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I was watching something about the Chinese cultural revolution the other day and you know what it reminded me of today? Trump’s culture wars in his second administration. The crazy decisions being made around tariffs, DEI, vaccinations, ICE, cancelling green energy projects, the national guard, stifling free speech, and not releasing the Epstein files are all driven by special interest groups. These are not in the economic interest of the country. The immense cost and wastage of many of these executive and illegal presidential actions being challenged in the courts aren’t doing the nation any favours. The destruction unleashed in the Chinese cultural revolution damaged so many lives and set that country back for decades.
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In a land chock full of guns hatred has become a currency. A young American man, from a Mormon family in Utah, who grew up around guns, I mean the family embraced a love of guns, used that weapon of choice to kill another man. This is an American story. Guns and hatred. The culture worships guns. Every movie and video game is packed with automatic weaponry. Why did Tyler Robinson kill Charlie Kirk? It’s pretty bloody obvious. The why was Kirk’s expressed and implicit hatred of non-white and different folk in America.
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Charlie Kirk, it appears, was murdered, allegedly, by someone further to the Right, a Groyper. Unfortunately for Donald Trump, who longs to blame those on the Left – the nutjobs with the guns are predominantly on his side. A Groyper is a follower of Nick Fuentes, who is basically a Neo-Nazi in his professed views re-antisemitism and white supremacy. Charlie Kirk was murdered, allegedly, by someone further Right than himself. Trump has normalised racism, white supremacy, antisemitism, belittling women, and demonising Democrats in America.
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Day 3 of having no power due to a storm. No service: Profitability is the new power. Yes, this post is written under the duress of being cut off from electricity in my home and work. We live in a time, where being connected to the grid is more essential than ever before. Everything now runs on electricity. My gripe is that despite this clear and present reality, we are still dependent upon outdated and fragile infrastructure. 50 years ago, as I was growing up, I heard about the plans to put the power lines underground. Indeed, this has been achieved in many new suburbs. I do wonder why in this wonderful new world of privatised utilities how so many more established suburbs and towns have not been transformed in this subterranean fashion. Storms wreak havoc to power lines on poles.
The AFL has created a game that human bodies cannot actually cope with. How do we know this? Take a look at the number of soft tissue and knee injuries on the playing lists of AFL clubs. AFL a game unfit for human bodies. The evolution of the game has AFL players running at top speed, suddenly stopping, turning, twisting and being tackled. No bloody wonder that human joints and muscles cannot cope with the stress being applied to them under this kind of duress week in and week out. The physical conditioning experts employed by the clubs would know this but their well paid jobs encourage them to stay silent on this issue.
British royal, the former Duke of York, Prince Andrew has now become the most prominent Epstein enemy of the people. Why is this so? Prince Andrew firms as No 1 Epstein target. Andrew appears to be a complex character. On the one hand, he seems none too bright and has not managed to amass any sizable fortune. If he had a few billion, he could avoid the public scrutiny, like plenty of other powerful men on the Epstein list who have managed to do so. Andrew is fastidious about the arrangement of his large teddy bear collection on his bed, according to confirmed reports from royal staff. WTF?
Australia has a tax problem and I am going to suggest something to remedy that. The ATO is in a hole for some $52 billion, mostly from Australians who owe back taxes. In the most recent financial year that we have records for, some 91 Aussies who earned more than a million dollars paid no tax on that income at all. They managed to do this via creative tax accounting paying professionals hundreds of thousands to make it happen. These folk would rather do this than pay their fair share of tax on their earnings. There is an American flavour to this – the idea that the rich shouldn’t have to pay a lot of tax is promulgated by the wealthy and the GOP in the US. America has a national debt of $37 trillion and this correlates with the reduction of taxes on the wealthy over the last few decades. The top income tax rate was in the 90% range in the 1960s and that has come down to 37% as of now – that is a huge drop. Company taxes have come down substantially, as well, in recent times. Wealthy individuals and corporations are not paying their fair share of tax.
