By 2353NM  

In the past year or so, most of us would have become quite familiar with the group of people that seem to front up almost daily to discuss the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic in each Australian jurisdiction. Usually there are a couple of politicians ably backed up by the experts in public health management, a high-ranking commissioned Police Officer, with a person live translating the discussion into Auslan for the benefit of those with hearing difficulties.

To some extent, they have all become minor celebrities, demonstrated by when the Queensland Government’s usual Auslan interpreter seemed to disappear from view recently, it became a news story in itself. He was ok, but quarantined.

Generally, the Chief Health Officers give background to the decisions they have recommended, with a degree of frankness that is lacking from politicians. As examples, Dr Janette Young, Dr Kerry Chant, Prof Brett Sutton and Dr Nicola Spurrier are happy to discuss their recommendations at a level where you don’t have to be a medical professional or the holder of a science-based PhD to understand. They communicate clearly and explain not only the decision but the reasons for the decision and none of them seem to be afraid to suggest that they actually don’t know all the answers. The ‘experts’ are also happy to discuss what they hope will happen if the plan works as intended.

Why do the respective governments around Australia wheel out their Chief Health Officers and similar staff when there is a crisis to address? The pattern is not a new thing. Shane Fitzsimmons is remembered by many as the ‘head’ of the New South Wales Fire Service during the 2019/2020 bushfires explaining the how and why of fire management. Various meteorologists are also given the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to explain why floods and cyclones affect some areas and not others most summers. In general, the expert information provided appears to be free of spin, marketing and point-scoring. As such, the majority of people put a great deal of trust in the provided information.

There is a lesson here for politicians and reporters, a lot of whom are sharing the stages with the various Chief Health Officers and their ilk at the moment. Frank and fearless advice generally is better accepted than incessant marketing, spin, vacuous promises and claims that cannot be either substantiated or supported. While there are certainly people who think the ‘experts’, reporters and the politicians are in cahoots to force us all into submission by the ‘lizard people’, most of us can understand frank advice and assess that we really should act upon it even if we find the actions irritating, annoying or difficult to comply with.

In contrast, Prime Minister Morrison determined that the dealings of the ‘national cabinet’ (which really are regular meetings of the Prime Minister and each state’s Premier/Chief Minister) should be secret. There has always seemed to be some ambiguity around the consensus achieved in ‘national cabinet’ meetings which suggests there isn’t always agreement. It is rare for the Premiers and Chief Ministers to be on the same stage as Morrison when the ‘national cabinet report’ is being presented.

Morrison’s justification for the secrecy is his decree that the ‘national cabinet’ was a committee of the Federal Government. It seems that others disagreed, with Senator Rex Patrick taking the government to court to gain access to ‘national cabinet’ documentation. The judge agreed with Senator Patrick that the justification for secrecy was invalid. The government had 30 days to appeal and on past history it probably will.

In comparison, the level of compliance with the patient and logical discussions by the medical experts who ‘stand up’ every day to go through the reasons for the restrictions in all our lives demonstrates that most of us can handle the truth even if it isn’t what we want to hear. It also seems that most of us can rationalise that some restrictions on our personal ‘freedoms’ help ourselves and others in our community, despite the claims of some who should know better.

A culture of secrecy does have consequences. If we don’t have the information there are a multitude of people who will make it up for a variety of reasons, including self-aggrandisement or to promote their own view of the world. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, people will fill information gaps caused by secrecy with ‘information’ that might be correct, but more than likely will not.

Open and honest communication demonstrates there is nothing to hide. It’s about time our politicians and reporters tried it. After all, they know the process works as they have been nearby spectators as it is demonstrated almost every day for over a year by the specialist staff employed to maintain public health.

What do you think?

By Matthew Reddin  

For weeks, Gladys Berejiklian has warned that things will get worse. She just announced that she won’t be doing daily press conferences.

There’s this ongoing trend that echoed throughout the online world during the Trump presidency: Imagine if Obama said (or did) this? Imagine the outrage, the scorn, the villagers with torches and pitchforks if he did/said this. But the thing is, you couldn’t imagine it, because he’d never say or do anything as remotely objectionable, crazy or flat-out offensive as Trump would. But a different standard was applied to Trump than was Obama, for whatever reason. There are volumes of books to be written on it and what’s behind it (spoiler alert: it has something to do with pigment).

This is what occurred to me, as a Victorian, as an Australian, as a sentient human this morning upon hearing that Gladys Berejiklian, presiding over a monumental failure to act, a failure of procedure and oversight, the consequences of which have stretched up, down and across the eastern seaboard, has decided that as of Monday, her daily press briefings will be done online, by some low-level bureaucrat, until such time as she has something to say.

Which could be never, let’s be frank about it.

I mean, FUCKING IMAGINE IF DAN ANDREWS HAD DONE THE SAME THING. Truth be told, you can’t, because he actually showed up and did his job, and would have known that there are consequences for not doing his job; Gladys is of the political stripe where there simply aren’t consequences for her doing anything, ever – nor for her federal counterpart.

Gladys announced 1,542 cases (double the highest number of cases Victoria ever recorded during the 2020 outbreak) and basically said her work here was done. “Can’t someone else do it?” she asked someone, probably, in between being insanely corrupt and blithely contemptuous.

Samantha Maiden from News.com.au called it as she saw it. I’m guessing she’ll be fairly alone in that stable for criticizing the NSW leader.

The ABC’s Patricia Karvelas was also less than impressed.

