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The global news this week has revolved around
the behaviour of the retiring president Donald Trump and his incitement of an
invasion by his supporters of the US Capitol for the first time since 1814. He
has now lost all legitimacy and needs to resign – as the man is a menace to the
world! He has also juast made it to infamy by being impeached twice@
In the UK we see a COVID catastrophe underway
with concerns re Brexit all but forgotten in the health crisis! This crisis is
awfully sad and depressing and we must all hope it slows soon and some level of
normality can return. Today they saw 1550 deaths in one day.
In OZ the summer torpor rolls on with
occasional virus outbreaks! Normal service likely to return after Australia
Day! Till then idiots like Craig Kelly will dominate the media with their inane rants! And the clown of an acting PM just warbles total inanities!
Sad news of an Indonesian aircraft crash last
weekend. 60+ killed.
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Major Issues.
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Superannuation reforms will shine sunlight on a murky system
Australia ranks at the bottom for disclosure practices by super funds. That's why the Your Future, Your Super package is about making sure the system works for members, not fund managers.
Tim Wilson Contributor
Jan 3, 2021 – 1.19pm
Too many superannuation funds are taking advantage of opaqueness in the system and disengagement from members that can only be addressed through greater transparency.
The 2020-21 federal budget will be remembered for its spending commitments to help Australians through the COVID recession. But it also included the Your Future, Your Super reforms designed to increase transparency in the murky superannuation sector.
Independent research shows it is sorely needed to build confidence the system is working for fund members, not fund managers.
Last month investment research firm Morningstar released its 2020 Global Investor Experience Study into disclosure by superannuation funds.
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How does Canberra manage when Biden's focus will be on home, not away?
The new president will want to help Australia in the stoush with China. But he may not be able to do much because America's internal travails run so deep.
James Curran Columnist
Jan 3, 2021 – 12.15pm
Some still claim that Ronald Reagan switched the site of his first inauguration in 1981 from the east to the west side of the Capitol to symbolise both his ambition to change the nation’s direction and America’s historical desire to look west for opportunity.
That myth has long been disproven.
The decision, taken to save money and accommodate more spectators, was made before the Republicans nominated Reagan. It didn’t stop him looking on the "shrines to the giants" before him: Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.
Later this month, Joe Biden’s own look westward will fall on a different vista – a malaise far different to that faced by Reagan in the wake of Vietnam, Watergate and the Iranian hostage crisis.
Biden inherits an America discordant. Traumatised by COVID-19, rent by deep divisions.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/albanese-isn-t-the-problem-it-s-the-policies-20210103-p56rel
Albanese isn't the problem – it's the policies
Unpopular leaders can win elections with the right policies. The Labor leader needs to find some.
Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent
Jan 4, 2021 – 12.19am
Like professional sporting teams, political party leaders have always been the focus of criticism when they're losing.
The latest example is the federal Labor Party, which is going through the equivalent of a mid-season debate about whether swapping coaches will give it a grand final shot.
Facilitated by those with ambitions to replace Anthony Albanese, the discussion is a diversion from a more challenging and pressing problem the opposition can't bring itself to resolve: its policies.
Although it won't admit it, the Labor Party is still working out how to respond to the 2019 election.
Rival books about the party's future have been published. "Headland" speeches given. A senior frontbencher even quit for the backbench.
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Hang on for a wild climate and energy ride in 2021
Good results delivering reliable, low-emissions electricity at lowest cost are possible this year. But everything depends on the climate wars finally being transformed into a real policy debate.
Tony Wood Contributor
Jan 3, 2021 – 12.46pm
As 2020 closes, credible and stable energy and climate policy seems further away than ever. Yet, prices and electricity sector emissions are falling, and the outlook for reliability is better than it has been for some summers.
Just maybe, policymakers will take 2021 as an opportunity to reconcile political fears with economic substance and answer one of the most tortuous and important policy issues of our time: how to deliver reliable, low-emissions energy at lowest cost.
There are two big, underlying policy questions. The first is whether we are at the point where the climate war changes from an intractable political battle to a real policy debate.
The next federal election and the Glasgow international conference on climate change will determine whether the Morrison government maintains its steady-as-she-goes position on emissions reduction or moves to fundamentally address climate change. Naked, practical politics will determine how far the Prime Minister is prepared to go.
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Capitalism is best - it just needs regular maintenance
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
January 4, 2021 — 12.00am
Just so we start the year on the right foot, let me make something crystal clear: I’m a life-long supporter of capitalism – or, to use the economists’ preferred euphemism, the market economy. I support an economy where the great majority of goods and services are produced by privately owned businesses using capital supplied by their owners.
There is little reason to doubt that, of all the ways to co-ordinate the production and distribution of goods and services – ranging from the feudal system to the command economy – the use of market forces is the least inefficient. That is, the one likely to produce the greatest satisfaction of our wants from a given quantity of finite economic resources.
You should deduce from this that I believe in capitalism not because I represent the interests of the owners of capital and want to see them earning fat profits, but because the market system does the most to provide ordinary consumers with the best range of goods and services at reasonable prices, while also providing the wherewithal – income from employment – to allow ordinary families to afford the goodies they help produce.
The market system is the economic system that fits most easily with democracy. Its other great strength is its dynamism – its ability to improve over time. This is thanks to the monetary incentive it offers entrepreneurs to find new and better products and better ways to run a business. It fosters continuous innovation.
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Unions, funds warn super rule changes could hinder economic recovery
By Jennifer Duke
January 4, 2021 — 5.00am
Superannuation funds and the Australian Council of Trade Unions warn the federal government's super reforms could put Australia's economic recovery at risk by encouraging funds to send money offshore and take up short-term investments.
A swathe of changes affecting the superannuation industry are expected to be introduced by the government in July, including strict penalties for companies that repeatedly report poor investment returns.
The legislation has been fiercely criticised by industry funds, which say that while they support benchmarks generally, they disagree with the way the proposed framework measures performance.
Responses from the sector were due to Treasury on Christmas Eve as part of consultation on the reforms initially revealed in the federal budget. Submissions have not yet been made public, however, some seen by this masthead have raised significant fears about the effects of the type of tests used to benchmark performance, warning it may affect funds' ability to help the economy as it recovers from the coronavirus-induced recession. The proposed framework could see funds classified as underperformers if they fall below their annual net investment return by 0.5 percentage points over an eight-year rolling period.
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https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/power-fix-urgent-as-grid-teeters-20210104-p56rj1
Power fix 'urgent' as grid teeters
Angela Macdonald-Smith Senior resources writer
Jan 5, 2021 – 12.01am
Preventing power blackouts is becoming more difficult as cheaper but weather-dependent renewable power increasingly replaces coal power generation, endangering the security of supply in the national electricity market.
The rise of renewables is forcing the Australian Energy Market Operator to intervene more often to keep the lights on, either by ordering some generators – often renewables – to cut back output, or requesting others – typically gas plants – to come online even if they are more expensive to run.
This type of intervention was needed more than 250 times in 2019-20, compared with fewer than 20 times three years earlier.
Energy Security Board chairman Kerry Schott said the latest report card on the health of the National Electricity Market, to be released on Tuesday, had exposed the fallout caused by the speed of the change. It also highlights the increased urgency of addressing the problem of keeping the power grid stable without the thermal plants that typically provide those services.
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Pace of change requires a united approach to energy policy
Kerry Schott
There is no more potent evidence of the ongoing transformation of Australia’s energy supply than today’s assessment of the health of the national electricity market.
It finds that emissions across the NEM are about 25 per cent lower than in 2005.
By 2030, those emissions will be between 40 and 60 per cent lower than 2005. And between 70 and 95 per cent lower by 2042.
This shift is happening because we are generating more solar, wind and battery-stored energy, and less coal and gas. This same trend is happening globally.
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World’s eyes on Australia to see if we can resist China
Before the pandemic shut down international travel, Australia had been receiving a steady stream of visitors from Western civil services, intelligence agencies, think tanks, universities and parliaments, all interested in one thing: what measures had Australia taken to protect its institutions from interference and infiltration by the Chinese state?
Experts have been explaining over and over what Australia has done and the circumstances that turned this country into the global leader pushing back against the Chinese Communist Party’s interference.