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I thought that it could be useful, in light of the apparent rise in the populist politics of grievance, to ask, so, what does it mean to be Australian? Anti-immigration is the flag waving vanguard theme of One Nation and the remnants of the Liberal party. Blame it on the immigrant appears number one on the political grievance charts downunder. Therefore, it provokes the question – what does it mean to be Australian? If it is not out-and-out racism, as those on the Right deny it to be, who, then, qualifies to be considered an acceptable Australian?
Culture Democracy Fresh Government Politics Power I thought that it could be useful, in light of the apparent rise in the populist politics of grievance, to ask, so, what does it mean to be Australian? Anti-immigration is the flag waving vanguard theme of One Nation and the remnants of the Liberal party. Blame it on the immigrant appears number one on the political grievance charts downunder. Therefore, it provokes the question – what does it mean to be Australian? If it is not out-and-out racism, as those on the Right deny it to be, who, then, qualifies to be considered an acceptable Australian?
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I thought that it could be useful, in light of the apparent rise in the populist politics of grievance, to ask, so, what does it mean to be Australian? Anti-immigration is the flag waving vanguard theme of One Nation and the remnants of the Liberal party. Blame it on the immigrant appears number one on the political grievance charts downunder. Therefore, it provokes the question – what does it mean to be Australian? If it is not out-and-out racism, as those on the Right deny it to be, who, then, qualifies to be considered an acceptable Australian?
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We have seen a spate of one-size-fits-all welfare payments and subsidies. You know, instead of governments helping the most needy they make stuff free for all. This is done for political purposes in attracting votes at elections. All this does is increase wealth inequality. Well off property owners should not be receiving government assistance in maintaining their lifestyles. This brings us to the Alan Kohler call for free childcare downunder. While I support the general idea, I question why wealthy Australians should qualify for these types of assistance. How about a carve out for those over a certain income and capital asset threshold? We need to reverse the widening wealth divide after decades of American style neoliberalism funnelling riches to a select few in Australia.
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Trump starts war with Iran in concert with Israel and vandalises the world economy. This irresponsible fool then passes the buck to America’s former allies, demanding they re-open the Strait of Hormuz. Nobody wants to follow the US into this mess of their own making. This is what you get when you elect a convicted felon and multiple bankrupt to the presidency. The stupidity of America is on full display. The greed and selfishness of Americans is up on the world stage for all to see. Listening to a lying, loud mouthed idiot is taking the United States and the world to the brink of collapse and destruction.
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We need an Inquiry into why LPG gas deals have been so financially bad for the nation as a whole. Why do the gas companies pay so little tax and royalties on the huge amounts of gas they export for enormous profits? When elected representatives are deaf to their constituents, you know something is wrong with our democracy. Polling has indicated that 75% of Australians support a 25% export tax on LPG gas. Yet, this federal Labor government has knocked back proposed legislation to make this happen.
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The Murdoch’s News Corp is at it again in Australian politics, making news rather than reporting on it. Sky News Australia, that blatantly one eyed right wing tabloid TV channel, is hard at it beating up BS into inflammatory stories. Calling out the fear mongers. Liberal party cronies and ex-staffers bleat non-stop anti-Albanese malarkey. The Australian newspaper in concert with Newspoll declares major popularity slump for the ALP federal government. This strategy of polling to start anti-government waves of public sentiment has been a long standing one for News Corp. They can then run multiple stories across their platforms with headlines about midterm slumps. The rest of the corporate media picks up these stories and runs with them, including the now chastened ABC.
We are not joking about something like suicide or the depression that can follow from poor financial decisions and outcomes. It can be a very dark time for those who have cooked their goose with financial controllers around the place. A bad credit rating is not a death sentence: It just feels that way in the game of life. The free enterprise system, where we can buy and sell things like goods and our services, is sometimes like a very serious board game – where the stakes are high and not Monopoly™ money. Losing one’s reputation around money and assets can be a difficult proposition to win back. It is more than the discomfort of not being able to afford the things you want. In a highly materialistic nation like Australia your credit rating and wealth are akin to your mobility within the various stratas of society. Door can close in your face and it takes great resolve to soldier on and get through these hard times.
