no move to block the geysers of hate aimed at him by artists with NEA grants, even though it was something he could have easily done.

But more troubling than the NEA attacking its patrons, is the reverse: They functioned as a de facto fan club base for Obama. Several people, including myself, noted the creepy Dear Leader-type campaign when Obama drafted the NEA into his personal propaganda department. This was exposed in a group call-out in 2009 by Patrick Courrielche.

Screenshot from NEH series Shared Cultural Spaces: Islam and the West in the Arts and Sciences- 2011-2013

Conservatives tend to feel the need for public art less strongly than others, but its not a fast rule. Shouldnt the NEA and art community hold a little olive branch for the ones they blame over art fundings loss? So far, its just war as usual. Beyond being unjust, NEH partisan nastiness is something they have pledged to not do. Their mission statement reads: The Endowment [NEH] accomplishes this mission by awarding grants for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers.

Artists and actors have furiously attacked Trump in every medium possible from the time he announced his candidacy. This includes his wife, son, friends and taste. Miles of art will be produced mocking and denouncing Trump and his policies, whatever they are. This hostility will not end even, if the administration reneges of funding cuts.

Smaller version of Renoirs 1874 La Loge, possibly belonging to Melania Trump

Pettiness is pervasive. A New York Post piece assumes a small Renoir in Melanias office is probably a fake. Yet the same article quotes Mark Bowdens horror when Trump points out a small painting on his plane and claims it is worth $10 million. But they contradict themselves even more, as they chide Trump for risking damage to the paintings they have previously labeled as fakes.

Only one article in the LA Times even comes close to comprehending the issue. Christopher Knight writes, Theyve been trying to kill it [NEA] for half a century not because they hate art, but because they hate government. Leftwing artists dont understand that, and take any cuts to art funding as a personal affront.

More pettiness: Last month protestors at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA) demanded the museum drop board member Larry Fink because he joined Donald Trumps business council. Previously Fink was considered for a spot of Clintons team, and was therefore an acceptable liberal. The 180o pivot against Fink reveals the volatile hatred in these groups, ready to ignite over the slightest political unorthodoxy.

Federal funding for the NEA is comparably very small, about $150 million. But the power these sister organizations yield as policy makers and trailblazers is huge. The power of the state is a real thing, as proved by Obamas attempt to yoke it into service for his personal interests. If the NEA, NEH and CPB survive, they must at least make an appearance of impartiality in the future.

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Is public art dead? Thank a liberal - WND.com

OTTAWA New Democrat MP Nathan Cullen is planning a series of town-hall meetings in Liberal ridings across the country in an effort to resurrect the issue of electoral reform.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau backed away in February from his election promise to end first-past-the-post voting, saying there was no consensus on a replacement system.

Cullen has tabled a petition with 130,000 signatures calling on Trudeau to keep his promise on electoral change.

He says he will challenge 20 Liberal MPs to show up at meetings in their ridings to debate the issue.

He also says those 20 votes would make all the difference if those MPs were to break with the prime minister.

The first town hall is scheduled for Saturday in Toronto.

Cullen says an analysis of the petition shows support across the country.

"Canadians, many who voted Liberal in the last election, are rightly upset," he said today in Ottawa.

"I believe that there's no more sacred commitment or connection than the one between a prime minister who runs on a clear campaign promise and the people he seeks to represent."

There is one chance to salvage the reform process when the electoral reform committee's report comes up for a vote in the House of Commons in May.

"This will be the last opportunity for the Liberals to do the right thing," he said, "to follow through on the campaign commitment ... and bring in a voting system where, truly, every vote can count."

Read the rest here:

Stand up for electoral reform, New Democrat MP urges Liberal colleagues - Times Colonist

The Liberal North Shore byelection candidate Felicity Wilson has downplayed the unpopularity of council amalgamations and is banking on voters being angrier about traffic on Military Road as she seeks election in the seat held for the Liberals by Jillian Skinner for 23 years.

