Saturday 30 August 2014

The Meaning of the Koch Brothers Tapes: "I Don't Know Where We'd Be Without You" | Mike Lux

The Meaning of the Koch Brothers Tapes: "I Don't Know Where We'd Be Without You" | Mike Lux

The Meaning of the Koch Brothers Tapes: "I Don't Know Where We'd Be Without You"

Article by MIKE LUX

Posted:
08/30/2014 2:01 pm EDT

Updated:
46 minutes ago

One of the classic strategies for politicians caught saying
embarrassing things is to use the old "there's nothing to see here, keep
moving" ploy. Republicans tried that at first when Romney was caught on
the 47% tape, but it didn't work for them because it wasn't only what
Romney said that was so offensive, it was the context: speaking to a
bunch of wealthy donors about all those greedy seniors and poor people.

Sounds familiar.

The spectacle of Mitch McConnell, Joni Ernst, Cory Gardner, Tom Cotton,
the head of the Republican Governors Association (and other politicians
who were on the agenda or in attendance) kowtowing to Charles and David
Koch and other billionaires gathered at the luxury resort. All the
money spent on security ($870,000 to rent the hotel exclusively not to
mention their own private security detail) to keep the meeting as
secretive as possible. And Mitch McConnell, the most powerful man in the
Republican party as the Senate Minority Leader, giving a speech
outlining how his entire career, and the party's future policy strategy,
were all in service to the Koch agenda. The combination will be as
definitional to this campaign as the 47% video was to 2012.

And this won't just make an impact in the four Senate races which have
gotten all the publicity so far. This is going to help define the
national narrative for the 2014 campaign: these tapes make 100% clear
that the modern Republican party is controlled by the Kochs and their
billionaire friends. The Kochs invite the most powerful party leaders,
the most important candidates, to their "seminars," and they all come
running. These politicians thank the Kochs and their billionaire friends
profusely, talk about how they wouldn't be where they are today without
them, and then tell them how they will battle on their behalf if they
win.

Mitch McConnell,
speaking of the Republican party, said, "I want to start by thanking
you, Charles and David, for the important work you're doing. I don't
know where we'd be without you." Joni Ernst made absolutely clear,
multiple times, that she would never had a chance to win her primary
without the donors in the room. Tom Cotton thanked the billionaire
financiers for reviving the Republican party in his state, and Cory
Gardner begged them to invest heavily not only in Colorado but in the
entire Rocky Mountain region, which was "ripe" for them to come in and
exploit.

Notice that these candidates come from all over the country - the South,
the West, the Midwest. The Koch donor network has a broad and deep
reach. They control the Republican party from sea to shining sea.

The Koch brothers have made clear their agenda. They don't believe in
climate change, and want no regulations on their oil companies. They
want their taxes reduced to almost nothing since they, after all, are
the "job creators." They oppose reform and regulation of Wall Street.
They don't believe in a minimum wage, or unemployment compensation, or
student loans, or Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They think
public education should be privatized and turned over to the corporate
sector.

And what the 47% recording, and the Koch conference recordings, confirm
with 100% certainty, is that this is the same agenda, with the same
values, shared by Republican politicians.

The Kochs and their millionaire/billionaire friends in that luxury hotel
in Orange County, California are now in control of the Republican
party- lock, stock, and barrel. And that is the narrative, confirmed on
tape, of the 2014 election. Mitch McConnell is right: the GOP would be
nowhere without the Koch brothers. The Republicans know where their
bread is buttered, and will dance with the ones who brung 'em.

Follow Mike Lux on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/ProgressiveLux

Mitch McConnell

Joni Ernst

Koch Brothers

Republican Party

Cory Gardner

Tom Cotton

Friday 29 August 2014

Sitting on defence - » The Australian Independent Media Network

Sitting on defence

August 30, 2014
Written by:
Kaye Lee
10 Replies

$80,281,391.78

This is how much we will spend every single day this
year on defence. And this figure is conservative. It does not include
funds appropriated to the Defence Housing Authority, those administered
by Defence for military superannuation schemes and housing support
services, nor the additional funds provided directly to the Defence
Materiel Organisation to buy equipment. Equipment investment will grow
from around $3.5 billion last year to $6.1 billion this year.

This year’s federal budget was dominated by budget repair. Yet amid
the spending cuts and tax increases, Defence did very well. Nominal
defence spending will grow by $2.3 billion this financial year (2014-15)
to $29.3 billion, representing 1.8% of GDP. In real terms, the
year-on-year increase amounts to a 6% boost.

Tony Abbott has also promised to increase defence funding to 2% of
GDP in 2023-24. To meet the target on the basis of the funding
disclosed for the next four years, expenditure will have to increase at a
rate of 5.3% above inflation for the six years after that.

If the government wants to spend 2% of GDP on defence it’ll have to
find a way to convince taxpayers to accept the higher taxes and/or
reduced services necessary to fund the venture. Every extra dollar
allocated to Defence meant deeper cuts to social programs and higher
increases to taxes than would have otherwise been the case to achieve
its fiscal goals.

