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Or sanctimonious right wing NY Times op-ed writers either This, from Eric Levitz in NY Magazine, is right on about Ron DeSantis: Ron DeSantis is the popular governor of a racially diverse state with a substantial Democratic population. He is also a reactionary. In the New York Times, Pamela Paul argues that liberals have a lot to learn from these two facts. The columnist implores her fellow Democrats to avoid writing DeSantis off as “another unelectable right-wing lunatic unfit for national office.” Rather than dismissing the Florida governor and his supporters as “racist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic,” Paul advises liberals to reflect on his political strengths. She explains that, unlike Donald Trump, DeSantis was a star student at an Ivy League school. It’s therefore likely that he “knows what he’s doing” when he scandalizes progressives. He is a savvy political actor, if his approval rating is any guide. Democrats should therefore seek to learn from his example. It isn’t clear precisely what Paul believes we should learn.

GREENS Upper House member Cate Faehrmann was in Coffs Harbour last Monday to kick off the Greens campaign for the seat in the upcoming State election. She announced Tim Nott as the Greens candidate for Coffs Harbour, and also discussed koalas, pokies and John Barilaro. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it...

The post Tim Nott announced as Coffs Harbour Greens candidate for state election appeared first on News Of The Area.

FABULOUS FAKES, the first exhibition of 2023 at the Coffs Harbour Showground Gallery featuring the Coffs Harbour Creative Arts Group (CHCAG) members, opened on Sunday 5 February. Members and visitors enjoyed light refreshments and contemplated the variety of works and skills applied in the Fabulous Fakes artworks on display. Advertise with News of The Area...

The post Coffs Harbour Creative Arts Group opens Fabulous Fakes exhibition appeared first on News Of The Area.

RECOGNISED with a Member of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the Australia Day Awards, Coffs Harbour resident Elizabeth (Beth) Rogers’ exemplary work has been in service to refugee support services, specifically as a volunteer supporting Burundian refugee families, since 2006. Beth will travel to Sydney later in the year to receive her award at...

The post Beth Rogers honoured with OAM for services to refugees appeared first on News Of The Area.

Strange Matters
Do Interest Rate Hikes Worsen Inflation?

I’m a boomer and the Gen Zs are grandchild age so I suppose it’s natural that I relate to them. That whole “skip a generation” thing is often true. Certainly, when it comes to politics it seems to me that the Democratic new guard is much savvier than both their immediate predecessors and the old guard my age. They see the opposition for what it is in a way that many liberals my age took forever to recognize (and that’s assuming they ever have.) I’m not sure why I could see the truth when so many couldn’t but I’m super relieved to see the younger generation in electoral politics is moving beyond some of the more parochial types of infighting that has so often characterized the Democratic party to form a popular front against the fascist tide on the right. Maybe we’ll get through this after all. Note that I’m speaking specifically of elected politicians. The campus wars are something else and I would guess it’s at least partially attributable to the fact that these young people are not exposed to the right while the elected politicians are.

The blood bath that was 2022 in occupied Palestine claimed the lives of more than 230 Palestinians. The Israeli Occupation Forces and the heavily armed illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank have continued their feral killing spree into 2023 unabated.  In the first month of this year, Israel murdered 36 Palestinians. Ten of those Continue reading »

All countries are failing to look after their environments and their people. Long haul flights will continue to generate most CO2. The world’s youth are not happy. Biophysical boundaries and social thresholds This piece requires familiarity with two concepts: planetary boundaries and doughnut economics. The first posits that there are nine environmental factors that must Continue reading »

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it particularly applies to the Whitlam government’s ‘loans affair’. The events leading up to the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975 were complex, fascinating and ultimately tragic, especially for Australian society. I will not reprise the key facts here as they are readily available, especially if one reads Continue reading »

The school year has started with the usual flurry of excitement about new policies and reforms, but flaws in the structure of Australia’s school system still aren’t on any agenda. Students and teachers are now back at school, accompanied by the usual ‘start of school’ media onslaught. It seems worse this year. Phone bans for Continue reading »