"It's traffic, traffic, traffic, is what I'm getting everywhere," Ms Wilson said. "Traffic, public transport, the impacts of traffic. It's not surprising given that Military Road is one of the worst roads in our state."

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The NSW government has committed to a tolled motorway tunnel linking Balgowlah in Sydney's north to the Warringah Freeway in an effort to relieve traffic congestion on the northern beaches. Vision courtesy Ten Eyewitness News.

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Watch Sydney disappear as it becomes enveloped by angry storm clouds. Vision: Sydney Seaplanes

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Embattled airline Regional Express have been forced to turn back a flight en route to Sydney from Dubbo Airport.Courtesy ABC News24

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University of Newcastle engineers uncover how the Australian sawfish uses its weaponised razor-edged snout.

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NSW Police detectives say they have arrested a 63-year-old man in Frankston, Melbourne, in a "major breakthrough" in the infamous 1970 cold case.

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University of Sydney academic Professor Jennifer Byrne has uncovered alleged research fraud.

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A huge storm front has made its way across Western Sydney and the Central Coast.

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The propeller that came off a Regional Express plane has been recovered from bushland in Revesby in Sydneys south-west, after it came loose and narrowly missed hitting the REX flight.

The NSW government has committed to a tolled motorway tunnel linking Balgowlah in Sydney's north to the Warringah Freeway in an effort to relieve traffic congestion on the northern beaches. Vision courtesy Ten Eyewitness News.

Fortunately for Ms Wilson, Premier Gladys Berejiklian last week announced plans for a feasibility study on a Balgowlah to Warringah Freeway tunnel, which would bypass Military Road, just in time for the byelection.

Thursday's close of nominations saw the candidate field for the North Shore byelection on April 8 narrowed to eight, with just three independents standing, including anti-amalgamations campaigner and Mosman councillor Carolyn Corrigan and former Crown solicitor and trade practices lawyer Ian Mutton.

After an unsuccessful tilt at Brad Hazzard's nearby seat of Wakehurst in 2015, Silvana Nile, wife of Christian Democratic Party leader Fred Nile, is also standing for the North Shore seat, calling herself "the only true conservative candidate" in the field.

She cited the Christian Democrats' opposition to council amalgamations as a key vote-winner.

Many of the candidates view council amalgamations as the central byelection battleground, given the local unpopularity of the government's policy. Mosman and North Sydney Councils are in an ongoing legal fight against a forced merger with Willoughby.

Ms Wilson supported council amalgamations when she worked for the Property Council.

But she denied the issue was the vote-changer her opponents believe, saying there was a wide range of views in the community on amalgamations, including many who believed North Sydney council should be merged following its "governance issues and history of dysfunction".

She defended the government's six years of inaction on the north shore's traffic problem.

"Well we had to spend a few years righting the budget. As you've seen, Gladys was the first person to get the budget into surplus in 20 years after Labor's long deficit. Now the economy and the budget is in a strong place, we can go ahead and make the infrastructure investments prioritised across the state."

Local doctor Stephen Ruff and North Sydney mayor Jilly Gibson withdrew their candidacies ahead of Thursday's close of nominations, narrowing the field of independent challengers who are likely to split an anti-Liberal protest vote.

Ms Gibson said she made the 11th-hour decision to withdraw due to an unwell family member. It came as a full-page advertisement spruiking her campaign ran in the Mosman Daily on Thursday.

Ms Gibson threw her support behind Mr Mutton's independent campaign, saying they shared "a similar vision for the lower north shore".

Mr Mutton said locals felt they had been taken for granted for too long by the Liberals and even if he did not win, a significant swing away from the Liberals was a good start.

"I know this runs fundamentally against what every independent says, which is 'I'm going to win', but if we move this seat to an at-risk seat then we would have achieved an enormous amount for the electorate," he said.

The three independents scored the top three spots on the ballot in Thursday's ballot draw, with the Ms Wilson in number four.

Labor is not running a candidate.

