Doctor and activist


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Category: Government

A Visit to East Timor- and New Year’s Eve at the Presidential Palace

2 January 2025

I have always been fascinated by the story of East Timor. It was very much a colonial backwater, a historical remnant of the Portuguese, who had first arrived in 1529 and fought with the Dutch until treaties in 1869 and 1893. Up till 1850, it had been under the Portuguese administration in Macau.

Timor was invaded by the Japanese during WW2, and East Timorese fought with the Australian and Dutch against them, running a guerilla campaign. Between 40-70,000 Timorese were killed as the Japanese seized food supplies and burned villages.

After WW2 it remained a Portuguese colonial backwater with minimal education or infrastructure development. In 1960 it gained the right to Independence, but was still under Portugal. Indonesia, under Sukarno, which was trying to get hold of West Papua specifically stated that it had no interest in East Timor. The small Viqueque revolt resulted in some improvements in education and some Timorisation of the civil service.

There was a revolution in Portugal in 1974 and the decolonisation of Mozambique and Angola speeded the decolonisation process, with a new Governor legalising political parties. Two groups emerged, the left-leaning Fretilin and the Right-leaning UDT (Democratic Timor Union), which was more a party of the elite and initially favoured continuing ties with Portugal. Indonesia had just eliminated the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) in a bloody struggle, so were concerned about Fretilin. Whitlam. the Prime Minister in Australia, who supported the Indonesian takeover of West Papua, was concerned that there would be a non-viable state in the region.

Fretilin and the UDT were initially in coalition, but the Indonesian military made it clear the to the UDT that they would not tolerate a Fretilin government and the coalition broke up. On 11 August 1975 UDT mounted a coup, as they were concerned at the increasing popularity of Fretilin and asked for union with Indonesia and the Indonesians to help them.

Indonesia immediately invaded, and five Australian journalists, who were covering the story in Balibo disappeared without trace. It had been claimed that Fretilin were communists so the Australian and US governments took no action, either against Indonesia or in pursuit of the journalists’ fate. They became known as ‘The Balibo Five’. Only the Australian Democrats supported the right of the East Timorese for self-determination, and some sections of the Left of the ALP, who were held to silence, of course.

Fretilin campaigned in the UN for recognition, particularly Jose Ramos Horta and after 24 years in 1999 and in the presence of an economic crisis the Indonesians agreed to a referendum on self-determination. The referendum result, which was widely expected, favoured independence from Indonesia by almost 80%. But gangs of pro-Indonesian youth, helped by the Indonesian government went on a killing spree. It was estimated that 200,000 Timorese had died during the 25 year Indonesian occupation, many ‘disappearing’; and about a third from malnutrition. But immediately after the vote, the militias killed about 1,400 people and forced about 300,000 into West Timor.

The UN intervened quite quickly with UNMET, the UN Mission to East Timor, in which the Australians were first to arrive and helped stabilise the situation.

Once East Timor achieved independence in 2002, they had the problem of economic survival. Australia held negotiations about where the boundary would lie, which was critical because there is a lot of gas in the Timor Sea and it would depend who owned it. Australia bugged the room where the East Timorese cabinet were deliberating and insisted on the border being very close to their coast. A whistleblower revealed this bugging in 2004 and the Timorese appealed successfully to the International Court.

Australia withdrew from the Court process, but then in 2012 agreed to the border being the midline between the countries, which is the international norm. Thw whistleblower, codenamed Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery, the ex-ACT Attorney-General, were pursued by the Australian government in the courts and convicted of breaching national security.

So I have always wanted to visit Timor Leste, and have finally made it for a10 day trip (not really long enough).

It is a 3rd World country, but seems to have a great sense of hope. It is an hour and half flight from Darwin, and about the same from Bali. There is not much information available to tourists, though a Lonely Planet and some other guidebooks are now available.

I have taken advice from a diplomat friend and will be going in a car with a guide, (the expensive rich person’s way to go that I have always despised) so I will not be giving advice on the cheap local buses that go between the major cities and are quite cheap.

Our guide, Guido (short for Egidio Da Purificatcao Soares of Timor Sightseeing) was brought up on a farm in the western part of the country and recalls as a 14 year old his whole family were threatened by gangs immediately after the referendum. The gang asked his father did he want to go to West Timor or stay in East Timor. He says that he father wisely said that the family wanted to go, because if he hadn’t they would have been assumed to be in favour of independence and massacred on the spot. They had had 14 cows and had already sold some, but took a few in a truck as they went to West Timor. He said that at the border the Indonesians threw them out of the truck as if they were sacks of potatoes, searched the truck then threw them back in in the same way. They sold the cows for a pittance and lived in a tent in Indonesia for 3 weeks until the UN had negotiated with the Indonesians and the ‘refugees’ were allowed to return. He said he was pleased to see the Australian forces at the border.

