THE COMPLETE FAILURE of the Morrison/Frydenberg Budget to address the catastrophic state of Australia’s environment is well demonstrated by the user guide in the budget paper for agriculture, water and environment portfolio (page 9). Not one mention of biodiversity.
Federal Budget condemns our wildlife to extinction
Frydenberg’s budget, based on discredited “trickle down” economics, misses an opportunity to restructure our economy, weakened by seven years of Coalition mismanagement.
The government sees itself as an agent of the private sector. – Pearls and IrritationsPearls and Irritations
The Morrison Government’s 2020 Budget message is a trillion in debt and no “baked in” spending or “unfunded” empathy anywhere in sight, writes managing editor Michelle Pini.
The Coalition’s latest trillion-dollar tax cuts Budget promo
wealth disparity in America: the gulf between middle-class white families and middle-class black families. In 2019, the median black family had a net worth of $20,730 while the median white family had a net worth of $181,440. The difference between the two — $160,710 — seems like a lot of money and, to most families, it is a lot of money. But this is because we often don’t realize how much wealth there really is in America. The $181,440 net worth of the median white family is less than one-fourth of the $746,821 they would have if all the country’s wealth were distributed evenly.
The Top 1 Percent Owns Nearly Everything in the US. We Need to Seize Their Wealth.
The PM wants to repeal laws my government introduced to protect Australians – and the banks are popping champagne corks
Under the cover of Covid, Morrison wants to scrap my government’s protections against predatory lending | Banking | The Guardian
“The moral of the story is, he lied to you for months and encouraged you to live recklessly during a pandemic, and when it got to him he received every top tier treatment and medication to ensure his survival while your friends and family died alone.”
As Covid-Positive GOP Politicians Enjoy Healthcare They ‘Would Deny Others,’ Coronavirus Pandemic Again Makes Case for Medicare for All | Common Dreams News
Biden is praying for him – and yet the Trump campaign’s negative ads continue. There’s an asymmetry of decency here
Trump, Covid and empathy for the world’s least empathetic man | Donald Trump | The Guardian
So, the man who has spread more misinformation about COVID-19 than any other individual on the planet has caught the coronavirus. The fact that he will now not be able to campaign personally will, ironically, perhaps save some lives.
POTUS and FLOTUS getting it together – » The Australian Independent Media Network
John Pilger has watched Julian Assange’s extradition trial from the public gallery at London’s Old Bailey. He spoke with Timothy Erik Ström of Arena magazine, Australia.
JOHN PILGER: Eyewitness to the agony of Julian Assange
Whether a snail, an octopus, a magpie or an ant, the evidence is mounting: being alert to the world makes us happier to be in it.
Want an awesome life? Meet an octopus and watch yourself shrink
Attacking Trump as a “Fake Billionaire” Is a Dead End
The real scandal isn’t that Donald Trump is secretly poor — it’s that our system let such an obvious fraud get so rich.
Attacking Trump as a “Fake Billionaire” Is a Dead End
And let’s put the $1.5 billion in perspective. Just last month $1.9 billion was announced for a 10-year plan to invest in technologies to lower emissions, while far more is to be given away in futile tax cuts to the already-well off.
Manufacturing Announceables: malaise needs more than a bag of goodies – Michael West
My thought for the day We would be a much better society if we took the risk of thinking for ourselves unhindered by the unadulterated crap served up by the government, the media, and self-interest groups.( John Lord)
Who protects us from the Government? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Now, I know some of you will be pointing out that Morrison and his band of merry men aren’t one of those who’ve agreed to a pay freeze/reduction, but remember they’re all struggling on upwards of $200,000 a year and Josh hasn’t even announced the tax cut for people like that yet… Mm, if not receiving promised increases are cuts, should reducing the tax you pay in the future be considered a tax cut?
Scott Morrison Giving People The Ships! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Alan Tudge, Richard Colbeck and Paul Fletcher are the latest Morrison Cabinet ministers to be mired in scandal, but no one is responsible for anything in this Coalition Government, writes managing editor Michelle Pini.
