Coalition pork-barrelling during the 2013 and 2016 election campaigns involved “zombie” grants that had not a hope in Hades of getting off the ground. Yet those grant applications are still on the books just waiting to be revived. How many grants from the 2019 election await a similar fate? Jommy Tee investigates.
via Coalition Zombie Grants: a slush fund to be reawakened for the next election – Michael West
Surely history speaks loudly to not repeat the mistakes of the past (ODT)
Reaganomics and Thatcherism were characterised by huge transfers of income and wealth from the poor to the rich, writes Roger Beale. Even such august institutions as the Productivity Commission argue that there’s little to be gained by going down the road of labour market flexibility.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has suggested we look to the Reagan and Thatcher legacies for inspiration to climb out of the Covid-19 recession – i.e. supply side economice. In lay terms, this means bringing forward tax cuts, increasing workplace flexibility and reducing green tape.
via Are Thatcherism and Reaganomics your best answer, Josh? – Michael West
The Morrison government’s “take the credit/deflect blame’ shtick is wearing thin. After all, the Commonwealth has ultimate responsibility for Australia’s border security – spelt out in the constitution, Quarantine Act (1908) and Biosecurity Act (2015).
RUBY PRINCESS -PETER DUTTON
A global pandemic ought to have demanded hyper-stringent oversight of returning citizens – especially once COVID became a ‘known event’ – and a far lengthier period of quarantine. Divisive rhetoric aside, Morrison’s political hero, John Howard, was right to assert in 2001 that “we decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. It begs the question, however: why didn’t this rule apply to infected returnees or stopping that one, all-important boat?
COMMONWEALTH AGED-CARE RESPONSIBILITY
Then there is private aged care – unquestionably the regulatory domain of the Commonwealth. The crisis playing out in the sector is the direct result of operators prioritising profits ahead of health and safety – of elderly residents and staff. Here and across our economy the chickens of insecure employment have come home to roost. Possibly contagious casual workers are going to work because, in the absence of sick leave, they believe there is no other choice for their families. COVID is many things, yet with workplace transmissions accounting for 80 per cent of all cases, this pandemic is a workplace virus, hurting the poor, especially migrants.
WORK PLACE DEREGULATION
Again, this is a Commonwealth responsibility. It is jarring to hear Frydenberg talk up workplace deregulation as “first cab off the rank”, while the health and economic imperative of paid pandemic leave for isolating workers sits in the too hard basket. By contrast, the Victorian government is providing payments to insecurely employed workers forced to self-quarantine after testing positive for COVID or close contacts of a confirmed case, and workers awaiting results without access to paid leave.
via Scott Morrison’s ‘deflect blame, take the credit’ shtick is wearing thin
If Australia is leading the world in export growth, then where is all this wealth ending up? As shown in multiple publications, the large foreign mining companies and other big exporters seldom pay anywhere near the tax they should. There are no other mechanisms for retaining the vast wealth in Australia. So most of the wealth gets shunted straight offshore into tax havens or to make mega-rich foreigners richer still.
via Australia the big winner from Trump’s disastrous trade wars
Polls this morning: Florida: 51% Biden 46% Trump Arizona: 49% Biden 45% Trump Michigan: 52% Biden 40% Trump
But Trump does have some reason for optimism and his opponents for vigilance. Trump claims there is a “Silent Majority” that will reelect him. But the fear for Democrats is actually a silencing of the majority. Trump won four years ago with a minority of the popular vote, and the hurdles to voting are only growing during the pandemic. Mail-in ballots may be discarded at high rates, a shrinking number of polling locations and a lack of poll-workers could result in long lines, as demonstrated by primaries. Election officials, low on resources, have just 100 days to carry out an election in a pandemic.
Political fortunes can change and polls may narrow, but as we pass the 100 day mark, Trump’s hopes for reelection increasingly rest on a majority of Americans having their will subverted once again.
via The Election Is in 100 Days. If It Were Held Today, Trump Would Lose. – Mother Jones
In the past 4 years how often have we seen America protesting Trump? (ODT)
via Federal Crackdown in Portland Provokes Solidarity Protests Across the Country | Common Dreams News
The Anti- Semitism of Right-Wing White Christian Addiction and Nazi thought in the USA. Overlooks the fact America’s Capitalism was based on the backs of Addiction and a drive to make it grow not Judaism alone. Finance in America is based on Addictions of all sort and given the money has run out Debt.(ODT)
No, the birth of the White Plague was largely iatrogenic, meaning “brought forth from the healer,” as legally prescribed OxyContin gave way to an opioid sea, as waves of oxycodone, hydrocodone, heroin, and fentanyl crested and crashed ashore, consuming our nation in its wake.
