Raja Janakar
Minimum wages need to be maintained at a minimum subsistence level and this level of income should not be taxed at all for anyone.
This country has been governed by conservative governments for too many years. These governments have seen fit to tax the poor to feed the rich and rely on what they term the "trickle-down-effect" to redistribute these through the rest of society. What a load of nonsense.
Based on demonstrably false assumptions, here is the evidence for this effect.
The only just and equitable policy is that stated above.
Thursday, 16 April 2015
Wednesday, 15 April 2015
Leadership
Terry Barnes
"Above all, Lincoln believed in something greater than himself, and acted on his principles."
"With malice towards none, with charity for all"
Leaders have the ability to see what is right and to force or manipulate events to progress in that direction.
Can anyone see this characteristic in any of our "leaders"?
Or in any of the "leaders" of the political parties we are forced to vote for.
"Above all, Lincoln believed in something greater than himself, and acted on his principles."
"With malice towards none, with charity for all"
Leaders have the ability to see what is right and to force or manipulate events to progress in that direction.
Can anyone see this characteristic in any of our "leaders"?
Or in any of the "leaders" of the political parties we are forced to vote for.
Shirt-front Policies
Trisha Jha
Look at this. Another thought-bubble-non-policy produced by a shirt-front PM at the head of an idiotic government.
All this for maybe 3% of babies. Lots of budget savings there.
Look at this. Another thought-bubble-non-policy produced by a shirt-front PM at the head of an idiotic government.
All this for maybe 3% of babies. Lots of budget savings there.
Never Ever Again
John Baron
You have give it to them. The GOP is nothing if not resilient. After two consecutive defeats by the forces of the left, the far right-wing elements in American society continue to find expression. Putting a baby face on your candidate and dressing him up in verbiage about the changing of the generations increases your appeal to the youth vote, butt they are still far right ideologues with a far right view of the world and if they ever get elected again they will do irreparable damage to life as we know it.
Now that the hyperbole is gone. John is being a good journalist, writing a balanced piece, marketable but not really saying much. He implies that there is a ghost of a chance of the republicans winning. An objective observer would have to think that the tea-party-policies of the far right could never attract sufficient votes of a rational-cognitive electorate. But let's not be surprised ever again. The electorate in the US is a tiny proportion of the voting public, because the mere act of voting is not compulsory, so almost anything could still happen.
We in Australia are, right now, as the US did in the dubya years, experiencing the consequences of electoral complacency, and the assumption that the electorate (as distinct from the voting public) will act in a rational manner. The cringe quality of Friar Tuck is so reminiscent of that arroused by George dubya himself, that I have to take anti-cringe medication every time I watch the news. If we don't cringe we are tempted to succumb to fits of hysterical laughter, and/or outright ridicule.
Yet these are our elected leaders.
You have give it to them. The GOP is nothing if not resilient. After two consecutive defeats by the forces of the left, the far right-wing elements in American society continue to find expression. Putting a baby face on your candidate and dressing him up in verbiage about the changing of the generations increases your appeal to the youth vote, butt they are still far right ideologues with a far right view of the world and if they ever get elected again they will do irreparable damage to life as we know it.
Now that the hyperbole is gone. John is being a good journalist, writing a balanced piece, marketable but not really saying much. He implies that there is a ghost of a chance of the republicans winning. An objective observer would have to think that the tea-party-policies of the far right could never attract sufficient votes of a rational-cognitive electorate. But let's not be surprised ever again. The electorate in the US is a tiny proportion of the voting public, because the mere act of voting is not compulsory, so almost anything could still happen.
We in Australia are, right now, as the US did in the dubya years, experiencing the consequences of electoral complacency, and the assumption that the electorate (as distinct from the voting public) will act in a rational manner. The cringe quality of Friar Tuck is so reminiscent of that arroused by George dubya himself, that I have to take anti-cringe medication every time I watch the news. If we don't cringe we are tempted to succumb to fits of hysterical laughter, and/or outright ridicule.
