Right-wing Italian leader’s party triumphs in local vote

Buoyed by a far-right ally, Matteo Salvini’s euroskeptic League party triumphed in voting in an Italian region where the left had held power for some 50 years, dealing a humiliating blow to the national government’s coalition parties.

Results Monday from balloting a day earlier for the governorship of Umbria, one of the country’s smallest regions, gave a coalition headed by Salvini and including the far-right Brothers of Italy party and former premier Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia party, a combined 57.5 percent of the votes.

Donatella Tesei, a League member and current senator who has served as mayor of a town in Umbria for 10 years, was elected governor.

A coalition anchored by the populist 5-Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party took a trouncing with a combined 37.5 percent.

Since early last month, the 5-Stars and the Democrats have governed Italy in an uneasy alliance of rivals formed by Premier Giuseppe Conte to keep Salvini from power.

The Umbria triumph shows that ‘‘Italians don’t like betrayals,’’ said an elated Salvini.

With the victory in the central region, the anti-migrant League continues to expand its influence southward from its northern power base.

Conte insisted the dismal result won’t affect his government’s viability.

The vote was a ‘‘test that shouldn’t be ignored at all,’’ Conte told reporters. But ‘‘we’re here to govern with courage and determination.’’

For sure, the results won’t help tensions between the 5-Stars and Democrats, who shelved bitter rivalries in order to govern together. The coalition came to power after a bad miscalculation by Salvini, who bolted from Conte’s first coalition, where the League and the Movement had governed for 15 months in a fractious alliance.

Salvini had hoped that by abandoning Conte he’d trigger early elections. But the 5-Stars and the Democrats ganged up on him, shutting him out of power, at least for now.

The Umbria outcome gives Salvini fresh momentum, as he plots his comeback nationally.

The League snared 36.9 percent of the vote, a huge jump compared with the 14 percent won in the previous Umbria election, while the Democrats tumbled to 22.3 percent, compared with 35.7 in the last election.

Eclipsing Berlusconi’s party as the second-biggest party on the right was Brothers of Italy, which has neo-fascist roots

The big losers were 5-Star, taking only 7.4 percent. The Movement’s embattled leader, Luigi Di Maio, blamed the defeat on teaming up regionally in Umbria with the Democrats. ‘‘This is an experiment that didn’t work,’’ he told Sky TG24 TV.

The governor of neighboring Tuscany, Enrico Rossi, warned his fellow Democrats against linking their fate on future campaign trails with the populists. In January, another long-time regional fortress of the left, Emilia Romagna, poses the next big electoral test.

‘‘This last-minute alliance between the 5-Star Movement and the PD (Democratic Party) doesn’t work, not even to keep the spread of Salvini at bay,’’ Rossi said.

SOURCE





Housing, Human Dignity and a ‘State of Emergency’

The push by Los Angeles officials to get Governor Newsom to declare a State of Emergency over homelessness is like a warning light flashing.

It draws our attention to a massive problem that people closed their eyes to for too long. But like any flashing light, the “State of Emergency” idea only helps us see part of the problem but not the whole—and ultimately it would deepen the quagmire and probably result in bigger and worse emergencies later.

Where the idea points in the right direction is easy to see: proponents of the State of Emergency rightly say it would streamline red tape on construction, reduce and shorten building approval processes, and block the frivolous use of environmental review to delay housing construction. That’s needed.

But let’s face it, here’s what’s really happening: First California passes laws that generate the crisis, then we declare a state of emergency to bypass those laws. But as a State of Emergency exemption, it’s an ad-hoc fix. It doesn’t address the systemic problem with the laws it sidesteps, and in fact it politicizes the whole situation further by allowing sensible construction only if political support for a formal Emergency can be cultivated.

But it gets worse. Some of the people who favor a State of Emergency also favor a so-called “legal right to shelter” which would create a basis to sue governments if they don’t directly provide housing to the poorest citizens. This would permanently turn the homeless into wards of the state and enrich those who would litigate on their behalf.

The homeless are indeed “victims of the system,” but not the system that most people think of. They are not victims of a free market in housing, because California has built a regulatory system that killed a free market in housing at all but the top price levels. Middle-income Californians are squeezed by this, too, but the most vulnerable Californians are pushed out on to the streets. The bottom rungs of the housing market ladder—where economically marginal citizens could once afford a place to live—have effectively been removed by bad public policy.

Let me give examples from a study soon to be published by the Independent Institute.

Los Angeles currently bans any housing other than detached single-family homes on about 75 percent of its residential land. Whereas in 1960 Los Angeles was zoned for up to 10 million people, by 1990 the city “had downzoned to a capacity of about 3.9 million, a number that is only slightly higher today,” according to the New York Times.