Two important factors persuaded the Turnbull government to introduce these and other policies. First, public alarm was rising following a series of media reports about donations by CCP-linked people to political parties, centring on the Dastyari affair. Second, the evidence in a series of secret intelligence briefings describing the extent of Beijing’s campaign to win friends among Australia’s elites became overwhelming.
The responses have included outlawing foreign interference, banning Huawei from the 5G network, excluding Chinese investors from buying up critical infrastructure and working behind the scenes to shake institutions such as universities out of their cash-induced complacency.
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Why investors are playing chicken with interest rates
Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham is warning that we're now witnessing 'one of the great bubbles of financial history', as investors bet that low rates will continue to buoy sharemarkets.
Karen Maley Columnist
Jan 7, 2021 – 12.00am
So who's afraid of rising interest rates?
Not the punters who have pushed the bitcoin price above $US35,000, nor the collector who paid a record-setting $US450.3 million for a rediscovered Leonardo da Vinci painting. And certainly not the legions of investors who have sent global sharemarkets hurtling to near-record highs.
This dizzying across-the-board climb in asset prices – dubbed the "everything rally" – partly reflects widespread confidence that central banks and governments will continue to support the global economy. And investors are pinning their hopes that the rapid rollout of vaccines will allow economic activity to rebound quickly from the pandemic, fuelling higher profits.
Even more fundamental than this short-term optimism, however, is the near-universal belief that interest rates will remain at record low levels, leaving investors no option but to continue to hunt out riskier, higher-yielding assets.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/the-inflation-doomsayers-are-wrong-again-20210106-p56s09
The inflation doomsayers are wrong again
Inflation figures quoted by governments are largely believable, despite debates giving credence to unofficial figures.
Noah Smith
Jan 6, 2021 – 4.31pm
Every so often, concerns crop up that inflation is much higher than official government numbers report.
Sometimes people allege that rises in asset prices, or relative changes in living costs for some subgroups of Americans, represent hidden inflation. Others may cite an alternative inflation index that shows much higher price increases.
Economies are not in danger of rising prices any time soon. Official inflation figures are on target.
But there's no reason to panic.
Official government numbers do a good job of measuring the rate of inflation.
Inflation numbers are important because if inflation is running higher than the government numbers suggest, it means that either the Federal Reserve needs to raise interest rates or Congress needs to cut the deficit, or both.
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Morrison needs to counter Australian and American disinformation too
By Anthony Galloway
January 7, 2021 — 5.01pm
Australia has taken strides to defeat disinformation from authoritarian states but Prime Minister Scott Morrison must be able to counter it from his own MPs and Australia's allies too.
Like cyber attacks, fake news narratives represent a growing threat to our way of life.
A report by the European Commission last year found foreign actors and countries, led by Moscow and Beijing, had carried out targeted disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining democratic debate and stoking confusion about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Australia has been particularly concerned about the effect China's disinformation campaigns are having in our near region.
The nation's competition regulator has also criticised social media companies including Facebook for failing to deal with the proliferation of fake news on online.
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There's a lot of blame to go around for the chaos in the Capitol, but some belongs to Australia
By Emma Shortis
January 8, 2021 — 12.10am
Australians woke on Thursday to an unfolding coup attempt in the United States. One by one, leaders from across the world condemned what was happening in the US Capitol and called for peace. From Ireland, to Greece, even Boris Johnson in Britain, governments expressed their horror and dismay.
Our own government took a little longer to react. We shouldn’t pretend we don’t know why.
There is a lot of blame to go around for what is unfolding in the United States. Aided and abetted by extremists in the White House and in Congress, and white supremacists across the nation, Trump is orchestrating nothing short of an attempted authoritarian takeover of what we have been taught to believe is the greatest democracy on earth and the guardian of peace in our world.
But some of that blame also lies here, with us.
The Australian government’s relationship with Donald Trump got off to a rocky start. But once Scott Morrison assumed the leadership, Australia went all in with the man trying to steal the presidency.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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Fauci rejects Trump's claim COVID deaths are overcounted
January 4, 2021 — 3.34am
Washington: Two top US health officials on Sunday disputed a claim by President Donald Trump that federal data on COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States is overblown, and both expressed optimism that the pace of vaccinations is picking up.
"The deaths are real deaths," Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on ABC News’ This Week, adding that jam-packed hospitals and stressed-out healthcare workers are "not fake. That’s real.”
Disturbing new modelling in the US has predicted COVID-19 will have claimed 500,000 American lives by the end of the month as the roll out of vaccines could take years, instead of months.
Fauci and US Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who appeared on CNN’s State of the Union, defended the accuracy of coronavirus data published by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention after Trump attacked the agency’s tabulation methods.
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'Stay at home': Britain plunges into deep lockdown
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Updated Jan 5, 2021 – 7.18am, first published at 4.29am
London | Britain has lurched back into a full-strength lockdown, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled an immediate shuttering of economic, social and educational activity until at least mid-February.
The country has lost its grip on the COVID-19 pandemic: many English hospitals are treating up to 50 per cent more patients with coronavirus than they were in the first peak last April, as a new mutant strain runs riot.
"It has been both frustrating and alarming to see the speed with which this new variant is spreading," Mr Johnson said in a televised address on Monday (Tuesday AEDT). "Our hospitals are under more pressure from COVID than at any time since the start of the pandemic."
In England, and also separately in Scotland, it will be illegal from Tuesday to leave home unless for essential shopping, exercise, medical treatment or for employment that cannot be done remotely. Schools will remain closed until at least late February.
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Australia is storing up a post-virus business bust
The country has not learned to adapt its strategy as the virus has rolled on. That could cost us dearly in the end.
Adrian Blundell-Wignall Columnist
Jan 5, 2021 – 12.00am
I have a friend who some years back managed to get a parking place right out front of the main entrance to the place where we worked in Paris – always difficult, and especially so back then. On my way home one day, I saw him trudging along in the pouring rain. I offered him a lift and he hopped in, thanking me profusely. I asked him why he wasn’t driving home. He told me it was because he had such a good parking spot and didn’t want to give it up.
This is a bit like current Australian policies on COVID-19. So much has changed on the logistics, treatment and science fronts in the past year that it justifies significant policy changes to deal with the rapidly unfolding damage to the economy. A new parking lot has become available nearby and my friend becomes more willing to use his car. But Australia seems bent on keeping its spot marked: “Eradication bragging rights here”.
Australia’s epidemiologists have injected fear into the population. Nothing short of eradication seems to satisfy them. But is this sensible at this point, when permanent damage is being done to the economy – much of it to come later – while science and technology have leapt ahead and treatments for COVID-19 are vastly more effective?
The balance doesn’t seem to be right. Failures now will put us further behind in the need for an economic plan to take us beyond digging holes and building finance industries around compulsory super.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/fears-over-business-failures-ease-20210104-p56rk3
Fears over business failures ease
John Kehoe Senior writer
Jan 6, 2021 – 12.00am
Thousands of small businesses across hospitality, retail, tourism and real estate face financial failure this year, but the rise in insolvencies will not be as bad as originally feared due to a faster economic recovery, according to corporate undertakers.
The phasing out of emergency supports and concessions from governments, banks and landlords will force the winding up of struggling businesses, particularly companies that were in trouble before the COVID-19-induced recession struck last year.
A survey of six leading insolvency and restructuring practitioners suggests banks will continue to show some leniency for businesses that can viably restructure, but other firms will confront their inevitable fate.
Ashurst restructuring and insolvency partner Michael Sloan said the previously anticipated "tsunami" of insolvencies would now be a "trickle rather than a flood", mainly for industries hard hit by COVID-19 restrictions and international border closures.
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First jabs must be at the border to keep Australia virus-free
The urgent priority must be to vaccinate border and quarantine staff to prevent highly contagious variants of COVID-19 leaking in from overseas arrivals.
Antony Blakely Contributor
Jan 5, 2021 – 11.14am
We need to take our international COVID-19 border more seriously. And perhaps prioritise the urgent vaccination of border and quarantine staff.
This will perhaps reduce the frequency of the virus leaking across the border from something like once a month somewhere in Australia to something like once every two or even every four months. That is a huge gain for Australia.
