Category Archives: Liberal

What did we learn from another Liberal minority win? - NEWS 1130 Rogers Media uses cookies for personalization, to customize its online advertisements, and for other purposes. Learn more or change your cookie preferences. Rogers Media supports the Digital Advertising Alliance principles. By continuing to use our service, you agree to our use of cookies.We use cookies (why?) You can change cookie preferences. Continued site use signifies consent.

by the big story

Posted Sep 21, 2021 5:19 am PDT

Last Updated Sep 21, 2021 at 5:22 am PDT

In todays Big Story podcast, a Liberal minority government. Likely within a few seats of where we started, 37 days ago. Did this election matter? What did it reveal about Canadas political mood? About the health of our electoral system? And about the future of the two leaders who went head to head for the past six weeks? Turns out, more than you might think.

GUEST: David Moscrop

You can subscribe to The Big Story podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google and Spotify

You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.

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Originally posted here:

What did we learn from another Liberal minority win? - News 1130

Being the discerning lot that they are,Spectator Australia readers would have by now worked out that I am a social conservative and an economic dry, in the vein of my modern political heroes: Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, John Howard and Tony Abbott. Mr Abbott, granted, could be considered less of an economic dry for sure, but I venture to say that he and I share the same Catholicism of another of my heroes: George Cardinal Pell: standing four-square with the Magisterium of the Church and Catholic Orthodoxy.

In apiece back in May, I stated that I have not voted Liberal since 2016, having previously done so all my life, since in my view the Liberal Party no longer espouses the values which its founder and this countrys greatest prime minister, laid out. Menzies would be appalled at what his Liberal Party has become. It no longer advocates for the forgotten class the middle class who, properly regarded, represent the backbone of this country taken for granted by each political party in turn.

I am not alone. As Charles Pier reported in this Flat White piecerecently, around 30% of Coalition votersare questioning whetherthegovernmentdeservesanother term. We now have four or five new parties whose putative constituents would have once been natural Liberal/National voters. Of all of these alternatives,if I had to vote today, Ijust might choosethe Liberal Democrats.

That statement mightshockfriends and acquaintances. Campbell Newmans views on social issues are a mile away from mine. However,I willnever compromise my opposition toabortion, euthanasia, gay marriage etc., thusexcluding the possibility of any candidacy on my part.Yet, social conservatives are notexcluded frommembership ofthe Liberal Democrats, a bit like the broad church John Howard wanted the Liberals to be.The Liberal Democrats do not supportthe wokeLBGQIT+ agenda, either.Their position during the gay marriage debate was that government should be removed from marriage,bar recognising couples. I disagree with that position.But lets not forget a significant minority of non-Catholics voted for B.A. Santamarias DLP.And how many people voted for Howard and Hawke even though they didnt agree with them on everything, but were persuaded to do so because oftheir conviction to make Australia a better country?

To those who beg to differ, Isay this.

Australia is at a point where we need to look at a bigger picture. We have forgotten how to live because we have been made afraid to die of something that has a 99.7% recovery rate. We are in a war for our fundamental way of life.When a pregnant woman can be arrested in her own home in front of her children, when the inalienable right to free speech is being suppressed violently (unless you belong to BLM, or Extinction Rebellion), when dying cancer patients cannot see their children because of The Science, yet The Science doesnt apply to sports stars, politicians, Brett Sutton and Hollywood actors, we on the conservative (that is to say, once Liberal/National voters) side, need to band together to send the Coalition a message.All of us, social conservatives and economic dries, have reason to bevery aggrievedwiththe Coalition andthe current tenant of the Lodge in particular, who has no conviction whatsoever.

Scott Morrison sayshe believes in informed consent and personal responsibilityfor what we put into our bodies andhasstated that herespects the views of those who wish to refuse abortion-tainted vaccines, but will mandate them anyway.On this, Morrison, his government and state premiers seem determined to gaslight the public, labelling those who are unvaccinated as a threat to public health, when evidence from around the world is demonstrating that any benefit conferred by the vaccine is entirely personal, whichbenefit may not be that great just look atIsrael.Ergo,asGraeme Youngwrote last week,vaccineapartheid,whetherproposed by governmentsorprivate enterprise, serves no goodpoint. And if there is no point, then they are an infringement on basichumanrights. No ifs, no buts.

It wasScott Morrison who said free speech doesntcreate a single job. It wasScott Morrison who convicted ADF personnel before they had even been tried. ItwasScott Morrison who failed to defend the principle that underpins Australias Constitution:one indissoluble Commonwealth. After three terms in government, the Coalition has not enactedeven modest industrial relations reform, or acted to appoint conservative High Court judges, ortorein in SBS and the ABC.Now it is creeping toward net-zero emissions by 2050. How many jobs of the quiet Australians will that cost?

Over the last 18 months, the Coalition government has spent billions bailing out lockdown happy authoritarian premiers, enabling their tyrannical behaviour.No wonder Marshal Mark and Princess Ananstacia are giving the federal government the proverbial middle finger on opening up their borders.

The record debtMorrison andFrydenburghave racked up isnt the only fiscal problem.Consider this:Australiaspersonal and corporate tax ratesare among the highest among OECD member countries.Australia has an over-reliance on personal income tax over consumption taxes almost half at 41%.The Coalition has done nothing about this in three terms. Why would it do anything in a fourth?

Heres one lastthought. In 1942Australias federation was under threat because of theUniform Tax Case. With the Commonwealth wanting to take over income taxation powers to fund the war effort, the States took the Commonwealth to the High Court, and lost. After that, all banded together to defeat the common enemy, theAxis Powers. In 1942 the Japanese bombed Darwin and Broome, and Australia was under serious threat of invasion.

As Campbell Newman has said, it is time to save Australia.In an interview of Senator JimMolanby former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson on hispodcast series,Conversations with John Anderson, Molan and Anderson argue that the first line of defence is for a nation to be united around its shared values. What are the core values conservatives share? Lower taxes, smaller government, reward for individual effort, defence of the family and the importance of national sovereignty, the rule of law and, above all, individual liberty.

If you are not attracted tothe Liberal Democrats, there arealternatives,as I noted above.There is goodwill and good relations between the minor parties on the right.They are different but lets see which one of them emerges from the pack. I suspect at least one will.Therefore,I implore all those parties to work together as closely as humanly possible to fight effectively the common foes in thisnewwarwe are in againstCovidhysteria and the ruling classfuellingit that are killing what was once among the best countries in the world.

Dr Rocco Loiacono is a senior lecturer atCurtin Law School.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Curtin University.

Visit link:

Why this social conservative might just vote for the Liberal Democrats - The Spectator Australia

By removing all troops from Afghanistan shortly before the 9/11 attacks 20th anniversary, President Joe Biden sent a none-too-subtle message: He wanted America, and the world, to see that he was turning the page that the war on terror era was well and truly over. In a speech last week justifying his decision, he stated the rationale explicitly: Its about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.

Its easy to be skeptical of Bidens seriousness. US forces remain engaged in counterterrorism operations across the globe. After an ISIS suicide bombing at Kabul airport during the withdrawal killed an estimated 170 people, including 13 American service members, the US launched drone strikes against ISIS targets in Afghanistan killing at least 10 Afghan civilians. And some of the attacks on Bidens policy from the Washington foreign policy establishment suggest its appetite for war is hardly sated.