Then there are so-called “prevailing wage” (read: union scale) laws. Prevailing-wage mandates increased average California construction costs for affordable housing projects by between 10 percent and 25 percent, according to a May 2017 report from the California Center for Jobs and the Economy. In areas such as Los Angeles, PLAs could hike market-rate housing prices by as much as 46 percent. Then there are the endless faux-environmental lawsuits against residential construction, which are invited and inadvertently enabled by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). And the list of anti-housing obstacles goes on.

What the homeless really need is a residential construction market that operates by normal rules that induce entrepreneurs to build housing all the way up and down the price spectrum—not just at the top where they can afford to overcome the regulatory and NIMBY hurdles. Don’t give the homeless a “right to shelter” by government; instead, give property owners a “right to build residential housing” on land they own. No, this would not eliminate restrictions on residential building, but it would raise a much higher bar by which to justify them. A ballot initiative amending the California Constitution would be the way to achieve this potent reform.

Less dramatic reforms would make a difference, too. Allow builders to give homeowners’ associations incentives to accept new construction, so as to counterbalance the disincentives that lead to NIMBYism. Stop suppressing housing through rent controls and so-called “affordable housing” mandates; these are the functional equivalent of taxes on housing development. What you tax you get less of. Another obvious change would be to put an end to the favoritism shown to unions through “prevailing wage” rules that swell construction costs. And why not abolish or at least vastly modify CEQA?

The people who care the most about the homeless are those who want to reintroduce a real housing market—and incentivize nongovernmental programs that treat people like people rather than like dependent clients.

How can we expect the homeless to rebuild their lives when government programs warehouse them like surplus merchandise, and when we kick the bottom rungs out of the housing market ladder so that even if they start getting themselves together, they can’t find a room or apartment they can afford to rent?

SOURCE





Why These 6 Towns Became ‘Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn’

Abortion clinics can change the viewpoint of entire communities, a pastor who is working to outlaw abortion locally says.

So far, six towns in Texas have banned abortion clinics with his help, and cities and towns in other states have shown an interest in doing the same.

Pastor Mark Lee Dickson says he sees a difference, for example, between Shreveport, Louisiana, a large city where an abortion clinic operates, and places such as Waskom, Texas, where abortion culture hasn’t taken hold.

“It’s a view of life as a whole,” Dickson told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “If we can say a child is not worth living because they may be born in a poor environment, or a child is not worth living because their mother was raped, that encourages the idea that situations devalue us as human beings.”

Dickson, 34, is not only the pastor of SovereignLOVE Church in Longview, Texas, but also director of Right to Life East Texas. Along with Texas Right to Life, a separate pro-life group, his organization works to outlaw abortion one town or city at a time. His website is called Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn.

Kathaleen Pittman, administrator at the abortion clinic in Shreveport, Hope Medical Group for Women, argues that the primary reason women get abortions is finances.

“They simply can’t afford another child,” Pittman said in an email interview with The Daily Signal. “The majority of women we see already have one or more children.”

To combat the viewpoint that life’s value comes from circumstance, Dickson helped the Texas towns of Waskom, Gilmer, Naples, Joaquin, Tenaha, and Omaha to outlaw creation of abortion clinics within their borders.

Combined population: about 11,815. Right now, Dickson helps lead a campaign to ban abortion in more Texas localities, including Mount Enterprise, Mount Vernon, Madisonville, White Oak, Carthage, Henderson, Greenville, and Abilene.

Dickson was born and grew up in White Oak, population about 6,500. Longview, where he is based, has about 80,000 residents.

Right to Life East Texas has yet to approach the Longview City Council about passing an abortion ban, although he says many residents there would like to see one.

Dickson, whose church belongs to the Southern Baptist Convention and East Texas Baptist Network, said that when people believe their value comes from their situation, they feel worthless when life’s troubles weigh on them.

If they think abortion is better for mothers and babies than a hard life is, he said, they also will think death is preferable to facing struggles in their own lives.

“It adds to this suicide culture. People want to end their lives,” Dickson said.

In contrast, the pastor said, he offers compassion born from a belief that all people are valuable before God.

“We’re going to support mothers. We’re going to support them in any way possible, but we won’t help them kill their child,” he said.

Since the 1990s, Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport has considered relocating to Texas if Louisiana’s abortion laws became more strict, Dickson said.

In late May, he asked the mayor of Waskom, Texas, to help prevent it.

Shreveport has more than 192,000 residents, while Waskom has about 2,190.

“I did not want to see an abortion clinic in Waskom out of fear of what that could do to the community,” the pastor said. “Of course it sounds crazy, asking the mayor to do something that’s never been done before in the nation. But what happened in that process is that the whole world heard about it.”

On June 13, Waskom became the first town in the United States to outlaw abortion after Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case in 1973 that declared abortion a constitutional right.

Towns and cities in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee have contacted Dickson about plans to ban abortion within their borders.

The six Texan localities all passed their own versions of the same law, which Dickson said relies on two enforcement mechanisms.

