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Category: Accountability

14/02/2021

Trump Acquitted. Significance?

14 February 2021

President Trump was not impeached because it needs a two thirds majority of US Senators and the Democrats and Republicans have 50 each, with the Vice President having a casting vote. So 13 Republicans would have had to vote for the impeachment, and only 7 did so. 57 to 43 was not two-thirds.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said that Trump could not be impeached as he was no longer President, but this was because the Senate delayed the debate while he was, so it looked like a convenient cop-out. Whether it was ‘loyalty to the Republican party’ is a moot question. In practical terms, Trump has a lot of support at the grass roots of the Republican party, and if he directs his supporters to oppose a Senator’s pre-selection next time it will be likely to cost them their seat. So they were willing to toe the line that the election was rigged, and now vote that Trump did not incite supporters to storm the Capitol. It is remarkable that they were in the Chamber when the Capital building was stormed, and the Senators were in physical danger, but now they decline to condemn Trump.

It is worth looking at the Republicans who did have the courage to cross the floor:

Mitt Romney of Utah was an Independent until 1993, and a Mormon. He stood as the Republican Presidential Candidate against Barack Obama in 2012, and was elected to the Senate in 2019. He is 73 now, but has probably a very strong base.

Bill Cassidy MD, aged 64 was a Democrat who changed to the Republicans in 2001. He was the only Republican Senator who did not challenge the result of the 2020 Presidential election and was condemned by his Louisiana Republican party for this stance, even prior to his voting for Trump’s impeachment. He was elected in 2020, so will face the voters again in 2024.

Susan Collins of Maine aged 68 was elected in 1996, and is the longest-serving Republican woman Senator, most recently re-elected in 2020. She declined to support the bill to repeal Obama’s ‘Affordable Care Act’ and also declined to support the nomination of conservative judge Amy Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Lisa Murkowsi of Alaska aged 63 has been in the Senate since 1998, having followed her father into her seat but via a write-in vote, having been defeated in the pre-selection. A survey showed her to be the second most liberal Republican Senator after Susan Collins. She intends to run for a 4^th term in 2022, but it has been tipped in Newsweek that Sarah Palin will stand against her in the next preselection.

Ben Sasse of Nebraska aged 48 has taken a strong stand against Trump and effectively bet his political career on what is currently not a popular stand in his State, though he paints himself as a strong conservative.

Richard Burr of North Carolina aged 65 surprised colleagues by voting against Trump. He was elected in 2005, but he had announced in 2016 that he would not seek a 4^th term, so preselection is irrelevant for him.

Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania aged 59 was elected to the House of Representatives in 1998, then the Senate in 2011 and 2016, but has said that he would not stand again.

So it looks as if there are very few Senate Republicans who will put the national interest ahead of their own pre-selections and party loyalties.

This is why we need the power returned to the people both in the USA and here. The interests of the political parties are not the same as the interests of the people.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-donald-trump-acquitted/story?id=75853994

12/02/2021

Value Capture and Equity in Infrastructure Development

3 February 2021

One of the ways to finance new infrastructure projects is to capture the extra value that they produce. A rail line makes a suburb far more valuable, particularly the areas around the stations. As it is planned some areas can be sold, or the government can develop the central areas and charge higher rates or a percentage of the increase in value when the land is sold. Simply to buy the land, built the railway and let the developers make all the profit is just plain dumb and is why there are so few rail lines in Western Sydney.

But there seems no sensible plan. The Federal government paid 10 times as much for some non-vital land to a mate, and now seems to be squeezing smaller landholders as they compulsorily acquire the land. If the land is going to be worth a lot more because of the railway, the people who are forced to move should get a bit extra for their trouble. This is only fair.

What is needed is a public formula that gives a fair price when the land is acquired and some value capture for the taxpayer. Railways should be self-financing, with fairness for all.

It seems that the governments are both corrupt and inept. With all the consultants floating around a formula should be proposed, debated, decided and implemented.

www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sickening-to-watch-scale-of-acquisitions-for-airport-line-upsets-landowners-20210120-p56vjy.html

12/02/2021

Governments are Simply Bought

3 February 2021

As we observe a seemingly endless litany of government decisions that are not just bad, but are totally against the public interest and wants, we might wonder why. Are politicians less principled than formerly? Are they of lower calibre? Is it just all about marketing?