He commented that in the Portugese times there was no electricity except in small parts of Dili and the Portugese generated their own on their properties. The Indonesians had improved infrastructure and electricity and introduced universal education, but anyone who was thought to support Fretilin or independence simply disappeared.

As we were here on New Years Eve, I wondered what to do and assumed that we would watch the fireworks on the beach. Guido suggested we go to the Presidential Palace. I assumed that this was impossible for a tourist. Not so, the Presidential Palace is open to all on New Year’s Eve. So we went. It has a large concreted area about the size of 3 football fields in front of it, with lawns about twice that size again. There was a stage set up and a dozen life size nativity scenes all the way up the wide drive. The military at the gates welcomed us and said that they would be giving out free food and drinks at 9pm. There were quite a lot of people, but it was not crowded early, with a lot of young families and kids with balloons and flashing lights. The state had popular local singers, with replays on some big TV screens like at a football match. There was a wonderful festive atmosphere. I held my phone up and started to take a video pan to try to capture the atmosphere. As I did so a man came close and thrust something into my spare hand. I stopped filming and looked at him. It was the Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao handing out ham and salad rolls and fruit juice. He had 3 young minders in T shirts merely carrying boxes of rolls and drinks. Naturally I pursued him and asked for a photo, and he very courteously asked me my name and where I came from. The event went on with presentations to people who have obviously done good, and also what seemed like a very long sermon, but of course, apart from the MC breaking into English to welcome foreign visitors, the whole thing was in Portugese. At about 9pm, some military wandered around and urged us to get some of their free food from the trucks near the gates. They obviously have a very good relationship with the populace. The President Jose Ramos Horta arrived with the Cardinal and about 20 ambassadors and made a speech at about 11 followed by one from Xanana Gusmao.

They had a table in the middle of the open area with seats for the dignitaries. At midnight there was the countdown, a lot of fireworks (no, not quite as good as Sydney), and the broke out large amounts of champagne and cut a huge 2025 Fruit cake and gave some to those nearby including us. It was like going back 50 years, where everyone was trusted, there was no security and the largesse was universal.

East Timor is in an interesting time. The population is very young and full of hope. They want to develop tourism and also the Sunshine gas project which is being done by Woodside and the Australians in the Timor Sea. Obviously this will be a financial lifeline, but not good for a warming planet. I asked Guido if we could go to the south of the country where all this is to happen. He said, ‘Yes, but there is nothing to see, it is just coastline at present’. He took some Spanish folk there a short while ago who were doing a feasibility study for a gas platform. So I will see the sights including Balibo and the Museums of the Revolution in Balibo and Dili, which was not open this week. I may revise this post after those visits.

East Timor is currently the least visited country in Asia. This is worth changing.

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NDIS and Health System in Crisis- what is the answer?

27 January 2025

The health system has been in crisis for years and now NDIS is the same.
State and Federal governments are locked in crisis talks, and now the NDIS is over budget and looking to ‘transfer services’ to other parts of the health system.
Why does all this go on, and what is the solution?
The short answer is that there are many sources of health funding and the main policy objective of all of them is to transfer the cost to someone else, and if they are a private source, to maximise the profit.
This ‘transfer costs’ imperative means that no one is concerned about the overall cost, merely their bit of it.
The major players are still the State and Federal government. In simple terms the States look after the hospitals and the Federal government looks after non-hospital services.
Medicare is being starved and pays less and less to doctors relative to inflation. The private health funds pay what they have to, the CTP (Motor Accidents) and Workers comp systems are either private or use a private model and pay as little as they can get away with and the patient pays the gap, unless they decide that private health insurance is not worth the money, which in most cases is true, and get a bit of Medicare and pay the rest.

Examples of cost shifting are easy to find. The Federal government has let Medicare rebates to GP fall to 46% of the AMA fee. It was 85% when Medicare started, so many doctors simply don’t bulk bill and charge a fee. So people go to the Emergency Departments that are free, but funded by the States. A visit to the ED is 6x more expensive than a GP visit, but the Federal government has shifted the cost to the States, so they don’t care. When you go to the ED and get a script, the hospital used to give you all the drug course. Now they give you a few tablets and a script for a pharmacy outside. The script was needless, and generates the costs of the trip to the pharmacy, the pharmacists fee, the PBS Federal government contribution and the patients script fee. A lot of wasted time and money, but the State saved a bit. When you went to the ED, you used to be followed up in a hospital outpatient clinic where the consultant was paid a sessional fee and oversaw registrars checking the cases and learning. You could also just book and go to a specialist clinic. These have largely been stopped to save the State money. Now you go to the specialists’ rooms and the State saves money, but the total cost per visit is much more.