Yet these are our elected leaders.
Friday, 10 April 2015
oh no
Went to my first ALP Branch meeting last night.
Pretty cool.
Lots of heavy duty ALP faithful, lifetime members, union dudes etc.
And they are all around my age.
Mark Mcgowan, leader of the state opposition, MLA for Rockingham, and the next Premier of Western Australia, attended and spoke to us. We are in a seriously bad situation with the state economy and budget. I haven't been paying attention so I didn't realise how bad. The loss of our triple A credit rating, which I did hear about and commented on, pointed to a bad situation, but I hadn't realised it was a full blown crisis..
He said Barney was gifted with a $3 billion budget deficit on taking office and has so mismanaged everything since then that it has now blown out to $30 billion. Yes that is a tenfold fuckup in the space of six and a half years. These were years of prosperity. The price of iron ore was high. Large royalties were paid.
WHERE IS ALL THAT MONEY!!!???
I am angry. Aren't you?????
Pretty cool.
Lots of heavy duty ALP faithful, lifetime members, union dudes etc.
And they are all around my age.
Mark Mcgowan, leader of the state opposition, MLA for Rockingham, and the next Premier of Western Australia, attended and spoke to us. We are in a seriously bad situation with the state economy and budget. I haven't been paying attention so I didn't realise how bad. The loss of our triple A credit rating, which I did hear about and commented on, pointed to a bad situation, but I hadn't realised it was a full blown crisis..
He said Barney was gifted with a $3 billion budget deficit on taking office and has so mismanaged everything since then that it has now blown out to $30 billion. Yes that is a tenfold fuckup in the space of six and a half years. These were years of prosperity. The price of iron ore was high. Large royalties were paid.
WHERE IS ALL THAT MONEY!!!???
I am angry. Aren't you?????
Saturday, 28 March 2015
The Champion Defender of Everyone and Everything (As Long as it begins with a twig)
Ian Verrender
Does anyone remember the days of the anti-mining-tax campaign and obscene footage of Twiggy Forrest, one of the most offensively wealthy people in the world, dressed in the uniform of a mine worker, pretending to be one with the working class, while prancing around on national television effectively denying truth and justice to all?
Shall we all applaud the turn of events showcased in this article?
Back in the day, in the Eighties, whence all goodness began, there was a book floating around at my alma mater called "Mineral Economics" (don't ask me who the author is) which introduced and promoted a strange concept. This concept was called a 'resource rent tax'. Now a 'resource rent tax' has a number of mystical semi-miraculous but also arcane characteristics. It doesn't tax investment,
nor capital, but only income and not accrual income but only cash income. It is the saviour of capitalism itself and can transmogrify any abstruse mining company into a soft fluffy family friendly entity capable only of acting in the interests of the nation at large.
The circularity of public discourse is appalling. This concept was applied to the offshore gas and oil industry without any complaint. Then it came around to the land based minerals industry and a firestorm of hellish proportions irrupted. The most absurd criticism was that it didn't actually produce any revenue. By definition these things don't produce revenue during the investment phase. They are designed to do this. Well Duh.
Resource rent taxes are in fact an idea dreamed up by miners for miners in the interests of miners. The minute anyone mentions a full blown sovereign wealth fund which would have the benefits we actually need the miners drag out the resource rent tax and say 'no, no. Look over here. Don't look over there. Here good. There bad. here are all the reasons why.'
And we all just keep going around in circles. getting nowhere at a tremendous speed.
Does anyone remember the days of the anti-mining-tax campaign and obscene footage of Twiggy Forrest, one of the most offensively wealthy people in the world, dressed in the uniform of a mine worker, pretending to be one with the working class, while prancing around on national television effectively denying truth and justice to all?
Shall we all applaud the turn of events showcased in this article?