Katherine Murphy from The Guardian did the Twitter equivalent of a spit take.

And while some in the press are going to laud the decision (laughable), it’s a pretty good shibboleth for who among them we all should ignore from here on in. The Andrews press conferences in 2020 were keeping the state informed; at a time when information was vital for our emotional and psychological wellbeing. Those pressers were sustaining, if difficult to endure once the floor opened to pernicious and stupid questions from the likes of The Australian’s Rachel Baxendale and Sky News’ Gabriella Power.

Berejiklian, on the other hand, seems to have accepted the fact that she’s royally fucked up, can’t think of any way around it, and wants to hide under the bedding until such a time as she can come out. At the point, she’ll emerge dole out some PR-spun horseshit about 70% double dosing and freedoms and picnics and how we all did this together.

Yet, Berejiklian has been foreshadowing the pandemic in NSW was going to get to its worst, its toughest; that the hospital system would be stretched to its elastic limit in October, based on modelling the NSW Health Department had prepared. Modelling, by the way, she’s not been very forthcoming with. So, knowing that the state is headed for a cliff, she’s essentially jumped out of the driver’s seat to get a better view of the spectacle.

“I’ll turn up when I need to,” are words that emerged from her sneering maw today.

We should have seen this coming. It was all there: first, they stopped their Covid hotspots announcements. Then, they essentially abandoned contract tracing. Reports started emerging of people dying at home. And all that deeply, deeply offensive talk of “underlying health conditions” (which, for the record aren’t what killed them; the disease did – John F. Kennedy had crippling back pain and irritable bowel syndrome, but you didn’t read the Warren Commission mention any “underlying health conditions” when talking about how he died). Then there are people not going to the hospital and dying in their homes. There’s talk of the health system collapsing, meaning if the emergency wards are too full of Covid patients, you’d best not have a heart attack, or have a car accident, or slip on the pavement, or get hit by a bolt of lightning. Because Gladys has all but runs away from the slightest hint of public accountability.

It would be totally fine for the NSW opposition leader to hold alternative press conferences at 11.00 am instead. They could stand there, read out the laundry list of the Berejiklian government’s abject, morbidly offensive shortcomings and failures, and the media would – by and large – show up and cover it. They have to cover something. (Phil Coorey may give it a swerve, having already penned the vomit-inducing Financial Review magazine cover story, ‘The Woman Who Saved Australia’).

The Labor opposition could front up on a daily basis with representatives of the state’s front-line workers, like nurses, teachers, and everyone else who is essential, advocating for those who seem to have been abandoned by this government, such as Aboriginal & disability communities, or GPs for that matter, as well as mental health experts. They could be the ones that convey the hard data, the facts we need to hear, the insights as to what’s happening in circles of power, and what the road forward looks like.

And people would watch. It’d get coverage, and in the absence of anything else, it would paint Berejiklian and her government in a bad light, and negative publicity is kryptonite to her. It’s further proof that all of these decisions, from both Berejiklian and Morrison alike, from lockdowns to vaccines and everything else, has been about polls and vanity from day one. It’s pathetic. They’re pathetic. Elections have consequences.

This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.

This week marks 1000 days since the Prime Minister Scott Morrison promised Australians an integrity commission.

In that time, the Prime Minister has done almost nothing to live up to his word. The truth is, this Government does not want an integrity commission before the next election. Especially one as robust as mine.

There are no two ways about it – the Prime Minister has broken a key election promise. Government officials themselves have even admitted it in Senate Estimates.

Thanks to you, we’ve shone a light on this Government’s unacceptable inaction on integrity. The thousands of letters, phone calls, social media posts and petition signatures from you have kept the heat on the Prime Minister. I’ve seen it up close myself in Canberra.

Without you, the Government would never have even revealed the details of their dud model for an integrity commission, which would investigate politicians and over 80 per cent of Government officials in secret away from the public eye. There’s a reason experts call it “the nation’s weakest watchdog”.

There is only one way we can have a robust integrity commission before the next election. We need to tell the Prime Minister to let Parliament do its job, and vote on my gold-standard Australian Federal Integrity Commission bill at the next sitting in October.

I know getting the Prime Minister to act on my bill sounds like a tall order. But we’ve forced his hand before. And we can do it again.

You can start putting the pressure on him today by sharing my op-ed on social media, and telling your networks to do the same.

Australians have put a whole lot of faith in this Government during this pandemic. It’s time for the Prime Minister to live up to his side of the bargain, and restore our faith in Government. No more rorts, no more lies.

The next election could be called any day now and is set to be extremely tight.

If the Government thinks it can count on crossbench support in a hung parliament, then they need to demonstrate they’re serious about legislating a strong integrity commission like mine. That goes for the Opposition too. How they act now on this issue will have consequences in the 47th Parliament.

Thanks for your support. I can’t do it without you.

Helen Haines MP

By Peter Wicks  

Craig Kelly’s claim of 30,000 new members has many wondering if his counting ability is any more reliable than his Covid treatments.

The fastest growing political party on earth.

That’s what Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly would like us to think the United Australia Party has achieved. This however, appears to be smoke and mirrors.

Some of you may have seen the full page advert in the press over the weekend bragging about achieving 30,000 new members in 10 days.

I thought I’d reach out to some of them to see what was attracting them to the party of Covid denial and crackpot theories.

Fortunately I was able to reach several of them on the same number. I spoke to a lovely lady whose UAP membership recognises as Usad Dickface. So impressed with the sound policies and professional medical opinions of Craig Kelly was young Ms Dickface that she thought she’d sign up a few memberships for some of her imaginary friends as well.