If you look at the overall efficiency of health systems, Medicare as a universal system has overheads of about 5% counting the cost of collecting tax generally. Private health insurance overheads in Australia are about 12%, Workers comp 30% and CTP over 40%. These figures are approximate and very hard to get, because the dogma is that competition drives down prices, when clearly the system is more efficient if there is a single paying entity. Interestingly, the Productivity Commission made no attempt to quantify these overheads when it looked at the cost of the health system- you may ask why. The point is if you take out profits, which are the same as overheads from the patients’ point of view, and make everyone eligible, you do not have to have armies of insurance doctors, investigators, lawyers and tribunals to see if the insurer has to pay or if it can be dumped on Medicare and the patient.
As far as foreign people using the system are concerned, universal Medicare for people living in Australia is administratively simple, and the cost of treating tourists who have accidents is cheaper than policing the whole system. Enforcement has quite high costs.

In terms of the cost of insurance, US schemes vary from 12-35%R, with the high costs ones being most profitable as they police payouts more thoroughly and naturally refuse more treatments. Note that the CEO of Unitedhealthcare in the US was recently shot, with the words ‘deny’ and ‘delay’ on the cartridges used. Surveys have shown that 36% of people in the US have had a claim denied. Claims are accepted here, but in a survey of my patients 60% of my scans and referrals of CTP patients were denied by NRMA. i.e, We accept the claim, but deny the treatment.

What Is needed is a universal system, free at the point of delivery.
What about over-servicing? The current system makes trivial problems of people with money more important than major problems of people without money. Underservicing is the major problem with ambulance ramping at EDs and long waiting lists.
In a universal system, which doctor is doing what is immediately accessible, with comparisons to every other doctor doing similar work. It is just a matter of checking up on the statistical outliers.

The problem is simple. The major political parties are given donations by private health interests to let Medicare die. Combine this with the Federal/State rivalry that makes cooperation very difficult and a reluctance to collect tax and you have the recipe for an ongoing mess.

The NDIS is an even bigger mess. It is a privatised unsupervised welfare system that arbitrarily gives out money and is subject to massive rorting.

The welfare system that looked after people with disabilities, both congenital and acquired by age or circumstance had grown up historically in institutions that were fossilised in their activities and underfunded to prevent expansion or innovation. People with disabled children looked after them with whatever support they could find. As these disabled cohorts reached middle age, their parents, who were old, were worried about what would happen when they died and wanted to lock in funding for their adult children before they died. They were an articulate lobby group with real problems and were quick to point out the flaws in the existing systems. They visited institutions that had no vacancies and thought that they had put their names on waiting lists. But no central list existed, and the institutions tended to give their beds to whoever came first when a death created a vacancy. ‘Just give us a package, and we will decide how to spend it’ was the parents’ cry. But then NDIS experts came in and interviewed people and gave away ‘packages’ based on an interview. A new layer of experts was created. District nurses or others who might have been able to think of more innovative or flexible options, or who could judge who in their area needed more than someone else had no input. People with real disabilities were given money, but did not know how to assess providers, so dodgy operators snapped up the packages, delivering dubious benefits. The government had no serious regulation or control system. Now the cost of NDIS has blown out, so the solution is to narrow eligibility and force people off the NDIS and onto other parts of the health system. Sound familiar? People with disabilities and their relatives are naturally worried; and rightly so. The lack of these services was why the NDIS was created. The answer is to have universal services. Set a standard, make it available and police quality in the system. Private interests may have a place, but there is no need for profits, non-profit organisations have been the mainstay of providers for years. For profit providers tend to cut costs, which in practical terms means either services or wages or both to concentrate on shareholder returns. The best way to allocate resources optimally is to empower the people actually doing the job, who also have the advantage of being able to see relative needs as they go about their routine work.

An interesting tome on the subject is ‘The Political Economy of Health Care’ by Julian Tudor-Hart, which looked at the changes in the British National Health System from when it started as an idealist post-war initiative run by those working in it with management overheads of about 0.5%, to when it was fully bureaucratised with overheads of about 36%. He was also responsible for the ‘’Inverse care law’ which is the principle that the availability of good medical or social care tends to vary inversely with the need of the population served. This inverse care law operates more completely where medical care is most exposed to market forces, and less so where such exposure is reduced.

The key point of that people have been taught that governments are hopeless and that you should pay as little tax as possible, so instead of good universal services being developed, a market has developed which is on its way to an American system.. People all agree that the US has the worst system in the developed world at delivering health care. But they overlook the fact that the US health system is the world’s best at turning sickness into money. That is what it was designed to do and that is why it is sustained and maintained. The same drivers are all here.