Yet the Afghan withdrawal shows a significant break with the post-9/11 order at least among liberals.

Since the 1990s, a dominant military paradigm on the center left has been liberal interventionism: the notion that the United States has the right, even the obligation, to intervene in far-off countries to protect human life and freedom. Liberal interventionism emerged out of a specific constellation of events: the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of the US as the worlds lone superpower, and the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans. It paired a morally righteous critique of US foreign policy with post-Cold War optimism about Americas ability to improve the world.

But in subsequent decades, the intellectual scaffolding propping up liberal interventionism took hit after hit.

9/11 was a key inflection point. The attack prompted leading liberal interventionists to marry their doctrines to the Bush administrations war on terror, becoming some of the most prominent boosters for a disastrous war in Iraq waged by a Republican president. Later, the Obama administrations experiences in Afghanistan and Libya reinforced lessons about the dangers of intervention.

More recently, an expansionist Russia and rising China raised questions about Americas capability to intervene in countries with competing influences. Donald Trumps 2016 victory and subsequent attempts to overturn the 2020 election revealed urgent threats to liberal democracy not abroad, but here at home.

As a result, the center of intellectual gravity among liberals has shifted.

The most remarkable fact about liberals today is that, aside from a few, theyve all learned their lesson, says Samuel Moyn, a law professor at Yale University and repentant liberal ex-hawk. Joe Bidens choices are kind of inexplicable absent that.

Liberal interventionism is being supplanted by a loose alternative that could be termed fortress liberalism: a belief that saving liberal democracy means defending it where it already exists and that crusading wars for democracy and human rights are distractions at best and disasters at worst.

This is not to say that America has gotten out of the war business. Bidens administration requested $753 billion in national security funding from Congress for 2021. The Washington foreign policy consensus is still quite hawkish, entertaining military solutions for problems ranging from ISIS affiliates in Somalia to Russias war in Ukraine to Chinese adventurism in the South China Sea.

But new wars waged on behalf of human rights and democracy are not really on the table (at least on the left). Part of the reason the criticism of the Afghan withdrawal has been so harsh is that some liberals are reckoning with the fall of one of their gods conceding that, for better or worse, the era of liberal interventionism is over.

In the 1990s, a geopolitical shift brought forth a more globally assertive, interventionist liberalism.

The collapse of the Soviet Union left the United States without any serious rivals. During the Cold War, America had built a military capable of intervening relatively swiftly around the world. Absent any peer or even near-peer threat, the United States was free to engage in wars of choice with a reach unmatched by any previous global power.

Now the United States stood as the worlds first liberal hegemon. The US victory in the Cold War was seen not merely as a matter of power politics, but as a vindication of liberal democracy as a political model.

We were on a euphoric high having won the Cold War, says Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA). The country had really bought into this narrative of the march of the liberal democracy and that Americas force could really facilitate that.

This zeitgeist, Americas unipolar moment at the end of history, created the conditions under which the United States could become a nation that could project its moral ideals by force if need be.

Two events pushed the American liberal elite toward embracing this vision: genocides in Rwanda in 1994 and Bosnia in 1995.

In Rwanda, a campaign of murder by the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority killed an estimated 800,000 people in just 100 days. At the time, United Nations peacekeepers were on the ground in Rwanda but prohibited from intervening by their UN mandate. Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the UN force, pleaded with UN officials to let him do something and they refused. The Clinton administration was also warned of an impending mass slaughter; the White House not only did nothing but worked to block UN action.

Susan Rice, who would later become one of President Barack Obamas national security advisers, was at the time a Clinton official working on peacekeeping issues. The experience, for her, was shattering. I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required, Rice told liberal interventionist Samantha Power in a 2001 interview.

A little over a year after Rwanda, a different UN force in Bosnia declared the town of Srebrenica a safe zone: a place where civilians fleeing the fighting consuming the Balkans could stay under international protection. Neither the peacekeepers nor prior NATO intervention in the conflict deterred Serbian forces from seizing control of the town. They systematically murdered Bosnian Muslims residents of Srebrenica, killing thousands in a matter of mere days.

Power, who would go on to serve with Rice in the Obama administration as UN ambassador, reported from the ground during the Bosnian conflict witnessing slaughter that, she argued, could plausibly have been prevented with a more assertive NATO response.

In her 2002 book A Problem From Hell, Power asserts that Rwanda and Srebrenica were part of a pattern; Americas problem historically has not been its capacity to stop genocide, but its will. No US president has ever made genocide prevention a priority, and no US president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence, she wrote. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on.

This was the essence of post-Cold War liberal interventionism: the notion that an absent America was a complicit America.

It was a vision of a superpower embracing its moral calling, protecting human rights wherever they needed defense, and it was a doctrine that became influential among liberal intellectuals and pundits after Rwanda and Bosnia. Among its most prominent advocates were the editors of the New Republic, the closest thing to a house organ for American liberalism at the time.

Near the end of Clintons presidency, these thinkers ideas received real-world vindication.

In 1998, war once again broke out in the Balkans, this time in Kosovo. Once again, ethnic Serbian forces singled out a civilian group Kosovar Albanian Muslims for slaughter. But this time, the Clinton administration chose to act, leading a NATO bombing campaign that began in March 1999. By June, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic (who led the Serbian side) had been battered into accepting an international peace agreement. Kosovo would become an independent state; in 2000, the authoritarian Milosevic was toppled in a popular uprising and stood trial for war crimes in the Hague in 2002.

Moyn, the Yale professor, worked on Kosovo policy during the war in a junior White House position. He believed they were doing the right thing but would come to change his mind in a few short years.

The thing we really missed is that, when you argue for illegal interventions for humanitys sake, youre allowing pretexts for future actors, he says. We didnt reckon with the enormous risk at the time and it was incurred soon after.

In 2001, the world pulled the rug out from under liberals interventionists feet. The 9/11 attacks, and the George W. Bush administrations aggressive response, turned American attention away from genocide and toward terrorism a move that would lead liberal interventionists in a disastrous direction.

Bushs wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not textbook liberal interventions. Both were primarily justified on traditional security grounds, first and foremost combating the threat from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. They were masterminded and implemented not by liberals but by neoconservatives and right-wing hawks.

Yet to build support for the war, the administration invoked liberal concerns, like the Talibans abuse of women and Saddams gassing of Iraqs Kurds in the city of Halabja. And it worked. Leading liberal interventionists in the Democratic Party, academia, the media, and Washington think tanks bought in casting war on terror hawkery not as a break with the interventionism of the 1990s but as its logical extension.

Thanks to the courage and bravery of Americas military and our allies, hope is being restored to many women and families in much of Afghanistan. ... [Womens rights] are universal values which we have a responsibility to promote throughout the world, and especially in a place like Afghanistan, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton wrote in a 2001 op-ed in Time.

Morally, there is no significant difference between Halabja and Srebrenica, New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier wrote in March 2003, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq. Unlike the villain of Srebrenica, the villain of Halabja is in the position to perpetrate the same atrocity again, and worse. How can any liberal, any individual who associates himself with the party of humanity, not count himself in this coalition of the willing?

But it wasnt just that they passively accepted Bushs claims: Its that they developed their own elaborate arguments for Iraq and the war on terrorism, couched in fully liberal terms.

