lev.lafayette's blog

Today is Bramble Cay Melomys Memorial Day, dedicated to Australian wildlife and especially those that have become exitinct due to human (in)action. The Bramble Cay Melomys is the first mammal to become extinct due to climate change. A rescue plan was organised, but it was too little, too late.

The Guardian cartoonist, First Dog on the Moon, has provided a series of cartoons on these events.

The following is the first of several short articles on the relationship between public finances, economic growth, and economic welfare. In this case two variables are considered, the Gini Coefficient of Income and the Total Tax Revenue as a percentage of GDP for OECD countries. In both cases the data is from c2018, the "circa" indicating that in some cases the data is a year or two older.

Donald Trump is now seriously arguing that the FDA deliberately withheld trial data from their COVID-19 vaccine until after the election.

"The @US_FDA and the Democrats didn’t want to have me get a Vaccine WIN, prior to the election, so instead it came out five days later – As I’ve said all along!"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1325962203346972678

The real story is:

Global COVID-19 cases hit 50 million; 1.25 million dead.

The rate is now over 600K new infections per day, and 9K dead per day.

On September 17 I pointed out that global cases of the coronavirus-19 pandemic had reached 30 million.
https://www.facebook.com/lev.lafayette/posts/10159396674065955

On August 10 we had hit 20,000,000 cases.
https://www.facebook.com/lev.lafayette/posts/10159291022025955

It has to be said that Victoria, AU, has managed something quite impressive.

Neil Mitchell believes: "Because despite meeting the targets, our Premier has decided to delay any further reopening in the metropolitan area, and make restricted changes in regional Victoria... The targets were met. People did the right thing despite the pain. And having been promised likely relief, they got none."

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/now-we-are-crushed-daniel-an...

As a dual-citizen and member of the Labo(u)r Party in both countries, this a delicious result. Especially after the ludicrous character assassination attempts by the Murdoch-Tory media in AU, and the attempted dumb-populism politics of Judith Collins.

National Party will be in the wilderness for a while. The libertarian-propertarian wing will find themselves heading to ACT, the conservative uglies maybe towards the New Conservative Party. Whilst will be left will be a corporatist shell, with most of the middle-class already in the left-leaning big tent of Labour.

With a month to go, this is how I think it will play out on current predictions and trends.

Keep an eye on Georgia, especially. Not a critical state (that's Penn, Wisc, etc, the "rust belt"), but rather a litmus on how much Trump will lose by.

I remember in the 2008 election contacting a US Dem pollster and suggesting that was winnable in the longer term. They didn't think it was quite ready, yet.

If I were the Dems, I'd be looking hungrily at Texas in the future as well.

A little over twenty years ago I had the opportunity to meet this great man in person after talking to him online for some time via the usenet group aus.politics.

We talked politics, we talked about unionism, we went back to Jika and we sampled a rather interesting Croatian sour plum liquor.

We stayed in some contact over the years. His family should know that he was held in high esteem for his commitment to the cause of working people.

ETU Queensland & NTFollow
24 September ·
Vale Peter John Simpson "Simmo" 3/5/1963 – 24/9/2020

"This is a devastating day for Australia. It's a heartbreaking blow to Australians around the country," Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

'... So we're going to give tax cuts to those on incomes of greater than $200K and freeze pensions.'

The lack of knowledge of the basics of macroeconomic theory and public economics from this pack of malicious corrupt thieves is simply astounding.

I do feel sorry for any decent social liberals still in the Liberal Party, and I know that there are some of you out there.