Note the Federal/State bickering in the article below (and weep).

My recipe for change is to have a Swiss style of government where the people can initiate binding referenda on governments and could simply answer a question like ‘Do you want to pay 5% more tax to have a universal health and welfare system?’ If a question like this got up against the doomsayers, we might have a chance. But of course the change to the constitution to get the referenda in the Swiss model is almost impossible to achieve, the Swiss having been discarded when the Australian Constitution was written in about 1900.

www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2025/01/25/exclusive-albanese-shut-down-hospital-talks-pressure-states?utm_campaign=SharedArticle&utm_source=share&utm_medium=link&utm_term=VT5jI6Zo&token=Z3cA3Py

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Health Insurance Executive Targeted in New York

6 December 2024

A top health insurance executive was killed in what seems to be a targeted shooting in New York’. It seems that he was threatened over ‘health insurance issues’.
Every day I see patients who have their perfectly reasonable treatment requests refused by workers comp or CTP (Compulsory Third Party = Green Slip) insurers. The ‘case managers’ who are grandly titled case clerks have little power and follow protocols dictated by more senior folk in the organisati0on. I am unsure if they get bonuses for cases costing less than some statistical average for that type of claim, but nothing would surprise me. Sometimes it seems that they just refuse treatments because they think that they will get away with it, but the odds are stacked that they will often succeed anyway. The case clerks (Case ‘Managers’) cop a lot of abuse and are rotated frequently, perhaps to prevent their abuse or perhaps to prevent them getting to know their ‘clients’, who some of us would call ‘patients’. The case clerks have very little discretion and the system is very slow and seems designed to ensure that absolutely no one could ever be overpaid. The clerks follow their protocols, and are often unavailable and do not return calls. Most use their first names and a letter (presumably the first letter of their surnames) presumably so that they will not be personally targeted by those whose treatments they are refusing. (One would have thought that as people handing out money to people in distress that they might be very popular). It is as if one side are playing a game with money, but for the other side it is deadly serious.
Given that about a third of the population live from paycheck to paycheck, the fact that insurers have 3 weeks to accept or reject the whole claim, then 3 weeks to approve or deny any treatment, and longer if it is a difficult case, a huge amount of human misery can be created without even stressing any protocols. Governments are keen to keep premiums low and seem keen to support any insurer –suggested legislative amendments that achieves this aim. Interestingly the NSW Parliamentary Committee reviewing the NSW Workers Compensation legislation in 2022 had no input for either patients or doctors or their organisations. Presumably they did not seek such input and there was no publicity for the inquiry.
I see in my practice many distressed people whose lives are destroyed by these treatment denials. Now with the insurers only liable for the first 5 years after injury, if they can delay treatment longer than that, they are off the financial hook and the patients need to be treated by Medicare if that is possible. When I say ‘if that is possible’, many specialists will not do any Medicare work as it pays less than half the private rate. The waiting list is usually over a year for non-emergencies and the specialists are even more reluctant to treat cases that should have been paid by workers comp or CTP insurers. Even that assumes that the patients have Medicare; overseas students or people on working visas do not.
My belief is that insurers want to control medicine and the WC and CTP insurers, now with considerable input from the American Health insurance industry are preparing for the (very soon) day when Medicare is irrelevant and insurers tell doctors what they may do.

The patients whose lives are destroyed by the insurer denials of their reasonable treatments are upset and angry, often shattered physically and by the loss of their homes, properties and marriages do not think through how this has all happened. They are angry with the ‘case manager’ but not those higher up in the organisation who set the protocol that was the basis of their treatment denial.
Years ago, when I went to tobacco control conferences in the USA, there would sometimes be discussions among doctors about how to treat various medical conditions. Amongst the non-Americans, the talk was about what regimes were best. The Americans were usually concerned with what the insurers would pay for to the point that it was sometimes frustrating to have them in the conversations. I won a Fellowship in 1985 to study workplace absence and got some flavour of the way treatments were denied. I now see it all unrolling in Australia.
In the US guns are easy to get. When I saw a US health executive had been shot by an unknown person, I did not find it hard to find a motive, and thought that there could probably be a very large number of suspects. I Australia the case managers do not dare give their surnames, but the top executives are still all on the company websites.
If we continue to let Medicare be defunded because of private health donations to the major political parties and put money ahead of people’s reasonable needs, we will follow the Americans.

Here is the Reuters article in the SMH 6 December 2024

Health executive shot dead on New York street

Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealth’s insurance unit, was fatally shot yesterday outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel in what appeared to be a targeted attack by a gunman, New York City police officials said.