The White Plague is the handiwork of an irredeemably evil pharmaceutical industry, aided by innumerable pharmacists and physicians who both wittingly and unwittingly served as its facilitators and footsoldiers. However, if we peek behind the curtains of the great monolith of Big Pharma, we find the true culprits, the names and faces of the demons who deliberately crafted, planned, and inseminated the White Plague — the New York Jews known as the Sackler family, the patriarch of which was the architect of Big Pharma itself. Just as the Great Recession of 2008 provided us with a glimpse of the Jewish corruption of the American financial system into a malevolent oligarchy of organized crime, the tale of the Sacklers’ rise to power, of the Jewish perversion of the pharmaceutical industry, provides us with an incredible glimpse into the Jewish coup of the twentieth century, into the Jewish corrosion of every single one of our
Doctor: There’s good news and bad news.
Patient: What’s the bad news?
Doctor: We amputated the wrong leg.
Patient: Oh my god! What’s the good news?
Doctor: The other one’s getting better.
via President, Plague, Bungler, Camera, TV | The Smirking Chimp
Trump’s Legacy to America is backfiring.(ODT)
Participants in the city’s Friday night events included members of the groups Healthcare Workers Protest, Teachers Against Tyrants, Lawyers for Black Lives, the “Wall of Moms,” and a new “Wall of Vets.” Backed by the beat of drums, the demonstrators chanted “Black Lives Matter” and “Feds go home.”
![Immigration New Zealand said Boochani's application had been successful, which means he has the right to stay in the South Pacific nation indefinitely [File: Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/7/24/65e048ce8da84a4f9cc3803a3f21999d_18.jpg "Behrouz Boochani granted refugee status in New Zealand")
Howard’s/Abbott’s/Morrison’s/Dutton’s SHAME (ODT)
via Behrouz Boochani granted refugee status in New Zealand | Australia News | Al Jazeera
Dutton is turning out to be Australia’s worst Minister this Century Boomgate, Oper’s Health Minister, Immigration and more (ODT)
There was just one tiny detail omitted by media editor Leo Shanahan. Tearing up the silos necessarily meant destroying dozens of journalists’ jobs. Instead of having four reporters covering a round you would have just one, and the story would be syndicated.
The day after the Blunden interview was published, the axe fell. Sources say about 65 people were tapped for redundancy at the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph, although the company won’t confirm numbers. On Thursday it was the Oz’s turn and another 13 people were made redundant, including an editor in his 60s who had clocked up decades on the payroll and a brilliant photographer.
Had there been a universal safety package for all individual Australians the anxiety and the need for work would have bee allayed and stemmed the snd wave of Covid -19 in Victoria. Victoria was the nations most successful state and as a consequence the hardest hit by the precarious casualisation of work. (ODT)
On his Twitter account on Wednesday, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews explained that of the 3,810 Victorians who tested positive for coronavirus over the past three weeks, an astonishing 89% kept working despite their early symptoms.
They simply couldn’t afford to stay home.
America is not a rich country, but rather a poor country with a lot of rich people in it. Suddenly a lot of things made sense.
I am so sad that my American friends and family have to witness such a dramatic decline.
via Foreign Correspondence: How coronavirus is creating a class education divide in the US
Gillard Speech a Decade on,(ODT)
via ‘F**king Bitch’ And The Everyday Terror Men Feel About Powerful Women | HuffPost Australia
Replicating Julia Gillard’s speech the echoed around the world. (ODT)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s blistering speech yesterday powerfully connected her experience of sexism with the broader issues of patriarchy and workplace harassment. It was proof, once again, that it’s very nice having democratic socialists in office.
Hospitals have been instructed to send COVID data to a central database in Washington, bypassing the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The information will no longer be accessible to the public, raising concern that the data is being hidden for political reasons and the lack of transparency will make it easier for the administration to mislead the public.
The administration is also blocking CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield from testifying before Congress about the safety of reopening schools. They are attempting to block GOP senators from allocating billions of dollars to the CDC, Pentagon, and State Department for pandemic response. And the administration even opposes sending billions to states for testing and contact tracing.
via Trump’s Authoritarianism is Ill-Suited to a Pandemic | The Smirking Chimp
Photo Shoot for Fox and ads for the next 3months (ODT)
However, the letter writers misunderstand the fundamental issue here: The problem is not that The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section undermines the newsroom’s credibility — it’s that in the right-wing media environment, especially under the ownership of the Murdoch empire, the newsroom only exists in order to help confer a patina of credibility on the opinion section as it spreads right-wing falsehoods. And this should become all that much clearer when looking at the opinion section’s responses and its total lack of accountability.