2% of projected GDP in 2023-24 is a lot of money; around $52 billion
($42 billion in today’s terms). Extrapolating current trends in
personnel and operating costs, there’ll be around $112 billion available
for capital investment in the forthcoming decade as a consequence,
compared with only $66 billion for the decade just past (both measured
in today’s dollars). It appears, therefore, that the ADF will need to
grow to accommodate the additional money that’s been promised.

Key initiatives in this budget included the bringing forward of $1.5
billion funding previously planned for 2017-18 to “address immediate
pressures”. I assume the ‘immediate pressures’ include the unending
search for the missing Malaysian plane on which we have already spent
about $50 million with another $90 million set aside for the search over
the next two years. They probably also include Scott Morrison’s war on
asylum seekers which is costing defence $60 million this year on top of
the $6 billion allocated to the Department of Immigration and Border
Protection.

Like other departments, defence has had an increase to the efficiency
dividend. Unlike other departments, according to the budget night
press release, ‘$1.2 billion in back office savings over the Forward
Estimates will be reinvested into Defence capability’.

On current estimates, each of Australia’s roughly 10 million workers
will be contributing around $5,000 a year each to sustain the promised
defence budget in 2023-24. Yet, according to opinion polls, support for
higher defence spending has fallen from 60% in 2001 to less than 40%
today.

Despite massive military spending the Australian Defence Force has a
wide range of serious problems and may have great difficulty defending
Australia in the near future.

Much of this relates to the attempts made by Liberal – Labor
governments to cast the ADF in the role of ‘Deputy Sheriff’ – a bit
player in distant US conflicts with limited independent capability.

New Australia
recommends that Australia maintain a ‘defensive only’ armed forces. This
does not threaten our neighbours and so will not trigger an arms race
with them. Maintaining a defensive-only force could save billions of
dollars and leave Australia better defended than it is at present with a
force oriented towards supporting US-led operations. They make the
following suggestions.

Cancel the Joint Strike Fighter Program. Replace with far cheaper
and more capable aircraft such as F-15SE ‘Silent Eagle’ or Sukhoi Su-35
‘Super Flanker’. Savings up to ~$10 billion.
Discontinue Surface Combat Vessels. Surface naval combatants have
been obsolete for decades due to the ever-improving capability of
anti-ship missiles. Australia should cancel the new Destroyers, Frigates
& Corvettes and replace all vulnerable surface combat ships with
more survivable and cost-effective diesel-electric submarines. Savings:
Over ~$20 billion.
Cheaper Submarines. China recently bought eight ‘off the shelf’
super-stealthy diesel-electric Submarines for $US 1.6 billion while
Australia is considering spending $3 billion on each of its new
submarines. Australia should buy off-the-shelf submarines saving $1 – $2
billion each.
Cancel the Large Assault Ships. Instead of the slow and vulnerable
large assault ships Australia should buy the much cheaper and faster
Tasmanian-built INCAT catamarans. These are quite sufficient for
operations like helping East Timor. Savings: ~$1 billion.

The population of Australia represents 0.33 percent of the world´s
total population yet, in 2013, we provided 1.4% of the world’s total
military expenditure ($1.747 trillion). However, all this spending has
not bought us security. Because the spending is all on the wrong sorts
of equipment, Australia is becoming more vulnerable than ever before
according to some experts, including a former Defence Department
analyst, Liberal MP Dennis Jensen
who launched an extraordinary attack on the Abbott government’s
multibillion-dollar purchase of fighter jets, suggesting his colleagues
lacked the competency and the courage to stop the order.

I do not pretend to understand all the nuances of military
interaction around the world but it seems such a ridiculous waste of
resources.

Wednesday 27 August 2014

Why I won't play for team Australia

Date: August 21, 2014
Category: Opinion

Comments 30

Jack Waterford

Editor-at-large, The Canberra Times

View more articles from Jack Waterford

Prime Minister Tony Abbott wants to captain team Australia as he would a boisterous boarding school. Photo: Brett Hemmins

I don't want to play for team Australia, or for team Abbott.
And I wouldn't encourage my children to, either. The real community of
Australians is not a band of footy thugs ruthlessly enforcing
conformity, led by a bully who doesn't hesitate to punch people on his
own side, who divides people according to whether they are for or
against him, and who wants everyone to defer to his judgment about
matters of the general interests of the team.

This is not a partisan matter. I would no more be a happy
Vegemite marching for Julia Gillard against the Palestinians, or Kevin
Rudd against boat people. A part of the privilege of being Australian is
that I don't have to march for anyone, sing to anyone's hymn sheet, or
listen to anyone's tendentious and pretentious nonsense about patriotism
and duty, respect for authority, honour and sacrifice.

These are people who cannot inspire, whether with their
deeds, or by their words. All too often their words pander to selfish
instincts of particular members of the team, not to the natural
generosity of the human spirit. These are leaders who cannot galvanise,
and whose every reach into the abstract should be carefully parsed for
hidden self-interest, while at the same time checking that one's wallet
is not being stolen.

They may have notions of what is in the public interest, but
their right to enforce these notions is contestable, and at best on
leasehold. As things stand, the only argument in favour of extending the
lease at the next opportunity is the feeling that Labor has yet to
learn anything from its last trouncing for failing at exactly the same
hurdles.