The Greens candidate Justin Alick said his party was looking at preference deals with all independents and the Christian Democrats, despite "numerous very big philosophical differences", because of common ground on issues like council amalgamations and privatisation.

"I think there's a definite appetite for change in this community and the Greens have come second in the two party-preferred vote for the last several elections in a row, we are the opposition here," Mr Alick said.

The Greens will announce this weekend at a Transport Forum in Mosman their support for a Spit Bridge tunnel, but only if it's a train tunnel.

"We recognise that the reason there are traffic jams, the reason people are sitting in their cars and wasting hours of their lives every day, is because there's no viable alternative than getting behind the wheel. It would be less expensive than a six-or eight-lane car tunnel, and it has much greater capacity than a car tunnel."

"The proposal we have at the moment is only good for Transurban. I think the community has had enough of government for Transurban."

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Liberal North Shore candidate downplays council amalgamations as byelection issue - The Sydney Morning Herald

Large billboards featuring black and white images of prime minister Malcolm Turnbull alongside One Nation leader Pauline Hanson form the basis of the scare campaign in ethnically diverse, marginal seats against changes to Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

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Turnbull has reportedly been calling ethnic leaders trying to calm concerns over the governments proposed changes to the laws.

A broad coalition of groups, including leaders from Indigenous, Jewish, Indian, Greek, Chinese, Arab and Armenian communities, penned a joint letter to Turnbull saying the changes could give a free pass to racial abuse.

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Hanson: I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians / record scratch / we are in danger of being swamped by Muslims.

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Racism is real. It affects our communities every day - at school, at work, in the streets.

It affects our ability to get work. It will affect our childrens futures.

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Reclaim Australia Rally Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

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Dangerous racism is growing in Australia. Weve worked hard to build lives here. Our children shouldnt suffer worse hardships than we did.

Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberals have not stood up to Pauline Hanson and One Nation.

Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberals are trying to change the laws that protect us from racist abuse.

Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberals do not care about the safety and security of our families and our communities.

We need leaders to stand up to racism, not to encourage it.

A vote for the Liberals is a vote for racism.

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Here's The Race Hate Scare Campaign Coming To Liberal Marginal Electorates - BuzzFeed News

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, right, speaks as Ontario Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault looks on during a press conference in Toronto on Thursday, March 2, 2017, to announce the government's hydro relief plan. Frank Gunn / THE CANADIAN PRESS

When a government picks a slogan, you never hear the end of it.

News releases, social media feeds, podium placards, radio and TV advertising, speeches by ministers the branding is everywhere, backed by the hefty resources of the state. With the federal Liberal government, its been real change and a strong middle class, over and over again.

In Ontario, the slogan after the 2014 election was building Ontario up, and, more particularly, the governments four-part plan to build Ontario up. Everything the governmentdidsomehow fit into those four parts. It was on every single news release for years.When the legislature cafeteria cancelled its Friday $5 fish-and-chips special (to my lasting chagrin), I have no doubt the premiers office could have justified it with the four-part plan if asked.

This is how political messaging works. It gets repeated endlesslyso it percolatesthrough to the public, even if the media never usesit.

Premier Kathleen Wynnes Liberals now have a new slogan, with its own website and social media accounts. Its called The facts still matter in Ontario, and it involves a daily effort to fact check something the Opposition (almost always Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown) has said.

Sometimes these facts still matter dispatchescome from the Liberal party; sometimes they come from a cabinet ministers office. Its both a Liberal party slogan and an Ontario government slogan. Expect to hear it constantly.

Its a clear attempt to exploit the concerns over fake news, and the stream of lies coming from the White House.Mediaorganizations are fighting off attacks on their credibility, Facebook is attemptingto flag fake stories and civic institutions everywhere are grappling with the dwindlingeffectiveness of fact-based arguments. Its a very real problem.

So now the Ontario Liberals, and by extension the government, are declaring themselves the championsof facts. You can anticipate how this is turning out. They do indeed catch some incorrect claims, but they dont stop there. No, everything must fit the message. So we get dubiouspolitical spin dressed up as fact-checking.