The Coalition protection racket: Why Tudge won’t budge
Anushka Britto ponders whether individuals spreading COVID-19 by breaking the rules and violating quarantine requirements should be held legally accountable for the consequences of their actions.
How #COVIDiots may be held responsible for their actions
Depressingly readable is the best way to describe Paul Barry’s revealing biography of Rupert Murdoch. I placed the word mongrel in the title of this piece but it could just as easily used scumbag which means a contemptible or objectionable person. It is a story about one man. A man with a love for money, power, influence, acquisitions, wives, children and even scandal. Scandal makes money.
Murdoch: forever brutal – » The Australian Independent Media Network
What is America really fighting over in the upcoming election? No particular issue. Not even Democrats versus Republicans. The central fight is over Donald J Trump.
The Coming Civil War Over Trump’s Ego | The Smirking Chimp
Certainly, such manoeuvres would be entirely consistent with, if not exemplify, some of the core traits of the emperor complex we have now deciphered in Donald J Trump: delusional, omnipotent, narcissistic, arrogant, lawless and distrustful. Juvenile. Tyrannical, resentful, unhinged, misogynist and, perhaps most worrying of all, Putinesque.
Emperor Donald Trump: a psychological profile of an American nightmare
Trump and McConnell have corrupted the Supreme Court and th judicial branch for a generation. Time to fight dirty
The Supreme Court is finished: Republicans have killed it. Now it’s time to fight back | Salon.com
New analysis reveals the government intends to cut billions of dollars from university research, while re announcing funds from elsewhere in the budget The government’s proposed changes to higher education funding will cut $2 billion a year from university research budgets, according to new analysis prepared by the sector’s peak body.
National Times | Facebook
My thoughts for the day Honesty isn’t popular anymore. It doesn’t carry the weight of society’s approval it once did. * * * I found it impossible to imagine that the Australian people could be so gullible as to elect for a third term a government that has performed so miserably in the first two and has amongst its members some of the most devious, suspicious and corrupt men and women, but they did. (John Lord)
Just because we are governed by clowns it doesn’t mean we have to laugh – » The Australian Independent Media Network
There are those who do back-flips, and triple backward somersaults with a twist. Then there is Communications Minister Paul Fletcher. The saga of the National Broadband Network continues as the Government this week announced a large-scale upgrade to fibre, heralding it as “an idea whose time has finally come”. It’s cost $14.5 billion more than budget, is under-performing and now the Government wants to spend another $3.5 billion to upgrade it, while competition looms. Australia is ranked 50 in internet speed worldwide. We’re well below almost every country in Europe and North America and many including ‘developing’ countries in South-East Asia. And we are failing badly when compared with our cousins across the ditch. Kiwis enjoy twice the average download speed of what Australians enjoy.
Backflips and somersaults – the NBN black comedy takes a new twist
Behind closed doors, government ministers beholden to monopoly capitalists cherry-pick which industry sectors get the most hand-outs. Take for example the unscrupulous extraction industry receiving fuel subsidies and a raft of other tax-breaks designed to offset the operational costs of doing business. While the working class suffer the financial burden that comes from the inequity of a 10% regressive goods and services tax, rent-seekers and other capitalists benefit handsomely from government wilfully leaving gaping loopholes in the tax system.
The big lie – » The Australian Independent Media Network
By sanctifying selfishness, it has undermined community-mindedness and the role of co-operation in advancing our mutual interests. Voting has become a simple matter of “what’s in it for me and mine”, while businesses and industries have been licensed to lobby for preferment at the expense of everyone else. “In recent decades the balance between these instincts [of competition and co-operation] has become dangerously skewed: mutuality has been undermined by an extreme individualism which has weakened co-operation and polarised our politics,”
Since the late 1970s, however, Americans have talked less about the common good and more about self-aggrandisement; less “we’re all in it together” and more “you’re on your own”. There’s been “growing cynicism and distrust toward all the basic institutions of American society – governments, the media, corporations” and more.