It’s not just the expert advice on Covid treatments attracting members like Dickface however, Mr Kelly is known to have active members of staff such as Frank Zumbo, who is widely regarded as one of the most ‘hands-on’ staffers around. For all the wrong reasons.

Another new member of UAP that I spoke with was surprised when his membership details including his membership number appeared in his inbox. It was a surprise to him as he would rather inject bleach into his own head than join the party that likely thinks this is a legitimate Covid treatment.

Given there is no cost involved in joining, Grant assumed that someone was having a bit of a joke at his expense.

Craig Kelly and Frank Zumbo (Image from the ABC)

The United Australia Party seems more intent on creating an impression rather than building a legitimate party. It is a plan as pathetic as a Senator buying Twitter followers, but arguably even less convincing.

The UAP membership page has such a low standard of authentication checking that many would assume that it has been designed to allow people to sign up anyone or anything they like. I sure as hell do.

Here’s how it all works.

I was fortunate to have an IT expert, Michelle Stevens, helping me out. Her speciality is search algorithms, and how government and private enterprise use algorithms for personalisation.

The authentication system used by Palmer on the UAP site, a Zoho Webform site is substandard. It will allow you to put anything in and will still accept your membership.

For example, here’s one we did for the Hulk, Mr Louis Ferrigno. His federal electorate is Cork in Ireland but he lives in Queensland with a postcode that doesn’t exist.

Here’s UAP’s membership form accepting the data.

Here’s Australia Post confirming the postcode doesn’t exist.

Here is the confirmation of UAP accepting the application.

Note that the email address matches the one on the membership form

It is important to note that the major parties have a proper authentication system that would never allow this to happen. They want real members, not fake members.

Even if you scrape the bottom of the barrel, you’ll find One Nation have better authentication.

It is also important to note that most parties have a membership fee. Most people are less inclined to set up 100 fake memberships for Ronald McDonald etc if there’s a cost involved. Clive and Craig don’t care.

Recently there has been an increase in burst blood vessels in peoples temples as phone owners nationwide are bombarded by unwanted texts from Mr 5G himself, Craig Kelly.

People have been understandably furious that he has obtained their phone number without their permission. Well I’ll let you in on a little secret. He hasn’t.

UAP will have been using a random number generator which will take the first two numbers as 04 and then just pump out texts to randomly generated numbers. This is why texts have been received on different days, it’s the cycle of the generator rather than an uploaded list of numbers. Unfortunately however, Clive and Craig may know yours is a legitimate number if you respond with warm wishes, as I’m sure many have.

Screenshot from a random number generator

Some minor parties have been doing membership drives in a struggle to reach the new minimum membership threshold. Many have been vocal about having to find 1500 members in a country of over 25 Million.

A few things to remember, we all struggle with the road-map sized Senate ballot, those complaining are seeking to make it bigger still. Taxpayers foot the bill for this enormous ballot paper, the smaller the ballot, the lower the cost to the taxpayer. If a party can’t rally 1500 members then it’s time to form a knitting circle or something.

I have had many people contact me recently about the process of resigning from a minor party.

If you have joined a party and wish to leave you just need to cancel your membership in writing to the Party’s head office. The AEC will be doing random checks from membership lists provided by the parties, if they contact you, simply say you are no longer a member.

If a party claims a member that has left or doesn’t exist here’s what the AEC confirmed with me today;

“…from an electoral law perspective is that the AEC being advised that people on the membership have never been, or are no longer, a member could result in a party being deregistered.”

With 30,000 new members of the calibre of our big green friend Louis Ferrigno, I reckon someone in Craig Kelly’s office has a big job in front of them.

Don’t call me a fake member

By Ad astra  

This is a short piece. There is no need for lots of words. Images are sufficient.

Have you noticed the cluster of loud-mouthed men that has appeared recently on our Melbourne streets, fists raised, shouting messages of defiance directed at our those in authority?

Who are they? What is their agenda?

Image from theage.com.au (Photo by Justin McManus)

Ostensibly, they are protesting at the lockdowns initiated by the Victorian government to limit the spread of COVID-19. But do take a few minutes to look at the men in the images in this link from the Melbourne Age. No amount of words, no amount of colourful rhetoric, could ever describe what these images portray.

Image from theage.com.au (Photo by Chris Hopkins)

Do these men come across to you as responsible citizens concerned about the psychological effects on the populace of a pandemic-inspired lockdown designed on the advice of medical experts and epidemiologists to limit the spread of a lethal virus? Is there any hint of professionalism in the actions of these men? You know the answer.

Image from theage.com.au (Photo by Justin McManus)

The thesis of this piece is that these protesters are simply opportunists purporting to be concerned citizens while advancing their real agenda, which is to implant extreme right-wing views among the local population.

Image from theage.com.au (Photo by Chris Hopkins)

It’s so easy to be deluded about them, about who they really are. It’s so easy to sit back in our comfortable living rooms, never suspecting that in our society there are such people with such radical agendas. When such naïveté exists, they are able to hoodwink us while we drowse in front of our TV screens watching the Paralympics or Bachelor.

Image from theage.com.au (Photo by Chris Hopkins)

Beware! Be very afraid.

By Denis Bright  

After years of commitment to market ideology by both sides of US politics, President Biden is offering some progressive changes in sustainable economic policies. This impending change was covered by my article for The AIM Network just over a year ago when Kamala Harris became Biden’s candidate for Vice President with charismatic endorsement from Michelle Obama (19 August 2020).