About 20,000 people arrive each month at our international border and go into quarantine. The risk that these people are infected with COVID-19 is increasing.
For example, the UK has about 50,000 reported cases a day. That is increasing due to the more infective virus taking over. Using the back of an envelope, allowing for under-reporting, and allowing for people taking five days to manifest with symptoms and many people not getting symptoms at all, about 1 per cent of all British residents are infected at any point in time without knowing it.
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Delayed UK jab could lead to 'slightly increased risk of an escaped mutant'
By Bevan Shields
January 6, 2021 — 7.18am
London: Boris Johnson's top health adviser concedes there is a "small but real" worry that expanding the window between the first and second coronavirus vaccine jab could spawn a new mutant strain, as the number of infected Londoners surges to one in every 30 people.
The government needs to vaccinate at least 2 million vulnerable people by mid-February to have a hope of ending a nationwide lockdown caused in part by a highly transmissible new variant which has sent infection rates soaring across Britain.
The Oxford/AstraZenica vaccine rollout has begun in the UK, with a deadly surge of winter infections forcing the country into a third national lockdown.
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show 1 in 50 people in England had COVID-19 in the week between Christmas and the New Year. In London, where the new variant is raging, one in every 30 people were infected.
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China trade rises to $208bn despite feud
Two-way goods trade between Australia and China has forged higher to hit $208.8bn over the 11 months to November — which is higher than the same period in 2019, despite the increasingly fractious relationship.
Chinese authorities threatened and imposed a variety of restrictions on Australian imports in 2020, including on meat, wine, seafood and timber. With little evidence that Beijing is backing down in its escalating and one-sided trade war, Australia in mid-December referred our most important economic partner to the World Trade Organisation over its barley tariffs.
Yet the latest trade data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for November, released on Thursday, shows that while the political ties have grown seriously strained, the trade links between our two nations have grown stronger.
Surging iron ore exports this year on strong demand and soaring prices explains the continued resilience in our international sales to China, but less discussed has been a significant rise in Australian purchases of Chinese made products, especially items such as household and home office goods as Australians spent significantly more time at home during the pandemic.
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Coronavirus is bad, but we’ve been through much worse
The year that has just ended was the most unexpected in the lives of the overwhelming majority of Australians. It is said to have changed forever our way of living and working. But was it such a unique year?
Certainly it was a zigzag year. At first, when the coronavirus gripped China and then northern Italy, there were fears that it might be as deadly as the Spanish flu pandemic, which at the end of World War I devastated most lands and especially India. In Europe in the middle of last year the modern virus seemed more tameable, only to surge again in the winter.
It was like a typhoon, the way it changed direction. Nobody is on record as predicting that in the space of 10 months it would play havoc with the US, the home of medical innovation, and would even shape the presidential election.
Contrary to prevailing opinion, Australia itself has experienced times that were more shattering than last year. We now know that eight centuries ago the Aboriginal people, especially in the temperate zone, faced a goliath of a drought. Starting in 1174 and persisting for 39 years, it must have reduced the population of Australia substantially and caused intense anxiety among most of the survivors. We know of this calamitous drought because in the thick ice of the Law Dome in East Antarctica a deep hole was drilled, providing valuable evidence for climate scientists led by Tessa Vance of the University of Tasmania.
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Climate Change
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Climate change: Australia records fourth hottest year in history says Bureau of Meteorology
· NCA NewsWire
Australia has recorded its fourth warmest year in history.
The weather bureau has revealed the nation’s area-averaged mean temperature for 2020 was 1.15C above the 1961 to 1990 average.
The country also experienced its warmest spring on record last year.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Annual Climate Statement for 2020 showed mean annual maximum and minimum temperatures were above average for all states and the Northern Territory, while rainfall was close to average, which helped ease drought conditions in many areas across the country.
But some regions had below average rainfall, including the west of Western Australia, southeastern Queensland and western Tasmania.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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Aged-care watchdog seeking more bite
Australia’s aged-care regulator will try to triple the number of on-site audits it conducts in retirement homes after a torrid year during which it was accused of failing to manage or even investigate the spread of coronavirus through facilities.
Disclosures in requests for contractors published by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission show the regulator wants enough staff to undertake at least 600 on-site audits this year, after conducting only 200 on-site and review surveys in 2020 and stopping visits altogether at the height of the pandemic.
Providers will have until January 22 to bid for the ACQSC tender, a move branded by one critic as “unusual” given the holiday period may make it difficult for interested parties to register.
“The commission plans to expand its long-term workforce capacity for re-accreditation site audits through the procurement of resources to conduct audits,” the document reads.
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Up to 36 Indigenous Voices across Australia, but no veto power on laws
January 9, 2021 — 12.01am
Federal Parliament would have to consult a national Indigenous Voice on laws relating to race, but the proposed body could not veto laws or overturn government policy decisions under a plan out for consultation.
The obligation on the federal government to consult would be narrowly confined to the constitutional ability to make laws involving race. The interim report from the co-design process says Parliament would only be "expected" to ask for advice on broader issues that significantly affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The report says the Voice should not deliver any government programs, mediate disputes between Indigenous organisations or governments, or be treated simply as a clearing house for research.
Instead, up to 35 local and regional Voices would form a robust system with a national Voice to allow Indigenous people to work in a true partnership with governments at all levels.
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National Budget Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/are-economists-asleep-to-risks-of-inflation-20201221-p56pdb
Are economists asleep to risks of inflation?
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Jan 4, 2021 – 12.01am
The consensus among economists is that inflation won't be sustainably back above 2 per cent for years, but that view should not blind people to what COVID-19 has done and could be about to do.
This holiday period we have the Chinese trade attacks to thank for some deflation from the delicious lobster, beef and wine on our tables.
But as the huge declines in the price of childcare and petrol in the June quarter of 2020 slide out of the annual inflation figure in the June quarter of 2021, economists expect the rate of inflation to rise temporarily above 2 per cent – back in the Reserve Bank's target range.
On face value, it might be easy just to say this is COVID-19 volatility balancing out and won't change perceptions on inflation.
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Property prices post 3pc gain in 2020: CoreLogic
Australia’s housing market finished three per cent higher over 2020 despite a turbulent year, with all bar one capital city recording annual growth and the regions reporting the strongest growth in a decade.
December marked the third consecutive month of consecutive national price gains, according to property researcher CoreLogic, with the rise of 1 per cent last month capping off 2.3 per cent growth over the period.
Property prices in 2020 finished up 3 per cent overall, with the regional housing prices more three times higher than the capitals.
Last year was one of extremes for the housing market.
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Tying workers to super accounts would save $1.8b in fees: Financial Services Council
By Jennifer Duke
January 5, 2021 — 5.00am
Tying Australians to their superannuation accounts could save them $1.8 billion in fees but risks leaving some workers in underperforming funds missing out on tens of thousands of dollars in retirement savings.
The effects of coronavirus on the economy will mean so many workers switching jobs that extra costs racked up through the creation of new super accounts could reach hundreds of millions of dollars annually, new analysis from the Financial Services Council shows.
The analysis forms part of a submission from the council to Treasury's consultation on a swathe of changes for the superannuation sector, including the "stapling" of accounts to individuals to stop the creation of duplicate accounts. This requires employers to pay into an existing fund rather than create a new one automatically.
"Not only will there continue to be Australians starting new jobs, but there will be an additional, substantial cohort of Australians re-entering the workforce in new employment after having lost their job during shutdowns," the submission says. "These two scenarios combined will likely result in a higher than usual creation of new duplicate accounts and the charging of excess superannuation fees."
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Coronavirus: Four-year grind for university rebound
January 5, 2021
The nation’s most prestigious universities will take up to four years to regain their post-COVID strength amid warnings that the Group of Eight faces a much diminished future in a post-pandemic world, sector analysts say.
Australia’s oldest university, the University of Sydney, has declared it can keep its place in the top 100 higher education institutions after retiring Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven predicted Australia would soon fall off the global league tables.
While higher education experts believe Australian universities will stay in the top 100 and perform well relative to countries ravaged by COVID-19, they say the universities’ absolute performance is on a “downward trend” and a full rebound for the sector might take until 2025.