The shooting occurred in the early morning outside the Hilton on Sixth Avenue, where the company’s annual investor conference was about to take place. Thompson was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. The attacker remained at large, sparking a search that included police drones, helicopters and dogs.

“This does not appear to be a random act of violence,” New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. “Every indication is that this was a premeditated, pre-planned, targeted attack.” The suspect, wearing a mask and carrying a backpack, fled on foot before mounting an electric bike and riding into Central Park, police said. Law enforcement authorities said the gunman appeared to use a silencer on his weapon, CNN reported.

UnitedHealth Group said Thompson was a respected colleague and friend to all who worked with him. “We are working closely with the New York Police Department and ask for your patience and understanding during this difficult time,” it said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to Brian’s family and all who were close to him.”

UnitedHealth Group is the largest US health insurer, providing benefits to tens of millions of Americans who pay more for healthcare than in any other country.
Video footage showed the gunman arrived outside the Hilton about five minutes be
fore Thompson. He ignored several other people walking by, NYPD Chief of Detectives, Joseph Kenny told reporters.

When Thompson approached the hotel, the gunman shot him in the back with a pistol and then continued firing, even after his gun appeared to jam. “Based on the evidence we have so far, it does appear that the victim was specifically targeted, but at this point, we do not know why,” Kenny said. The shooting happened not long before the scheduled investor conference at the Hilton.

UnitedHealth Group chief executive Andrew Witty took to the stage about an hour after the event started to announce the rest of the program would be cancelled.
“We’re dealing with a very serious medical situation with one of our team members, and as a result, I’m afraid we’re going to have to bring to a close the event today,” he said.

Police tape blocked off the area on 54th Street outside the Hilton, where blue plastic
gloves were strewn about, and plastic cups appeared to mark the location of bullet casings.
Thompson’s wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News that he told her “there were some people that had been threatening him”. She didn’t have details but suggested the threats may but suggested the threats may
have involved issues with insurance coverage. Eric Werner, the police chief in the Minneapolis suburb where Thompson lived, said his department had not received any reports of threats against the executive. The killing shook a part of New York that is normally quiet at that hour, about four blocks from where thousands of people were set to gather for the city’s Christmas tree lighting. Police promised extra security for the event.

“The police were here in seconds. It’s New York. It’s not normal here at seven in the morning, but it’s pretty scary,” said Christian Diaz, who said he heard the gunfire from the nearby University Club Hotel where he works.

Police issued a poster showing a surveillance image of the man pointing what appeared to be a gun and another image that appeared to show the same person riding on a bicycle. Minutes before the shooting he stopped at a nearby Starbucks, according to additional surveillance photos released by police. They offered a reward of up to $US10,000 ($15,500) for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, where the company is based, said the state was praying for Thompson’s family and the UnitedHealth team. “This is horrifying news and a terrible loss for the business and healthcare community in Minnesota,” he said in a statement. Thompson, a father of two sons, had been with UnitedHealth since 2004 and served as chief executive for more than three years. Thompson was appointed head of the company’s insurance group in April 2021 after working in several departments, according to the company’s website.

“Sometimes you meet a lot of fake people in these corporate environments. He certainly didn’t ever give me the impression of being one of them,” said Antonio Ciaccia, chief executive of healthcare research non-profit 46brooklyn, who knew Thompson. “He was a genuinely thoughtful and respectable guy.”
Reuters, AP

 

There was considerable follow up:

www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/bullets-used-in-us-healthcare-exec-s-killing-had-writing-on-them-20241206-p5kwa6.html

www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/wave-of-hate-flows-for-health-insurance-industry-after-ceo-s-shooting-death-20241206-p5kwcz.html

 

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The Revolution Has Happened- no one noticed- Just that Trump Won

6 November 2024

Trump won the US election. A convicted felon, who achieved nothing positive in his last time in the White House except perhaps the only boast that was true, ’I didn’t start any wars when I was President’.

Trump will win the dodgy electoral college system, which gives small states more votes than they should have based on their population.  Someone said that the US has 36 Tasmanias, which is not a bad simile.  But he may also win a majority of the popular vote.

Why? everyone asks. ‘He had no policies’. ‘He was totally inconsistent’.  ‘He seemed not to know and not to care that he didn’t know’.  ‘How could he be trusted?’  ‘Even those who had worked with him in high positions came out against him’.  ‘He was lazy and self-indulgent’.  ‘He did a lot of dodgy business deals’. ‘He never paid his contractors’.

The biographical movie, ‘The Apprentice’,  (which is still on at the Palace Cinema in Leichhardt) is about Trump’s early years and shows him coming under the influence of an amoral lawyer, Ron Cohn. Cohn won by recording conversations and blackmailing judges, especially gay ones at a time when homosexuality was illegal.   Cohn used his methods to get rid of some bills and taxes for Trump and teaches his 3 principles:

  1. Morality is an option,
  2. Truth is whatever you say it is, and
  3. You must never admit defeat because you must believe that you are a winner so that you can convince everyone else that you are.