Ironically, the Trump administration gave the green light to record levels of federal US deficits to cope with the pandemic recession and its associated public health crises. The Biden administration has cautiously moved public spending from opportunistic deficits of the Trump era towards some cautious progressive agendas for government intervention in the US economy. The Democratic Party has not really followed this path since Franklin Roosevelt’s (FDR) New Deal Programme (1932-45).

In contrast, the hopes generated by the election of John Kennedy and Barack Obama were squandered by new phases of military adventurism.

In President John Kennedy’s short administration (1961-63), opportunities for improved relations with the Soviet Union to repair tensions created by the shooting down of the U-2 spy plane over the Ural Mountains on 1 May 1960 were dashed by the installation of medium range nuclear missiles in both Italy and Turkey (Map Image: CIA). The Soviet Union retaliated by the construction of its own nuclear missile sites in Cuba after the CIA’s own attempts to overthrow the legitimate government of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs landings (17-19 April 1961).

Barack Obama made the mistake of following military advice favouring a troop surge into Afghanistan in 2013 with support from most NATO countries and Australia as an associate member of NATO.

To his credit, Joe Biden has honoured a commitment to end direct military involvement in Afghanistan despite a wave of nostalgia for continued military commitment from the Murdoch press.

Biden’s domestic economic policies can be developed without the distractions imposed by new military commitments. The financial burden of US military spending remains a real barrier to Biden’s domestic economic agendas (Data-Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 26 April 2021):

Strong increase in US military spending continues in 2020

In 2020 US military expenditure reached an estimated $778 billion, representing an increase of 4.4 per cent over 2019. As the world’s largest military spender, the USA accounted for 39 per cent of total military expenditure in 2020. This was the third consecutive year of growth in US military spending, following seven years of continuous reductions.

‘The recent increases in US military spending can be primarily attributed to heavy investment in research and development, and several long-term projects such as modernizing the US nuclear arsenal and large-scale arms procurement,’ said Alexandra Marksteiner, a researcher with SIPRI’s Arms and Military Expenditure Programme. ‘This reflects growing concerns over perceived threats from strategic competitors such as China and Russia, as well as the Trump administration’s drive to bolster what it saw as a depleted US military.’

This inheritance of continued record levels of military spending is at least being offset by new domestic US economic agendas despite fierce opposition from Republicans and moderate Democrats (Politico News Network, 30 August 2021):

President Joe Biden’s defense budget may be headed for another defeat at the hands of Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The House Armed Services Committee will weigh in on Biden’s $715 billion Pentagon budget proposal on Wednesday when it debates annual defense policy legislation. The debate has split Democrats, but party leaders may not be able to hold back an emerging bipartisan drive to boost defense spending.

Republicans have for months said Biden’s budget is too small to adequately deter China and Russia, while many progressive Democrats see a Pentagon budget in need of steep cuts as the U.S. winds down a two decades-long war in Afghanistan. Centrist Democrats say they would consider proposals to increase the defense budget.

Commitment to more defence spending erodes the traction for Biden’s Green New Deal and risks unsustainable levels of national budget deficits which have been summarized by the Congressional Budget Office (9 August 2021):

However, the outreach of Biden’s deficit spending extends across the spectrum of government responsibilities from defence and aerospace industries to infrastructure, jobs and family welfare. The focus is on rebuilding a social market as noted in the details of job creation and family support packages to assist with recovery from the COVID-crisis.

Promoting the current New Green Deal agendas can become a mainstream response that appeals to voters in rustbelt states and depressed cities where constituents were once attracted to Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) rhetoric.

Steven Greenhouse of The Guardian (2 May 2021) correctly identifies Joe Biden as the most distinguished pro-union President in recent US history:

Unions have also suffered notable setbacks in recent years, mostly recently failing to get the votes to unionize at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama. None of this has dampened Biden’s ardor for organized labor, or Republican opposition to it.

Last Monday, Biden issued an executive order establishing the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, a move that aims to help unions expand their ranks. On Tuesday, Biden named Celeste Drake, to head his new “Made in America” program, which is designed to steer more federal money to US manufacturers. Drake is long-time trade expert at AFL-CIO, the US’s largest union federation.

Also last week, the White House issued a fact sheet saying that Biden’s proposed $2.3tn infrastructure plan would create many union jobs in construction, clean energy and other fields – by, for instance, requiring companies that receive money under the legislation not to oppose unionization efforts.

Events in Afghanistan may have distracted mainstream news services from Biden’s less newsworthy domestic agendas. The largely Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal of the Biden administration has been summarized on the White House site (11 August 2021):

• Makes the largest federal investment in public transit ever
• Makes the largest federal investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak
• Makes the single largest dedicated bridge investment since the construction of the interstate highway system
• Makes the largest investment in clean drinking water and waste-water infrastructure in American history, delivering clean water to millions of families
• Ensures every American has access to reliable high-speed internet
• Helps us tackle the climate crisis by making the largest investment in clean energy transmission and EV infrastructure in history; electrifying thousands of school and transit buses across the country; and creating a new Grid Deployment Authority to build a clean, 21^stcentury electric grid

Biden has inherited an economy that had rebounded from the COVID-19 recession in the September Quarter of 2020.

The Medium Term Investment Prospects

The Biden administration of course plans to ease back on deficit spending during the 2020s by expanding a global investment hub through the Quad Group of countries (US, Australia, Japan and India). However, data from the United Nations Centre for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) shows that the investment outreach of the Quad countries is quite weak and negatively affected by the effects of the COVID pandemic in 2020.