Centre for the Study of Higher Education professorial fellow Frank Larkins told The Australian on Monday that universities’ recovery from the loss of $7bn in foreign student fees and the COVID-19 recession will begin in 2022, but it will take longer to reach pre-COVID levels.
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Coronavirus: Insolvency at 20-year low but for how long?
Australia’s company failure rates are set to increase from their lowest levels in more than 20 years as the Morrison government removes its blanket of emergency income support and temporary protections allowing businesses to trade while insolvent.
As new rules giving small enterprises greater flexibility to work their way out of difficulty commenced on Friday, the latest Australian Securities & Investments Commission data showed that only 946 companies entered external administration during the three months to September.
That was the lowest quarterly number of companies entering external administration since the end of 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom. It was also fewer than half of the 2182 recorded over the same period a year before.
Institute of Public Accountants general manager of technical policy Tony Greco said “the reality is the year accelerated pre-existing trends and, unfortunately, some business models aren’t going to be intact when things resume”.
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Health Issues.
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Coronavirus: doctors back US ambassador’s call for medicine security
The peak doctors association has thrown its weight behind the outgoing US ambassador’s call for Australia to secure critical supplies of medicines and medical goods.
As the Australian Medical Association called for a national strategy to address a key risk to the country’s medical system, a leading economist said China’s aggressive trade actions over the past 12 months had exposed the “naivety” of global supply chains that focused exclusively on efficiency at the cost of security and resilience.
In his final interview before leaving the country, Arthur Culvahouse said the “Five Eye”nations — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US — alongside allies including Japan and India should work together to create alternative sources of supply for critical minerals, medical goods and pharmaceuticals.
AMA president Omar Khorshid said the country’s doctors had long been concerned about the supply of critical medications, which had left shortages of basic medicines even before the pandemic. “COVID has really exposed how little we manufacture here in Australia, and how exposed we are to trade shocks,” he said.
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International Issues.
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Texas congressman suggests ‘violence in the streets’
Elizabeth Thompson
Jan 3, 2021 – 3.50pm
Washington | East Texas congressman Louie Gohmert suggested “violence in the streets” may be the only remaining option to block Joe Biden from becoming president, after a federal judge rejected his lawsuit aiming to force Vice-President Mike Pence to overturn the election.
US District Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee from Mr Gohmert’s hometown of Tyler, threw out the lawsuit late on Friday (Saturday AEDT), ruling he and other plaintiffs – including the GOP chairwoman in Arizona and that state’s defeated slate of Republican electors – lack standing.
Mr Gohmert said on Newsmax he had sought redress in court “so that you didn’t have to have riots and violence in the street".
“Bottom line is, the court is saying, ‘We’re not going to touch this, you have no remedy,’” Mr Gohmert said. “Basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you’ve got to go to the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM.”
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/will-trumpism-outlast-trump-20210103-p56re0
Will Trumpism outlast Trump?
With the President still claiming a stolen election, the 2024 Republican field is filled with contenders hoping to inherit his mantle.
Edward Luce Columnist
Jan 3, 2021 – 9.49am
Shortly after Josh Hawley said he would contest Joe Biden’s victory at the electoral college certification in Congress on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT), the Republican senator had a bizarre exchange with Walmart.
A rogue employee at the giant retailer retorted on the company’s Twitter handle that Hawley – and, by implication, Donald Trump – was a “sore loser”. The Missouri senator, whose planned stunt at most will delay Biden’s certification by a few hours, replied: “Thanks @Walmart for your insulting condescension. Now that you’ve insulted 75 million Americans, will you at least apologise for using slave labour?”
Even a year ago it would have been hard to imagine any senior Republican other than Trump talking so scathingly about one of America’s biggest employers – still less a global brand name owned by an avowedly conservative family. Now such declarations are almost routine.
Shortly after the presidential election in November, Hawley said: “We are a working class party now. That’s the future.” This week he will try to lay claim to being Trump’s heir by impugning an election that federal officials have deemed the most free and fair in America’s history.
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Unlike in 2008, this time the recovery will be better supported
Technological progress and an improved political environment will ensure that a long-term boom will follow once the economy recovers from the pandemic.
Paul Krugman
Jan 3, 2021 – 12.23pm
The next few months will be hell in terms of politics, epidemiology and economics.
But at some point in 2021, things will start getting better. And there's good reason to believe that once the good news starts, the improvement in our condition will be much faster and continue much longer than many people expect.
OK, one thing that probably won't get better is the political scene. Day after day, Republicans – it's not just Donald Trump – keep demonstrating that they're worse than you could possibly have imagined.
But on other fronts there's a clear case for optimism. Science has come to our rescue, big time, with the miraculously fast development of vaccines against the coronavirus.
True, the United States is botching the initial rollout, which should surprise nobody. But this is probably just a temporary hitch, especially because in less than three weeks we will have a president actually interested in doing his job.
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Republicans weigh their options: join Donald Trump’s ‘coup’ or risk his vengeance?
Sarah Baxter, Atlanta
Sunday January 03 2021, 12.01am GMT, The Sunday Times
Donald Trump is marshalling his forces for one last effort to salvage his lame-duck presidency after demanding that Congress refuse to certify Joe Biden’s election victory. His attempt to mount a constitutional coup is certain to go down in flames this week, but he has succeeded in persuading a large number of Republican lawmakers to join his cause.
Trump has called for a huge “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington as a show of strength against members of Congress who believe it is their duty to confirm Biden’s win. Both events will take place on Wednesday, the day after the two run-off elections in Georgia that will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate. The US courts have repeatedly rejected Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud.
Mike Pence, the vice-president, faces the unenviable task of presiding over the official count of the electoral college votes and announcing the winner to a joint session of the House and Senate — unless he bows to Trump’s pressure and bucks tradition. As a likely presidential contender in 2024, he has to decide whether his greater loyalty is to the US constitution or to the demands of a fickle president who has only 17 days left in office.
Biden has already won the electoral college vote by 306 to 232. “The certification has always been a formality,” said Tom Edmonds, a Republican consultant in Washington. “The vice-president is obliged to say Biden won, but Trump may turn on him. He has a following that transcends traditional politics and it will still be there after January 20.”
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/america-s-dangerous-reliance-on-the-fed-20210104-p56rja
America’s dangerous reliance on the Fed
The Fed is pledging to do what it takes, while America’s elected officials seem unlikely to agree on fiscal policy. These are the potential seeds of America’s next populist crisis.
Edward Luce Columnist
Jan 4, 2021 – 9.06am
For bitcoin speculators, last year was a bonanza. The cryptocurrency started January 2020 at $US7194 and on Sunday surged above $US34,000 ($44,121) — a more than 360 per cent annual return.
Courtesy of the US Federal Reserve, asset buyers in general have had a stellar pandemic. Whether it was US Treasuries or junk bonds, equity portfolios or high-end property, the free money gusher has lifted all asset prices. Nor is the Fed inclined to stop the party. This year could offer a similar kind of boom to last.
Even if they do not trigger high inflation, the Fed’s extraordinary interventions will come with steep price tags. No doubt these would be far lower than the Fed not having acted at all — particularly in the short term. Had it foregone the more than $US3 trillion expansion to its balance sheet since last March, the US economy would have gone into freefall.
Corporate bankruptcies would have piled up and there could have been a 2008-style financial meltdown.
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Trump pressured Georgia official to recalculate the vote in his favour
Amy Gardner
Jan 4, 2021 – 8.24am
Washington | President Donald Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to "find" enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) that election experts said raised legal questions.
The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Mr Trump alternately berated Mr Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue Mr Trump's false claims, at one point warning that Mr Raffensperger was taking "a big risk".
Throughout the call, Mr Raffensperger and his office's general counsel rejected President Trump's assertions, explaining that the president was relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden's 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.
Mr Trump dismissed their arguments.
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Reflections on a ghastly year: Trump's final days are even weirder than Nixon's
Martin McKenzie-Murray
Regular columnist and former political speechwriter
January 4, 2021 — 12.00am
Much has been said about the ghastliness of 2020, but I confess that it’s enjoyably ratified my longstanding fear and pessimism. I spent much of the year pacing my house in a soiled toga, asking my partner and young child to join me in accepting the profound and intractable awfulness of everything.