Advertisement

My own aversion to playing in the team comes in part from
Groucho Marx's injunction against belonging to the sort of clubs that
would have people like yourself as members. I was once thrown out of
school cadets on the grounds that I was bad for morale (the other troops
would get dispirited about my being the only one in step).

But my aversion to others playing in the team is not unlike
the fears of mothers about letting their darlings play rough games, like
rugby, which seem to them brutal, unscientific and managed by bruisers
of no conspicuous moral or intellectual leadership values such as Tony
Abbott and Joe Hockey, or, for that matter, Bill Shorten or Tanya
Plibersek. The only reason I would follow any of them, and then at a distance, would be out of curiosity about which fresh disaster they were leading us to.

One can, of course, be entirely sure that Tony Abbott has no
partisan game in mind when he speaks loftily of team Australia – the
collective, or family, that we are regardless of our different
backgrounds, types, political opinions and disagreements. The squabbling
family that is still, nonetheless, a family at heart. And the family
that recognises that there are rules for resolving arguments and values
we all share. Rules we all agree on, and are bound by.

Team Australia is like a boisterous boarding school, such as
Riverview, where Tony Abbott went. Those who go there are the cream of
the Catholic crop, having much more uniting them (particularly access to
a lot of money) than dividing them (such as how far an ethic
of obligation to others has to be taken in real life.) There are
prefects and seniors, rules and traditions, and, of course, lots of
little factions and friendship groups – but everyone cheers for the same
side at the big games.

Members of team Australia might be defined as those who feel a
burst of pleasure and pride when Australian wins a gold medal at chess,
or the first Ananga child to graduate from high school. (The latter
hasn't happened yet, though by the time she should have done so, about
$850,000 will have been paid to various non-Aboriginal members of team
Australia "helping" her with life's struggles.)

In this Enid Blyton or Frank Richards vision of the world,
the example is, of course, set by the senior boys and girls, and the
enduring culture of the place. That's a culture that is British, of
course, or perhaps particularly English. Certainly not Scottish,
apparently. And who could better encapsulate it than Tony Abbott
himself, the reason why we are all so delighted when he, as a captain's
call on our behalf, anathematised any idea of the end of the 1707 Act of
Union and a separate Scotland.

It is never quite clear just when Tony is making a captain's
call – when he is presumed both to be infallible and to be speaking on
behalf of all in the team. Or when he is simply being a divisive,
rancorous and fallible figure leading team Abbott out to play against
the leaners and takers.

His pronouncement on Scotland came in the middle of a host of
other pronouncements, about the sheer wickedness of the Russians, and
of soldiers in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, where he
appeared to be speaking ex cathedra, as it were. I am, for that
matter, never quite sure into which category his occasional comments
about Indonesia, Israel, China and Japan fit, though I am often
uncomfortable with the remarks he has made on those as well.

I have, of course, no objection to his saying what he thinks,
to his putting forward arguments in debate, and even to his right, as
prime minister, to carry forward into action the things he thinks right.

What I object to is his claim of a right to have us all fall
obediently into line behind him when there has been argument and
deliberation, on the basis that father Tony knows best. And in saying
that this claim of a right sticks in the craw, I would also observe that
he was never, either as a leader of the opposition or as a follower of
other leaders of the opposition, conspicuous for loyalty either to the
leader of the team, or his team.

Abbott has a right to denounce terrorism, and to demand that
others do not practise it, here or abroad. I am not so sure that he
should be able to formulate, on behalf of all Australians, just what
classes of Australians – Muslims say, or Tasmanians – should think about
the civic obligations, or their duty not to kill those with whom they
disagree, unless Tony Abbott, on behalf of the team, has declared them
to be enemies of all Australians.

There are several reasons for caution. Even in my lifetime,
some regular Australians – Catholics such as myself, for example – have
believed things about our right to impose values on others that we no
longer can do in the secular society we have become. Not so long ago
Spaniards, in the name of Catholicism, were offering Jews conversion,
exile or death. It would be relativism, surely, to say that values and
cultures can be defensible in different contexts.

My other reservation is that sometimes I have a slight
sympathy for the sentiment of our captain, but contempt for his
explanation. Such as, for example, about the problems of Syria being
about bad baddies and not-so-bad baddies, or the readiness with which he
has assumed that the shooting down of MH17 was a positive act of
Vladimir Putin's will.

And much as I tended to agree with his assessment of the need
to render urgent humanitarian aid and protection to the Yazidis and
Christians in northern Iraq, I was a little concerned at his idea of a
fresh and unprofitable war in the area.

For all I care, Abbott can even categorise things as
"un-Australian", though, given the things that some "great" Australians
have done and won praise for, here and abroad, I have often wondered
whether there are any clubs to which Australians cannot belong on the
grounds of being too ghastly or too evil.

I think, frankly, he should concentrate on leading team
Abbott, which is not doing at all well, and leave the saying of uniting
encomiums to governors-general, and other, more natural and uniting
leaders, not so obviously muddied by battle on the field.