Back in the day, in the Eighties, whence all goodness began, there was a book floating around at my alma mater called "Mineral Economics" (don't ask me who the author is) which introduced and promoted a strange concept. This concept was called a 'resource rent tax'. Now a 'resource rent tax' has a number of mystical semi-miraculous but also arcane characteristics. It doesn't tax investment,
nor capital, but only income and not accrual income but only cash income. It is the saviour of capitalism itself and can transmogrify any abstruse mining company into a soft fluffy family friendly entity capable only of acting in the interests of the nation at large.
The circularity of public discourse is appalling. This concept was applied to the offshore gas and oil industry without any complaint. Then it came around to the land based minerals industry and a firestorm of hellish proportions irrupted. The most absurd criticism was that it didn't actually produce any revenue. By definition these things don't produce revenue during the investment phase. They are designed to do this. Well Duh.
Resource rent taxes are in fact an idea dreamed up by miners for miners in the interests of miners. The minute anyone mentions a full blown sovereign wealth fund which would have the benefits we actually need the miners drag out the resource rent tax and say 'no, no. Look over here. Don't look over there. Here good. There bad. here are all the reasons why.'
And we all just keep going around in circles. getting nowhere at a tremendous speed.
Friday, 13 March 2015
It Reeks of Ideology aka "against stupidity..."
Alan Kohler
Michael Janda
Greg Jericho
Here we are in 2015, staring down the barrel of another joke of an LNP budget. The worst aspects of the robbing hood's first budget were thankfully blocked in the Senate by the forces of the far right, of all people, now clothed in the guise of the progressive. In other words we are now progressing in a regressive manner towards a vague right wing phantasm of an ideological utopia defining our reality in terms of a sepia-soaked image of life reminiscent of a time 60-70 years ago.
I began this entry in the usual format butt now I am simply going to VENT, so those of you with an aversion to brown matter everywhere would be best advised to turn off your devices now.
How can anyone be so stupid, say such stupid things, look so stupid on TV, treat everyone with patronizing belittling contempt, and yet actually be elected???????? Does the electorate despise itself this much?????? That it could elect a party that openly believes it is incapable of understanding the concept of anything????
I was stung out of my apathy by the prospect of being forced to live under Work Choices; a policy so unfair unjust and so biased towards the interests of SME's that the prospect of being forced to live by it's rules was anathematically intolerable. So I became as active as I could in the Keven07 campaign. I attended meetings, chanted slogans and publicized the message under the constraint of time devoted to earning a living.
And so was the joyous facade of the Rudd government initiated.
How quickly it all unraveled. No one can know what exactly happened. Everything unravelled at Copenhagen.When PM Rudd realised that although anthropomorphic climate change was the existential, defining, issue of the new millennium, but that, due to the power and influence of vested interest groups, whose very existence depended on the defense of the status quo, it would not be recognised as such and acted upon, he sort of lost interest and backed away to lick his wounds and re-energise for the next battle.
This sence of utter disillusionment with reality has been experienced by most of us on the left of politics. It's like "abandon all hope ye who enter here", except instead of the gates of hell we stand at the gates of the planet. The reality of climate change deniers has no basis in reality. To say, therefore, that it is unreal, is an understatement of the first magnitude. But let us return to Kevin'07.
It is to the infinite degradation of the forces of light that Kevin Rudd was not strong enough, indeed was too weak, to ignore or overcome his disillusionment and disappointment with the Copenhagen result and push through his climate change policy regardless of his feelings. All the unfortunate stupidity which directly produced the present incompetent government of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood, with its shirtfronting approach to policy, can be traced back to this time. The Rudd Government's abandonment of its principles on climate change, after all its rhetoric on the subject, forced the electorate to reconsider its position, leading to a slump in the polls, which allowed the centrifugal forces within the federal ALP to expose the long knives.
Leaders live and die by their principles. If a leader is to lead in an efficient manner he or she must ponder the morality and ethics of their stance. Only then can they decide what policies lead in the right direction, as opposed to the wrong direction. Correct or incorrect doesn't really matter. Only the vision of the leader can enlighten the path we all choose.