Some long-term trends have to be looked at. At Bretton Woods in 1944 world leaders considered how to lessen the chance of future wars. The two world war had been because emerging powers needed markets that were closed to them. So ‘Free Trade’ was the cry that would allow the world to benefit from the free movement of goods from the places that produced them most efficiently to where they were wanted. Governments would not be able to get in the way. This trend has increased, helped by technologies in transport that have lowered freight costs. Countries that have done well have risen, countries that cannot get a premium on their products have gone down. But multinational companies have been able to evade taxes and develop oligopolies that allow super-normal prof its. Multinational companies are now richer than many countries, so governments’ power has hugely lessened in relation to these companies. So the companies often tell the governments what to do rather than vice-versa. Really good people used to go into government with a vision for their country’s future. Now these people often go into business, raising the question whether our politicians are second tier. Marketing is also much more sophisticated, and targeting is very important. Once it is recognised that what determines an election is a few percent in a few seats, the question is how to change those few minds. So research and election donations become critical. I have spoken to Ministers who seriously believe that they cannot oppose the industries that are the key players in their portfolio area. And if they believe that, that will certainly be the outcome.

Decisions like the inability of Australia to oppose the coal industry in the Climate ‘debate’, to avoid fracking when the gas industry sold gas on the assumption that it could frack for more, cal mining under dams, property development that sells iconic museums or demands higher dam walls are examples of governments doing what monied donors want. But the pork-barrelling to ‘look after our own’ is a new low in political behaviour. It has been coming for a while.

When I was in Parliament I followed up the award of a contract for disability services in the Hunter region, which had not gone to the incumbents who had been considered to be doing quite a good job. Investigations showed that there had been an exemplary selection process done in the public service, with the incumbent narrowly winning from another provider in the area, both with scores in the high nineties . The contract went to another tenderer with a score in the 50s. Scrawled across the file was a minder’s note, ‘This one more innovative- support them’. The Minister did. The minder went off to be CEO of the winning tenderer. The unsuccessful tenderers withdrew in disgust. Sadly, this did not come out for some time, so the successful tenderer was then established and the unsuccessful downsized so the decision could not be reversed. Someone in the office was temporarily stood down. It was an example of Ministers over-riding neutral selection processes, which is now so commonplace that Gladys Berejeklian assures us it is normal and the Federal government also acts as if this is so. Perhaps soon there will no public service process at all; why bother making potential trouble?

So with government believing that they cannot act against vested interests and also able to buy power with marketing money, it is hardly surprising that industries donate, especially when there is nothing stopping them. Ministers who are not particularly clever, but have good party connections can also leave politics for lobbying positions in the industries that they formerly were responsible for, having contacts in both the government and the responsible Departments.

As the power and the image of politicians fall, so do party numbers allowing more branch-stacking and nepotism. Some years ago, Christians, noting their numbers falling in the census made a huge effort to get into the political system to maintain their privileged tax deductible status and school system, so now they are represented in Cabinet way more than in society in general. So there is yet another strong lobby within the system- the religion industry.

These problems are part of long-term trends with technological and economic drivers. My own view is history is driven by these forces more than by anything governments want to do. Politicians now have a career structure where their interests are different from the public interest and this will never be reconciled. So we need a new conceptual framework. The power must be taken from the politicians and given back to the people. The government of Switzerland acts similarly to ours except that there are more political parties sharing power, so there is never an absolute majority with governments able to do whatever they like. More importantly, the people have plebiscites quarterly at Federal, Canton (State equivalent) and local levels. If there is enough signatures, an issue is put to plebiscite and the result is binding on governments. Legislation can be overturned if the petitions get enough signatures within a statutory time. So governments govern, but remain aware that they cannot do what they like. Politicians are all part-time and keep their jobs, which are also their post-parliament continuing careers. They are also limited to 2 terms, so that they do not have a political career structure that they can put ahead of the public interest.

