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Could property investment capital be redirected to offer new solutions to Australia’s housing crises? Why aren’t existing solutions gaining traction? A summary of the PEXA / LongView housing whitepaper, Mobilising Private Capital for New Housing...

I’m relieved to see it. Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman have the story: A raucous school board meeting in Hernando County, Fla., on Tuesday night captured what’s striking about this new phenomenon. The scene featured teachers pointedly declaring that right-wing attacks are driving them to quit, even as parents and students forcefully stood up on their behalf, demanding a halt to the hysteria. “I have never seen such fear from my colleagues as I have seen in the last two months,” social studies teacher Victoria Hunt told the board. The whole affair really put the culture-war-mongers to shame. Not that they’ll see it that way; as the meeting also showed, scenes like this — with maximum rage, fear, tension and suspicion surging between parents and educators — are precisely the outcome they want. This county, north of Tampa, voted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022 by a 41-point margin. It’s wherefifth-grade teacher Jenna Barbee recently enraged local enforcers of right-wing orthodoxy by showing her class “Strange World,”a Disney movie with an openly gay character.

A NEW 45-minute Garden Discovery Tour by electric buggy has been launched by the volunteer Friends of the North Coast Regional Botanic Garden. Offered on Sundays only, the timetable provides departures at 10am, 11am, 12:30pm and 1:30pm. A maximum of seven people per tour can hop on board, accompanied by the Friends garden tour guide,...

The post New Sundays-only tour launched at Coffs Botanic Garden appeared first on News Of The Area.

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Good point. Media Matters on how this ubiquitous right wing “dementia” claim looks today: The last week has been brutal for this theory, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Biden personally negotiating a debt ceiling deal that right-wing media figures call a “total cave” to Democrats that produced “a typical DC swamp sewer bill.” In March, McCarthy offered to bring the president “soft food” to kickstart negotiations, an obvious crack at his age. But on Sunday, after striking a deal, the speaker described Biden to reporters as “very professional, very smart. Very tough at the same time.” The resulting legislation passed the House on Wednesday night and now moves to the Senate.  The right is having difficulty coming to terms with how, as Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) put it on Twitter, “Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants.” Some, like Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity, are treating Biden’s purported senility as entirely unrelated to the result.

“Way too damned little and way too damned late.” That’s what one life-long Illinois Catholic...

And it’s as bad as you remember Oy. Just thought you’d like to know …

Little is known about the history of Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first “disinformation correspondent.” But her record of churning out disinfo of her own in the service of British government objectives sends a bright red flag up over the new Verify project.  The launch of BBC Verify, “a new brand to address the growing threat of disinformation and build trust with audiences by transparently showing how BBC journalists know the information they are reporting,” has raised questions about whether the […]

The post Troubling questions surround BBC ‘disinformation correspondent’ Marianna Spring appeared first on The Grayzone.

In charting the way ahead for Australia-China relations, Canberra needs to present the risks posed by increasing Chinese military power in realistic rather than hawkish terms, writes Colin Heseltine. Building the case for Australia to significantly upgrade its defence force structure and capability, including the expensive acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, is a challenge for the Continue reading »

Australia’s first Aboriginal-led Royal Commission recently completed a month of public hearings during which Commissioners questioned Victorian government ministers and senior bureaucrats about injustices against First Peoples in the criminal justice and child protection systems. These historic hearings marked the first time an Aboriginal-led Royal Commission has publicly held to account the authorities that have Continue reading »

WA premier Mark McGowan was rightly popular and admired as a consequence of his leadership, especially during the Covid crisis. Now he has a real opportunity to make an even more important contribution beyond state borders. Dear Mark, Many thanks for your leadership over recent years. Unless you are a congenital attention-seeker or egomaniac, such Continue reading »

It’s astonishing now that the analytical dust has settled on the budget that out of 57 leading Australian economists, most have given it top marks. What planet we may ask do they – and the Labour Government – live on? Not one critically endangered by climate change and a catastrophic decline in biodiversity which collectively Continue reading »