Never was this easier than during Melbourne’s second lockdown and my toddler’s brief flirtation with American YouTuber Blippi — a prodigy of obnoxiousness and, I strongly suspect, a creation of Russian psy-ops.
Many people point to the vast suffering in the world to question the existence of God, but I prefer to gesture to Blippi’s bank account. Here’s a multimillionaire who, before his reinvention as a kids’ entertainer, sought fame by making videos of himself defecating on mates. Jefferson’s Republic is in a late stage of putrefaction.
If I lost my mind, at least I wasn’t in public office. Donald Trump didn’t handle 2020 too well either, and his last days in office have made me think of Richard Nixon’s. Bad with booze and repentance, Nixon spent his final days in dark ecstasies of self-pity. His Chief of Staff feared the remote and maudlin President’s suicide, while his Secretary of Defence tried quietly to subvert Nixon’s unilateral power to deploy nuclear weapons.
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Texas senator Ted Cruz launches bid to block Joe Biden
· AFP
A group of Republican senators led by veteran Ted Cruz said on Sunday AEDT they would not vote this week to certify Joe Biden’s election win — the latest last-ditch move to support Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine the vote.
The support for the US President came a day after Mr Trump was dealt a humiliating blow in his last days in office with the Senate voting overwhelmingly to override his veto of a sweeping defence bill — the first time congress has done so during his presidency.
In a statement on Sunday, Senator Cruz and six other current senators along with four senators-elect assert that “allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes”.
The group said when congress convened in a joint session on Thursday — for what normally would be a pro-forma certification of Mr Biden’s victory — they would demand the creation of a special commission to conduct an “emergency 10-day audit” of the election results.
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Ugliest spectacle of Trump era looms
“I could never have imagined seeing these things in the greatest democracy in the world,’ says Republican Senator Mitt Romney. “Has ambition so eclipsed principle?’
It is a fair question for any moderate Republican to ask ahead of what promises to be one of the ugliest spectacles of the Donald Trump era in Congress this week (AEDT).
At the president’s urging, a group of at least 11 Republican Senators seeking to curry favour with Trump and his voting base will seek to block what should have been a routine certification of Joe Biden’s election win. They will be supported in the House by at least 120 Republicans.
The move, due to unfold in Congress on Thursday (AEDT) is, at its core, an attempt to override the will of American voters because they voted for Biden over Trump.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/europe-has-handed-china-a-strategic-victory-20210105-p56rsj
Europe has handed China a strategic victory
This is the wrong time for the EU to agree an investment treaty with Beijing. It is also a considerable kick in the teeth for Joe Biden.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Jan 5, 2021 – 9.37am
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, says she wants to lead a “geopolitical commission”. But Ms Von der Leyen concluded 2020 by sending a truly awful geopolitical message — as her commission signed off on an investment treaty between the EU and China.
Over the past year, China has crushed the freedom of Hong Kong, intensified oppression in Xinjiang, killed Indian troops, threatened Taiwan and sanctioned Australia. By signing a deal with China nonetheless, the EU has signalled that it doesn’t care about all that.
As Janka Oertel, director of the Asia programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, puts it: “This is a massive diplomatic win for China.”
It is also a considerable kick in the teeth for Joe Biden. The US President-elect has stressed that, after Donald Trump, he wants to make a fresh start with Europe. In particular, the Biden administration wants to work on China issues together with fellow democracies.
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Extraordinary warning to Trump against use of military over election by former Pentagon chiefs
By Robert Burns
January 4, 2021 — 3.16pm
Washington: In an extraordinary rebuke of US President Donald Trump, all 10 living former secretaries of defence cautioned against any move to involve the military in pursuing claims of election fraud, arguing that it would take the country into “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory”.
The 10 men, both Democrats and Republicans, signed on to an opinion article published in The Washington Post that implicitly questioned Trump's willingness to follow his constitutional duty to peacefully relinquish power on January 20. Following the November 3 election and subsequent recounts in some states, as well as unsuccessful court challenges, the outcome is clear, they wrote, while not specifying Trump in the article.
“The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the constitution and statute, has arrived,” they wrote.
The former Pentagon chiefs warned against use of the military in any effort to change the outcome.
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China’s rapid military development outpaces even the US
Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping is shaping to make the People’s Liberation Army his primary vehicle for driving the party’s strategic aims this year.
The end of last year has brought remarkable policy and propaganda shifts in Beijing, mostly unreported in the democracies, that consolidate the CCP’s control of the military and make the PLA’s development the core of Xi’s personal authority.
On December 18, a story in party newspaper the People’s Daily stated “Xi does not simply command the PLA from behind a desk”. His “thinking” is central to attaining more powerful combat capability, which “should be the ‘sole and fundamental’ benchmark of the military”.
The key message was clear: the PLA has “strengthened its resistance” to “erroneous political views” and understands that “the party commands the gun”.
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Boris Johnson’s latest lockdown order plunges UK into state of gloom
Boris Johnson is astute enough to know the British public is fed up. He said as much in his national address while inflicting upon the English yet another brutal national lockdown — the third and harshest one yet of this pandemic — although this time he didn’t even try to pretend that the measures would be for just a fortnight or two.
True to form, Johnson has said just enough to get him through the next half hour: this time telling the nation the lockup will be in place until mid-February. But everyone knows his ambitious vaccine rollout of two million jabs a week is unfeasible and it’s highly unlikely the over-70s will all be inoculated before Easter, let alone in six weeks.
Just one day after informing radio listeners how vital it was to keep schools open in the face of union opposition as the new term began, Johnson has now slammed them shut and sent everybody home.
Worn down by the first 100-day lockdown in March, April, May and June, where everything bar a local supermarket and chemist was closed, and then since October, a series of tiers and lockup, (some areas have never come out of harsh measures) everyone is resigned to the most dire of winters and even springs. Let’s not even mention the turmoil surrounding Christmas that was to allow some family get-togethers before banning them altogether.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/biden-edges-closer-to-total-congress-control-20210106-p56s4b
Democrats capture a majority in the US Senate
John Kehoe Senior writer
Updated Jan 7, 2021 – 8.42am, first published at Jan 6, 2021 – 6.50pm
US President-elect Joe Biden has taken control of the US Congress after two victories in Georgia's run-off elections gave him a majority in the Senate, opening the way for his agenda of corporate tax rises and climate change action.
It was a stunning defeat in Donald Trump's last days in office while dramatically improving the fate of Biden’s progressive agenda.
Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Democratic challengers who represented the diversity of their party’s evolving coalition, defeated Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler two months after Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992.
Warnock, who served as pastor for the same Atlanta church where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. preached, becomes the first African American from Georgia elected to the Senate. And Ossoff, who was born to an Australian mother, becomes the state’s first Jewish senator and, at 33 years old, the Senate’s youngest member.
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Trump played with fire and American democracy got burnt
By Matthew Knott
Washington: Donald Trump's reckless dishonesty has reached its horrifying but logical end point: blood on the floor of the US Capitol Building and a woman dead. A temple of American democracy under siege by a violent mob of domestic terrorists.
Tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel famously said in 2016 that Trump's supporters take him seriously but not literally.
But when Trump falsely claimed again and again that the November election had been stolen from him by corrupt Democrats and weak Republicans, tens of millions of his radicalised supporters took him at his word.
Wrongfully convinced that the election had been marred by unprecedented fraud, it was only a matter of time until some of them tried to intervene to "stop the steal".
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Goons and poltroons: a confederacy of dunces mobs US Congress
Columnist
January 7, 2021 — 11.54am
Donald Trump doesn’t read the Bible, of course, and lacks the insight to process its lessons if he did. But the words ''sow the wind and reap the whirlwind'' hover over the sad, hateful and once unthinkable events that reeled Washington DC today.
After days of assembling in Washington, on Wednesday afternoon Washington time, a group of the so-called Proud Boys and other right-wing goons, some of them proudly waving Confederate flags, surrounded the US Capitol. Inside, the two houses of Congress were going through the procedural motions of certifying the elections results from November.