It is time to change the constitution to lessen the power of the governments. Restricting political donations should be tried, but I watched as people tried to stop the tobacco industry buying influence. When TV ads were banned, they had ‘sponsorships’ around the grounds and it took 26 years to get rid of these as sponsored sport sang for its supper. Ethnic clubs, Sports Foundations, Rescue boats, Charities, disabled groups; all manner of potential lobbyists were gifted and sang for their supper or donated in kind. If someone has money and wants to help you, and you want to be helped there are a million ways to get around impediments. Those who think a donation limit will stop the problem are frankly naïve, though I am not saying it should not be done. It establishes a principle at least, so that we can chase the avoidances. But more substantial change is needed, a new constitution to lessen the power of Parliaments on the Swiss model.

www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/hidden-donations-highlight-grave-weakness-of-australian-democracy-20210131-p56y70.html

07/02/2021

COVID Problems Caused by Lack of Respect for Knowledge

7 February 2021

Prof Raina McIntyre argues that the COVID19 problems in the developed world, particularly the Anglo world are the result of an understanding of and a lack of respect for public health. She charts this as within the medical profession, which has its own hierarchies, but also in the political arena. The overwhelming influence of the corporate sector and the profit motive, and the managerial approach which assumes that if you are not an expert, you can quickly find one, bone up and take over has been found sadly wanting. For a manager or politician, selecting an expert is not as easy as it sounds as there are many people who want to tart up their CVs and market themselves with dubious claims to expertise.

This has resulted in a very suboptimal preparation for and response to the pandemic. The failure in the managerial decision-making process has been laid bare in the COVID situation, but this is not an isolated example. The lack of respect for expertise, the replacement of knowledge with marketing spin, and public good with corporate profits will lead to more bad decisions, which often take a crisis to become evident. It happened in the bushfires, and is happening with climate change. Examples in foreign policy, education, health and defence all come to mind.

Here is Raina’s paper about COVID19

https://iser.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/hijacking-public-health-and-price-paid-during-covid-19-pandemic

07/02/2021

Police Leaving the Police On Medical Grounds Triples- Why?

7 February 2021

We might ask why NSW Police leaving the force on medical grounds has increased from 150 a year in 2014-15 to 420 in 2019-20, almost triple.

There is talk of a culture of bullying.

We might ask what they are being asked to do. Public perception seems to have changed when the changed their name from ‘Police Service’ to ‘Police Force’. The perception that they are now revenue raising, and that their cameras are so that they cannot use their discretion as they themselves are being watched may have contributed to this.

My own view is that the ever-more invasive laws that they are expected to enforce tends to have this result as they are more often thrown into conflict with ordinary citizens who they thought that they were there to help.

www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/fish-swimming-amongst-sharks-why-so-many-police-are-quitting-the-force-20210202-p56yp6.html

06/02/2021

Welfare Repayment for Some- Nick Scali Optional?

6 February 2021

We all saw the callous and incompetent saga of Robodebt, where the tax database and the welfare database were imperfectly matched, the welfare recipients were accused of understating their incomes and put in the unenviable position of having to prove that they system was wrong, as their support payments were cut to below survival level.

Now we see some companies who are doing very well getting Jobkeeper and being asked politely if they would mind paying it back.

Nick Scali, the furniture retailer has done very well out of the lockdown as people still at home and working, with forced saving on their out of home recreations have upgraded their furnishings. His profit has risen 99% to $40 million, and the share price from $3 to $10.51 in the last 12 months. The dividends are up 60%. Nick Scali as the major shareholder with 13% of the company will make $4.4 million personally. The company has received $3.5 million in Jobkeeper payments, so Labor MP Andrew Leigh has asked that it be repaid. Of course, Scali has done nothing illegal and has taken money that companies were entitled to. But the Government which is so careful and niggardly when it comes to poorer people getting money is totally silent on this situation. They are very thorough when it comes to giving out Jobseeker or any type of pension, yet seem unable to restrict much more generous handouts to business, let alone having a mechanism to get it back. The stockmarket profit reporting season is just starting so we are likely to see many more examples of this.