Pedro Castillo, the Peruvian president, overthrown in a coup 7th December 2022, and then sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, clearly represented a threat to some significant forces. Following the overthrow, mass protests have spread across Peru, to which the government have responded violently, with 60 deaths in the past weeks. As per usual with Latin Continue reading »

An important feature of the new globalisation is China’s Global Development Initiative and a renewed, non-exploitative focus on the Global South. The other is the growth of the digital economy and non-dollar-denominated digital currencies that enable cross-border trade. The idea that globalisation has ended is growing in popularity with some economic analysts. Parallel to this Continue reading »

Happy Super Bowl weekend! Let’s kick it off with some Smirnoff! It’s a sure bet you and your friends will be watching the game this weekend. Why don’t you all get together for a spirited Smirnoff warm-up before the game? Team up delicious food, good friends, and great Smirnoff drinks with the best seats inContinue reading The Smirnoff Football Brunch & Bloody Mary (1970) →

Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle are backing a bill that endorses Maryam Rajavi, an Iranian opposition figure who leads the Mojahedin-e Khalq.

The post Amid Ongoing Iran Protests, Congress Boosts Cultish MEK Exile Group appeared first on The Intercept.

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Democrats’ new direction? “There has to be a dream. We have to stand for a thing,” messaging consultant Anat Shenker Osorio tells students. That seems to have filtered up to top Democrats more accustomed to “being too reactive and too defensive when confronting Republican attacks,” writes Christian Paz at Vox. If President Joe Biden is, as he appears, already campaigning for a second term, it “is likely to be less oppositional and more optimistic, with less focus on highlighting how bad the other side is, and more attention on imagining how much more Democrats can accomplish with four more years in power,” Paz writes (although the White House declined comment). Negativity is out of fashion: That’s not necessarily how Democrats have run their campaigns in the Trump era and even into Biden’s presidency. Since the 2016 election, much of Democrats’ political strategy has been to run vocally and clearly anti-Trump, anti-MAGA Republican campaigns.

Solidarity is power Many isms attempt to capture the divide between left and right both in the U.S. and abroad. A broad set of impulses fuel the personal, religious, cultural, class, and political clashes roiling society. Without naming it, Heather Cox Richardson examines the shortsightedness in the current appetite in some quarters for fascism: Over all the torrent of news these days is a fundamental struggle about the nature of human government. Is democracy still a viable form of government, or is it better for a country to have a strongman in charge? Democracy stands on the principle of equality for all people, and those who are turning away from democracy, including the right wing in the United States, object to that equality. They worry that equal rights for women and minorities—especially LGBTQ people—will undermine traditional religion and traditional power structures. They believe democracy saps the morals of a country and are eager for a strong leader who will use the power of the government to reinforce their worldview. But empowering a strongman ends oversight and enables those in power to think of themselves as above the law.

The panic over Russian disinformation that followed the election of Donald Trump often relied on a source now known to have been fraudulent, Hamilton 68.

The post The Chris Hedges Report: Matt Taibbi on Russiagate and the Most Pernicious Campaign of Censorship Since the 1950s appeared first on scheerpost.com.

The president promised to veto a national abortion ban if Congress passed one in his first State of the Union address since the Supreme Court’s June ruling that left the legality of abortion up to the states.

The post Biden Calls Out Abortion by Name and Skewers ‘Extreme’ Bans in State of the Union Address appeared first on scheerpost.com.

California has fined GEO Group over $100,000 for “willful and serious” health and safety violations.

The post California Immigrant Detention Center Operator Faces Fines, Lawsuit Over Working Conditions appeared first on scheerpost.com.

A former member speaks out about the unit responsible for the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian American.

The post Israeli Army Battalion Puts U.S. Ban on Funding Abusive Units to the Test appeared first on The Intercept.

By Ralph Nader / RalphNader.org No other institutions consistently Rule over as Much in the World as the Giant Global Corporations – not governments, not armies, not religions and certainly not trade unions. These fictional corporate entities have largely achieved transcendent imperial status, as they amass coordinated control over capital, labor, technology and governments because […]

The post How to Rescue Our Democratic Society: Constitutionally Render Corporations Unequal to Humans appeared first on scheerpost.com.

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