Goodbye America
Goodbye America. Perhaps the death of your democracy was inevitable. After all, a nation built on slavery and on lands stolen from Native-Americans, a land that allowed the abuses of “Jim Crow,” a land where, to this day, appeals to racism and hatred are accepted political tactics probably did not have much chance to survive in the first place.
So, all hail Fuhrer Trump, the glorious architect of the Fourth Reich. Because, if you don’t, his SS and Gestapo may soon pay a visit to your town too.
via Trump’s America
Mind you the LNP has given them $40mill dollars on a Murdoch Quid pro Quo basis. Funds taken from the ABC who Morrisson like Abbott has echoed fro 7 years faced “no cuts” by the LNP
Revenue from News Corp’s subscription video service segment, which is made up of Foxtel and Sky News, fell US$77m in the first three months of 2020 “mainly due to lower subscription revenues resulting from fewer broadcast subscribers” and the weaker Australian dollar, the company said in accounts filed in May.
via Foxtel’s residential subscriptions plunged by nearly 200,000 in 2019 | Australia news | The Guardian
The deaths of 80 elderly people are imminent as a result of COVID-19 spreading through private aged care homes. Aged care behemoths were granted an extra $200m to cope with the pandemic but refuse to provide critical paid pandemic leave to an overwhelmingly casualised workforce, claiming it’s the government’s responsibility. The government says the buck stops with aged care operators. Meanwhile, Victoria’s publicly owned homes, with mandated staffing requirements, have few reported cases of COVID-19. Dr Sarah Russell investigates.
Compare this with staffing in privately owned residential aged care homes, where a single registered nurse is often required to look after more than 100 residents.
Not surprisingly, data from the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission indicates outbreaks in Victoria are almost exclusively a private sector aged-care issue. State-owned nursing homes comprise about 200 of the 750 in Victoria, but of the 66 aged care homes that have reported a COVID case since June, just six are state-government run.
Passing the Buck: why Victoria’s Covid is raging in private aged care homes – Michael West
Capitalism hasn’t flexibility for everyone’s improvement. Capitalism will bear its ugly truth and use armed forces as an excuse to resist. Will the Industrial Military Complex forgo even 10% of it’s Revenue? (ODT)
via China’s rebound ‘a good omen’ for rest of globe – World – Chinadaily.com.cn
He’s talking Economic System and Private Interests here in a world in which citizens
are living under the yolks of debt and poverty. You’re declared well off in the size of debt your allowed and enslaved to. (ODT)
via We must change China or China will change us, Pompeo warns
“The reason why JUF and other Zionist organizations in the US are spending so much money and time attacking Palestinians and our supporters is because the exact opposite is true.”
“Israel is finally being seen – even in the US – as the criminal, racist, apartheid state that it is, and that is because our organizing and activism is paying dividends,” Abudayyeh added.
via Jewish Federation monitors Chicago solidarity groups | The Electronic Intifada
Key points:
From the start of July, a quarter of COVID-19 infections have been in Victorians aged in their 20s
Four children are in hospital and 20 per cent of the state’s coronavirus patients are under the age of 50
A senior ICU nurse manager says there is no doubt that that younger adults with coronavirus will die
Intensive care nurse’s blunt warning over coronavirus risk to younger adults – ABC News
Why Covid-19 in Victoria is rife stimulus is not going to individual survival and anxiety is contagious. Universal benefit not companty benefits are required, (ODT)
Key points:
- When economic conditions are relatively favourable, the number of businesses going into administration is about 8,000 a year
- Despite the COVID crisis, the latest number of businesses folding is below that, raising fears that stimulus measures may be keeping zombie businesses afloat
- There are calls for regulators to be given greater funding to go after companies that may be trading while insolvent
History repeats itself and has done for over 200 years. Aborigines had less than 1% of bank loans, jobs, capital gains education health. What has changed. They even have less than 1% of the acknowledged history an and Culture of this country. They have been effectively cancelled. (ODT)
Aboriginal people hold less than 1% of all water licences, a form of dispossession that needs urgent redress, researchers say
via Australia’s water market is excluding Indigenous people, study finds | Australia news | The Guardian
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