A low-income American earning $35,000 this year would be earning $61,000. A college-educated worker now earning $72,000 would be earning $120,000. Overall, the grotesque surge in inequality that began 40 years ago is costing the median American worker $42,000 per year. The upward redistribution of $47 trillion wasn’t due to natural forces. It was contrived. As wealth accumulated at the top, so did political power to siphon off even more wealth and shaft everyone else.
Murdoch has them by the balls. What is it that Rupert Murdoch has that enables him to demand of our government millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money whenever he wants it? I first came across this story in 2017 when the government kicked in $30 million dollars to Foxtel to promote women’s sports. It appeared as a one-line item in the budget of that year.
The ability of thinking human beings to blindly embrace what they are being told without referring to evaluation and the consideration of reason never ceases to amaze me. It is tantamount to the rejection of rational explanation. (John Lord)
There is Democratic Socialism but there isn’t Democratic Fascism
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, many pundits were asking how Donald Trump could have garnered over 70,000,000 votes and made the presidential race much more competitive than pre-election polls indicated. After all, here was a man who repeatedly and unabashedly lied to his supporters, endangered their lives by encouraging them not to take precautions during a global pandemic, and openly remarked how his desire to win reelection was all about him, and not the good of the country.
The great advantage of writing satire is that when you tell the truth, nobody believes you. This is fortunate because it means that no secret service people whisk me away to interrogate me about who’s leaking all this top secret stuff.
The media are reporting that anti-Trump protesters are outnumbering pro-Trump protesters at various places throughout the USA. This is being disputed by the Trump camp who argue that only protesters who’d been there since Election Day should be counted.
You’ve been in or around politics for more than 50 years. How are you feeling about Tuesday’s election? I’m more frightened for my country than I’ve ever been. Another four years of Donald Trump would be devastating. Nonetheless, I suspect Biden will win.
Mr Incredibility, Clive, did promise, last year, he’d pay 800 former workers at Queensland Nickel’s Townsville Refinery. Three years late. Yet it was the Commonwealth which had to stump up $66m in unpaid entitlements.
My thought for the day An artist creates a sculpture alone; a painter uses a brush in isolation. But music forms a community, where the spirit of life can be felt. ( John Lord )
Scott Morrison played on the general ignorance, as regards politics, of many members of the public, when he performed a one-man-band election campaign in 2019. A closer inspection of his message would have revealed no policy promises, except for cutting taxes. For the unthinking, that sounds like a good idea.
Ok, the recession isn’t really over yet. I’m just getting in early because the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank said something about growth that gave rise to a headline or two about the recession being over.
Biden was more passionate and forceful than he’s been in any debate so far – including in the primary debates. But Trump’s lies and bizarre outbursts were no less toxic. Here are the 4 biggest takeaways.
Tyrants through the ages have exploited the fear of viruses to justify or incite the most barbarous crimes against humanity. They use the language of germ warfare. Joseph Stalin’s henchman Vyacheslav Molotov said enemies needed to “be isolated” or “society would have been infected”. Heinrich Himmler sent millions to the Nazi gas chambers calling his victims “a bacterium”, a “sepsis” that needed to be cauterised. Adolf Hitler called the holocaust a “surgical procedure” to rid Europe of the “Jewish disease”. Comparisons to the Nazis are wisely avoided and Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler. But Trump exploited fear of outsiders, promising to build a wall to keep out illegal Mexican immigrants who he said were bringing “tremendous infectious diseases” across the US border.
In the recent few days, there’s the Cartier watches; the ABC paying Foxtel so that they can cover women’s soccer after Foxtel was given government money to cover women’s sport; the disappearance of all documents relating to the “grants” in NSW; the realisation that even if Trump is voted out, some people still think that Donald Trump is a reasonable pick for President; the confusion that, four years after Trump’s surprise win, the best the Democrats could come up with was Joe Biden; the media’s presentation of the Melbourne lockdown protests and the fact that many people are tipping Richmond to win the AFL flag by more points than they’re likely to kick for the whole game… Strangely that last one is the least of my concerns! Ok, let me take them one at a time:
My thought for the day This Governments performance over its time in office has been like a daily shower of uncouthness raining down on society. Surely performance or lack of it must mean something.
Know Your Enemy is a podcast about conservatism that takes analyzing its ideas and actions seriously. As we approach the end of Trump’s presidential term, we talked to its hosts about the state of the Republican Party and the Right after nearly four years of President Trump.
Ben breaks down the Morrison government’s failure to create jobs while more jobs are destroyed but billions are go out the door in tax cuts… Van explores ugly attacks on Australians of Chinese heritage in a senate committee… and – after 100 days of lockdown – it turns out Victoria is a better place to be than Paris!Also, our dog Germanicus bumps into stuff. A lot.
Locking out visitors has made it difficult for staff to meet the daily care needs of residents. What an indictment on aged care providers. They receive billions a year in funding, yet rely on the unpaid work of family/friends and volunteers. Surely it is time for complete accountability for their government funding, writes Dr Sarah Russell.