At the end of the movie, having betrayed even Cohn himself, Trump, unkeen to talk to a would-be biographer states these 3 principles.

So why did people vote for him?

Because there has been a revolution that no one has noticed.  People no longer believe that the government can or will help them. Consider this. The rich have been getting richer and the poor poorer and the gap between the two groups have continued to grow. With the world turned into a market, US jobs in the steel industry and the car industry went offshore. Manufactured goods were increasingly imported, while working Americans lost their jobs.  The welfare and health system in the US are quite inadequate for a decent life, yet taxes to the rich are cut.  Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seemed to care. Bernie Sanders tried to point this out and looked like winning the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2016 and even 2020, but the party put in Hilary Clinton and then Joe Biden to stop him.  The Republicans did not want Trump, but could not stop his populist campaign. Most of them were scared to speak against him, and when he won the nomination and looked a chance to be President again, they all supported him.

Trump spoke whatever suited him at the time. He used racial scapegoats for the national problems, but still recruited blacks and Latinos, presumably because of his speaking to their economic pain. When he did not win in 2020, he simply accused the other side of cheating- true to the 3 Cohn principles. He principally criticised the Establishment and said that he would change it. That was the key point. He was going to change the Establishment. That was what people wanted to hear.  He was right in the key issue. The Establishment had not fixed the problems of declining living standards. The wealthy were getting wealthier. Their benchmarks of economic growth were doing fine, and the mass media and business pages trumpeted their success. But a lot of people were hurting and no one seemed to care.  Trump criticised the Establishment and said that he would fix it.

Harris said that the election was about Democracy and Trump’s character.  But Democracy is an abstract concept and has not delivered material benefits for them. As far as a lot of people were concerned, if Trump could deliver they did not care about his character flaws.

So there was a revolution. People rejected Government as it has been practised by both Democrats and conventional Republicans. It is  just that no one has yet noticed that it was a revolution, and unfortunately the rebels have Trump instead of Sanders to lead them.

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Why Trump May Win

31 October 2024

 

The situation is the logical consequence of turning the world into a ‘market’. This was always favoured by big business, but it got turbocharged by the idea that competition for markets caused the two World Wars. Thus the object of world political policy was to turn the world into a market, so that the rich could get richer without wars over markets and virtue would be rewarded.
The US had a huge percentage of world markets and a huge say over it all- what could possibly go wrong?
In a hierarchical system, those at the top set the prices and the wages, whereas those at the bottom are in a perfect market of labour, so take whatever prices and wages they can get.  Money therefore movies upwards as in a Monopoly game.
The whole situation was turbocharged by a number of factors.  As trade became cheaper, goods travelled and workers competed with workers from other countries, so workers in more developed countries were not able to compete on price and the owners of capital moved their industries to cheaper countries, which gave these countries something of a leg-up, but most of the profit went to the owners of capital.  Technology also advanced, so fewer workers were needed to produce anything- mechanisation was here.  We could produce much more than we could ever consume. Business developed built-in obsolescence, so goods would wear out or become unfashionable, so they needed to be bought again. Marketing became immensely significant, so we were no longer to consider what we needed, but what we wanted.
Increasingly most of the goods being manufactured needed to be sold, but did not need to be bought.  Western consumers were actually in the box seat with all their needs met, so needed to be persuaded to consume for status or whim.  Marketing was largely up to the challenge.  As Dave Ramsay famously put it, ‘We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like’.
 
Meanwhile the gap between rich and poor continued to grow between countries and within countries, a general recipe for social and international malaise.  The residue of colonialism remains. Nigeria is oil rich, yet its resources are foreign-owned and its main employment industry is scamming.  South America has had its governments frequently act on  behalf of foreign companies.  The result of the problem is seen as ‘illegal migration.’
So just as the inexplicable ‘Brexit’ vote was a longing for an earlier time and a rejection of the Establishment and the status quo, so Trump is seen as a disruptor. He wil tell them all to ‘get fu..ed’  That is enough. He speaks to the pain of rust belt Americans who saw their jobs in steel, cars or manufacturing disappearing through no fault of their own and their standard of living falling. He is a  demagogue who tells them what they want to hear.  The migrants caused the drug problem, and every other problem. If it is not consistent or even coherent, it does not matter; they listen to the shock jock. Again, technology is relevant. Policy is no longer broadcast, it is selectively narrowcast with truth an early casualty. Trump ads tell Jewish voters that Harris is pro-Palestine while other Trump ads tell Muslim voters that she is pro-Israel. Whatever it takes.  The country is very polarised and there is even talk of civil war.  Marx believed that revolution would happen in an advanced capitalist system because the logical end point of unfettered capitalism was that a few people would end up with all the money and the majority would be unhappy.  (We had better not mention who said this).
The American voting system is as bad as its health and welfare systems. The politicians set the electoral boundaries in a huge gerrymander, and the electoral college gives each state the same voting rights, whether they have large or small populations. The Constitution is fossilised, with 36 Tasmanias, states that are declining relatively or cannot pay their way. These are the States that will determine the election.
The polls are neck and neck in these ‘swing states’, but the betting favours Trump, and the betting has been generally more correct than the polls.  A financial friend of mine told me that the bond market is behaving in anticipation of a Trump victory.
Things are not always pleasant, but there is usually an explanation.
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DVA Still Screwing Veterans