Monday 25 August 2014

Crucial fortnight for Coalition

Date: August 26, 2014 - 2:03AM

Mark Kenny and Latika Bourke

Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey after releasing his budget. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Federal cabinet met on Monday in a bid to reframe its
confused budget messaging as Labor confirmed it would not be
compromising on stalled measures forcing the government further towards
retreat or compromises with the independents.

The talks followed a harsh political reaction to suggestions
from senior ministers about possible tax increases or cuts to university
research spending if budget savings remained unlegislated.

The otherwise routine cabinet meeting came as even some of
the nation's conservative commentators urged the government to regain
the initiative, amid confusion over the language being used by senior
ministers to describe the budget impasse.

With the first-year anniversary of its election looming on
September 7, Coalition ministers met in what some referred to a "war
cabinet" - a reflection on the government's low popularity and the stiff
resistance its budget has met in the Senate.

Labor continued to offer no way forward for the government,
with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten telling his MPs to hold the line.

"I would assess that we have fought well in what's been 100
days since the budget – but the fight is not over and really, we've only
just begun to fight and that's what Australians expect of us," he said.

Mr Shorten pilloried the government declaring "our meeting
here is about fairness, the other meeting down the corridor is about
tactics".

But government sources played down the significance of the
cabinet talks, claiming that strategic discussions in cabinet took place
regularly and that detailed negotiations over individual initiatives
remained the province of senior ministers.

Government hopes of more productive talks with the Senate
crossbench appeared no closer, however, with key figures such as Palmer
United Party Senate leader, Glenn Lazarus branding talk of higher taxes,
if cuts cannot be approved, as "political suicide" for Tony Abbott.

That followed a weekend warning from Finance Minister Mathias
Cormann that revenue would have to be increased if spending could not
be cut.

Another crossbencher crucial to that outcome, South
Australia's independent, Nick Xenophon, characterised those comments as
"incredibly reckless and irresponsible", calling on the government to
instead have the courage to address tax concessions on superannuation if
it was genuine about its threat.

Labor labelled the Cormann warning tantamount to "extortion".

Senator Cormann said on Sunday the "the only alternative to
balance the books is to increase taxes" and Education Minister
Christopher Pyne said the government would have to examine the option of
cutting research funding if Parliament rejects his proposal to
deregulate the university sector.

Senator Lazarus said on Monday that the tactic would sound a death knell for the Coalition if followed through.

"I think it would be political suicide for the Abbott
government if they did try and introduce more taxes to the Australian
public, I can't see that happening," he told Fairfax Radio in Brisbane.

He said PUP would reject measures such as the proposed $7 fee for doctors' visits because they unfairly hit the poor.

Mr Shorten said again it was time for the government to dump its budget.

"We've seen in recent days the government move from insulting
the Australian people, telling them they just don't understand the
unfair budget when in fact they do," Mr Shorten told reporters.

"The government's moved from insulting the people of Australia to threatening the people of Australia."

Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said on Monday that he
"fully understands" voters' concerns but likened the budgetary situation
to a "financial melanoma", which "will kill you" if left unaddressed.

"In five, 10, 15 years' time, the chickens will come home to
roost. We will be closing down hospitals, we won't have an ABC, we
won't be able to defend ourselves because we will have run out of
money," he said.

Sunday 24 August 2014

Callow or shallow? - » The Australian Independent Media Network

Callow or shallow?

August 25, 2014
Written by:
Kaye Lee
Leave a reply

When Nelson Mandela died last year, Tony Abbott joined many other world leaders in singing his praises.

“The world mourns the passing of Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela will
forever be remembered as more than a political leader, he was a moral
leader. He spent much of his life standing against the injustice of
apartheid.”

But Tony didn’t always feel that way.

When Abbott was President of the Students’ Representative Council at
Sydney University, he wrote in Honi Soit that Voluntary Student
Unionism “would finally stop all students being taxed so the SRC can
fund groups such as International Socialists, South African Terrorists,
the Spartacists, Lidcombe Health Workers Collective etc. which are quite
irrelevant, not to say obnoxious, to student purposes.”

Abbott’s “South African Terrorists” were the members of Mandela’s
African National Congress (ANC) political party, to whom the SRC had
previously been giving money.

Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal Party, and its associated Liberal student
groups at universities, supported the Commonwealth campaign to abolish
Apartheid. Abbott did not join these efforts. He was President of the
University of Sydney Democratic Club, an affiliate organization of B.A.
Santamaria’s militantly anti-Communist National Civic Council and
Democratic Labor Party.

These organisations actively supported South Africa’s Apartheid
government, if not the Apartheid system itself. Abbott wrote and
published the club’s bulletin, The Democrat, and was a close friend of
Santamaria. The Apartheid government was seen in Western conservative
circles as an important bulwark against Afro-Communist tendencies, which
the ANC was thought to exhibit.