Books by leading liberal hawks, like scholar Paul Bermans Terror and Liberalism and New Republic editor Peter Beinarts A Fighting Faith, argued that radical Islam was a civilizational challenge to liberalism the next great battle after fascism and communism. The messianic liberal energies once focused on genocide prevention became redirected toward defeating jihadism and spreading democracy in the Muslim world.

Americas destiny is literally at stake, then-Sen. Joe Biden said in a speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The overwhelming obligation of the next president is clear: Make America stronger, make America safer, and win the death-struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism.

But the war in Iraq swiftly proved disastrous. Hundreds of thousands died as a result of the US invasion, which uncovered no weapons of mass destruction. Instead of stabilizing the region and promoting democracy, it gave birth to ISIS and a fragile Iraqi state few wanted to emulate. During the conflict, American troops committed atrocities including mass murder and torture that undermined US claims to moral superiority. Meanwhile, Bush neglected the occupation of Afghanistan; Osama bin Laden escaped and the Taliban reconstituted itself, evolving into an effective and deadly insurgency by the time Bush left office.

Ben Rhodes, who would become one of Obamas leading foreign policy advisers, began his career in in the midst of the early-2000s war fervor a 24-year-old pissed off about 9/11, as he puts it. Like most Democrats, he bought into the notion that the war on terrorism would be a generational endeavor only to have his faith shattered when Bush, backed by the bulk of the national security establishment, used this premise as a justification for the invasion of Iraq.

I never got over that, Rhodes tells me. It was a warning sign to me that you could put an intellectual framework around anything, even something as manifestly dumb as invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and then occupying it.

The catastrophe in Iraq and the long quagmire in Afghanistan undermined two fundamental liberal interventionist premises. First, that America could be trusted to attack the right targets that liberal ideals would not be abused to justify unjust wars. Second, that defeating murderous tyrants would produce better humanitarian outcomes.

These twin lessons played a pivotal role in the decline of liberal interventionism. Barack Obama won the 2008 Democratic primary in no small part because he had opposed the Iraq War from the outset while Hillary Clinton, infamously, had supported it. It was a sign of the hawkish tides waning, of the rise of a more cautious spirit on the center left.

But liberal interventionism wasnt quite extinguished yet. As president, Obama surged troops into Afghanistan in an effort to defeat the rising Taliban insurgency. When faced with a potential mass slaughter in the Libyan city of Benghazi in 2011, he chose to launch a Kosovo-style intervention multilateral, primarily airpower, no large-scale postwar American occupation.

The US and its allies not only stopped the conquest of Benghazi but also toppled Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi arguably exceeding their UN mandate in doing so. And there was no subsequent quagmire as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the war was hardly an unmitigated success. Shortly after Qaddafis fall, Libya degenerated into violence and civil conflict. It became an anarchic and violent place, a weakly governed space exploited by jihadist militants one that remains unstable today.

Its possible likely, in my view that Libya would have been even worse off absent US intervention. But for Obama and many liberals, the war was proof that even a light footprint intervention typically isnt worth the costs. Rhodes recalls a conversation with Obama about intervening in Syrias civil war that crystallized where liberalism had moved to by the mid-2010s:

After Libya, I remember sitting in the Situation Room saying, We have to consider doing more [in Syria]. And Obama was in the meeting and he was like, What do we do, Ben? with some exasperation ... he was very easily leading me to the logical conclusion that any limited intervention would either accomplish nothing or lead to a much more significant intervention, for which there was absolutely no political support and was likely to fail in the same way that Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya did.

When it comes to liberal interventionism in the Obama years, Rhodes believes that Libya ended all of it. The refusal to intervene in Syria, followed by Bidens Afghanistan withdrawal, were more steps down the same path toward a new posture among liberals.

After the catastrophes in the Middle East, the most prominent liberal interventionists went in different directions.

Power and Rice are both serving in the Biden administration, but neither works on military or defense policy: Power is the head of USAID while Rice runs Bidens Domestic Policy Council.

Other hawks are once again warning of alleged existential threats to liberalism, albeit from a different corner: Wieseltier and Berman have both evolved into critics of cancel culture and the alleged excesses of the left. Still others, like Beinart and Moyn, have spent years grappling with what they now see as the terrible mistakes of the 1990s and 2000s, becoming influential skeptics in debates over the US use of force.

But on the whole, what was once a vital intellectual and political movement has dissolved. No one event illustrates this more clearly than Biden, who voted for the Iraq War, supervising Americas withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Some liberal interventionists, like the Atlantics George Packer, attacked the Biden withdrawal, as did many straight news reporters and Washington think tank denizens. But most of these objections focused on either the withdrawals execution, like a failure to evacuate Afghan allies quickly enough, or national security concerns (like the terrorist threat posed by a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan).

The liberal move away from interventionism is not solely the result of Americas Middle Eastern misadventures. It is also a reaction to deeper transformations in global politics.

First, the United States is no longer unrivaled in the way it was when the Berlin Wall fell. Russias invasion of Ukraine, intervention in Syria, and meddling in the 2016 election refocused American attention on its old enemy. Even more important, the rise of China suggested that America might actually face a peer competitor in the future a rising power that, unlike Russia, might be able to overtake America in global influence.

Russian and Chinese assertiveness has led official Washington to refocus on great power competition: a foreign policy primarily concerned with US relations with large rivals rather than the internal affairs of smaller, strategically marginal states. In this paradigm, some liberals began to see wars for human rights as a costly distraction aligning with realists in a renewed emphasis on traditional power politics.

I dont actually think that the failures of foreign policy in the Middle East alone were enough to catalyze this shift against interventionism, says Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank. I think its the rise of China, and more broadly the fact that America is in relative decline ... that is where we start hearing some talk of constraints.

Biden invoked this concern, quite explicitly, in his speech justifying the Afghanistan withdrawal: Our true strategic competitors China and Russia would love nothing more than the United States to continue to funnel billions of dollars in resources and attention into stabilizing Afghanistan indefinitely.

But its not just Russia and China that have doomed liberal interventionism. American liberals now face a threat closer to home: Donald Trump, an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party, and the rise of illiberal populism inside democratic states.

The shock of far-right populism did not just undermine the sense of destiny that motivated liberal global ambitions in the 1990s. It also made liberals acutely aware that the great ideological battle of today would not be waged abroad but at home. Liberalism, on the offensive since the Cold War, has been backfooted by far-right populism.

How can a country that has January 6 fix Afghanistan? Rhodes asks, referring to the insurrection at the US Capitol.

Its a question that captures the shifting mood among liberals and the rise of fortress liberalism. Twenty years after 9/11, liberals are deprioritizing the spread of liberal values in favor of protecting them where they are already in place.

Rather than wasting its still considerable power on quixotic bids to restore the liberal order or remake the world in its own image, the United States should focus on what it can realistically achieve, Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Lissner, both current Biden NSC staffers, wrote in a 2019 Foreign Affairs essay.

Fortress liberalism is not a clean break from what came before it. Biden, for example, has been quite clear on his willingness to use force against terrorists around the world.

While the door may still be open to future liberal interventions, it is clear that liberal interventionism as a doctrine that American military policy should be oriented around stopping genocide and spreading liberal values has been supplanted.

