When your sink is clogged, pouring more water into it won’t solve the problem
War on Christmas? Biden’s Ag Sec Once Tried to Tax Christmas Trees.
Problems With The Meritocracy
Humans are given to hierarchy—we measure ourselves against those around us and strive to better our relative position—but we are, at the same time, unhappy that this is true of ourselves. This predicament is the product of two drives. – Boston Review
Molded in the mythos of meritocracy, millennials have now become the burnout Generation
For all the cuts and privatisation, government is bigger than ever
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Police: ‘Pro-criminal’ politicians are to blame for murder spike.
China sentences former bank chief to death in rare move
China blocks WHO investigators' access to Wuhan
1988
The NSW Minister for Health, Peter Collins, announced that the Prince Henry Hospital would close, its facilities would be relocated to the Prince of Wales Hospital at Randwick and the state-owned land at the Prince Henry Hospital site would be sold. The NSW National Trust inspected and classified the hospital and its site and recommended a National Heritage listing.
WELL, YES, THAT’S HOW THINGS WORK: People started breaking Covid rules when they saw those with privilege ignore them.
People won’t believe it’s a crisis when those who are telling them it’s a crisis aren’t acting as if it’s a crisis.
"Historians will record that in the early decades of the 21st century we became an unforgiving society, a society of furies, a society in search of guilt and shame
LobbyLand. The scourge of powerful special interests and lobbyists – a repost
A major reason for the loss of trust in governments and parliaments is the way powerful special interests with their lobbyists have come to dominate the public debate and skew decisions in their favour. The fossil fuel sector is the most obvious and recent example.
How The Millennial Generation Burned Out
According to Anne Petersen, the main difference between millennials and the rest of the precariat is that we once had such great expectations. Molded in the mythos of meritocracy, our generation was raised to believe that we could beat bad circumstances and secure personal stability — if we simply worked hard enough. This happy ending has not materialized for most of us, and there has been extensive emotional fallout. – Los Angeles Review of Books
Pelosi wins Speakership for fourth time in dramatic vote The HIll. Slotkin, Spanberger (CIA Democrats), and Sherrill (Navy Russian policy officer) vote “present,” which is interesting. Bush, Bowman, AOC decline to “go after” Pelosi (hopefully for a player to be named later).
2020’s Most Powerless People In The Art World
“Considering it’s 2020, it was especially tough to compile since most of us have felt powerless this year as a deadly virus ravaged our communities by forcing businesses to close, upending daily life, and resulting in the illness and death of millions of people.” – Hyperallergic
FOR EUROPE TOO, THINK ABOUT IT: A United Europe Aligning With China Would Be A Disaster For The United States.
The sad thing is that a prediction I made on a train in France has a good chance of coming true, if we fight our own take-over by Chinese puppets. Despite the dirty looks given me by Frenchmen who understood the muttering, it is quite possible my grandchildren will bleed or even die over there, liberating Europe from its own stupidity. This gives me no pleasure.
Scammers Are Conning Famous Authors Into Sending Them Unpublished Manuscripts
Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Ethan Hawke, Jo Nesbø and James Hannaham are a few “of countless targets in a mysterious international phishing scam that has been tricking writers, editors, agents and anyone in their orbit into sharing unpublished book manuscripts. It isn’t clear who the thief or thieves are, or even how they might profit from the scheme. … In fact, the manuscripts do not appear to wind up on the black market at all, or anywhere on the dark web, and no ransoms have been demanded. When copies of the manuscripts get out, they just seem to vanish.” – The New York Times
Corporate Power and the Future of U.S. Capitalism Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan, Capital as Power
Why Larry Summers MUST Believe $2,000 Checks Are A Bad Idea Ian Welsh
The businessman, Huifeng "Haha" Liu, is a Liberal Party donor and former soldier in China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) who developed links with federal Liberal MP Gladys Liu and Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar.
ASIO red-flags Liberal Party donor Huifeng 'Haha' Liu over foreign interference risks
How China’s state serves the Party (East Asia Forum Dec 22, 2020)
Xi Jinping is a Party man. His first words in November 2012 after being made General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party were about closing the gap between the Party and the people.
It’s a trial with all the hallmarks of a great blockbuster movie.
Two siblings, Adam and Lauren Cranston, whose father is the former deputy commissioner of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), along with lawyer Dev Menon and referrer Jay Onley, are on trial after pleading not guilty to being involved in scheme that defrauded the Commonwealth of more than $105 million between March 2014 and May 2017.
The Offence of Conspiracy to Defraud the Commonwealth