Anti-Apartheid activity was alive and well in Australia at this time.
Many Australians supported fundraising efforts for the ANC, and
participated in anti-Apartheid demonstrations throughout the 1960s and
1970s. The racially exclusive Springboks were banned from playing in
Australia between 1974 and the end of Apartheid in 1994. In 1981, the
Fraser government refused permission for the aircraft carrying the
Springboks to a tour of New Zealand to refuel on Australian territory.
Abbott, however, accepted a rugby scholarship to tour South Africa in
what former Federal Labor Minister Barry Cohen described as a
“universally acknowledged… promotional tour of Apartheid”.

Tony isn’t the only Liberal to change his tune since University days.

A few years earlier, a young Malcolm Turnbull, while describing
then-PM Gough Whitlam as an arrogant egomaniac, lauded the Labor Party
as a “wealth of opinion and class…diverse and less likely than the
conservatives to blindly rally behind one great leader”. Menzies’
Liberals, on the other hand, had “warmed the treasury benches” for 23
years with “the steak-fed bottoms of the sons of Toorak and the
champions of Double Bay” – an interesting observation as Malcolm grew up
in Vaucluse and Double Bay and he and his wife Lucy have lived in the
Wentworth electorate all their lives.

In 1984, Christopher Pyne signed up for the Adelaide University
Liberal Club and the Young Liberal Party before he even went to his
first lecture. Soon enough, he was running both shows. Ruthlessly he
purged right-wingers from the executive of the Liberal Club. When half
of the 400-strong membership threatened to quit in protest, Pyne
cheerfully collected the resignations. He has freely admitted that he
campaigned against the reintroduction of university fees purely to win
an election, a view he reiterated when interviewed recently saying
“Those people who see me as some kind of political warrior are right to
think that I would do everything I can to win, so that the Coalition is
in government … I’ll do what I need to do to position the Coalition to
win elections.”

Sydney University was a very different place by 1987, when Joe Hockey
took the reins of the SRC Presidency. The dominant political grouping
was the Sydney University Liberal Club, a conglomerate of liberals, soft
conservatives, and careerist moderates.

Liberals and Left Action were the two major factions on the SRC, but
Hockey was from neither. Indeed, he disparaged the student newspaper,
Honi Soit, for their obsession with the ‘return of Liberalism’ and its
reluctance to report on student protests.

“One wonders whether Honi Soit is a NEWSpaper or a front for
political masturbation,” he wrote in a 1987 Presidential report. “They
do not seem to have any shortage of contributors espousing the virtues
of Liberalism on campus but when there is student news there is no local
coverage.”

Hockey’s policy statement in the 1986 election edition of Honi:
“There is no question in my mind that students will never accept fees. I
totally oppose any compromise the government may offer.”

His year as SRC President was chiefly spent fighting Labor’s re-introduction of university fees,
which had been abolished under Gough Whitlam. But according to a 2012
profile by Bernard Keane, he was “accused of failing to aggressively
lead student demonstrations for fear of endangering his Solicitors’ and
Barristers’ Admission Board enrolment”.

Hockey’s backers, a ticket called “Varsity”, were decidedly centrist
and unaffiliated, declaring they would “fight the burden of factionalism
presently hindering the SRC’s effective operation”. In stark contrast
to Abbott, Varsity was emphatic: “There should be no further government
cuts to university funding.”

Whilst I acknowledge that these were words spoken a long time ago, it
appears that, as university students, our current ministers were more
endowed with confidence than conviction. As their careers have unfolded
we have seen political expediency trump passion with backflips on not
only university fees but climate change, paid parental leave, banking
regulation, unaccompanied minors being sent offshore, environmental
protection – the list of discarded beliefs is long and growing.

Yes, they were young, but one wonders whether their views were those of callow youth or shallow men.

Thursday 21 August 2014

Captain Abbott's Team Epic Failure

Bob Ellis 22 August 2014, 8:00am 20

New Australians Politics

**(Photograph Joe Armao via Brisbane Times)**

Though the competition is large, Abbott's 'Team Australia' is probably the most idiotic thing he’s said in a fortnight, writes Bob Ellis.

What Abbott has been attempting lately is what might be called a daily scramble to change the subject.

Operation Bringing Them Home. Threatening Putin. Denouncing an independent Scotland. Praising the cross-benchers. Denouncing Clive Palmer. Declaring there is no Budget emergency after all.

His latest wheeze is Team Australia; and how, as George W. Bush might have put it, you’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.

It’s probable, though the competition is large, that this is the most idiotic thing he’s said in a fortnight.

It came a day before Melbourne was named the world’s most liveable city. It’s the world’s most liveable city because it’s — probably — the world’s most successful multiculture.

Melbourne
people think of themselves as Macedonian Australians, Greek
Australians, Italian Australians, Croatian Australians, Sudanese
Australians, Chinese Australians, Korean Australians, Japanese
Australians, Pakistani Australians, Tongan Australians, Filipino
Australians, Arabic Australians — and so on. Scottish Australians. Irish
Australians.

And none of them think of themselves as Team Australia. It’s an
insult to their nation of origin, or their parents’. He’s saying take
off your kilt, take off your hijab, you’re Australian now. Put on this
nose cream. This bikini.

