Me, me, pick me! … Grazie!

The real Kamala.

@RealMacReport

Telemundo: “Right now no Democrats are talking about a pathway to citizenship.”

Kamala Harris: “I am! I am talking about it!”

Telemundo: “We’re talking about mass deportations.”

Kamala: “I’m not talking about…”

Telemundo: “What’s your stance there?”

Kamala: “Mass amnesty.”

Because, of course, only one outcome is acceptable. I remember well the 2016 election when it was clear that Trump had won but they held off for hours admitting it.

Kamala Says Her ‘Team of Lawyers’ is Prepared if Trump Declares Victory Early, as Election Tabulation Could Drag On for Days, if Not Weeks

Kamala Harris Under Fire for Accepting Campaign Cash from Chinese Auto Exec with Ties to Chinese Communist Party

Trump to join Tucker Carlson live in Arizona for event to benefit hurricane victims

Copacabana cock-up; Holiday homes for the party elite. High-rise slums for the proles

David Flint, The Spectator (Australia), 23rd October, 2024

If Anthony Albanese is remembered for anything, it will be for ‘the Copacabana cock-up’. Having not only introduced the worst housing crisis in Australian history, and then not honouring a promise to reverse it, he splurged $4.3 million on a clifftop holiday home at New South Wales’ Copacabana, an almost $900 a night ‘Airbnb hit’. The views are ‘uninterrupted’, so at least he won’t have to look at any of Minister Bowen’s monstrous wind farms.

His chauffeurs will be able to drive on the $130 million upgraded road from his Sydney or Canberra mansions, that is when he and Minister Bowen are not using an RAAF jet each to get to the Central Coast.

Meanwhile, among the rank and file, the old Australian dream of ‘owning your own home’, or even renting one to raise a family, is now beyond the average young Australian family.

Except for the independently wealthy, such a splurge would have once also been beyond any Australian Prime Minister.

Contrast this with Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, our longest-serving Prime Minister. He could have been a very wealthy man but he gave up a brilliant career at the Bar to serve in politics at a time when politicians were not well paid. When he retired, a group of supporters bought a Melbourne home for his and Dame Pattie’s retirement. He accepted this on condition that when they died, the house would be sold and the proceeds be shared between his wife’s and daughter’s schools.

In the following years, a campaign supported by much of the commentariat emerged. This was that politicians’ pay should be significantly increased. The supporting argument was untested and simplistic: if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

This wasn’t just an amusing motto. It was the case, the whole case, and nothing but the case. But when it was adopted, what followed was not better politicians, but rather, the scourge of the career politician – people who have hardly ever had a real job.

The result is that even without taking into account the extraordinary platinum superannuation Mr Albanese will be one of the last to receive (around $300,000 a year), our Prime Minister is paid substantially more than those of most other comparable countries. As are all our politicians.

Why increasing pay for politicians can lead to a fall in quality was explained by a study of the European Parliament led by US Professor Emir Kamenica, who concluded that raising politicians’ salaries is unlikely to result in better governance, but may well accomplish the opposite.

The reason suggested is that politicians, not market forces, are responsible for setting their own salary levels. In Australia, this has been disguised by passing the decision to a class more likely than not to favour generosity.

There are two living examples which demonstrate that high salaries are not necessary for excellence in governance.

One is Donald Trump, who, in foreign affairs, defence, education, and energy, performed at a higher level than any president since Ronald Reagan. Yet he disbursed all his salary, less one dollar, to various worthy causes. The other is King Charles, who as King of Australia, is unpaid.

The point is we enjoy the services of the King and the Royal Family without paying their salaries, superannuation, or even handing out ‘jobs for the boys’.

And notwithstanding overpaying the political class and the high bureaucracy, the quality of government in Australia is significantly lower than it once was.

The rates of functional illiteracy and numeracy flowing from our education system are among the worst in the world.

Our per capita income is falling, despite our massive natural resources. With dangerous illegal immigrants released, and potential terrorists admitted, the government manifests little concern for the safety of the Australian people. We are next to defenceless.

We have an NDIS and immigration policy, both of which are out of control.

While we have all the water we need, most of it falls in the wrong places. Yet we stopped any serious scheme for a program of dam building, the Bradfield Plan, during the Hawke government.

And to repeat, the Australian dream of owning your own home is vanishing for most young Australians.

And despite being fantastically endowed with mineral wealth and energy, Australia’s electricity is among the most expensive in the world.

Western Australia apart, there is no domestic reservation of any gas, so we stupidly have to buy back our own gas from the Chinese and Japanese at top world prices.

Instead of state governments standing up to the Albanese government, they are seriously proposing that Australian families squeeze into high-rise, poorly constructed dog boxes, which will be the slums of the future.

Something like a new Canberra every two years will be dumped into Australia without the infrastructure necessary.

The result is the birth rate has fallen drastically as young Australians realise that if the Albanese and state governments prevail, they will never own a family home.

With the government identified with gross incompetence and massive waste, the Copacabana cock-up has emerged as a media disaster representing everything wrong with the government.

Finally, to those who mistakenly think that Labor is still a workers’ party, what will surely astound them is that so many Greens and Labor politicians, including Labor’s far-left leader, have joined Mao’s despised landlord class, even reaping the benefits of negative gearing and capital gains.

From a Labor man who never ceases to refer to his early housing commission life, notwithstanding that housing commission homes are sound and commodious, what is astounding is that before selling his investment unit, he stooped to evicting his long-term tenant. Surely it was possible, or even likely, that another investor could have bought it?

Few will be surprised that in the recent announcement of legislation against ‘unfair evictions’, the NSW Labor government has an exception, which I call the Albanese exception. This is for the landlord like Mr Albanese determined to ring every dollar out of a sale, even from a long-term apparently good tenant.

“Having not only introduced the worst housing crisis in Australian history, and then not honouring a promise to reverse it…”

Much as I like to see Albanese get a good kicking (metaphorically), this crisis has been a long time in the making and the Liberal Party shares much of the blame.

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Twomey says no constitutional grounds to stop Thorpe serving out senate term

Constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey says Lidia Thorpe‘s bizarre “hairs” affirmation is not grounds for disqualification, and it is unlikely that any legal challenge against her eligibility to sit in the Senate would succeed.
It comes as the opposition threatened legal action against Thorpe, calling into question her eligibility to participate in the proceedings of the Senate, and confirming the Coalition would seek legal advice on the matter.
Ms Twomey said the Senator’s remarks could come under scrutiny in the Senate but any High Court challenge to her status would be unlikely to succeed.
“The first thing to note is that she actually signed the Oath of Allegiance with the correct word there, heirs, not hares. So she has, it seems, made the formal written oath signed and witnessed in the Senate by signing what’s called the test roll. So on that basis, there’d be reasonable grounds for the Senate to take the view that she had made the Oath of Allegiance,” Ms Twomey said on Sky News.
Ms Twomey explained that the requirement to take the oath before taking your seat in the parliament is covered in section 42 of the constitution.
“It’s not one that leads to formal legal consequences such as disqualification.”
“So it’s an internal parliamentary matter. So it’s really a matter for the House. If the Senate decided that she had not validly made an oath, then it could exclude her from sitting. But that would be a matter for the House, not for a court.”