The only explanation I can find is ‘For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.’ — in Matthew 25:29, Revised Standard Version.

www.smh.com.au/business/companies/nick-scali-s-profits-double-in-covid-boom-triggering-dividend-bonanza-20210204-p56zfl.html

05/02/2021

Myanmar-A Coup. What next?

5 February 2021

The history of Burma was that it was colonised by the British, who had colonial wars with increasing control from 1824 to 1885. It was occupied by the Japanese in WW2, which helped its independence movement and it achieved independence from Britain with some struggle by General Aung San in 1948.

It had not been a united country, having a lot of tribal and ethnic wars and tensions. General Aung San negotiated a ‘Union of Burma’, but he was assassinated by conservative forces before the new country came into being.

It had relatively unstable governments until a military coup in 1962 under General Ne Win and has been under military junta control since. An uprising of the people in 1988 was brutally suppressed and n 1989 the junta changed the country’s name to Myanmar. They held elections under a new Constitution in 1990. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was the daughter of General Aung San, who had defeated the British and who had been educated in Britain and who had returned in 1988 won a landslide victory with her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD). The junta seemed completely surprised by this, but did not allow her party to take control. She was placed under house arrest. The world was highly critical of this and she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1991 “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.”

In 2003 the junta claimed it had a ‘roadmap to democracy’ but nothing much changed, with Aung San Suu Kyi still in house arrest. In 2005 the national capital was moved out of Yangon (which had been called Rangoon) to get it further from the population centres to a hilly area 370km away in Naypyidaw.

There were major protests in 2007. In 2010, the junta, recognising that they were unpopular, but also that the world’s sanctions were biting, released Aung San Suu Kyi and held some elections, but the NLD boycotted these as a farce. In new election in 2012 the NLD won in a landslide with 41 of the 44 contested seats, but the junta had stopped Aung San Suu Kyi from being President and kept a number of seats and key Cabinet posts for themselves.

Now the military has had a coup. The people are not happy, but are aware that the military will deal with any uprising brutally and ruthlessly. Aung San Suu Kyi herself has been arrested for the trivial crime of having 6 unauthorised walkie talkies. Presumably she wanted to be able to talk to her immediate staff without the junta hearing every word. In a sense that is a symbol of her situation and the power of the junta.

I have taken an interests in Burma/Myanmar because when I was in Parliament the elected NLD members who should have been the legitimate leaders of Myanmar came to Parliaments around the world and were photographed with groups of MPs to show that their legitimacy was universally recognised outside Myanmar. I kept in touch with NLD contacts and visited Myanmar in late 2017. It is a third world country which was trying to use rapid growth in tourism to bring itself up. There were quite new tourist buses, but a shortage of accommodation, and this was expensive for a third world country and for its standard. Aung San Suu Kyi was nominally in charge as ‘State Counsellor’, with the NLD supposedly doing her bidding. In reality, she was something of a powerless figurehead with the SLORC junta keeping real power. She was doing what she could and it was hoped that democracy would gradually win and the junta would gradually fade, but this was certainly not happening quickly. The local people were not well educated, and most had poor English, but as my contacts pointed out, they were not game to talk about politics anyway- they supported ‘the Lady’ as Aung San Suu Kyi is known, but the military were very much in control and it seemed that there was no love lost between them and the people.

I travelled to Mandalay, the second city, in a modern tourist bus of Chinese origin. The Chinese had been helping the junta in exchange for economic concessions. In a way this bus was reassuring. Most of the cars in Myanmar are right hand drive, either old British or relatively new Japanese, but in 1989 the junta had decided that the country, which had driven one the left, should drive on the right as most other countries did. So it was safer in one of the buses where at least the driver could see when overtaking on the fairly basic roads.

Mandalay has a large fortified palace in its centre, complete with moat. It has been taken over as a military base. Tourists are allowed in through a military checkpoint, but can only walk up the central path to the royal building and temples, and the greetings are not warm.