But for all its errors and they were myriad and massive liberal interventionism did contain a core insight worth preserving: that a life is no less valuable because it is lived outside Americas borders.

The greatest sins of American foreign policy have not been the result of an excess of concern for foreign life but a lack of it. From the genocide of Indigenous peoples to the transatlantic slave trade to imperialism in Latin America to Cold War-era support for mass murders and torturers, America has a long and horrifying track record of sacrificing people on the altar of its own economic and strategic interests.

Liberal interventionists were right to recoil from this past and seek something better. But they were too quick to conclude that the solution was moralized militarism to see the use of American might against manifestly bad actors as righteous rather than dangerous.

Preserving the moral outlook of 90s liberal interventionism while abandoning its militarism means discharging our moral duties to non-Americans through nonviolent means: leading the world in the fight against climate change, opening Americas doors to many more refugees, and sending humanitarian aid to the worlds impoverished.

It also means recognizing the toll that any war, however just-seeming, has on civilians and, as a result, opposing the use of force as anything but a last resort under truly desperate circumstances.

Liberal interventionism barely had a pulse these past few years; Bidens withdrawal is less its formal end than a long, drawn-out coda. Todays liberals do seem to have internalized at least one key lesson from its failures: concluding, as John Quincy Adams put it, that America should not survey the world in search of monsters to destroy.

But they should also remember the second half of Adamss formulation: that the United States must also proclaim the inextinguishable rights of human nature and the only lawful foundations of government, that wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.

Go here to read the rest:

9/11, the war on terror, and the death of liberal interventionism in Afghanistan and Iraq - Vox.com

The polarized views on just about every political and cultural issue in America have been underscored again in a new study from the non-partisan Pew Research Center. The study reveals a Grand Canyon-sized gap between Republican and Democratic perspectives on the national news media.

Just five years ago, 70 percent of Republicans said they had at least some trust in national news organizations.In 2021, that share has been cut in half, with just 35 percent feeling the same way.

Meanwhile, Democrats are peachy keen on what they're seeing and hearing from the national news media, with 78 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying they have "a lot" or "some" trust in the Fourth Estate nationally. When breaking down the numbers between self-identified liberals and conservatives, the gap widens to 53 points. Eighty-three percent of liberal Democrats have at least some trust in the national media, while just 30 percent of conservative Republicans do.

Pew's findings arent an outlier. A 2020 deep dive from Gallup showed that Democrats trust in the media approached record highs during the Trump presidency, while among GOP voters it fell to an all-time low.

I asked longtime media observer and 14-time Emmy-winning journalist Bernie Goldberg whats behind these numbers.

Goldberg explained that the reason Democrats and liberals trust the mainstream media is that their values are reflected by said media. So, if you're a liberal and see your liberal values masquerading as straight news, you're perfectly happy.

The reason conservatives aren't happy is that most of the news comes from liberal news organizations, said the author of the 2001 New York Times bestseller Bias:A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News.

Almost all of the major news organizations have a liberal slant to their coverage of stories, and certainly on their editorial page, he explained. So, Republicans and conservatives see bias. And liberals see honesty. But liberals are wrong, and conservatives are right, in this particular case."

To Goldberg's point, for conservatives, the sentiment you hear is consistent: Too many journalists incorporate their own opinions and biases into straight news reporting. And since most of the national political media is based in Manhattan (very liberal) and Washington, D.C. (extremely liberal), it's almost impossible for conformity and groupthink not to steer the perspectives left by those who seem to have gotten into the business not to report but to advocate.

The recent Reporting on the new Texas abortion law is a prime example of advocacy in action, as noted in an op-ed published by the non-profit Poynter Institute for Media Studies."Texas Abortion Law Leads To Emotional Media Moments in a Busy News Day," reads its headline before noting CNN anchor Kate Bolduan's report on the new law.

[It] led to some emotional moments in the media coverage, including this from CNNs Kate Bolduan," Poynter notes. "She opened 'At This Hour' by saying, 'Lets just be real. The very same people in the very same state who say, Dont you dare tell me to wear a mask, the same people who say that is government overreach because it violates individual freedoms those very same people clearly are saying now, Never mind when it comes to my body and the medical decisions that I make with the advice of my doctor. Now that choice is totally fair game, apparently, to be taken out of my hand and dictated now by a bunch of politicians. That is hypocrisy. This is hypocrisy, the definition of.

Note: Bolduan is not an opinion host or pundit. She is the anchor of a daytime news program. Yet there she was, hammering home her feelings on the matter with lots of emotion and no ambiguity.

Any conservatives or independents who were watching may not have enjoyed being lectured to, either. According to Gallup, 49 percent of American adults consider themselves pro-choice, while 47 percent say they're pro-life. In 2019, just 46 percent called themselves pro-choice while 49 percent identified as pro-life.(And in case youre wondering, despite how the issue is often presented, women and men hold almost identical views on abortion.)

If the goal is to alienate half your audience on an issue, this is a textbook way to accomplish that.

Many hyperbolic reactions could be found on Twitter, too.

Texas turned back the clock not just 50 years to Roe v Wade (1973) but nearly 140 years to the enactment of the KKK Act (1883).

Who is gonna invade Texas to liberate women and girls

Welp we're about 12 hrs till Texas' 6 week abortion ban takes effect. An emergency petition is at SCOTUS & if the Justices don't act they will have effectively reversed Roe on the shadow docket.

I can honestly say that in 10 years as a repro journalist I don't know what's next.

It wasn't always this way, of course. Back in 1976 and the post-Watergate reporting era the days of Cronkite and Brinkley and Mudd 63 percent of Republicans trusted the media "a great deal" or a "fair amount," compared to 72 percent of independents and 77 percent of Democrats. A tiny gap compared to today.

Today, most political journalists hold liberal views and vote for and give money to liberal political candidates.

Most conservatives don't trust the media.Most Democrats do.With studies and analyses like these, it's easy to see why.

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist for The Hill.

Read more here:

The media trust gap between conservatives and liberals continues to grow. Here's why | TheHill - The Hill

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Americans are witnessing a self-destructive meltdown by the liberal media never seen before as Black and Hispanic Americanshave begun to join the ranks of the Conservative Movement in record numbers. Liberal media now seeks more creative ways to attack conservative Black Americans as the old, tired terms like "Uncle Tom" and "sellout" are no longer effective. Liberal mediaspropensityto target, bully, and intimidate this growing group of non-monolithic thinkers has given way to new, dirtier tactics.

The strategy of the Los Angeles Times and others is a bit bewildering, however. In its recent attack on Black American and California gubernatorial candidate, Larry Elder, it first accused Elder of being "the face of White Supremacy," then came the narrative that he is a "White minstrel dressed in blackface," and finally, because hes a Black conservative, Elder is supposedly incapable of thinking for himself. Larry Elder is not only capable of independent thinking but, as an author, documentarian, and radio host, he is one of the mostrespected"thought leaders" in our countryregardless of race.This is simply unacceptable to the progressive Left and its media cohorts.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carsons success as a world-renowned brain surgeon, best-selling author, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom was not sufficient enough to keep his character and intellect from being attacked.He was accused by the Huffington Post of embracing White Supremacy followed by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., demeaning insult that he didnt have "the intelligence" to be HUD Secretary.