21 July 2021

 

A recent article shows that the Dept of Veteran Affairs is still making it hard for injured veterans to get redress.

 

This is entirely consistent with the way that governments try to minimise all welfare payments.

 

Centrelink is a bureaucratic nightmare. They will not pay until you have absolutely no resources, and the amounts are not enough even to pay rent in capital cities.  Morrison claimed that he had cut the rate of people being granted the Disability Support Pension by two thirds. All the people refused have to keep sending off job applications as part of their ‘mutual obligations’.  I see these people. They have virtually no hope of a job and are wasting their own and employers’ time.

 

I work in the State area of workers compensation and CTP injury. SIRA (State Insurance Regulatory Agency) is chiefly concerned that insurers do not pay out too much, so that the government can boast that premiums are low.  There’s not much danger of insurers overpaying. They refuse a large number of investigations and treatments that are standard elsewhere.

 

Veterans Affairs used to be a special welfare system for returned service personnel and was set up after the world wars as a system to look after heroes. But wars lately have been neither popular, nor in Australia’s interest. The Vietnam war was unpopular, as were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vietnam was a mistake, but the more recent ones were merely done to please the USA, who also should not have been there.  Our troops have lots of PTSD and because negative media coverage was stopped after Vietnam, the veterans cannot really talk about what happened to anyone who understands.  Their suicide rate has been high. But consistent with the lack of willingness for any sort of welfare, the veterans also have a bureaucratic nightmare, which delays payment as long as possible, often till their death by suicide.

 

The market-obsessed late capitalist system in which we live simply creates greater inequality, and the only way to maintain a harmonious social fabric will be to support disadvantaged people, whatever the cause of their disadvantage. It has been said that the Left tries to lessen inequality and the populist Right tries to defend privilege or finds scapegoats. As we watch the US unravel or see our government and opposition blame migrants for the housing shortage it is hard to argue with this proposition.

 

In the meantime, the veterans need help against the government’s lawyers. And the population should try to stop us being drawn into very silly wars.  Taiwan looks like the next danger.

 

Royal Commission into Veteran Suicide confronts lawfare, cronyism and a bureaucratic nightmare

 

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Israeli Parliament votes down Two-State Solution 68-9

21 July 2024

Israel has been settling people, largely poorer folk from Eastern Europe on hilltops on former Palestinian occupied land since 1948. Because they did recognise land title before the declaration of the State of Israel, they can claim that no one owns this land, which is of course nonsense, as the Palestinians had been occupying and farming it.

They have continued to pretend that a peace could be negotiated as they gradually took more and more land, and built roads to all the settlements so that the army could come and help the occupiers if the Palestinians resisted. They called the Palestinians terrorists, basically to undermine their legitimacy.

Now there is no land that could be a Palestinian state- there are about 750,000 Jewish settlers in the West bank in fortified villages, and they are educated in Hebrew only, so they cannot go anywhere even if they agreed to.

Israel has pretended for years that there could be a two-state solution because it has been playing for time to make it impossible. Now, because the world is calling out for a peace solution, the Knesset has said that it will not have a two state solution. The Palestinians obviously have nowhere to go. Gaza is rubble and the land on the West Bank is largely Jewish-owned.

Jeff Halper in his book ‘An Israeli in Palestine’ recognised this problem more than a decade ago and said that there would have to be a one-state solution with and post-Apartheid type of reconciliation similar to South Africa’s. Good luck with that now!

It is hard not to believe that the hard right who control the Israeli Knesset wanted the Gazans either to die or to flee to the Sinai, but Egypt did not allow the latter, as they knew that they would be refugees there forever. The Gazans knew it too, though we might wonder what they would choose now as Israel bombs them and blockades them till their children starve.