My recent stocktake of the state of play on implementation of the Thodey Report recommendations was written just before PM&C released details of proposed changes to the Public Service Act with an exposure draft of the legislation and an exposure draft of explanatory materials. Extraordinarily, consultation on the changes ends on 31 May but these Continue reading »

The Public Service Act doesn’t just allow secretaries and their departments to push back on politicians’ abuses of power; it demands it. But targeting ministers or SES, or tightening the standards and laws under which they operate, will not be the most effective way to repair what is a broader issue.  It is hard to Continue reading »

På tio år har  — som SVT: granskning visar — Thorengruppen tjänat sammanlagt 944 miljoner kronor. Ägaren, Raja Thorén, har tagit 81 miljoner kronor i aktieutdelning. I Sverige år 2023 låter vi friskolekoncerner med undermålig verksamhet få plocka ut skyhöga vinster — vinster som den svenska staten gladeligen låter dessa koncerner ta av vår skattefinansierade […]

Atrocities don’t happen overnight. They ramp up over time. The Nazi death camps, were preceded by at least a decade of smaller, selective and escalating removals of human rights for Jewish and LGBTIQ+ peoples. Similar patterns allowed for the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia – incremental and selective removals of minority rights built momentum and Continue reading »

Military attaches from the United States and Australia were among the dozens invited to tour the People’s Liberation Army’s garrison in Beijing last week, the first event of its kind since the pandemic. The event signals willingness in China for exchanges with Western forces, observers say. The tour came as the US said it would Continue reading »

RICO, as you may know, is a law passed in 1970, meant to be used against the Mafia. It allows the government to seize money before a guilty verdict if there is a “pattern” of racketeering (defined very widely).

Of course, once you seize someone’s money, they generally can’t hire a defense lawyer, so they tend to have to plead. I respect public defenders greatly, but if you’re in real trouble using one is a crapshoot at best and even the best ones can’t put in the time and work a private defense lawyer can.

Back in 2008 I suggested using RICO against the banksters: there was a pattern of fraud. I did this because I hated the banksters and I hate RICO, and the best way to get rid of bad law is to use it against important people. (Same reason I wanted the banksters thrown into nasty prisons.)

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DeSantis thinks that because he won big in Florida he has the secret sauce for America. I hate to tell him, but it’s a big country and Florida is a special case. This piece by Steve Schale, a Democratic operative in Florida, explains what happened there, from his perspective. It is probably somewhat self-serving and I doubt it’s the whole story but it’s a useful bit of information. There is simply no doubt that something terrible happened to Democrats in Florida. Who’s at fault is probably highly contested but I suspect there is probably something to this version of events even if the Florida Democratic Party is the most hapless in the country. He starts off by talking about his own history working on campaigns in Florida for many years. The state was a swing state that tended to go back and forth as they do. I’ll pick up the story in 2008 when Obama won: In 2008, thanks to the resources of the Obama/Biden campaign, we took those fundamentals, expanded them statewide, and built an organization.

För de som gillar att testa sina ekonomikunskaper — varför inte testa det här ekonomiquizet på Malmö universitet?

Hey marketing team for every major brand: Do you really think that I—a proud, rational, and tasteful LGBTQ+ person—am going to purchase your silly little product just because you released a pride edition? Because I will. You are correct.

The pride month pandering that occurs every June is both predictable and exhausting. Rest assured that your attempts to commercialize this celebration of queer history and culture have been noted. You know what’s also predictable? The fact that I’ll buy into it without even a second thought. My Hugo Boss wallet is going to be exhausted by July.

Oh, a Boston Red Sox hat with a rainbow “B” on it? How expected of you. Don’t mind if I do. I won’t even complain about the unnecessary price markup you added. Hell, I’ll buy two in case you lose any sales from bigots boycotting you because of this. Did I mention I haven’t watched baseball since I was nine?