It’s an American concept, of course. Team America! is an American
rallying cry. It applies to a nation more divided, more sundered, more
split, more troubled, more war-like along ethnic lines than any in
history. Various mafias crowd American history, and American miniseries.
Roots. Boardwalk Empire. The Sopranos. The Kennedys. The Molly
Maguires. Miami Vice. Hawaii Five Oh. Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. The
Godfather. Chinatown.

But Australian history is not much like that. There are few gang wars that are ethnic in their borders. We’re not like that.

And Abbott, as usual, has mistaken the country he’s in.

He’s a man who believes Muslims will fry in Hell and he’s inviting
them into his team. And they, quite rightly, see this as a threatening
gesture. Abandon your culture, your national tendencies, adopt mine.
Ride bikes. Confess to Pell. Try in the priesthood, then shuck it off.

He truly doesn’t know how strange he is, how repellent some of his
beliefs. No raped woman should abort the result. No woman, not even his
sister, should marry a woman. When the vote is 70 percent against him,
he is not for turning. When it’s 90 percent against him, he is not a
team player. He’s just a little crazy.

Most migrant groups see him this way — all atheists, all agnostics and, oh yes, all Muslims. Every one of them.

And he’s inviting them into his team.

‘The Mad Monk’, he used to be called. A disaster in the making.

And, one year in we see − and see every day − how true that is.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

Recent articles by Bob Ellis (showing 10 of 134 articles | view all articles by this author)

22 August 2014 | Captain Abbott's Team Epic Failure
19 August 2014 | Q&A and the Palmer method
15 August 2014 | The last days of Joe Hockey
14 August 2014 | Joe the Dill careers off
8 August 2014 | Team Australia: The tipping point
3 August 2014 | Scott Morrison: Madness as usual
1 August 2014 | Israel — and the words the White House will not say
23 July 2014 | The imprisonment of Scott Morrison
14 July 2014 | Stop killing children in Gaza, Bibi. Stop it now.
13 July 2014 | Sgot Moralsnone delivers children to their family's murderers

By following the US, Australia consigns future generations to social immobility | Jim Chalmers | Comment is free | theguardian.com

By following the US, Australia consigns future generations to social immobility

Among
Joe Hockey’s many mistakes, the most damaging may be his pursuit of
American-style job outcomes and intergenerational stagnation here in
Australia

- Jim Chalmers
- theguardian.com,
  Friday 22 August 2014 09.25 AEST
- Jump to comments (16)

The unemployment rate in Australia was lower than in the United States every single day
of the Rudd-Gillard governments, but higher just before Labor was
elected and soon after it was defeated. This was a largely-ignored but
key takeout from the recently-released labour force data for July, which saw the Australian rate tick up to 6.4% while the US’ dropped to 6.2%.

This is fact, not opinion. It means Labor oversaw a stronger jobs
market here than in the US every day it governed, but Australia’s was
weaker than in the US at times under Howard and Costello, and now under
Abbott and Hockey. Today, on this measure at least, America’s labour
market gathers pace while Australia’s deteriorates.

This is a stunning reversal when you consider that during the peak
of the global financial crisis our unemployment rate was almost half
America’s (see graph). It is also a welcome factual reminder of the
success of the stimulus packages detailed and explained in Wayne Swan’s
new memoir, The Good Fight.

Meanwhile, his Liberal successor Joe Hockey has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons; most recently for insensitive comments about “poor” people and petrol.
But among the many mistakes already characterising his treasurership,
the most damaging may be Hockey’s pursuit of American-style job outcomes
and intergenerational stagnation here in Australia, turning Australia’s
remarkable recent economic success on its head.

Objective analysis of two other pieces of recent data feed an
argument that we are adopting some of the worst features of the American
economy. The first was ABS figures
released last week, which showed that real Australian wages fell
year-on-year for the third consecutive quarter. It was the first time
that price inflation has outstripped wage growth for three consecutive
quarters since 2008.

Across the Pacific, a decade or more of wage stagnation is one of the
most troubling indicators of America’s failure to share the gains of
post-war, and now post-crisis, prosperity effectively.

In one of his most fascinating speeches since leaving the prime
ministership, Paul Keating attributes American wage stagnation to the
fracture of the binding social philosophy of the US kicked off by the
Reagan-era shift to conservatism. Published as the last chapter in his
book After Words,
the speech argues that this shift is marked most clearly by the radical
Republican obstructionism of Gingrich in the 1990s, replicated by the
Tea party movement more recently, seeking to cement structural
inequality in the political framework.

Australians are waking up to the fact that the Abbott government,
with Hockey at the wheel, is now trying to drive Australia down this
discredited economic and political road. Their first budget asks those
on low and middle incomes to carry the heaviest load while the
wealthiest gain new entitlements; a fact claimed not just by Labor
politicians but proven by the independent National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM).

Judged on their decisions to date, we now have a government that sees
inequality as an objective to be met, not a challenge to be overcome.
This is appalling in the here and now and devastating for the future. As
Miles Corak’s Great Gatsby curve suggests, inequality in one generation breeds inequality in the next, consigning future generations to social immobility.

