His letter to the Post employees is fairly innocent. Can you imagine a department store chain owning a newspaper? That’s one way to look at it; another might be that Bezos at Amazon doesn’t focus on profits, so that makes a newspaper just about perfect for the guy.
So, the election has started in earnest, and we finally know the date: September 7th. Today was Day 1, and the action is all under way for Election 2013. Hmm: let’s recap for those who haven’t been paying attention. Back in 2007, Kevin Rudd was Opposition Leader, running against the tired old policies of Howard. Rudd promised… well, roughly the same policies as Howard, but he’d be nice to the Aboriginals, the refugees, the environment, and the “working families” who were about to be put on cruel and unusual employment conditions. Rudd got into power, and appointed his deputy Gillard to oversee the transition away from the cruel & unusual working terms (a.k.a. WorkChoices). He then got stuck into the hypotheticals, called a major ideas conference, and then promptly did… well… I don’t think anything actually concrete came of that conference. I’m not sure even something ephemeral did. Then the GFC happened, and everything else went out the window. ...
Shooting an AK-47 underwater leads to all kinds of rad stuff. Cool, cool cool cool.
Excellent post on The Conversation about what is actually proposed by Rudd & Bowen to change with the FBT rules next year: This means that where the statutory formula method gives a lower taxable value than the cost method, the taxpayer is getting a tax concession. This is recognised in the annual Tax Expenditure Statements issued by Treasury. The Tax Expenditure Statements contain a list of items where taxpayers are getting a tax concession, along with an estimate of the aggregate of the tax concession. ...
Barack Obama, showing the eloquence he’s famous for, makes the point in the light of the Trayvon Martin/Zimmerman case that America is not (yet) a post-racial society: There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often. ...