Striving to outmanoeuvre China comes at great expense to the flow of  investment capital as measured by Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) capital outflows. The strategy is a variation of Make America Great Again (MAGA) agendas to re-industrialize the US economy.

Since the election of President Biden, outstanding if still conservative minds, are being allowed to share critical perspectives on the way forward for the global economy which is increasingly dominated by the fortunes being build-up through the new speculative financialization.

The participants at this European Central Bank (ECB) Podcast would have been ridiculed by President Trump as opponents of his MAGA agendas.

In a recent episode of #TheECBPodcast with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and host Katie Ranger, Christine Lagarde (President of the ECB) spoke about the risk of the pandemic dialling back progress on female economic empowerment.

This discussion is a long way from the generation of new solutions but at least Dr Janet Yellen has been rewarded with the cabinet position of Treasury Secretary in the Biden administration.

Each participant is also fully aware of the complexity of the new financialization where hard won capital inflows from domestic and overseas corporate profits are being lost to the deserts of financial speculation.

The forte of the US economy has long moved onto high technology manufacturing and financial services. There is a very high degree of financial speculation in the outreach of contemporary investment. Risk taking is highly protected by contemporary financial practices which drive market indicators to new record levels before the need for a major correction somewhere in the future.

While the investment outreach of the US was in retreat on indicators for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) during 2020, most financial market indicators continued in record territory into 2021.

The US economy is artificially strengthened by capital inflows into the new financialization which generates a vast share of US corporate profits through financial speculative financial outsourcing through trade, commodity production, real bricks and mortar investment or accessible commercial services.

Some US FDI inflows do find their way into real investment and into state of the art industries such as aerospace, defence, robotics or social media networks.

However, capital flows into the new financialization from within the US and beyond are more likely to generate instant returns to financial speculators.

Capital flows into the US economy dwarf real investment as measured by FDI inflows.

Trading Economics that net capital inflows into the US were actually in excess of $US 300 billion in just the month of March 2020 and almost $US150 billion in March 2021.

This contrasts with FDI inflows of $US 156 billion in 2020 and an FDI Outflow of $US83 billion for an entire year.

This makes the US a net importer of real FDI while financial markets are awash with fluctuating levels of capital flows to support the new financialization. The long-term future of US capital markets is a matter for speculation and seems to be highly motivated by rent seeking investment.

Is Long-Term Reform of the US Financial Sector a Serious Possibility for Citizen Joe Biden?

The FDI graphs show that the investment outreach of the US and Japan have been in decline during the recent COVID-crisis. The ideal that Quad investment will carry developing countries like PNG and Timor out of their underdevelopment is an exercise in fantasy.

Rather than offering net FDI exports to the world, the US financial sector thrives on attracting capital inflows to finance the budget deficit and for speculative gains by financial operatives.

The late Professor Peter Gowan (1946-2009) of London University provided a synopsis of this subterranean financial sector that had maintained the new financialization through shadow banks and rampant tax evasion through global tax havens and interchange of transactions across borders as hallmarks financial leadership by stalwarts of neoliberalism.

Contemporary data updates might be available at a price through specialized financial networks which are usually by-passed in mainstream news reporting:

Academics Megan Neely from the Copenhagen Business School and Donna Carmichael from the London School of Economics offer a new documentation of the speculative financial sector in the US economy in a peer reviewed article in American Behavioural Scientist can assist in unravelling the puzzles presented by financialization (24 March 2021), “Profiting on Crisis: How Predatory Financial Investors Have Worsened Inequality in the Coronavirus Crisis.” The article is quite easy to read despite the saturation coverage of reference acknowledgments in the original text. I have relied on a block quote to share the wisdom of the authors. Welcome to the world of speculative financialization which generates at around half of all corporate profits in US economy:

This boom in market activity captures how a small group of investors is profiting from the crisis, while the majority of people face unprecedented health and economic hardships. This gap is indicative of widening inequality over the past four decades.

Since the late 1970s, deregulation of the U.S. financial sector has allowed finance to expand in leaps and bounds—and become increasingly risky, opaque, and complex. Finance’s share of corporate profits tripled over the past 60 years, averaging 15% in the post-war era then peaking at 45% before the 2008 financial crisis. During this same period, however, finance’s share of employment only increased from about 4% in 1950 to just over 7% in 2001. Thus, a smaller share of workers reaps the rewards of growth in the financial sector than did in the manufacturing sector’s heyday. The ability of financial actors to influence politics to favor deregulation, leverage bargaining power, and stimulate market demand has transferred large amounts of income to this sector.

As finance expanded its influence to other sectors of the economy, it brought about a widespread shift in corporate governance, called the shareholder value revolution. Before 1980, corporate management focused on reinvesting earnings to develop the company’s workers and products. After 1980, the dominant model of corporate governance understood the corporation’s primary purpose as promoting the interest of its shareholders, including executives, by maximizing profits. To maximize profits, financial investors have pressured companies to downsize, de-unionize, outsource, and computerize jobs. Rather than cutting costs, this focus on shareholder profit served to redistribute earnings from workers to managers, executives, and investors. Overall, this financial restructuring of the corporation resulted in less negotiating power, fewer protections, and greater insecurity for workers.