The US Capitol locked down on Wednesday with lawmakers inside as violent clashes broke out between supporters of President Donald Trump and police.
A slightly more presentable set of goons – Donald Trump’s political poltroons, his most craven supporters in Congress, all yammering about his baseless charges about election fraud – were planning some procedural objections to the process. These all had gotten some press attention, and were doomed to fail. But it was all part of the allowable moves in Congress, and, in the end, all should have been well.
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Meet the Americans who believe Trump's election fraud lies
By Matthew Knott
January 7, 2021 — 11.51am
Washington: Jerry Daniele believes things that aren’t true. He is confident, for example, that Donald Trump received 75 per cent of the vote in the November election - the largest share of the popular vote of any candidate in modern US history.
The fact the official results show Trump won only 47 per cent of the vote is because of rampant fraud committed by Democrats in multiple states, Daniele says.
"This was not an election - this was a soft coup," Daniele says. He believes that truckloads of illegal ballots for Joe Biden were shipped into key swing states on election night, depriving Trump of his rightful victory.
Daniele and wife Michelle flew six hours from their home in New Mexico to Washington, DC, on Thursday (AEDT) to join tens of thousands of Trump supporters at a protest against the looming certification of Joe Biden's election victory.
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A single day shakes two presidencies, two parties and one nation to the core
· Dow Jones
Never in recent memory have the events of a single 24-hour period so shaken two presidencies, the very Capitol of the United States and the nation itself as they did on Wednesday.
The remarkable scenes of political violence that broke out amid what was to be a peaceful confirmation of the transfer of power are testing America’s democratic institutions, and it’s far from clear how they will respond. President Trump’s term, which began with Republicans fully in charge of Washington and the promise of a new kind of populist leadership, effectively came to an end Wednesday with his party aflame and out of power, some of its top leaders excoriated by a president they had loyally supported, and a mob of Trump supporters occupying and vandalising the Capitol.
The effects will ripple out for years to come, and the full consequences will be left for historians to sort out. It seems likely, though, that the chances that other Republicans will see Mr Trump as the leader of their party after he leaves office have been diminished significantly. As Mr Trump himself tried to remind his supporters after violence broke out, Republicans like to be seen as the party of law and order, and that is hardly the image he is now projecting.
Meanwhile, the efforts of President-elect Joe Biden to calm and unify the nation have become more complex. On the one hand, the willingness of Trump supporters to resort to violent behavior on the Capitol grounds shows how deeply they question his legitimacy, and how unwilling they are to accept him as their president.
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Ossoff defeats Perdue in Georgia Senate runoff, giving Democrats control of chamber
Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff defeated Republican David Perdue for a seat in the U.S. Senate, where he will join fellow newly elected Democrat Raphael Warnock and give their party control of the chamber.
The Associated Press declared both men had won their races. The two upset victories give Democrats control of both the Senate and the House for the first time in a decade.
Mr. Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker, beat Mr. Perdue, who was first elected senator in 2014. Mr. Perdue’s term expired on Sunday. Mr. Warnock, the pastor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church, defeated Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the AP projected earlier. Ms. Loeffler was appointed a year ago to fill the seat of GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson, who resigned for health reasons.
Messrs. Ossoff and Warnock, who will be sworn in within weeks, will be the first Democrats to represent Georgia in the Senate since 2005. The change of power in the Senate will hand Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration a Congress more willing to consider its agenda. That includes confirming Mr. Biden’s judicial nominees and cabinet appointees to seeking additional federal spending in response to the Covid-19 pandemic — items that were central to Messrs. Ossoff and Warnock’s campaigns.
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Republicans will pay for Typhoon Trump
In nearly 30 years of closely following US politics, I have seen a great many astonishing developments. But never anything remotely like the political typhoon that has swirled through Washington in recent weeks.
Indeed, it is extremely hard to understate the significance of the ensuing electoral chaos: with likely Republican losses in the two run-off Senate races in Georgia, Donald Trump has damaged irreparably his own cause in a hitherto safe conservative state.
And as bizarre as it sounds, it is entirely reasonable to believe the outgoing President wanted the Republicans to lose the two Georgia Senate seats. (The last time a Democrat unseated an incumbent senator there was in 1986.) This is because, in his mind, a dual loss would have supported his fallacious allegations of widespread voting irregularities.
After all, if the Republican Senate candidates defied the “crooked” system and, as was expected a few months ago, won the run-off elections, then how to explain Trump’s own defeat two months ago? Besides, if the system really is “rigged” against the Republicans, why should they bother voting anyway? Somewhere, Woodrow Wilson — who sought to make the world “safe for democracy” — is rolling over in his grave.
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Trump loses the Senate
· The Wall Street Journal
Republicans lost both Senate races in Georgia, losing control of the Upper Chamber, and you don’t have to be Karl Rove to understand what happened.
If you want to win, don’t tell voters that their votes don’t matter. Don’t have a President tell his voters that the last election was stolen, that Georgia Republicans were complicit in the theft, that GOP Senate leaders don’t care, and then expect those same voters to turn out in the Senate runoffs after a rally and a few tweets.
Donald Trump cost Republicans the Senate by making the two Georgia runoffs a referendum on himself. The races should have been a referendum on blocking Democrats from controlling all of Congress and the executive branch. But that message was obscured, if not obliterated, by Mr. Trump’s insistence on telling voters day after day that he was cheated in November—no matter the lack of credible evidence or plausible path to victory.
***
The Georgia election details prove this point. Turnout was down from November as expected in most places. But it was down more in Trump areas than in Democratic strongholds. The suburban voters who rejected Mr. Trump in November also didn’t return to support GOP incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
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The nightmarish end to Donald Trump’s presidency
Four years after Trump warned of 'American carnage' in his inaugural address, he got what he wanted. The scenes of insurrectionists, some of them armed, ransacking Congress will go down in infamy in American democracy.
Edward Luce Columnist
Jan 7, 2021 – 1.02pm
Ninety minutes before rioters stormed Capitol Hill, US President Donald Trump addressed many of the same people using unequivocally inciteful language. “You’ll never take back our country with weakness,” Trump said. “You have to show strength.”
His personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, also called on the crowd to conduct “trial by combat”.
A mob made up of “Make America Great Again” protesters, Proud Boys and other far-right groups took them at their word. What followed was desecration. Four years after Trump warned of “American carnage” in his inaugural address, he got what he wanted. The scenes of insurrectionists, some of them armed, ransacking Congress will go down in infamy in American democracy.
Nobody should feign surprise. Trump has been vowing to “take back control” since before he took office. During the build-up to last year’s presidential election, Trump repeatedly predicted that it would be the most corrupt in America’s history. Since losing, he has been broadcasting that falsehood ever more loudly.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/trump-has-blood-on-his-hands-20210107-p56scb
Trump has blood on his hands
It was always impossible to predict the precise end game in Trump's chaotic presidency. But it was long obvious it was never going to end well.
John Kehoe Senior writer
Jan 7, 2021 – 12.27pm
A tyrannical Donald Trump has blood on his hands, having ignited a powder keg which just erupted to display the very worst of American society.
A shocked world is witnessing the consequences of Trump and his shameless cronies trashing American democracy for the past five years, since he started his unconventional campaign to "take back America".
Violence has erupted outside the US Capitol as Washington DC enters curfew.
The charge sheet is long: disputing the result of free and fair elections; inciting mob protests; throwing his foolishly-loyal Vice-President Mike Pence under the bus; pressing congressional Republicans to undermine the election outcome; lying to the American people; undercutting law and order; the list goes on.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/get-ready-for-truth-free-trump-tv-20210107-p56sb2
Get ready for truth-free Trump TV
As a former reality TV star, Donald Trump knows better than most the power of the visual medium. He could use it to make more than $1 billion a year and keep the Republican party running scared.
Jan 8, 2021 – 12.00am
In the dying days of his presidency, Donald Trump and his brutish acolytes used the contrivance of upholding the United States constitution to foment a riot against democracy.
It was archetypal Trump. The black-hearted master of malevolence applying his rat cunning to throw a dark cloak over the main strategic game – putting in place the building blocks for Trump TV.
This is the perfect media project for a narcissist. This $1 billion-a-year business will operate at the intersection of political power and money.