Condoleezza Rice graduated from University of Denver at 16 years old, was professor of political science at Stanford University, served on the National Security Council for President George W. Bush, was the first Black female to serve as Secretary of State, and the first female to serve as National Security Adviser.

NEWSOM RALLY SPEAKER CALLS LARRY ELDER 'A BLACK FACE ON WHITE SUPREMACY'

However, during her tenure with the Bush administration, John Sylvester, the program director and morning personality on WTDY-AM in Madison, Wisconsin called her "Aunt Jemima." He added that Rice wasnt competent to serve as Secretary of State.

When asked by many in the Black community and conservative critics to apologize, he doubled down by planning a giveaway on his show of Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup. "I will apologize to Aunt Jemima," Sylvester told the Associated Press. He also referred to Colin Powell as an "Uncle Tom" at a time Powell was considered by many to be a conservative.

Earlier this year, the progressive Salt Lake Tribune in Utah, shamelessly and unapologetically compared me to the White Supremacist hate group the Ku Klux Klan for bringing attention to the crisis on our southern border.

LARRY ELDER COULD MAKE HISTORY AS CALIFORNIA'S FIRST BLACK GOVERNOR

It was the KKK, during my southern upbringing, that was responsible for lynching thousands of Black Americans. Ironically, this same "woke" paper presently does not employ any BlackAmericans in a leadership role.This hypocrisy is not lost on Black conservatives who the intolerant progressive media attack incessantly.

The present narrative now perpetrated by the LA Times, the Tribune, and others like them beckons us once again to the era of Jim Crow. Then it was acceptedas fact that intelligent, courageous, and articulate voices could only reside within the White race. It was during this era of Jim Crow that I entered the National Football League.

THE TRUMP FACTOR: NEWSOM SPOTLIGHTS FORMER PRESIDENT IN CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL RECALL ELECTION

The New York Jets drafted me in 1973 at a time when integration in professional sports was on an upswing. But it was also a time when certain team positions and leadership honorsrequiringintellectual and thinking skills were set-aside for "White players only." This included Team Captain honors and "leadership" positions such as quarterback, center, middle linebacker, and free safety. These coveted positions were mostly granted only to White NFL players.

It was due to the influence of Al Daviss Oakland Raiders, a culturebuilt solely on meritocracy, that the NFLs prioritiesevolvedmaking this Jim Crow practice impractical. It was finally called out for what it was: racist. During the height of Raiders dominance, it boasted the first Hispanic Coach, Tom Flores, and the first to win a Super Bowl, the first Hispanic quarterback, Jim Plunkett, to earn Super Bowl Most Valuable Player honors, later the first Black Head Coach, Art Shell, and the NFLs firstfemale CEO, Amy Trask.

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Due to visionaries like Davis and decades of patriotic military leaders who prioritized meritocracy over Affirmative Action, the era of divisive Jim Crow in sports finally ended. Unfortunately, now it is the liberal media, in its desperate quest to belittle conservative Black American men and women, that is once again forcing the narrative of Black intellectual inferiority back into the public forum. These are predominantly White liberal pundits who insinuate that it is impossible for Black Americans to articulate coherent conservative thoughts.This same "soft-bigotry of low expectations" is now being messaged by the Democrat Party.

Whats evident in the race-based attacks on conservative Black Americans is the underlying theme of media outlets like the L.A. Times and the Salt Lake Tribune: intelligent and engaging ideological positions cannot possibly emanate from Black Americans, at least if those thoughts are not in lock-step alignment with their liberal views. If we dare to have an independent thought, the conclusion is there must be a White American pulling the strings. This is the very definition of "Jim Crow" racism.

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Unfortunately for the increasingly racist liberal media, the American people have no more tolerance for the intolerant. "We the People" are tired of elitists telling us what and how to think.

If more leaders and visionaries in the mold of Oaklands Al Davis step forward and step up, Americans will soon see a day when the liberal media is rendered obsolete like the Jim Crow laws of the past.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM REP. BURGESS OWENS

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Rep. Burgess Owens: California Newsom recall, Larry Elder and the liberal media's return to Jim Crow - Fox News

There's been considerable chatter over the past few years about the crisis of democracy sometimes more clinically described as a "democratic recession" or "democratic deficit." And for good reason: When Donald Trump stripped the flesh off the American body politic, he revealed a disease that has become endemic throughout the so-called Western world.

Faith in the power and goodness of democratic self-governance, previously as unchallenged and ubiquitous as belief in God during the Middle Ages, has decayed into the empty, hopeful rituals of the Anglican Church. Even those who insist they still believe are clearly troubled: Supposedly democratic elections are too often won by overtly anti-democratic or authoritarian leaders, and too often result in governments that ignore what the public actually wants and pursue policies that blatantly favor the rich and powerful and make inequality worse. (As, in fairness, nearly all governments tend to do.)

But the important question is not whether this is happening the answer is obvious but why. Trump and Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbn and Jair Bolsonaro and Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Rodrigo Duterte and all the other pseudo-democratic usurpers around the world didn't arise out of nothing. To suggest that they all simultaneously tapped into a current of know-nothing darkness and bigotry and moral weakness that has been there under the surface of society all along, like undiscovered crude oil, is not a remotely adequate historical or political explanation.

To see so many marginal democracies tumble into the abyss and a great many well-established ones tiptoe right to the edge suggests that something else is going on, a deeper pattern we aren't ready or willing to look at. That deeper pattern isn't just a crisis of democracy in the narrow sense, meaning a system or mechanism for selecting hypothetically representative leaders, because that itself is a symptom or symbol. It's about the failure of liberalism, which is an especially confusing word in the American context but in larger historical and philosophical terms describes the amorphous and often contradictory set of beliefs that supports democracy and without which democracy becomes impossible or meaningless.

Liberalism, in that broader sense, has dominated an increasing proportionof the world since the early 20th century and virtually the whole planet since the end of the Cold War. It's atradition that included (until very recently) both the conventional left and the conventional right in the United States and most other Western-style democratic nations. It's not so much a coherent philosophy as a basket of principles, many of which are frequently in conflict: Free trade and the primacy of the capitalist "free market," the expansion of civil rights and civil liberties, freedom of the press and artistic expression, universal equality before the law and a contested role for the state, which is sometimes highly interventionist and sometimes much more hands-off.

To put it mildly, there'sbeen a lot of disagreement within the liberal tradition about which of those principles is most important. Old-school "classical liberals," for example, eventually became known as conservatives or libertarians, while the "new liberals" divided into camps most often described today as moderates and progressives. In the wake of World War II and then the Cold War, liberalism writ large began to imagine itself as the end stage of human history, promising a world in the infamous (and false) words of Thomas Friedman in which no two countries with McDonald's franchises would ever go to war.

But as two important recentbooks about the liberal tradition Pankaj Mishra's "Bland Radicals" and Louis Menand's "The Free World" argue in different ways, that confidence was hubristic, and liberalism had already undermined itself at its moment of apparent total victory. The most generous thing we can say is that liberalism sometimes delivered on some of its promises (and only to some people), but never came close to fulfilling all of them. As for the liberal tradition's willingness to accommodate heated internal debate, as well as to wrestle with its own errors and blind spots, that was seen (with some justice) as a defining virtue and was also, from the beginning, a critical weakness.