The expanding size and power of finance has increased the concentration of capital into the hands of a select few and driven widening economic inequality. First, the shareholder value revolution has allowed finance to extract resources from the economy and weakened labor’s bargaining power relative to executives and financial investors. Second, financial professionals in the financial and nonfinancial sectors have devised new investment products that yield enormous profits. These products have further weakened the demand for and power of other workers. Last, disparities in household lending allow the middle and upper class to leverage debt with low interest rates, while the working class, especially those who are families of color, struggle to obtain credit with higher interest rates and fees. Average households and workers struggle to make ends meet, while CEOs and Wall Street reap escalating top incomes, setting the stage for how each group has fared during the coronavirus pandemic. Neoliberal policy regimes have been a primary driver in relaxing financial regulations and the subsequent rise of financial capitalism. Neoliberalism refers to a set of economic policies and practices guided by a market ideology that believes that markets have an internal stabilizing logic and less regulated, competitive markets will reach equilibrium.

Incorporating these reduced global capital flows into productive investment for humanity through real investment in environmental renewal, infrastructure, health and community development is one of the great challenges for today’s generation of financial and political leaders.

A progressive government in Australia should welcome the opportunities presented by the arrival of Citizen Joe Biden to the White House. Forthcoming elections in NATO countries like Norway and Germany do suggest a cautious mood towards progressive change is developing in some European electorates. This polling data for both Germany and Norway is updated every few days and the new trends can be looked at by readers.

Expect the federal LNP to strive for an opportunistic pre-Christmas election before the hopeful voices of change start to become mainstream across the countries of the US Global Alliance.

Eighty years ago, Prime Minister John Curtin called for strategic assistance from the Roosevelt administration during the War in the Pacific with Japan. Time travel might invite a similar address to the nation in Christmas 2021 should Anthony Albanese win an early election on the back of currently favourable polling trends with swings to Labor in all states and territories on the latest Morgan and Resolve soundings of public opinion:

Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to President Joe Biden’s administration  to deliver new sustainable economic agendas because the old policies based on market  ideology and strategic regime change in foreign policies have taken the countries of the US Global Alliance into the wilderness. Our incoming Labor government is ready to implement a New Green Deal for Australians in the new social market traditions of President Joe Biden.

By Matthew Reddin  

Two press conferences, two states dealing with Delta, two very different sets of reported numbers. I decided to compare the pair.

In her July 23 press conference, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian labelled the 136 new cases of COVID-19 a ‘national emergency’. Today, August 30, NSW reported 1293 new cases. No reports were offered of links; no reports were offered of the success of contact tracers. It’s apparently no longer important data; no longer important enough to know where the disease is, where it’s going, its impact or how one case may or may not be linked to another. No talk of it being a national emergency, despite the case numbers having increased marginally shy of tenfold.

On the day when Victorian health authorities reported 73 new cases, 52 of them linked with 21 under investigation (at time of press). In Victoria: 73 is too high a number to open up. In NSW: Case numbers aren’t the most important number, so why not have that picnic?

Tuning in to NSW’s 11.00 am press conference, the focus seems to be “reduce case numbers, sure, but get vaccinated.” The other number that’s critical, repeated, is hospitalisation. But no information is provided. 840 in hospital, 137 in ICU, 48 on ventilators. There’s no ‘national emergency’ when numbers indicate a virus out of control and a system that’s not keeping up.

I’d drink every time Berejiklian says variations on ‘Living with the virus,’ but I’d be passed out on the floor by lunchtime. It’s not a good look. As was this quote, right out of the Trump playbook: “Less testing means less cases”, meaning the less we know about those darned numbers, the less it impacts us, and by us, I mean LNP voters in safe North Shore seats.

Immunologist Alan Baxter posted on Twitter, “Assuming a continuation of the exponential increase in case numbers, by the end of September, NSW will have over 10,000 cases per day, and by the end of October, 200 COVID deaths per day.”

Deputy Premier John Barilaro has been doing the media rounds touting the ‘freedoms’ NSW residents can look forward to once we reach the highly touted 70% vaccination rate (and, just as a refresher, 70% of adults over 16 is actually 56% of the population).

Priorities seem completely out of whack in NSW. Official words and actions look to be motivated by the people’s prevailing mood, rather than best medical practice. Say what you will about Daniel Andrews’ government, but nothing he’s been doing for the past 18 months has been textbook popularity contest-winning stuff. It’s politically counter-intuitive to be making daily announcements that won’t be well-received, operating under the guiding principles that what’s right will be well received, and if not, at least he did what was right.

Victoria’s 11:00 am presser was more of a sombre affair. Present was Health Minister Martin Foley; Daniel Andrews in absentia with fewer announcements to make in the lead-up to what will doubtlessly be a lockdown extension on Thursday. Foley, a laconic suburban probate lawyer type, delivers his messages in a matter-of-fact way. He’s on top of his numbers and tends to have zero patience for the dirt-dumb dipshits in the media who ask him questions that sometimes defy understanding. Taking a cue from NSW’s habit of hearing from the frontline workers to get the point across, he passes the mic to Kylie from Western Health, who speaks of her 2020 experiences with COVID. It’s not pretty. Whereas the NSW paramedic front-footed vaccinations (quite rightly), Kylie makes a sobering point about what they on the front lines are anticipating in the event of opening up. She is “terrified”.

It’s a weird state of play that while NSW, the ACT and Victoria are all under lockdown, the NSW government is downplaying their own situation; the federal government is arcing up their attacks on those states with zero COVID with the unmitigated temerity to “keep doing what’s worked and is overwhelmingly popular”.