Thinking economists are grappling with why their profession has made our lives worse
Donald Trump tries to portray himself as pro-worker. Nowhere is this absurdity better exposed than in the decisions of his National Labor Relations Board, which have over and over again favored bosses rather than workers.
Trump Claims He’s Pro-Worker. But His Labor Board Is Trying to Destroy Worker Organizing.
An unprecedented leak of thousands of files from the US government’s most confidential financial intelligence database has shone a spotlight on the world’s $2 trillion-a-year dirty money habit. As Nathan Lynch reveals, this story goes much deeper than the glib “bad bankers” narrative being trotted out by the world’s media.
Dirty money leaks shine a spotlight on kleptocrats devouring our economy – Michael West
Over the next 48 days, let us do all we can to deliver a decisive victory for Joe Biden on November 3. And once we do that, let us remain vigilant to see to it that Trump allows for the peaceful transition of power.
The Possibility That Trump Will Not Voluntarily Leave | The Smirking Chimp
Just as boys and girls with leanings toward the Right tend to join the armed forces, so do Right-leaning youngsters get recruited as spies. A spy is a person employed by a government to obtain secret information or intelligence about another country and individuals within it. Spies come in many shapes and forms. They can be full or part-time, they can be sleepers, activated as needed. Or even members of professional or sporting associations and academics who report regularly or as required, or when they judge something is of interest to their minder. They might be journalists, but they shouldn’t be. Sometimes diplomats are spies; sometimes spies use the cover of diplomacy to undertake their activities.
Getting back to the roots of spycraft
The common good, or empathy for it, should be at the centre of any political philosophy. However, it is more likely to be found on the left than the right.
Newspoll, Insiders, and what’s new in politics – » The Australian Independent Media Network
And with the money we save we could afford to give even greater tax cuts to those having a go. Yes, it’s all in how you frame it. Apparently it’s fine to suggest that we can’t afford any economic slowdown just to keep old people alive. After all, they’ve had a pretty good innings so they can just shut up and accept that Covid-19 will kill a few of them. Yes, that seems to be an acceptable way to treat the elderly if you’re a politician or an economist or someone who has a media gig… But if you should suggest touching their franking credits, you’re some sort of monster!
The Economy Above All – Even Life Itself! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
the Right’s resort to judicial supremacy is not a sign of strength, but an admission of weakness: a beleaguered regime calls upon the authority of the court only to achieve what it cannot accomplish through electoral politics.
How Abraham Lincoln Fought the Supreme Court
Anyway, this latest proposal should go a long way towards helping get us out of the current recession. There’s nothing like a power plant that hasn’t been built for bringing down energy prices. I can’t work out why some people are being cynical about it! Ok, back into the Delorean. I’d make a little trip into the future to see when the plant is actually built, but there may not be enough fuel in the universe to get there and back!
Reducing Energy Prices And Getting The Debt and Deficit Under Control or Back To The Future XXIV – » The Australian Independent Media Network
If one day in the future our children wake to find our prosperity gravely ill. It will be because Australia’s conservative politicians during the years 2013 to 202? Didn’t believe the science of a changing climate and left you with the consequences.
They built a disastrous NBN and now they think they can build a power station. Wow. – » The Australian Independent Media Network
As the West Goes Up in Flames, Trump Couldn’t Care Less | The Smirking Chimp
Nonetheless, Americans have a clear choice. In a few weeks, when they decide whether Trump deserves another four years, climate change will be on the ballot. The choice shouldn’t be hard to make. Like the coronavirus, the dire consequences of climate change – coupled with Trump’s utter malfeasance – offer unambiguous proof that he couldn’t care less about the public good.
As the West Goes Up in Flames, Trump Couldn’t Care Less | The Smirking Chimp
A half-century ago, the economist Milton Friedman wrote an article in the New York Times Magazine that got a lot of attention. In it, he argued that CEOs should not try to be socially responsible. Their sole obligation was to maximize shareholder returns. It was the responsibility of government to respond to social needs.