Most of the invigorating essays in Mishra's collection revolve around the insight that the disastrous failures of liberal foreign policy so vividly illustrated in Afghanistan over the last few weeks cannot be understood as aberrations or even contradictions. From the beginning, the liberal promise of expansive civil rights and ever-increasing prosperity (for the citizens of liberal nations) relied on overseas imperialism and ruthless exploitation, what we might today call the outsourcing of inequality. Furthermore, imposing Western-style liberal democracy on other nations (who were understandably uncertain it was a good idea) through coercion and bribery and outright force, if necessary was built into the model all along, even if that became embarrassing in the 20th century and had to be described with euphemisms about "freedom" and "self-government."

Menand's book is a sprawling, ambitious study of Western (and mostly American) culture during the Cold War years from the avant-garde to Elvis Presley, from academic literary criticism to "The Feminine Mystique" which could fairly be described as the greatest accomplishment of the liberal era. One of the central threads running through his history is the way this amazing cultural explosion began to pull the postwar liberal consensus apart, such that by the end of the Vietnam War, most American writers, artists and intellectuals saw themselves as enemies (or at least critics) of the American state, especially in terms of its global-superpower role.

In other words, while the crisis of electoral democracy seems to have appeared suddenly in the Euro-American backyard over the last 5 to 10 years, like a nasty invasive weed and is still viewed by many observers as an almost inexplicable phenomenon the implosion of the liberal order has been a long time coming. It's hard to see that clearly through the ideological haze, given that the media and political classes in the U.S. and most other Western nations (outside the far right and far left) remain steeped in a post-World War II worldview where some version of liberalism however much amended, repaired and clarified is the natural, inevitable and desirable order of things.

If liberalism remains the only paradigm available to resist the rise of Trump-style autocracy, as generally seems to be the case, then we're in deep trouble, and the dread so many of us feel about the inexorable erosion of democracy is fully justified. Does anyone today literally anyone possess the kind of universalist, upward-trending faith in liberal progress that drove the mythology of John F. Kennedy's brief presidency or the moral clarity of the civil rights movement?

In bizarre, upside-down fashion, Donald Trump's entire "Make America Great Again" campaign can be understood as a half-conscious attempt to rekindle that kind of collective passion, if only as ghoulish racist parody the liberal soul, transplanted to a fascist body. (Trump's most insane followers in the QAnon cult briefly convinced themselves that John F. Kennedy Jr. was still alive and would return as Trump's running mate or spirit animal or something.)

Only someone with a time machine could tell us whether it will be possible to redeem or renew the better aspects of the liberal tradition as a vibrant force against the rising tide of jingoism, tribalism and autocracy. What we can say right now is that every few years someone emerges on the world stage who is embraced by the media and political caste as the savior of liberalism or, worse yet, as the "transformational figure" who will overcome political paralysis and division and it never ends well. No doubt Bill Clinton and Tony Blair think it's profoundly unfair that they have been consigned to the dustbin of history just because they made catastrophic compromises with the forces of evil. Emmanuel Macron actually believed he could make friends with Donald Trump, and that hubris may also pave the way for the far right's return to power in France, for the first time since the Nazi occupation.

Let's consider the most famous example, whose lessons "liberal" Americans (in all senses of the word) have not yet begun to understand. In the United States we have told ourselves a more sophisticated version of the above-mentioned narrative about how the current of ignorance and darkness running beneath our society has endangered democracy. It possesses some historical plausibility and, almost by accident, is a little bit true. In that story, the election of Barack Obama which seemed to inaugurate a new era in American history and to symbolize a fulfillment of America's democratic promise triggered the benighted racists in flyover country so badly that they all flocked to the banner of a TV con man who ran for president on a platform of blatant white-supremacist fantasy.

There's something to that, as public opinion research makes clear: Overt racial hostility is the decisive marker between white people who voted for Trump and white people who didn't. But to view that as a linear, limited cause-and-effect equation is the most mechanical and ahistorical kind of pop psychology, not to mention massively condescending. Like nearly all political analysis in our perishing republic, it's focused on symbols and signifiers, and not at all on the actual substance of politics. Obama himself would surely tell you that if his presidency had been successful, it would not have provoked such intense antipathy among many working-class and middle-class white people in the heartland groups among which he did reasonably well in the 2008 election.

Obama came to office hoping to put an end to the era of red-blue political division and change the terms of American public discourse. Even his extensive post-presidential fanbase doesn't talk about that too much now, because it makes his entire project sound hilarious and doomed, like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. His utter and complete failure to do those things like all other failures of all other liberal politicians usually gets blamed on Republican intransigence, entrenched public prejudice or his own lack of Beltway backroom negotiating prowess. (Or just on Joe Lieberman.)

Biographers and political historians will chew on those factors for decades, no doubt. But to suggest that if this or that tactical or strategic decision had been made differently the Obama presidency might have had a different outcome and a less gruesome aftermath is to deliberately miss the deeper and more uncomfortable lesson.

Barack Obama was the most charismatic and eloquent political leader most of us will ever see. He won a landslide election (over a widely respected conservative war hero) as the last great defender of liberalism. His presidency failed because he was the last great defender of liberalism maybe, in retrospect, something like the Mikhail Gorbachev of liberalism not because Mitch McConnell was mean to him or because Revolutionary War cosplayers terrorized members of Obama's party into pretending they didn't even know him. Or rather, all those things amount to the same thing: Obama believed he could make us believe in the promise of liberalism again, but he couldn't because we don't, and because none of these golden-boy savior-hero types can ever do that. He tried and we tried, andit was a nicer exercise in nostalgia than the one that came afterward. So at least there's that.

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Beyond the crisis of democracy: Does anyone still believe in liberalism? - Salon

The most senior official in the House of Commons has agreed to launch a reviewinto whether there were issues with the government's handling of former Liberal candidate Raj Saini's case, according to a new letter obtained by CBC News

Saini ended his bid for re-election on Saturday after a series of allegations of unwanted sexual advances and inappropriate comments were made public. Saini denies the allegations as "unequivocally false" and said a workplace assessment by a third-party cleared him of any harassment in the summer of 2020.

Trudeau stood behind Saini for days,as well as the government's "rigorous" process before reversing course this weekend. Trudeau said on Sunday there were new allegations that came forward and Sainiwill no longer be running under the Liberal banner.

Conservative candidate Michelle Rempel Garner last weekcalled on the clerk of the House of Commons, Charles Robert, to probe whether that process was conducted properly, since the complainant who triggered a 2020workplace assessment of Saini's office said she was not interviewed.

Rempel Garner also asked Robertto look into MPs' workplace harassment policy to determine if it is sufficient to stop the "culture of sexual misconduct" on ParliamentHill and ensure that those in power are held accountable.

Robert confirmed in a letter to Rempel Garner yesterday that he has taken action.

"In answer to your request, I have asked the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) to examine the matters raised in your letter to assess whether there are any shortcomings present in the Policy or its application and to propose appropriate changes, if needed," wrote Robert in the letter.

Robert wrote that the results of the evaluation and any recommendations will be presented to a parliamentary committee, but he didn't provide a date.

"You can be assured that I share your commitment to providing a healthy and respectful work environment free from harassment to all employees who come on Parliament Hill to work in service to their country," Robertwrote in his response to Rempel Garner.