Trump can springboard from the most powerful elected office in the world to a TV network that will be the personification of untruthfulness and deceit.
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Trump is said to have discussed pardoning himself
Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman
Jan 8, 2021 – 8.20am
President Donald Trump has suggested to aides he wants to pardon himself in the final days of his presidency, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions, a move that would mark one of the most extraordinary and untested uses of presidential power in American history.
In several conversations since Election Day, Trump has told advisers that he is considering giving himself a pardon and, in other instances, asked whether he should and what the effect would be on him legally and politically, according to the two people. It was not clear whether he has broached the topic since he incited his supporters on Wednesday to storm the Capitol in a mob attack.
Trump has shown signs that his level of interest in pardoning himself goes beyond idle musings. He has long maintained he has the power to pardon himself and his polling of aides' views is typically a sign that he is preparing to follow through on his aims. He has also become increasingly convinced that his perceived enemies will use the levers of law enforcement to target him after he leaves office.
No president has pardoned himself, so the legitimacy of prospective self-clemency has never been tested in the justice system and legal scholars are divided about whether the courts would recognise it. But they agree a presidential self-pardon could create a dangerous new precedent for presidents to unilaterally declare they are above the law and to insulate themselves from being held accountable for any crimes they committed in office.
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Capitol Hill riot was 'quintessentially American'
The insurrection by a group of mostly white men opposing the legitimacy of a free and fair multiethnic election is quintessentially American.
Omar Wasow
Jan 8, 2021 – 9.28am
After a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol, commentators and elected officials - notably House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California - decried the events as "un-American".
In an interview with a Boston radio station on Thursday (Friday AEDT), Harvard historian Jill Lepore went so far as to say, "We are off the grid of American history."
There's no disputing that the assault was remarkable. But "un-American" is the wrong adjective. A better way to make sense of the news of the past few days - not only the violent occupation in Washington but also the historic Senate victories by Democrats in Georgia - is as a long-run contest between two competing American traditions: one committed to preserving the status quo racial hierarchy and one fighting to advance equality.
From this perspective, the insurrection by a group of mostly white men opposing the legitimacy of a free and fair multiethnic election is quintessentially American.
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Democracy is a mindset and Americans are losing it
By Peter Hartcher
January 7, 2021 — 7.35pm
The world might be witnessing not only the death throes of the Trump presidency but of US democracy.
Democracy's great virtue is not that it guarantees the best possible ruler but that it allows the bloodless removal of a bad one, as the Anglo-Austrian philosopher Karl Popper said. Donald Trump's denialist contortions are an effort to prevent democracy delivering its ultimate benefit.
Witnessing the invasion of the American parliament, Trump's first Defence Secretary, Jim Mattis, didn't shrink from naming the chief culprit: "Today's violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump." And he's right.
Trump has potential to do far worse in the final fortnight of his presidency. "Chaos is his friend," his former national security adviser, John Bolton, told me, even before the latest mayhem, "as it has been many times in his life and in businesses and he's hoping to fall back on it".
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American mythology dies on the Hill
The dramatic unrest in Washington yesterday seems to represent a historic shift in the conflict dynamic in the US.
January 7, 2021
The only truly shocking thing about this week’s events is how many observers claim to have found them shocking. Nothing on Capitol Hill on Thursday AEDT surprised anyone who has tracked “patriot movement” chatter or pro-Trump social media since the US election, seen the scale and passion of the President’s rallies, witnessed 1000-car “Trump trains” or watched protesters converging on Washington this week.
One woman, Ashli Babbitt, was killed in the afternoon, allegedly shot by police inside the Capitol building as protesters ransacked House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, rampaged through the rotunda, below the Capitol dome, broke down the door to the chamber and occupied the Senate floor.
More may be murdered overnight, since (if last year’s pattern holds) the hours of darkness — when police pull back to protect public property, protesters and counter-protesters clash, and arsonists come out of the woodwork — are the most dangerous.
But several myths also died this week. One was the complacent notion that “it can’t happen here”. On the contrary, Thursday looked a little like the opening move of a colour revolution, as seen in Ukraine, Serbia, Georgia or the Arab Spring.
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Trump proves he was never fit to rule
As power seeps from Donald Trump he has become the enemy of US democracy, its constitution and the will of the people. His populist quest is ending in ruin.
By Paul Kelly
January 8, 2021
The Trump presidency is dying in futile violence, constitutional sabotage and a comprehensive victory for the Democrats.
The insurgent rampage through the Capitol and its legislative chambers was triggered by Donald Trump’s reckless campaign of incitement and his fraudulent accusation of a “stolen election”.
As power seeps from Trump he has become the enemy of American democracy, its constitution and the will of the people. His populist quest to “Make America Great Again” is ending in violence and ruin.
The mob assault on the Capitol exposes a fractured nation and Trump’s rebellious challenge to incoming president Joe Biden. Trump’s rage is that of a loser: he lost the White House, lost in the courts, and has now lost in the congress.
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Qanon cultists believe the final showdown between light and darkness is upon us
· The Times
If the storming of the Capitol was part tragedy and part farce, its enduring symbol was the bare-chested man in buffalo horns. This was Jake Angeli, a voiceover artist from Arizona, also known as the QAnon Shaman.
QAnon is a conspiracy theory-turned-cult whose followers believe that there is a deep-state plot run by a paedophile sect whose leaders include the Clintons and Obamas. This plot was “revealed” online a few years ago by someone calling themselves “Q”.
Q has also let it be known that there is a counterplot by freedom-loving Americans led by none other than Donald Trump.
Q supporters believe that the final showdown between the forces of light and darkness is upon us. When the world is seen through such a warped lens, it is little wonder their belief in democracy, votes cast and the rule of law, has been abandoned.
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The Republican Party is in disarray
· The Wall Street Journal
Donald Trump may have been correct at his Monday rally when he said of Georgia Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler: “If they win I’ll get no credit, and if they lose they’re going to blame Trump.” But Tuesday’s election and Wednesday’s mob assault on Congress were stark examples of the destructive reactions the president can generate.
One Trump effect was felt in Atlanta’s suburbs. In Clayton County in November, Democrat Jon Ossoff had a 71-point lead; on Tuesday it was 77. In DeKalb Mr Ossoff led by 64 points in November; on Tuesday he led by 67. In Gwinnett he led by 16 points in November and 20 on Tuesday. In Fulton, the state’s most populous county, Mr Ossoff’s November lead was 41.6 points; on Tuesday, 43 points. These were enough to erase Mr Perdue’s 88,000 vote lead in November and propel Mr Ossoff to a narrow victory.
Mr Trump tried to turn out his rural Georgia supporters, but the results were uneven and insufficient. Take the 14th Congressional District, which the president visited Monday. In November it had roughly 328,000 voters turn out; on Tuesday only 282,000 voted there, though there are several thousand ballots still outstanding.
President-elect Joe Biden has slammed the violent mob who stormed Capitol Hill yesterday – demanding they not be recognised as protestors and reiterating his call for President Donald Trump to take responsibility.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/bring-the-insurrectionists-to-justice-11610065179
Bring the Insurrectionists to Justice
The politicians who egged them on should also be made to pay a heavy price.
By Peggy Noonan
Jan. 7, 2021 7:19 pm ET
How do we deal with all that has happened?
We remember who we are. We are a great nation and a strong one; we have, since our beginning, been a miracle in the political history of man. We have brought much good. We are also in trouble, no point not admitting it.
We regain our confidence. We’ve got through trouble before. We love this place and will keep it. We have a Constitution that’s gotten us this far and will get us further.
We lower the boom. No civilized country can accept or allow what we saw Wednesday with the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. This was an attack on democracy itself. That is not just a phrase. Rule by the people relies on adherence to law and process. The assault and siege was an attempt to stop the work of democracy by halting the peaceful transfer of presidential power, our crowning glory for more than two centuries.
This was a sin against history.
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House will move to impeach Trump unless he resigns immediately
Nicholas Fandos and Luke Broadwater
Jan 9, 2021 – 7.10am
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said on Friday (Saturday AEDT) that the House would move to impeach President Donald Trump over his role in inciting a violent mob attack on the Capitol if he did not resign "immediately", appealing to Republicans to join the push to force him from office.