China has achieved an economic miracle by being one of the few developing countries to shift its status up and into a world superpower. A billion people have together created a modern economy in record time. Only a handful of nations have made the jump to developed economy from developing status in recent times and they are Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea. According to Professor Richard Werner none of the developing nations primarily being helped by the IMF or the World Bank have made this transition. Why is that? Why has the West and the US in particular been so unsuccessful in their efforts to facilitate such economic progress, despite their wealth? In his estimation, as an international economist, it is because the help these financial entities offer is largely exploitative. Bankers just want to make money, it is in their DNA, and they come from investment banks and their associates are still tied to these banks and corporations. Miners and engineering firms are in it for their own profitability above all other considerations when operating in third world places. There are, also, disagreements around economic policy, as there always are in economics.
The media’s obsession with polls in the political spectrum is damaging to our civil society. I think a keen illustration of this was the recent Voice to Parliament for Indigenous Australian’s referendum. The constant polling around this drove the political debate to a large degree. Australians watched as support for the Voice dropped over the weeks and months according to the polls. What had been reported prior to the constant polling as having broad public support was eroded with each update to the polls. What I saw happening was uncertain Australians finding certainty in going with the flow of public opinion. It became alright to say No via perceived safety in numbers, according to the polls. Polling and manipulation by media is damaging to civil society.
How can we have a situation where Australian banks are making record profits in the billions and we are getting scammed for billions at the same time? These scams utilise our bank accounts and banks to transfer their ill-gotten gains.
You know, one of the most fundamental failures of the neoliberal order over the last few decades has been its decimation of wage growth in Western economies. Not paying high enough wages to the world’s biggest consumers has hamstrung productivity in America. The US economy has been stuck in third gear for 20 plus years or more. All those smart cookies who thought it was a brilliant idea to move manufacturing offshore to developing countries, where they could pay workers peanuts, didn’t factor in the whole picture. Yes, production was much cheaper, but the impact on wages in America meant that consumers couldn’t afford to buy as much stuff.
The few serious offenders who have been released by the High Court of Australia from indefinite detention have already served their sentences. Xenophobic Peter Dutton fear mongering once again and raising anxiety levels among Australians. The Leader of the Opposition is both an embarrassment to the nation and a danger to the social fabric. The political point scoring by Dutton is at the expense of the judicial fairness of Australia. Why should these people have to serve further punishment if they have already served the time for their crime. Dutton is a disgrace and should be censured by the parliament for inciting ill feeling toward vulnerable human beings under the care of Australia.
It’s the old story, Leader of the Opposition banging war drums at home and criticising the PM for going out and doing things in the world. When he should be at home mud wrestling with Dutton. Hamas initiated war with Israel and that is Albo’s fault. According to Dutton, Albo should be touring Israel, just like Scomo, instead of wasting his time repairing the China relationship – our major trading partner and the economic elephant in the room. The Libs want to bang the war drums with China and blame the red menace for everything under the bed. Dutton sees himself as a mini Trump, voicing loud opinions on everything.
American Congressmen and women regularly trade on the stock market during their terms in office. This is despite the fact they may have crucial information about corporations and companies which affects their stock price. The American political set up is a bad joke in terms of any separation between civics and commerciality. The committees that these members of Congress sit upon directly impact upon the fortunes of American companies. The fact that members of Congress or their families can happily trade on the stock market during their terms of office is outrageous. No wonder they have to carry them out in wooden coffins and they hardly ever leave office until they reach the ripe old age of Methuselah. Talk about being on a good wicket.
A phalanx of politicians announced the completion of the Robodebt Royal Commission and that the federal government would be accepting all its 50 something findings. This disgusting policy initiative by the previous Coalition government went after 500, 000 Australians accusing them of fraudulently taking social […]