Heres a fact check they sent out the other day. The PCs called cap-and-trade, which is expected to raise $1.9 billion a year in new government revenue, a cash grab. Fact: Wrong again, the Liberals wrote. Every dollar generated through cap and trade will be deposited in a dedicated account and reinvested into green projects. (It goes on to tell us how great the projects are.)

Actual fact: Many of those projects were already in the works, but are now being funded from this new revenue stream. Ontario is not off-setting carbon pricing revenue with tax breaks, as British Columbia is. Ontario is grabbing the cash and spending it on stuff. Whatever you think of these projects, it is not factually wrong to call the funding mechanism a cash grab.

At a time when the U.S. presidentis shamelessly using his office to spread conspiracy theories and insult those trying to respondwith reason, we really dont need the Ontario government further degrading the meaning of a fact and adding to the atmosphere of cynicism.

And theLiberals have already demonstrated how they really feel about having to scrupulously stick to facts. We used to have a law passed by Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty in 2004 that forced taxpayer-funded government advertising to only be used for public service information campaigns. The auditor general couldhalt government ads whose primary purpose was obviously self-promotion of the governing party.

Wynnes Liberals gutted that law in the spring of 2015. They didnt want ads filled withdry facts; they wanted ads that sold their message to voters. And now we have a blitz of taxpayer-funded advertising promoting Wynnes new plan to reduce hydro rates. For the Liberals, as with all political parties, a fact is only worth mentioning when it makes them look good.

Brian Plattis the deputy digital editor for the Ottawa Citizen. Previously, he was based at Queens Park as a policy reporter.

twitter.com/btaplatt bplatt@postmedia.com

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Platt: In an era of fake news, the Ontario Liberals are making things worse - Ottawa Citizen

1970By a vote of 5 to 3, the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Brennan, rules in Goldberg v. Kelly that the Constitution requires that the government provide an evidentiary hearing before terminating welfare payments to an individual whom it has determined is not eligible to receive such payments. Justice Black objects in dissent:

I would have little, if any, objection to the majoritys decision in this case if it were written as the report of the House Committee on Education and Labor, but, as an opinion ostensibly resting on the language of the Constitution, I find it woefully deficient. [I]t is obvious that todays result does not depend on the language of the Constitution itself or the principles of other decisions, but solely on the collective judgment of the majority as to what would be a fair and humane procedure in this case.

2004The Left is adept at what Abraham Lincoln labeled lullaby argumentsfalse claims designed to lull the listener into a sense of complacency. In testimony at a Senate hearing, law professor Cass Sunstein argues that a constitutional amendment on marriage is unnecessary because the prospect that the Supreme Court would invent a constitutional right to same-sex marriage is utterly fanciful:

It is possible that the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs will meet in the World Series and play to a seventh game tie. That is unlikely, but that scenario is more likely than it is that the Supreme Court of the United States, as currently constituted, will hold that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. This is a reckless conception of what is on the horizon and it is indefensible by reference to anything any Supreme Court Justice has said, at least on the bench, and I believe even off the bench.

Sunstein was testifying less than one year after the Supreme Courts 6-3 decision in Lawrence v. Texas. In his majority opinion for five justices in that case, Justice Kennedy combined his usual gauzy rhetoric with the specific assertions that our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child reading, and education (emphasis added) and that [p]ersons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual persons do. So much for Sunsteins claim that any concern that the Court might hold that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage was a reckless conception of what is on the horizon and indefensible by reference to anything any Supreme Court Justice has said.

2009President Obama nominates radical transnationalist Harold Koh to be State Department legal adviser, a position that would give Koh a cornucopia of opportunities to advance his agenda of having American courts import international law to override the policies that American citizens adopt through the processes of representative government. (See here for more detail.) Three months later, the Senate confirms Koh by a 62-35 vote.

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This Day in Liberal Judicial ActivismMarch 23 - National Review