I was advised not to bother to go to the capital, Naypyidaw as it was sterile and there was ‘nothing there’. I went anyway. It was a complete contrast to Yangon, which is crowded and dirty, with little access to the banks of its polluted river. Naypyidaw had an 8 lane highway through its centre with trees and gardens reminiscent of Canberra. The Parliament was modern, though it could not be accessed and the National Library was modern also, and about the size of Wollongong’s. There were no buses to get there- Naypyidaw needs taxis to go everywhere, so there was almost no one in the library. The librarian who spoke excellent English told us that this was the normal number of people. There was a hotel precinct that had a number of very large hotels that were modern, extremely cheap and built by the Chinese. We noted at night that there were only half dozen lights on in the hotel that had had hundreds of rooms and there were few people at breakfast. There were no local people apart from hotel staff near the precinct, and they told us that the local people lived a suburb away and it was not really a walking distance.

Aung San Suu Kyi was much criticised for not acting on behalf of the Rohingya Muslims, but there is a lot of prejudice against this group historically, as they were felt to have no right to have come, which related to a border skirmish a long time ago. Even with its ethnic divisions Myanmar is 88% Buddhist. Had Suu Kyi spoken up for the Rohingyas, she would have had lost much local support and, as my contacts pointed out, she had enough trouble as it was.

The situation looked untenable. The NLD government was not allowed to govern. The military were obviously undemocratic, unpopular and unprogressive, but supported by Chinese money and trade deals. The loosening that was hoped for had not happened and did not look likely. Here we are 3 years later.

The NLD had another landslide in the November 2020 elections. More proof of the unpopularity of the junta, and still they do not want to move. A re-run of the 1987 and 2007 brutally suppressed revolts does look likely. Myanmar is unlikely to shift the junta without a lot of blood being spilled.

Here is Kevin Rudd’s opinion- and he was ex-Foreign Minister.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=esHnsZQ59ms

05/02/2021

Chinese Doublespeak as their World Influence Rises

4 February 2021

President Xi Jinping has installed himself as leader of China for the foreseeable future. Central to this is the domination of the Chinese Communist Party. It does not really matter what a party calls itself if it has unchallenged power. It objectives will set the policy of that nation totally.

The West has for years preached competition as the route to efficiency, but at the same time its governments have made trade deals that disfavour developing economies, and assume that their companies will be the ones getting access to markets. As they have done this, they have tended to turn a blind eye to the development of monopolies and oligopolies in the multinational companies and a blind eye to their tax avoidance; perhaps because the companies in tax havens buy US bonds as they have to store their money somewhere. Western governments have become weaker relative to multinational corporations. The Chinese model has a government able to make the rules for the whole economy and focus on priorities in a way that the West has rendered itself usable to do. This is effectively a new economic model, the implications of which do not seem to have had the attention that they deserve.

Now China is asserting itself. It has taken over Hong Kong to quell any idea of democratic movements. It is doing bad things to the Uighurs. It has fortified islands in the South China Sea. It is building its military and flying over Taiwan, which it claims is merely a wayward province, so dealing with it would be ‘an internal matter’. Most of the West has conceded that there is only ‘One China’ is order to be able to trade with China, so they will have trouble with opposing the theory of a Chinese takeover, not to mention the practicalities. China is taking a hard-line with Australia on trade, perhaps just to demonstrate its strength to and on an uppity middle power like Australia who shot their mouth off over COVID in Wuhan and would not let Huawei put in their 5G network.

But China is also preaching equality between nations, which is presumably aimed at the Third World, so that it will seem their champion against the Colonial West. It has raised many of its own people out of poverty. This may be necessary to keep its people controlled, but that policy is good. Its building of infrastructure in Africa is soft power, which looks a lot like a more modern style of colonialism; but time will tell.

The Belt and Road initiative from Beijing to Western Europe incorporating South Asia as well will take in 65% of the World’s population. It also uses local currencies and the Yuan, which effectively means it excludes the US and the US dollar, which will hugely weaken the US as its significance increases.

Here are two articles, one highly critical of China, the other overlooking its militancy.

www.smh.com.au/world/asia/two-track-xi-reveals-china-is-in-no-mood-for-reconciliation-20210126-p56wvm.html

www.informationclearinghouse.info/56266.htm

03/02/2021

Are Google Algorithms Reinforcing Anti-Science positions? 3 Feb. 2021

As the anti-science movement seems to gain strength and undermines the campaign for COVID vaccination, there has been increased interest in the origin, strength and tactics of this.