The risk is that this social immobility then dampens the prospects of
future growth. It’s a risk supported by a third piece of
largely-ignored recent data, this time from the international ratings
agency Standard and Poor’s. In a review of US economic data,
S&P found that the extreme levels of income inequality in the US
are a drag on long-run economic growth, causing them to lower their
expectations of average annual growth from 2.8 to 2.5%.

Their solution? To invest in education – to develop the human capital
that benefits not only workers of today, but the workers of tomorrow as
well. A far cry from the education funding cuts and changes to higher
education access that were introduced in the Hockey budget this year

Recent US labour market outcomes and their distribution of economic
opportunity are not among the many things we admire about that
otherwise-great nation. Somehow, as Australians turn on Hockey and his
unfair budget in increasing numbers, he still fails to understand this.

A sociopathic lack of empathy - » The Australian Independent Media Network

A sociopathic lack of empathy

August 22, 2014
Written by:
Kaye Lee
Leave a reply

One thing I have tried to teach my children is that, when you make
a mistake, tell the truth, apologise, do what you can to make up for
it, and learn from the experience.

The example being set by our nation’s leaders makes it hard to reinforce that message.

According to Tony Abbott, the Coalition’s woes at ICAC are due to the
Labor government making rules about donations from developers, implying
it is the rule that is wrong rather than the breaking of it.

Likewise in the Bolt case – his conviction for vilifying groups in
our society was the fault of an unjust law rather than any wrongdoing on
his part according to his special friend, George Brandis.

Hockey’s defence of the revelation that he is paying off his
investment property by claiming $270 a night accommodation entitlements
is that it is “within the rules”, a defence also used by Malcolm
Turnbull and many other politicians. Nowhere is it questioned as to
whether this is what was intended by the “away from home” allowance.

Abetz and Hockey have both used the “blame the media” excuse for
things they have said. I was misinterpreted, I didn’t finish my
sentence. Abbott and Pyne tell us that we misunderstood when they said
they were on a unity ticket about education funding.

Twelve months into their term, the government seem unable to take the
reins, constantly repeating the “debt and deficit disaster inherited
from Labor” line, with absolutely no plan for the future. Tony counts
off on his fingers (an exceedingly annoying habit that he seems unable
to function without), “We axed the carbon tax, the boats are stopping,
we are building the roads of the 21^st century, and we are getting the budget under control”. There is no thought about what we will do about climate change or how we will help refugees or whether those roads are the best infrastructure investment or modelling on how the budget cuts will affect the vulnerable in our society.

But the prize for the best “pass the buck” comment must go to Tony’s
mentor and spiritual advisor, George Pell. When being interviewed by
the Royal Commission into child sex abuse yesterday, Pell made the crass
analogy that the Church should not be held responsible for the actions
of its clergy any more than a trucking company should be held
responsible if one of their drivers molested a woman they picked up on
the road.

The last time I looked, trucking companies didn’t run schools. They
were not placed in positions of trust to care for the vulnerable in our
community or to provide moral guidance. I would also suggest that if
the company was informed that one of their drivers had raped someone
they would not try to bribe the victim to not go to the police.

In 2002, Pell told his audience of World Youth Day delegates that
“abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young
people”, during a public religious instruction session. In response to
the outcry this caused, Pell said he was merely trying to point out that
sex abuse by Catholic clergy had attracted attention to the detriment
of other issues.

Anthony Foster, the father of two of the abuse victims, has said
Cardinal Pell displayed a “sociopathic lack of empathy” when they met to
discuss the case in the 1990s.

This lack of empathy is the most frightening part of the current
government and the people to whom they listen. Anyone who is not rich
is to be blamed for not working out how to rort the system. Single
parents are made to feel ashamed of their situation which Kevin Andrews
and Cory Bernardi tell us will lead to their “sons ending up in gaol and
their daughters being promiscuous”. Unemployed people are just not
trying hard enough and we can’t afford to keep giving handouts to the
sick and elderly. Refugees are to be incarcerated and vilified for
wanting a better life for their families, and all Muslims viewed as
terrorists waiting to behead us at the first opportunity.

A sociopath is someone who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. I’d say that just about sums it up.

Like this:

Wednesday 20 August 2014

Team Australia: Patriotism, religion and idiots

Duade Borg 21 August 2014, 9:30am 4

New Australians Politics Religion

**(Image by John Graham / johngraham.alphalink.com.au)**

Tony Abbott's appeal for immigrants to join 'Team
Australia' is simply a crude dog-whistle attack against another
religion, writes Duade Borg.

RECENTLY, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has been attempting to draw
attention away from their shambles of a first year in office by putting
security on the national agenda.

The politics of fear is a tried and true success story for the
politically and socially stagnant. Any time the progressive side of
politics is having a good run, you can be assured the stagnants will
jump at every spook.

I’ll borrow an idea from the great George Carlin.

When you consider just how stupid the average person is, and then
realise that half of everybody are even more stupid, it’s not difficult
to see why conspiracy theories and fear of the unknown are such vote
bringers. Stupid people are easily alarmed and there’s a lot of them.

This is the essence of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s "Team Australia" comments. It's simple political symbolism designed to invoke a sense of patriotism.