What is it in the hearts and minds of men (l declare women more honest than men, but they also indulge) that turns them into liars, robbers, cheats, people of ill repute, corrupt scoundrels who would take from the public purse – that which is not theirs – in order to feather their own nest?
Trump and many Republicans insist that the decisions whether to wear a mask, go to a bar or gym, or work or attend school during a pandemic should be personal. Government should play no role. Yet they also insist that what a woman does with her own body or whether same-sex couples can marry should be decided by government.
“Australians know there is no money tree,” said Treasurer Josh Frydenberg at the apogee of the coronavirus in May. But there is. The Reserve Bank is creating money out of thin air. It’s called QE. Michael West reports on the latest fruits to fall from Josh’s fertile money tree, particularly free cash from a hitherto hidden measure in the Budget.
Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s foremost public intellectuals, has provided the international left with wisdom, guidance and inspiration for nearly 60 years. Proving that he operates at the locus where argumentation and activism meet, he demonstrates indispensable intellectual leadership on issues of foreign policy, democratic socialism and rejection of corporate media bromides.
The US president has lowered the bar so much, the rest of the world is happy to settle for underperforming leaders @vanbadham Sun 18 Oct 2020 06.00 AEDT Last modified on Sun 18 Oct 2020 06.46 AEDT Shares 100
Beijing has banned importы of Australian coal. The move came as China’s response to Australia’s support for its geopolitical ally, the United States. Why doesn’t Moscow learn from Beijing?
My thought for the day Have we reached the point in politics where TRUTH is something that politicians have persuaded us to believe is, “Like alternative facts” rather than TRUTH based on factual evidence, arguments and assertions? John Lord
From Down Under we see a sick deluded man of no redeeming features, full of racial hatred, bile and misogyny. A deluded, pathetic liar unsuitable for the highest office in the land, if not the world. He sees complex problems and impregnates them with populism and implausible black and white solutions.
Charities pay top dollar for dinner with Gladys Berejiklian despite regulator’s no-no to political donations by Michael West | Oct 15, 2020 | Business The Liberal Party is harvesting tens of thousands of dollars in donations from registered children’s charities and charities for the disabled. Michael West reports.
Australian politics is now a corrupt mess and the more the government get away with the more emboldened they become. We have seen such a decline in the practice of government that it wouldn’t surprise me if circumstances might prevail that would give the conservatives a long period of power that might entrench them. So good has the propaganda been. Add to it the lack of interest the public has in politics and you have a situation where maintaining the status quo is but a few lies away. Our current Christian Prime Minister copies the Trump methodology of only pleasing those that will help you win. How bitterly dispiriting it is when the hearts and minds of our politicians are so utterly corrupted by this virus of political lies, but more demoralising it is that ordinary people catch the same infection. So emphatically poor of political morality is the U.S. now that there is a distinct possibility that an ill of mind billionaire entertainer in Donald Trump might trump a second-grade movie actor to become the next president. How a man of such ill repute, threatened by two countries to be disallowed entry, could even be nominated beggar’s belief. It even questions the sanity of those who would contemplate his election. To think that the Republican Party could ever consider a megalomaniac like Trump as a nominee to run for the presidency illustrates just how low the GOP have fallen. That he wanted to exit the hospital after treatment for COVID-19 wearing a Superman t-shirt under his suit so he could dramatically reveal it upon leaving hospital last week confirms his mental state. The New York times says that “he ultimately decided against the stunt, thus depriving the world of what would have been a… memorable moment in a year of memorable moments.” Continued tomorrow… My thought for the day The Office of the American President was once viewed by its people as an office of prestige and importance. Trump has reduced it to one of ridicule and contempt.
As the possibility of Donald Trump trying to undemocratically snatch the 2020 presidential election seems increasingly likely, we should look to a previous successful attempt by Republicans to seize the presidency while the Democratic Party all but stood by helplessly: the 2000 election’s Florida recount.
In Part 1 of her three-part investigation, Michelle Fahy investigates the corporate influence on government policy and how weapons makers cultivate relationships with politicians and top officials in the public service.
I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” Donald Trump boasted in 2016. He thought his almost unlimited bravado, bombast and dominance of any situation allowed him to get away with figurative murder.
2013: Debt and deficit disaster. It’s only by having a surplus that we get economic growth. We have a PLAN for JOBS AND GROWTH and to bring your energy prices down. IT’S ONLY BY HAVING GROWTH THAT YOU HAVE JOBS. NEVER FORGET THAT!!!!
White nationalist groups, who make up some of the most serious terror threats in the country, find new members and support in the U.S. military. These groups believe that white people are under attack in America.
And you see that this “Liberal values” business-directed, tax-reducing approach to fiscal stimulus explains why the budget didn’t include the two measures economists most wanted to see because they’d do most to boost consumer spending and jobs: a big spend on social housing (a no-no under the rules of Smaller Government) and a permanent increase in unemployment benefits (almost every cent of which would have been spent). The risk with Frydenberg’s politically correct stimulus is that too much of it will be saved. He needs to bone up on Keynes’ warning about the “paradox of thrift”.
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.