It is blamed on the Russians, who presumably are trying to weaken and divide the West, and on civil libertarians, who want to politicise medical common sense. But when it helped by people like Trump in the White House and Kelly in Australia the conspiracy theories are put into perspective, as the anti-science views are given legitimacy.

But in the fuss about Google withdrawing from Australia, or not covering Australian politics, I wondered what effect this might have and tried a different search engine, duckduckgo. The difference is that google gives me a personalised feed, but duckduckgo gives everyone the same information for the same key words.

Search engines at a basic level give a ‘top pops’ of popularity of a topic in that those with the greatest number of clicks go to the top. This may be fine if you are looking for a movie review, but if you want older material it will be a long way down. Scientific articles are a lot further down than mainstream ones, and the algorithm is influenced by the viewer’s previous viewing habits. If a person has viewed a lot of conspiracy articles, it is presumably then likely that these are more likely to come up again and reinforce the existing views of the viewer. If the feed is continually biased to a point of view, the viewer is likely to come into contact with more of this view and people who share t, so that they are eventually in a bubble or subculture of people with this belief, and are unaware that their reality has been changed.

As an example my son went to school with a boy in NZ whose father controlled feral pests for a living, which meant shooting rabbits, ferrets, deer, pigs, cats and possums which are predators on various farms in NZ. He kept in touch with his friend and they played video games online. But his friend went shooting quite a lot with his father, joined a gun club and started to receive the literature of this subculture. His previously non-political, mainstream views are now hugely influenced by the American gun lobby and rabidly right wing. This is quite unusual in rural NZ. My son commented, ‘In the end, you think what you get in your feed’.

The algorithms exist to make you happy and to keep you clicking in order to get you to buy things. But the result might be quite different- a creation of a bubble environment where everyone’s opinion tends to be magnified, sometimes going in a bad direction.

How this can be controlled is a question- if we all got the same feeds, would the sensible people make sensible articles come up first? Presumably; if most people were well educated. We had better go there also. Which Big Brother will tell google how to do its algorithms?

(The longer version of this attached article is available via a link at its end).

https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/peter-hotez-anti-science-movement-killing-hundreds-of-thousands_n_6014b39ac5b622df90f382ee?ri18n=true&fbclid=IwAR19_qqWuNe9t8ySSTdNU5OjL6jKkxPCT3cDbAP0EhAKXoXrLPod_xVfdKM

29/01/2021

Make Google Pay for Content? But who does the money go to? 29/1/21

I searched for something on google today and first up came a message from them on why they should not have to pay for content. Hey, it was like me telling a neighbour where a coffee shop was and then having to pay for having done so. Not quite!
There was no feedback to google- hey we are used to one-way communication these days. Most emails have a ‘No reply’ address and the rest of advertising has been one-way communication since BUGA UP stopped spraying on billboards in the mid-1980s.
But after the google position there was this video by Kevin Rudd, which talks about how the ACCC, which is now claiming to be doing this for media diversity, a.k.a. competition, happily approved Nine buying Fairfax and Murdoch buying almost all Australia’s rural newspapers to get an effective monopoly. They have not looked at media monopolies in Australia and do not seem to want to.
Rudd asks what has changed in media diversity and suggests that Scotty from Marketing is actually just collecting revenue to give to Murdoch. He points out that the legislation does not say where the money will go, and if it goes to existing media, principally Murdoch, it may do nothing at all for media diversity. He also points out that exempting the ABC from getting any money will mean that he can continue to defund them, while subsidising Murdoch, an American citizen who he just gave a gong to in the Australia Day honours. The message is clear from Scotty to Murdoch, ‘Those nasty Labor people want to investigate monopoly in Australian media, but we will support you and give you money- support us next election’.
Google and the multinational tech companies, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Expedia, the gambling websites and the rest that live overseas and pay no tax should be taxed on their turnover in Australia. The ABC should be better funded, and I am open to suggestions as how to support media diversity. The worry is that the extra revenue could just to used to favour sources that suit the government.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_mSnAKWHZA