Doing what’s popular rather than what’s right at a time of crisis doesn’t seem to bode well for the future. Feast your eyes upon this, from an anonymous doctor in a western Sydney hospital: “We believe it likely that projected patient numbers will soon be overwhelming…from Westmead to Liverpool and Blacktown, ambulances now routinely line up in hospital carparks, unable to discharge their patients. What exactly is going on?”

Sobering sentiments, right there. And a question that verges on the rhetorical.

It’s the kind of event that many premiers – Victoria’s Daniel Andrews included – foreshadowed based on their health advice and brought about extensive lockdowns to avoid. This kind of activity has been taking place all over the world, notably in the US.

Five days ago, the Associated Press reported that the state of Arkansas ran out of intensive care unit beds for COVID-19 patients on Tuesday for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. Arkansas has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the US, with 40% of the state’s population fully vaccinated.

At the time of writing, 18.7 million doses had been administered in Australia, with 6.9 million people fully vaccinated. Noice. But still, that only represents 27.2% of the population, which according to my limited understanding of arithmetic is less than 70%. To quote Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, “Let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks just yet.”

The ABC is also reporting – somewhat depressingly – an “…increase in COVID-19 positive residents refusing to self-isolate”. That’s hard to read, and even harder to comprehend. Asymptomatic people, fatigued from the third wave lockdown? You can kind of understand them doing this. Those who are asymptomatic but have been tested because of proximity to Tier 1 or Tier 2 exposure sites? At a pinch, you can see why it happens, even though it really shouldn’t. But diagnosed COVID-19 positive cases not self-isolating? That’s a dirty pool. Criminal negligence. Public floggings in Martin Place-type stuff.

In NSW, official words and actions look to be motivated by the people’s prevailing mood, rather than best medical practice. Say what you will about Daniel Andrews’ government, but nothing he’s been doing for the past 18 months has been textbook popularity contest-winning stuff.

It’s a weird state of play that while NSW, the ACT and Victoria are all under lockdown, the NSW government is downplaying their own situation; the federal government is arcing up their attacks on those states with zero COVID with the unmitigated temerity to “keep doing what’s worked and is overwhelmingly popular”. Someone seems to have forgotten to tell Frydenberg and Morrison that WA and Queensland are part of the Federation, and that winning seats in those states are necessary for the Morrison government to be returned to office.

Let’s find out how that turns out, shall we?

This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.

By Peter Wicks  

The new dawn looms. Where the unvaccinated are Morrison’s scapegoats and our children are used as guinea pigs.

Sometimes making people do something can be tricky. Some go for the gentle encouragement method. Others go for the ‘scare the crap out of them’ approach.

It’s sad to see NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and some in our media taking the latter approach. In what has now finally been declared a race to vaccinate, I personally feel the scare tactics have gone a step too far.

I listen to the daily updates of the hundreds of COVID-19 cases in NSW and hear the daily death toll as we all do. But like many others I wince when I hear the victims of Sydney outbreak described not as loving mothers, or cherished sons, but as ‘unvaccinated’. Like that is the most significant thing about their life.

We all want to see more people vaccinated, but I think this public branding of a victim is both perverse and disrespectful. It borders on victim blaming.

The other thing that really irritates me about this victim blaming is it ignores the fact that we have a shortage of supply of the Pfizer vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions are currently sitting on a waiting list for the vaccine. Their wait is by no means any reflection on them, rather it is a reflection on the Morrison government. If any of those on a waiting list caught the virus and ended up dying, they would be another statistic announced as ‘unvaccinated’. Not because they were an antivaxxer, lazy or complacent, but simply because Scott Morrison didn’t order enough vaccine.

However, when Berejiklian says “sadly there have been three deaths in the last 24 hours” and then adds “all three were unvaccinated,” that’s not the impression you are left with.

Another day of victim blaming?

You know what I’d like to see?

I’d like to see those in our mainstream media question this.

I’d like to see them ask, regarding those who had died, “How many of these were on the long list awaiting vaccine availability?” Why not? The data should be available from NSW Health.

I live in regional Victoria, I was originally told I had to wait over 8 weeks just to get a date to make an appointment as everything was full and their system would not allow them to book anything ahead of eight weeks. Fortunately I found an alternative that had just started getting access to Pfizer and I shortened the wait to five weeks. I know of many others still waiting for their first jab.

We hear Morrison talk about this imaginary figure of 30,000 lives somehow saved, meanwhile there is real data and real names for those that have died waiting for the vaccines he didn’t order. Real lives of real people with real families. Each one a tragedy worth far more than being labelled and brushed off as “unvaccinated”.

Each of these people died because we were not at the front of the vaccine queue as we were assured in perhaps the most shameful political lie told yet this century.

Those of us who haven’t died waiting for vaccine availability are now being told that ‘the dawn’ is coming. The day when we hit the magic 70% vaccinated and have to “learn to live with the virus.” Morrison insists we have to end lockdowns at some point, and that is the point he wants us to revert back to normal life.

That sounds great, unless of course you’re a kid, have a kid, or maybe grandkids. Children won’t be vaccinated, just like all the ones we are seeing now end up in ICU or violently ill from the Delta strain, the Gladys/Morrison strain as some call it.

Living with the virus

While in first world countries children as young as 12 are receiving Pfizer, here in Australia the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) have been asleep at the wheel waiting for Health Minister Greg Hunt to figure out which way to hold the map. While Morrison and Hunt bicker with ATAGI over the wording of Astra Zeneca advice, children are picking up the virus and taking it to school for show and tell.