Most people believed in Rudd's original stance on climate change and the resultant need for his policies. When he turned around and stabbed them in the back by winding these policies back, he set forces in motion which lead him to be dispatched in the same way. Now to return full circle in this piece, let us again contemplate stupidity.
Three links occur at the beginning. These and their content are only a smattering of what is out there, freely available to anyone who may care to look. They refute and contradict in a coldly analytical, rational, evidence-based manner, every policy, argument, direction and principle of this illegitimate farce of a government. Yet the electorate is not boiling with civil disobedience, wrath and unrest, but continues to tacitly and openly legitimise this grave state of affairs.
Now that is stupid.
Michael Janda
Greg Jericho
Here we are in 2015, staring down the barrel of another joke of an LNP budget. The worst aspects of the robbing hood's first budget were thankfully blocked in the Senate by the forces of the far right, of all people, now clothed in the guise of the progressive. In other words we are now progressing in a regressive manner towards a vague right wing phantasm of an ideological utopia defining our reality in terms of a sepia-soaked image of life reminiscent of a time 60-70 years ago.
I began this entry in the usual format butt now I am simply going to VENT, so those of you with an aversion to brown matter everywhere would be best advised to turn off your devices now.
How can anyone be so stupid, say such stupid things, look so stupid on TV, treat everyone with patronizing belittling contempt, and yet actually be elected???????? Does the electorate despise itself this much?????? That it could elect a party that openly believes it is incapable of understanding the concept of anything????
I was stung out of my apathy by the prospect of being forced to live under Work Choices; a policy so unfair unjust and so biased towards the interests of SME's that the prospect of being forced to live by it's rules was anathematically intolerable. So I became as active as I could in the Keven07 campaign. I attended meetings, chanted slogans and publicized the message under the constraint of time devoted to earning a living.
And so was the joyous facade of the Rudd government initiated.
How quickly it all unraveled. No one can know what exactly happened. Everything unravelled at Copenhagen.When PM Rudd realised that although anthropomorphic climate change was the existential, defining, issue of the new millennium, but that, due to the power and influence of vested interest groups, whose very existence depended on the defense of the status quo, it would not be recognised as such and acted upon, he sort of lost interest and backed away to lick his wounds and re-energise for the next battle.
This sence of utter disillusionment with reality has been experienced by most of us on the left of politics. It's like "abandon all hope ye who enter here", except instead of the gates of hell we stand at the gates of the planet. The reality of climate change deniers has no basis in reality. To say, therefore, that it is unreal, is an understatement of the first magnitude. But let us return to Kevin'07.
It is to the infinite degradation of the forces of light that Kevin Rudd was not strong enough, indeed was too weak, to ignore or overcome his disillusionment and disappointment with the Copenhagen result and push through his climate change policy regardless of his feelings. All the unfortunate stupidity which directly produced the present incompetent government of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood, with its shirtfronting approach to policy, can be traced back to this time. The Rudd Government's abandonment of its principles on climate change, after all its rhetoric on the subject, forced the electorate to reconsider its position, leading to a slump in the polls, which allowed the centrifugal forces within the federal ALP to expose the long knives.
Leaders live and die by their principles. If a leader is to lead in an efficient manner he or she must ponder the morality and ethics of their stance. Only then can they decide what policies lead in the right direction, as opposed to the wrong direction. Correct or incorrect doesn't really matter. Only the vision of the leader can enlighten the path we all choose.
Most people believed in Rudd's original stance on climate change and the resultant need for his policies. When he turned around and stabbed them in the back by winding these policies back, he set forces in motion which lead him to be dispatched in the same way. Now to return full circle in this piece, let us again contemplate stupidity.
Three links occur at the beginning. These and their content are only a smattering of what is out there, freely available to anyone who may care to look. They refute and contradict in a coldly analytical, rational, evidence-based manner, every policy, argument, direction and principle of this illegitimate farce of a government. Yet the electorate is not boiling with civil disobedience, wrath and unrest, but continues to tacitly and openly legitimise this grave state of affairs.
Now that is stupid.
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