CBC News reported the allegations against Sainion Aug. 31, after seven sources with knowledge of the complaints spoke about four different instances of the then member of Parliament allegedly making unwanted sexual advances or inappropriate comments toward Liberal staffers.

Sources said a senior member of the government first brought concerns about allegations at a Liberal holiday party six years ago to the Prime Minister's Office and Justin Trudeau's chief of staff, Katie Telford.

Trudeau said on Sunday he was "pretty frustrated' by the scandal.

"Obviously, this is a far from ideal situation that we no longer have any candidate in that riding," said Trudeau. "There's going to be lots of reflections on what we could, should have done differently."

The senior staffer who said she wasn't allowed to participate in the review filed a Canadian Human Rights Commission complaint last year alleging that Saini touched her thigh on more than one occasion, made inappropriate comments and harassed her. Fearing career reprisals, she asked CBC News to keep her identity confidential.

She alleges Saini's treatment contributed to her mental distress. She said she tried to take her own life by overdosing on pills in Saini's office in March 2020.

Saini said he got the police involved over concerns for his own safety. The former senior staffer sent repeated text messages and emails to Saini while on sick leave, demanding he apologize or else she'd sue, go to HR or make her accusations public, according to correspondence shared with CBC News.

Saini and Liberal whip Mark Holland's office said in 2020 that the staffer could participate in a workplace assessment when she returned from sick leave, but was dismissed from her job with cause.

In the dismissal letter, the House of Commons said she engaged in a"pattern of persistent and incessant communications that you refused to cease" and "also made unwelcome and disparaging comments toward the MP and staff, all of which have now required police intervention."

Rempel Garner wrote to Robert saying that what took place "does not actually sound like an actual investigation" was conducted and wondering if the "policy is sufficient and actually works."

The deadline to file nomination forms with Elections Canada has already passed, meaning the Liberals will not be able to field another candidate in the riding and Saini, who won the seat in 2019 by almost 6,000 votes ahead of Green Party candidate Mike Morrice, will remain on the ballot.

Trudeau said Saini will not be a member of the Liberal Party caucus regardless of what happens election day.

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House of Commons agrees to probe workplace review involving embattled former Liberal candidate Raj Saini - CBC.ca

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Why would the party make choices when it can say yes to everything?

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The Liberal party has so embraced increasing the size of government that even the appearance of principles to justify profligacy has been abandoned. After nearly doubling the size of public debt while in power, the partys platform promises to grow the budget by another $78 billion, with new revenue to cover hardly a third. Barely any of this new spending would be in service of a coherent set of beliefs honestly held about the role of government. When faced with two competing, or even contradictory, policy options aimed at achieving the same goal, the Liberals will inevitably refuse to decide and instead choose both.

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Take the pledge of $10-a-day daycare, estimated to cost $30 billion over five years and accounting for nearly 40 per cent of all new costs outlined in the platform. Ignore for the moment that existing provincial subsidies for lower-income families already bring expenses dramatically down, or that given already high levels of female participation in the workforce, any gains are likely to disappoint.

That is, whatever the merits of the policy, the Liberal daycare plan would, at least, appear to represent a clear vision of government, a well defined philosophy, that daycare is too important to be left to the market and that standardized care overseen by public authorities is the best way to deliver that service, regardless of income level and absent the involvement of (greedy) capitalists.

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And the plan indeed would represent a clear position favouring state planning, except the Liberals have already implemented a competing market-based approach to daycare. After forming government in 2015, the Liberals expanded direct payments to families from $160 per child per month to as much as $530 per month, payments that have since grown to as high as $570. Direct support to parents for daycare assumes that they are in the best position to determine how to spend those dollars, particularly important for families who opt for care arrangements outside a rigid Monday to Friday daytime schedule.

Previous elections were fought along these two competing approaches, standardized care versus direct payments, planning against markets. In 2015, the Liberals argued their direct-payments policy was more fiscally responsible than the NDP proposal to bring in a national system for $15-a-day daycare, even calling the NDP plan to pay for it a mirage. The Liberals have now, of course, decided that being responsible no longer matters and are implementing both policies at the same time. In fact, the current Liberal proposal for a national daycare system is more generous than the one they panned six years ago. Why choose when you can just say yes to everything?

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Another example is the Liberal approach to climate change. The idea of a carbon tax was initially conceived as a more efficient, market-based policy intended to bring emissions down, while avoiding the often suffocating effects of regulation. By working within the price system, a carbon tax is a less intrusive way to allocate resources towards more environmentally friendly products and practices.

However, rather than being used as a substitute for regulation, the Liberal carbon tax was implemented alongside other new rules, such as a more onerous development review process for pipelines and other resource projects. The current Liberal platform would regulate industry further still with promises to make sure oil companies cap emissions, bring in clean electricity standards and, incredibly, mandate that every new car or passenger truck sold in Canada be electric by 2035, while the carbon tax will continue to grow.

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The Liberal tendency to avoid decisions by implementing all ideas was also evident during the pandemic. When workers were being laid off by the thousands, there was a spirited debate about whether the government should support people directly with payments to individuals, or indirectly with payments to businesses. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals chose both options, and in equally large measures such that many got payments they didnt need and many private companies redirected their payments often to bonuses for executives.

What enables the Liberals to take multiple expensive, and often opposing, policy paths is a refusal to treat public debt as anything but imaginary. Faced with the option to either raise taxes enough to cover expenses or cut spending, the Liberals again refuse to choose and in this case instead of choosing both, they choose neither.

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When Stephen Harper left office after nearly a decade in power, he had cut federal revenues by 15 per cent as a proportion of GDP. At the time, in a long essay for Policy Options, former Harper advisers Ken Boessenkool and Sean Speer argued that this left Ottawa with much less room to spend and that the incoming Liberal government and subsequent governments would be constrained. Harpers plan of making Canada a more conservative country had prevailed.

That thesis hasnt aged well now that the government of the day has simply decided that revenues dont matter and debt is of no consequence.

This is not a liberal party in the original sense of the word. Nor is it a democratic socialist party, which would at least imply consistency and principle in its programs. If the Liberal party is guided by any principles at all, it is the principle of government for its own sake.

National Postcjerema@postmedia.comTwitter.com/carsonjerema

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Carson Jerema: The Trudeau Liberals only philosophy is to spend, spend and spend some more - National Post

An estimated $10.8-billion of banks excess cash could be claimed by the government if the Liberals are re-elected and proceed with their tax plan.

Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail

A Liberal Party campaign pledge to raise taxes on large banks and insurers is weighing on the share prices of large financial institutions and creating uncertainty for investors expecting a windfall from bumper profits the sector has earned so far this year.

Shareholders have been waiting for the banking regulator to lift temporary restrictions on dividend increases and stock buybacks. But if the Liberals are re-elected, their promised tax hikes could eat into the excess cash banks have to dole out to investors.

The share prices of many of Canadas major banks and insurance companies have fallen between 2 per cent and 4 per cent since Aug. 25, when the Liberals pledged that if they are returned to government, they will increase corporate tax rates on the largest banks and insurers and collect a special fee from financial institutions that have a pretax income of more than $1-billion. The broader stock market has risen by 1 per cent over the same period.