This is colonialism and genocide more obvious than it has been in public memory, and the Knesset has just shut the door on the peace process that Australia and many other governments have been vainly clinging to.

https://johnmenadue.com/israeli-lawmakers-vote-against-palestinian-statehoodpic-zeev-elkin/

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Anglo Democracies- What a Mess. We need a New Constitution

7 June 2024

If a mob stormed Parliament, overcoming the security system, causing great fear, killing one person and injuring others, we would regard that country with suspicion; South American tin pot democracy?  If a few of the rioters were charged, but the instigator was not charged 4 years later, we would regard that as a farce. If the instigator then got a fine for irregularity in the bookkeeping of his election funds 4 years later and got a fine that was a tiny fraction of his election budget, he might as well have had a parking ticket. If the instigator then with total impunity stood again for election we would say that the tin pot nature of a quasi-dictatorship was confirmed.  Yet this is exactly what has happened in the USA, where Trump will get a non-custodial sentence, i.e. a fine or some charitable work.  Photo-op in a soup kitchen perhaps?

The Republicans will win if Biden becomes unpopular because the economy turns down, or he supports Israel too much because of the power of the Jewish lobby, or if the scare campaign on his age is successful enough.  This is because there are only two options, Democrat and Republican.  The leaders in the Republican party do not want to criticise Trump because if he succeeds their fortunes will suffer and if he fails, they want to run in 4 years.  In a Big Party, it is all about climbing up their hierarchy- tough luck about the country’s welfare. Even Nikki Haley, who criticised Trump in a desperate effort in the Republican primaries has endorsed him. So we have a President who is too old and should step down standing against Trump who has a criminal record and for some reason cannot be brought to book within 4 years; his past failures, ignorance and appalling policies almost irrelevant in the scheme of things.

In Britain, with First-Past-the-Post voting, the electoral system is similarly distorted to favour only two parties and the inequities are such that you can almost draw a line across the country. Conservative Blue in the South, Labour Red in the North. Other parties and opinions are a dot here and there, they get far more votes than seats.  Post-Brexit the economy has tanked, which is what one might have expected since most their trade was with the EU.  The Conservatives will get a caning, putting in the lack- lustre Labour party, the only alternative, of course.

Back, in Australia, Labor is criticised for doing so little and being Liberal-lite.  They had agreed not to raise taxes and even to give tax cuts because Shorten had been defeated by scare tactics in 2019, so having no policies was a safer, small target option.  The Conservatives rule from beyond the grave.

The problem is that the people have handed the power to a two party system.  When Churchill wrote the post-WW2 German constitution he wrote it so that no party would ever get an absolute majority. There would have to be negotiation about forming government and about each piece of legislation; no ‘winner takes all’.  The Swiss constitution has 3 levels of government, all but 7 politicians are part-time and limited to 2 terms, with their jobs protected so that when they leave they go back to them full time. This means there are no party hierarchies to climb up and no jobs for the boys and girls at the end. Also there are quarterly referenda where if citizens get enough signatures they can overthrow even Federal government decisions.  This is what Australia did not copy when our constitution was written in 1900 (though it was considered). Our 1901 constitution was a heroic effort to stitch 6 squabbling colonies into a nation. It was not all wisdom for all time.

Anglo countries may have been early in creating democracy from autocratic kingdoms, but better things are now known and we need to move up and on.

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Religious Update:  2 items from Secular Australia

2 June 2024

Wording of the Census

A battle is brewing between Catholic Church leaders and secular groups over the religion question in the Australian census. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is currently testing whether it would be better to ask “Does the person have a religion?” rather than “What is the person’s religion?”, after 9.8 million people (approximately 40% of responses) indicated in the 2021 count that they had no faith. The new question would have a mark box for both “No” and “Yes (specify religion)”. The bureau is also testing the use of a write-in box for respondents who wish to indicate more detail on their faith, rather than simply picking from a small list of common religions.

The Lord’s Prayer in Parliament House, Victoria

Liberal upper house member Evan Mulholland has placed a motion on the Notice Paper in support of faith leaders who wrote to all members of parliament earlier this month demanding that the parliament continue to observe prayers, including the Lord’s Prayer, at the opening of each sitting day.

It has been 1034 days since the state Labor government promised to replace prayers with something more reflective and appropriate for Victoria’s diverse community.

Victorian Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes has acknowledged the government’s “unmet commitment”.

The flurry of activity – the letter from faith leaders and motions on the Notice Paper – may be a sign that the government is ready to deal with the matter.

Earlier in the year, Mr Mulholland declared that the Liberal Party would “fiercely oppose” any attempt to remove prayer.

Census data show that Christianity has plummeted from 85 per cent of the Victorian population in the 1970s to 41 per cent in 2021. The percentage of people who identified as having no religion at the 2021 Census was 39 per cent.

https://secularism.au/

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