In a letter to members of the House, the speaker invoked the resignation of Richard Nixon amid the Watergate scandal, when Republicans prevailed upon the president to resign and avoid the ignominy of an impeachment, calling Trump's actions a "horrific assault on our democracy".
"Today, following the president's dangerous and seditious acts, Republicans in Congress need to follow that example and call on Trump to depart his office — immediately," she wrote. "If the president does not leave office imminently and willingly, the Congress will proceed with our action."
Pelosi also said she had spoken with General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about "preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes".
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Donald Trump permanently banned from Twitter
January 9, 2021 — 10.39am
US President Donald Trump has been permanently banned from Twitter due to the risk of further incitement of violence.
Twitter had temporarily blocked Trump's account earlier this week following the siege of Capitol Hill on Wednesday by pro-Trump protesters and warned that additional violations by the president's accounts would result in a permanent suspension.
On Saturday morning AEDT, Twitter made the suspension permanent.
Rioting Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC where, inside, the final chapter on his Presidency was being written.
"Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open," Twitter said in a statement.
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Yes, Donald Trump is at risk of prosecution. Here's why
Christopher Dunn
Legal director of the New York office of the American Civil Liberties Union.
January 8, 2021 — 11.38am
Wednesday’s mob attack on the United States Capitol to disrupt Congress’ formal recognition of the election of Joseph Biden to be the president of the US sent shock waves throughout the country and around the world.
Given that the United States has
enjoyed a long history of democratic rule where elections and not force have
dictated who would lead the country, the images of hundreds of people storming the Capitol in
support of a
presidential candidate who lost were unfathomable.
World leaders have expressed shock and dismay after supporters of US President Donald Trump, encouraged by him, stormed the US Capitol building as Congress met to certify the results of the presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
First and foremost, this insurrection presents a political crisis in the United States, one that is the predictable culmination of Donald Trump’s sustained assault on America’s democratic institutions over the last four years.
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Fate of the Republic: it’s time to address the truth of Trump
Whatever opinion one may hold about Donald Trump as a person or as a politician, about his policy platform, his political style or his actions as US President, his refusal to accept the outcome of the election held last November and his incitement of the mob on Thursday, to march on the Capitol and confront “weak Republicans” made him a serious threat to the US constitution and the integrity of the American republic.
That members of his own cabinet discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office and replace him — for the final two weeks of his term — with Vice-President Mike Pence has to stand as the ultimate indictment of his conduct. Joe Biden has now been confirmed by congress. Trump has stated there will be a smooth transition, but still denies the outcome of the election.
Highly credible public intellectual Fred Kaplan wrote in Slate on Wednesday: “It is now clear that American democracy is too much at risk if Donald Trump remains President for the two weeks before Joe Biden’s inauguration. There is a way to remove him quickly, if there’s a will — invoking the 25th Amendment. Trump’s behaviour on Wednesday — his incitement of violence, his expression of ‘love’ for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, his continued propagation of the lie that his ‘sacred landslide election victory’ was stolen — could justify his ouster.
“In an astonishing statement, released hours after the rioting, the National Association of Manufacturers — a leading group of big business leaders that has enthusiastically supported Trump in the past — stated, ‘Vice-President Pence … should seriously consider working with the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy’.”
That’s where things got to in Washington.
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Donald Trump’s Final Days
· The Wall Street Journal
The lodestar of these columns is the US Constitution. The document is the durable foundation protecting liberty, and this week it showed its virtue again. Despite being displaced for a time by a mob, Congress returned the same day to ratify the Electoral College vote and Joe Biden’s election. Congratulations to the President-elect, who will be inaugurated as the Constitution stipulates at noon on Jan. 20.
***
That still leaves Wednesday’s disgrace and what to do about the 13 days left in Donald Trump’s presidential term. Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are demanding that Mr. Trump be removed from office immediately—either by the Cabinet under the 25th Amendment or new articles of impeachment. There’s partisan animus at work here, but Mr. Trump’s actions on Wednesday do raise constitutional questions that aren’t casually dismissed.
In concise summary, on Wednesday the leader of the executive branch incited a crowd to march on the legislative branch. The express goal was to demand that Congress and Vice President Mike Pence reject electors from enough states to deny Mr. Biden an Electoral College victory. When some in the crowd turned violent and occupied the Capitol, the President caviled and declined for far too long to call them off. When he did speak, he hedged his plea with election complaint.
This was an assault on the constitutional process of transferring power after an election. It was also an assault on the legislature from an executive sworn to uphold the laws of the United States. This goes beyond merely refusing to concede defeat. In our view it crosses a constitutional line that Mr. Trump hasn’t previously crossed. It is impeachable.
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Welcome to the new normal of America's 'asterisk president'
An America that cannot even agree who its president is will be in no shape to lead the rest of the democratic world.
Ian Bremmer Contributor
Jan 8, 2021 – 11.47am
Eurasia Group released its annual list of the top geopolitical risks this week and, just like last year, the United States ranks at the top of the list. Unlike last year, though, our concerns for the US extend far beyond the next calendar year.
Let’s start with a statement that in typical times would be utterly uncontroversial: there was a clear winner in last November's US presidential elections. That winner was Joe Biden. Yet nearly half of all Americans refuse to accept that Biden won the presidency legitimately.
As the shameful events at the US Capitol this week showed, a smaller set of Americans are even willing to use violence to prove that point.
Democracies depend on widespread faith that the political will of the people is being honoured; that has been true of every advanced industrial democracy in the postwar era. But the 2020 election and its turbulent aftermath have shown that can no longer be taken for granted in the United States.
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Trump has always been a wolf in wolf’s clothing
The problem isn't those who took Trump at his word from the start. It's the many, many elected Republicans who took him neither seriously nor literally, but cynically.
Ezra Klein
Jan 8, 2021 – 8.03am
For years, there has been a mantra that Republicans have recited to comfort themselves about President Donald Trump — both about the things he says and the support they offer him.
Trump, they'd say, should be taken seriously, not literally. The coinage comes from a 2016 article in The Atlantic by Salena Zito, in which she complained that the press took Trump "literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally".
For Republican elites, this was a helpful two-step. If Trump's words were understood as layered in folksy exaggeration and shtick — designed to trigger media pedants but perfectly legible to his salt-of-the-earth supporters — then much that would be too grotesque or false to embrace literally could be carefully endorsed at best and ignored as poor comedy at worst.
And Republican elites could walk the line between eviscerating their reputations and enraging their party's leader, all while blaming the media for caricaturing Trumpism by reporting Trump's words accurately.
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Trump made conservatism 'the new punk', but now Republicans must repudiate him
Parnell Palme McGuinness
Columnist and communications adviser
January 10, 2021 — 12.01am
Outgoing US President Donald Trump has destroyed any moderate case for Trumpism in the final days of his presidency. If the Republican Party is to have any future, principled conservatives must repudiate the Trumpian assault on democracy.
Since entering the presidential primary race as a Republican candidate in 2016, Donald Trump has polarised the right. The harrumphing conservatives of the Grand Old Party, as the Republican Party is fondly referred to, were opposed to Trump from the outset.
In January 2016, before Trump was confirmed as GOP presidential candidate, arch-conservative journal National Review devoted an issue to its anti-Trump manifesto, editorialising that Trump is “a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favour of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones” and warned that “Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot on behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself”. That editorial has aged remarkably well.
Trump won the Republican primaries and then the presidency without the support of many traditional conservatives by harnessing and nurturing a cultural movement that defined itself in contrast to the traditional right.
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We won’t be silenced: Donald Trump circumvents Twitter ban
Donald Trump has responded with fury to Twitter’s suspension of his account, using his official @POTUS account to tweet: “We will not be SILENCED.”
Twitter said earlier today it would permanently suspend the US President’s account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
Twitter has permanently suspended Donald Trump’s account due you the “risk” of “further incitement of violence”.
But Mr Trump succeeded in temporarily circumventing the ban, sending four tweets before they disappeared from the social media platform.
In his tweets, the President suggested he would build his own, alternative platform to continue posting on social media.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