Patriotism is great for making idiots unquestionably follow the will
of the government; you’ll find some of the most interesting and wondrous
tales of patriotism in Nazi literature and Axis history in World War II. Powerful stuff indeed.

Many of Abbott’s comments and undertones are fuelling the Team
Australia bus down the express route through Muslim territory into
Bigotry City. Lord Mayor Andrew Bolt – the name synonymous with racism – has been extremely vocal on this issue as one would expect, having written many rants on the local Sorbent in Melbourne.

Let’s not mince words. Team Australia (and pretty much everything
Abbott and Bolt ever do) is about perpetuating Christianity (and
Judaism) at the expense of Islam.

Now myself, I’m an atheist. A militant anti-theist, no less.

The best part about being an atheist is that you get such strong emotional responses to the absurdity of all religions.

For example, a Christian would find certain parts of Judaism and
Islam completely off limits for ridicule, as all three religions are
just different versions of the same untruth. However, when you regard
them all with the same disdain and consider all their followers equally
as schizophrenic and deluded, the blinders are lifted and the only thing
left to see is the harm created and perpetuated by them.

So let’s start talking about these 'good Christians'.

The sheer ludicrousness of the Tony Abbott business advisor Maurice Newman’s recent comments about climate change science being a new form of 'religion' could only come from the demented, unhinged mind of a religious lunatic.

Science is the application of logic and reason where religion is the
suspension of it. Science is observation and experimental reproduction
where religion is a disregard of your own observations.

Such brazen contempt for the scientific method could only occur in a country such as Australia, where the Government consists purely of far-right stagnants.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s maiden speech to Parliament in 1994 began with a reference to the first Christian service in Australia.

He stated in his speech that

“... loss of faith is a social problem extending far beyond politics and far beyond Australia.”

He went on to claim that

“God and the ghosts of great men give [him] strength."

Treasurer Joe Hockey gave a speech in 2009 to the Sydney Institute titled 'In Defence of God',
where he attempted to defer the blame for the influence religion has on
people to do terrible things. He has repeatedly cited his Catholic
faith as his reason for opposing socially progressive policies such as
gay marriage.

Scott Morrison,
the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (note: only a
stagnant government, with a constituency of mostly deluded idiots, could
possibly elevate border protection to the highest level on the national
agenda in a country surrounded by oceans) spoke very highly of himself
and his Christian values in his maiden speech in 2008:

From my faith I derive the values of loving-kindness, justice and
righteousness, to act with compassion and kindness, acknowledging our
common humanity and to consider the welfare of others; to fight for a
fair go for everyone to fulfil their human potential and to remove
whatever unjust obstacles stand in their way, including diminishing
their personal responsibility for their own wellbeing; and to do what is
right, to respect the rule of law, the sanctity of human life and the
moral integrity of marriage and the family. We must recognise an
unchanging and absolute standard of what is good and what is evil.

Desmond Tutu put it this way:

‘... we expect Christians ... to be those who stand up for the
truth, to stand up for justice, to stand on the side of the poor and the
hungry, the homeless and the naked, and when that happens, then
Christians will be trustworthy believable witnesses.’

Three obviously deeply religious men, they are probably so deluded
that they don’t even realise their idol/prophet is likely to have had the same coloured skin
as those children and families they have condemned in squalid detention
centres for simply seeking a life away from the harm causes by
religious groups at war.

All claim to follow the teachings of a profoundly progressive,
left-wing, prophet and yet none of them act in such a way. Cases in
point being Abbott’s vandalism of our environment, Hockey’s vandalism of
our social fabric and Morrison’s vandalism of our morality.

The dangers of religious delusions are real — regardless of the
religion that the person prescribes to. For such a prescription to
occur, there must first be a suspension of logic and reason. If an adult
claimed to hear voices, have visions, or speak to a sky fairy without
attributing them to “god”, they would be promptly medicated or
institutionalised for being a schizophrenic menace to society.
Curiously, though, this is not the case with religion.

Stagnants love the word “terrorism” because of the connotations. It’s another great way to invoke fear and compliance.

But have you ever seen or heard the term used by a stagnant to describe a massacre committed by a white man?

Take this article from Andrew Bolt a few years ago as an example. No less than three times are acts committed by Muslims referred to as terrorism, yet not once does Bolt refer to the 2011 Norwegian shooting massacre by a white, right-wing extremist as a terrorist act.

In a classic act of Bolt obfuscation, he attempts to make the
left-wing look bad because someone pointed out that the shooter was a
Christian. Obviously, Bolt’s sensibilities are threatened by white Christian massacres.

It’s always amusing to watch someone with such a weak ideological foundation sit in their glass house throwing pebbles.

Highlighting the hypocrisy of Bolt’s “journalism” serves little
purpose. His readership and viewership are idiots but at least he brings
them together where we can keep an eye on them, as you would any group
of people who lacked full development.

What brings Bolt, Abbott, Hockey and Morrison together is not
religious extremism, or Islam, or even Team Australia, it is simply that
it is not the right sort of religious extremism: the Christian sort — the one that brought us the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades.

Idiots.

You can follow Duade Borg on Twitter @diabzAU.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

Saturday 30 August 2014