One allows family members of the unborn baby to sue the abortion doctor, the person who paid for the abortion, and the person who transported the mother to an abortion clinic taking place in a town with the law. The potential lawsuits disincentivize abortion in a town with such a law.

The second enforcement mechanism is a $2,000 fine for anyone who performs an abortion in town. That is the maximum fine for violating a local health ordinance in Texas, Dickson said.

However, the twist is that the fines won’t apply unless the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

If and when that happens, an abortion clinic that performs 100 abortions a week could face over $10 million in fines per year under the local laws.

The approach poses a dare to abortion providers: Will most Americans believe abortion is morally acceptable in the future?

If so, they won’t sue those involved in the procedure, and towns never will apply the fines. If not, then opening a clinic in a town with such a law will have severe consequences.

The abortion clinic in Shreveport performs around 20 abortions on Tuesdays, 30 on Wednesdays, and 50 on Saturdays, Dickson said.

“If 50 people died in a school shooting, it would be on the news constantly,” the pastor said. “There’s 20 innocent children dying every Tuesday at that abortion clinic. Why aren’t they doing that with the lives of unborn children?”

Dyana Limon-Mercado, interim executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, told The Dallas Morning News that Waskom’s ordinance was part of a nationwide attack on reproductive rights.

“The intent of this local ordinance passed by an all-male city council is clear: Ban abortion and punish anyone who tries to access care or even help Texans considering an abortion,” Limon-Mercado said of the Waskom law. “This is an attack on the rights of everyone who might or can get pregnant.”

Dickson’s campaign recently suffered a setback. On Oct. 14, the Omaha City Council voted to repeal the law unanimously passed Sept. 9 and make the measure a nonbinding resolution.

The council, which includes four women and two men, did so on the advice of the attorney for the town of about 1,000, according to Dickson’s Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn website.

Dickson told The Daily Signal that he has received phone calls from Omaha citizens who are “ready to elect new councilmen.”

This article has been modified to list more states where localities express interest in banning abortion, to clarify where the pastor grew up, and to correct a caption misstating the “sanctuary” status of Mount Enterprise.

SOURCE





Australia: Attorney-General backs senior trial lawyer over Leftist campaigning

The swamp defends one of their own.  A politicized judiciary is OK if it's Leftist.  Nobody can see anything wrong about Qld Bar Association president Rebecca Treston QC handing out Leftist propaganda on the streets

Queensland Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath has declared her full confidence in state Bar Association president Rebecca Treston QC amid disquiet over the silk campaigning for Labor at the federal election. Ms D'Ath threw her weight behind the first woman to head the state Bar after The Weekend Australian revealed former president Christopher Hughes QC had written to federal Attorney-General Christian Porter dissociating himself from Ms Treston's actions.

Hitting out at Mr Hughes, Ms D'Ath said: "Mr Hughes has not written to the Queensland Attorney-General, who is responsible for making Queensland judicial appointments. "It is regrettable that Mr Hughes has chosen to politicise the matter by writing to the Commonwealth Attorney-General, who has no authority over state appointments."

Ms Treston said she was acting in a personal capacity when she donned a Labor T-shirt and handed how how-to-vote cards for her friend and ALP candidate Ali France before the May 18 federal election. This happened once, for only a few hours, she said. Ms Treston insisted she did not belong to a political party and her position did not preclude her from being "supportive to my friends".

In a shot at the federal government's quasi-judicial appointments in Queensland, Ms D'Ath said the state Labor government's selection process was transparent, unlike the Coalition, which "has no concern with appointing former LNP politicians and staffers" to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

"I have full confidence in Rebecca Treston QC, her leadership of the Bar and in the members of the Bar Association in Queensland," Ms D'Ath said.

Ms Treston's critics have cited her 'responsibilities to advise the state government on judicial appointments and consult over the designation of barristers as Queen's Counsels in arguing that she has compromised the supposedly apolitical standing of the Bar president.

The annual intake of QCs can be contentious because of the valuable stakes: the investiture of silk typically bumps up a barrister's earnings and prospects of advancement, including later appointment to the bench. This year's prospective crop in Queensland is being circulated for comment among Supreme Court judges by Chief Justice Catherine Holmes, who will provide recommendations to Ms D'Ath on who should get silk. An announcement is due by November 20.

Victorian Bar president Matthew Collins QC said he was not aware of rules anywhere in the country preventing the office-bearers of a legal representative body from being actively engaged in political campaigning. Asked whether this was appropriate conduct, Dr Collins said: "My concern would be about whether any conduct had undermined the ability of the office-bearer to engage in a constructive relationship with politicians from whatever side of politics. So it would depend very much on the circumstances."

Ms Treston said she had developed strong working relations with MPs on all sides, and would continue to represent the interests of barristers.

From "The Australian" of 28/10/2019

******************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here.

************************************