2022 is looking like it could be the year the Morrison government turned everyone’s children into guinea pigs while the modelling his decisions are based on shows the Delta variant will spread like a wildfire. Never mind, just like last time there were wildfires, the long vaccinated Morrison will probably have Jenny and his kids watching the carnage on TV from a beach hotel suite in Hawaii.

Australia’s burning

At least back home we’ll be able to do the important things again like go to a Harvey Norman store, or cross our fingers and put the rent money in a pokie machine right?

Yeah sure kids can wear a mask to school, but how many adults do you see having trouble fitting a mask properly?

Even if ATAGI pull their finger out and approve Pfizer for anyone over 12 years old, and even if we have 100% of those eligible vaccinated, where does that leave kids under 12? Do they all have to become Bubble Boys and Girls and live their lives in lockdown until a vaccine is found for them?

We need better options than what is being proposed.

Some will think I’m just being negative and not offering any ideas. I may be wrong, but I thought the countries Chief Medical Officer was paid the big bucks to do just that?

Instead of finding ways to improve our prospects he unfortunately seems to be focussing on trying to find ways to justify Morrison’s positions.

Morrison now says “It’s not how you start the race, it’s how you finish the race.” Well as we lurch from one failure to the next it is looking increasingly likely under a Morrison government we won’t see the finish line.

If we want to make the distance there is one thing that we will need almost as much as we need more vaccines.

A new government.

This article was originally published on Wixxyleaks.

By Dave The Trucker 

It started with a push for workplace rights, but the subversion of the #IStandWithTruckies hashtag is indicative of where we’re at in this country.

The virtues of a transient workplace such as mine mean you can roll your eyes at fellow staff’s comments without reprisal. The downside is that the comments you hear don’t have a face, they just come through the radio, supplanted by the next, louder comment.

On Twitter, the hashtag #IStandWithTruckies is trending, inspired by the possibility of a countrywide blockade erected in response to the government (whichever one) making a vaccine mandatory. It, like many things of ill repute, is an American invention, one eagerly bumped by sound thinkers, like Clive Palmer.

On the platform, user Ben Davison writes:

“Right now the mouthpieces of foreign propaganda are using #IStandWithTruckies to plan a series of blockades to undermine our #Covid19 response. The screenshot is from a video with an American explaining how to disable a truck to use it as a barricade.”

Image from Twitter

Elsewhere, under the same hashtag, many are showing support of the plan, purely because of the crucial role that truckers possess. It’s a maxim I hear in my workplace. If we stop, the country stops. We are the people that the government will listen to. If we stop for a week or month, the government will really feel it. However, the point is lost, as the message is a drive against political corruption and/or taking back the country.

In reality, the genesis of the movement was motivated by the application of COVID rules at a roadhouse in Gilandra. According to what information has been passed on, the local police apparently threatened a $5000 fine if they let truckies dine-in, which conflicts with the National Cabinet exemption allowing dedicated stops and lounges to remain open during Covid lockdowns.

Per Big Rigs:

“Senator Glenn Sterle, a former truckie himself, has now taken up the fight, writing to NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and other state cabinet members to get on board and ensure police abide by the National Cabinet directive on truckies’ facilities.

This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.

By Ad astra  

This short piece is not intended to be a serious treatise; instead it’s a light-hearted appraisal of federal politics. We have had our fill of commentaries on the ins and outs of the Canberra scene written by self-confident ‘experts’ who believe they understand the machinations of the political class. It can’t be all that complicated though; self-interest seems to explain most of the day-by-day behaviour of our politicians.

Instead, this is a search for our very own ‘Toad’, in our very own ‘Toad Hall’, federal parliament. Persist with me if you’re up for a disrespectful tilt at our politicians.

Why Toad, an inelegant creature with none of the refinements of a classy frog? What is it about this ugly fellow that attracted me?

I suspect it was the enigmatic personality of Toad in A A Milne’s dramatisation of Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 novel Wind in the Willows (my favourite tale as a youngster), namely Toad of Toad Hall, that caught my attention at I grew up in what was then the rather sooty coal-mining precinct of Silkstone-Booval in Ipswich in SE Queensland.

He appealed to me because he was so full of ideas. Some were bright, some ridiculous, but they were always presented with such assurance, such confidence, such flair. His advocacy of his ideas was consistently enthusiastic, passionate, always patently honest. Yet the impetuosity with which he presented them resulted in blunder after blunder, which he conceded in his characteristic self-deprecating manner: “stupid Toad”, “silly Toad”, “ignorant Toad”...

The question I put to you is: Who, is our very own Toad in our very own Toad Hall, our federal parliament?

Who there has a personality that matches Toad? Can you identify a politician who consistently comes along with ‘bright’ ideas, who presents them with unbridled enthusiasm, who falls flat on his or her face over and again, but, and this is a big ‘but’, is ready to admit mistakes?

Or does your mind revert to the plethora of politicians who never do so, always seek to blame others, always find others whom they deem responsible?

Our PM is a past master at sheeting home mistakes to others. When have you heard him genuinely, I mean genuinely, accept responsibility, concede an error of judgement, appear eager to put the record straight? No, it’s always someone else’s fault. His verbal diarrhoea is legendary. As is his inability to utter a genuine full-throated ‘Sorry’. There’s always a ‘Morrison’ way of avoiding it.

Unfair appraisal? Reflect on his demeanour during press conferences, where his characteristic smirk bespeaks confidence, over-confidence some would say. Others may use a less polite descriptor.

Our PM is no ‘Toad’.