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The retreat clipped what has otherwise been a strong run for bank stocks. Before the Liberals unveiled their proposals, shares in the six biggest banks had gained 21 per cent to 43 per cent so far in 2021, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

A lack of clarity about how the Liberals would carry out the promise has fed into a wider sense of uncertainty about whether banks will face a tougher regulatory environment no matter which party wins the Sept. 20 election.

Other parties have also targeted Corporate Canada. The Conservatives have promised to get tougher on large companies by closing tax loopholes and ordering the Competition Bureau investigate bank fees, while the NDP has pledged to raise corporate taxes across the board and add a temporary tax on excess profits generated because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Liberals have also pledged to require banks to reduce fees such as the ones they charge merchants on credit-card transactions.

Trudeau targets banks, promises surtax on profits

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Scotia Capital Inc. analyst Meny Grauman wrote in a note to clients in late August that regulatory risk is rising for the banks, and remains the most significant risk to bank shares after COVID. The Liberal proposals brought this topic to the front pages, he added, but we view it as a broader issue.

The Liberals expect their promised policy would raise about $2.5-billion a year over the next four years, divided fairly evenly between the increased tax rate, which would be permanent, and the temporary fee, which they call the Canada recovery dividend.

We believe that this is a significant negative development for the earnings outlook of the Canadian banks and insurance companies, Barclays analyst John Aiken said in a note to clients the day of the Liberal announcement.

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The Liberals say their Canada recovery dividend would raise $1.3-billion to $1.5-billion annually for four years, but the platform does not explain how as details would have to be hammered out with Canadas banking regulator. A Liberal official confirmed the party has not yet decided how to determine each financial institutions share or whether it would be measured against earnings, revenue, capital or another financial metric. The Globe is not naming the official because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the proposal.

With few details to guide them, investors and analysts are trying to estimate the potential impact to shareholder payouts if billions of dollars in bank profits could be diverted to the coffers of a re-elected Liberal government.

Earnings reported by Canadas banks have more than recovered from lows reached earlier in the pandemic, with pretax income hitting $70-billion in the past 12 months through July 31, up 47 per cent from the depressed 12 months the year before. Earnings initially fell as banks set aside billions of dollars in reserves to cover potential loan losses that have largely not occurred. Now, most banks have released about 40 per cent of those provisions, boosting their quarterly profits.

So far, not much of that good fortune has gone to banks shareholders because of a moratorium on dividend increases and share buybacks the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) imposed in March, 2020. Analysts expect the regulator could lift that restriction as soon as October, as banks close the fiscal year. Some banks have said that they would likely respond with larger, catch-up dividend increases to return to their typical payout ratios, and resume spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying back shares on the public markets.

If the Liberals are re-elected and proceed with their tax plan, however, an estimated $10.8-billion of banks excess cash could be claimed by the government. The Liberals propose permanently raising the corporate income tax rate from 15 per cent to 18 per cent on the portion of bank and insurance-company earnings over $1-billion. That would raise $5.3-billion over four years, according to an estimate reviewed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

The balance rests on the recovery dividend, which would raise a projected $1.3-billion in each of its first two years, and $1.5-billion by its fourth and final year, adding a further $5.5-billion to government revenues by 2025-26.

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If implemented, the higher tax rate would apply only to corporate income earned in Canada. All of the countrys six largest banks Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and National Bank of Canada would be subject to the higher tax because they earn far more than $1-billion in Canadian profits each year.

Manulife Financial Inc., Sun Life Financial Inc. and Great-West Life Insurance Co. would likely be subject to the added tax, while Intact Financial Corp. and iA Financial Group might also qualify. Canadas insurance holding companies often have multiple insurance subsidiaries and it is still unclear whether the Liberal proposal would be applied at the parent-company level, which would collect more taxes.

For example, iA Financial spokesman Pierre Picard said the company believes, in the absence of detailed legislation, that the proposal would not affect our business at this time, because the profits of each of its insurance companies are below $1-billion. Investors, however, have sent iA shares down 2.9 per cent since Aug. 25.

National Bank analyst Gabriel Dechaine used 2019 Canadian earnings the last full year before COVID-19, to represent a normal year of profits to estimate the potential impact to future profits. He found the corporate tax increase alone would, on average, reduce major banks earnings per share (EPS) by about 2 per cent. (The impact on the insurers was negligible, with EPS dropping by less than one-half of one per cent for the four insurers he examined.)

Based on 2019 profit levels, Mr. Dechaine estimates RBC would have the largest increase to its tax bill, at $437-million, or 2.7 per cent of total earnings, if the Liberal proposal becomes policy. TD and Scotiabank would each pay an extra $200-million or more in taxes, while CIBC and BMO would pay at least $100-million more, and National Bank would owe about $68-million extra, according to Mr. Dechaines estimates.

Those figures do not account for the recovery dividend, which would more than double the financial impact, potentially reducing big banks total earnings by 4 per cent to 5 per cent relative to prepandemic levels.

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Liberal officials say the partys tax-and-dividend election promise is modest given the banks strong financial performance through the crisis. Increased profits, however, are what drive regular dividend increases as investors anxiously await their turn to share in the banks recent earnings boom.

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Liberal campaign promise for new bank tax tempers investor expectations - The Globe and Mail

The former leader, who is widely seen as a decent, smart and dignified man, was urged to build relationships with MPs and change his leadership style following an unsuccessful coup attempt in March.

He hired a new chief of staff, laid out new policies and stepped up attacks on the Premier and the government.

However, he continued to alienate his colleagues, according to MPs. This included barely speaking to or acknowledging the March coup leaders Brad Battin, Ryan Smith and Richard Riordan.

As he ignored them, they had regular conversations over winter with Matthew Guys supporters to heal differences and strike a deal to roll the leader, out of sight of the small and less social group of MPs Mr OBrien relies on as his eyes and ears.

The power lines furore highlighted the tinderbox environment inside the opposition. MPs on thin margins, who fear an electoral wipeout similar to that experienced by the WA Liberal opposition, became increasingly concerned that Mr OBriens policy agenda was philosophically inconsistent and flaccid.

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In late June two weeks after Mr Guy questioned whether border closures were turning the nation into a group of colonies Mr OBrien said the Andrews government should have shut the border to NSW sooner and avoided two removalists entering the state and spawning a COVID-19 outbreak.

The new hardline stance, which Mr OBrien revealed in an interview with The Age, was a departure from the oppositions frequent warnings against disproportionate public health measures. It provoked red-hot anger from MPs who represent border communities and within days the Herald Sun reported the border stance had prompted a renewed push against the leader.

MPs frustration over policy announcements extended to the most trivial of decisions. When the party room last month learnt of a proposed COVID compassion commissioner to champion Victorians and make kinder judgments on compassionate exemptions to public health rules, the position was quickly labelled the cuddle commissioner.

That champion should be the Opposition Leader, one MP said.

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Mr OBriens supporters believe the last month or two have been his best in the job and that he had begun to land some blows, but the die had been cast for months and MPs once loyal to him no longer trusted his decision-making.

Mr Guy is set to revisit the power lines policy to assuage the concerns of MPs and local councils. While praising the new leader for his political nous, one senior Liberal source warned his charm offensive in recent months could backfire as leader.

I dont know what he has promised his colleagues to get here, the source said. If he wants to win he needs good people around him to give him support; he doesnt need to be returning favours.

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Power lines and power plays: How the Liberal Party tinderbox exploded - The Age