Milton Friedman, 50 Years Ago Today | The Smirking Chimp
The choice shouldn’t be hard to make. Like the coronavirus, the dire consequences of climate change – coupled with Trump’s utter malfeasance – offer unambiguous proof that he couldn’t care less about the public good.
Trump doesn’t care if wildfires destroy the west – it didn’t vote for him | Robert Reich | Opinion | The Guardian
My thought for the day It is clear that from whatever way you look at it that Trump lied and people died. PS: For the complete list of Trump’s lies about the coronavirus (John Lord) click here.
Donald Trump: The fool on the hill is full of rage – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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The problem isn’t only that Elon Musk has a net worth of about $100 billion when tens of millions of Americans are barely getting by. It’s that he’s made this money while treating his workers so badly. His wealth quadrupled during the 4 months Tesla forced all workers to take a 10 percent pay cut.
Citizen Musk | The Smirking Chimp
Not under an LNP watch
Hiring properly qualified staff, staff-resident ratios and a commitment to be transparent and accountable for the $13 billion in annual taxpayer funding would help private providers of aged care “change the conversation” and “win the hearts and minds of middle Australia”. Dr Sarah Russell reports.
Tone deaf: aged care providers’ PR campaign strikes wrong note – Michael West
How overlapping false claims about the wildfires ricocheted around conservative social media thanks to a bogus story from Russia.
Right-Wing Conspiracists Linked Antifa to the Wildfires. Then They Got a Big Boost from Russian Media. – Mother Jones
Conservatives are sounding the alarm bell about a Marxist takeover, with at least one philosopher urging liberals to join forces with the Right to destroy the socialist bogeyman. But the values of liberalism have much more in common with socialism than the Right — and liberals sincerely committed to advancing freedom and equality should unite with leftists.
Why Liberals Should Unite With Socialists, Not the Right
An appeals court recently ruled a mass surveillance program exposed by Edward Snowden was illegal. It’s only the latest example of Washington admitting Snowden had, despite being continuously denounced by pundits and politicians, done the right thing by leaking information about the government’s massive surveillance operations.
Over and Over and Over Again, History Has Vindicated Edward Snowden
Gordon Gekko jumped out of a Hollywood movie onto a TV Reality Show in need of someone someone to play the role Trump was born to play. The Snake Oil salesman no longer needed a covered wagon to come to town. America was ripe and ready. Will he steal the Peace Prize too? (ODT)
Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” The embodiment of the false creed of neoliberalism, Trump cannot fathom any human action that cannot be reduced to a transaction. He cannot comprehend volunteers because that involves altruism and empathy. The narcissistic materialist is equally confounded; discomfited to discover that over 1,800 US Marines lost their lives at Belleau Wood. He sees them as “suckers” for getting killed. In brief, as Goldberg sees, Donald Trump suffers the delusion that “nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don’t pursue riches are “losers.” It’s not hard to hear the same delusion at work in the News Corp journalists who endlessly, every day twit Dan Andrews with the same questions. Why should the state pursue public health and safety instead of profits for business at any costs? Similarly, in his tedious repetition of his vacuous slogan “open the nation for business”, Trumpista Scott Morrison exhibits the same pathological indifference to others; the same failure to imagine another’s pain, along with an alarming poverty of mind and spirit which simply make him unfit to lead. He should resign over the sports rorts alone. In their own ways, the rise of Trumpism and the coronavirus pandemic have helped create an environment where Morrison and Murdoch’s minions’ claims that we must endlessly pursue selfish competition – that greed is good and might is right – are so vividly exposed as toxic aberrations and hopelessly, grotesquely inadequate to the times’ need for compassion, co-operation, community and humanity. We must expose their lies; continue to hold them to account.
Just who are the losers and suckers, Mr Trump? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Leadership: The LNP is practiced in not giving answers when asked quite the opposite can be said of Dan Andrews.
That made no sense to me. During the course of a 23-year career in DFAT, which involved briefing ministers and ministerial advisers, I cannot recall the provision of such simple and straightforward information not being provided under the circumstances prevailing in this matter. I went back:
China policy: Our trading relationship is being ruined by the Right wing
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