Tosser on tour

Noted from Senate hearings this morning:

Freedom commissioner Tim Wilson tells the senate that he will be doing a freedom roadshow, funded to the tune of $50,000 - and seeking private sponsorship - that will travel the highways and byways of the country.

Also as part of that report:

George Brandis is again before the senate legal and constitutional affairs committee, accompanied by the Human Rights Commission, including president Gillian Triggs, race commissioner Tim Soutphommasane and freedom commissioner Tim Wilson among others.

Labor senator Lisa Singh is asking Soutphommasane to talk about the effect of Brandis' changes. The question is ruled out and Brandis counters that Soutphommasane's views are well known. That is, he doesn't like them.

So much for freedom of speech, Singh says.

 PS:  just dropped in again on Tim's grandiose, self promoting website.   It still describes him as "Australia's Human Rights Commissioner".   I'm sure the rest of the Commissioners appreciate that.

Update:  I appear to have not understood Mr Wilson's position.   Here I was thinking that all Commissioners at the Human Rights Commission could be called "a Human Rights Commissioner"; yet I see from the website that when dishing out the title for each commissioner ("Age Discrimination Commissioner" for example) that Timbo's title is indeed "Human Rights Commissioner" (and he is the only one so named on the list.)    

Why is it, then, that about the only Human Right I hear Wilson constantly banging on about is free speech?

I can see many other "Human Rights" that he could be talking about other the one that is the obsession of the IPA.

They're like a masterclass on how not to do political media management

Just up on Fairfax:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has slapped down his Education Minister and ruled out collecting outstanding HECS debts from the estates of dead students.

Mr Abbott said on Thursday morning that the government was not going to change existing rules around HECS debts from the deceased.

''This government is not going to change the existing rules, and the existing rules in respect of university debt . . . is that they cease on decease,'' he told ABC radio.

Gee, he just can't help himself with the stupid three word slogans, can he?  Must be what they taught at Oxford during his Rhodes scholarship, was it? [The Abbott family has done well out of scholarships. :)]
The problem for Tone is that it was not just Pyne, but Smokin' Joe who thought it a good idea in principle too:

Treasurer Joe Hockey also earlier on Thursday appeared to back the idea.
''It shouldn't be different to any other loan,'' he told the Nine Network. ''It's only against the state of the individual. It’s not going to go across families and so on.''

On another issue, let's not forget the weirdness of Dennis Jensen, a climate change skeptic, nonetheless attacking his government's budget cuts to science. And people thought Gillard's office didn't do media management well!  Geez. 

More on my anti marijuana binge today

Driving After Marijuana Use Twice As Common As Driving After Drinking

Whitehill says, "There seems to be a misconception that marijuana use is
totally safe, but as an injury prevention researcher I dispute that.
We've done a good job in public health with messages about the risks of
driving after alcohol use. Clearly the idea not to drink and drive has
come through for these students, because we found only 7 percent engage
in that behavior. But our study suggests we must do better when it comes
to marijuana, since we found that 31 percent of marijuana-using
students drive under its influence." 

Yet more not-exactly-thought-through fallout from Colorado's marijuana laws

From the LA Times:

Colorado's neighbors dismayed by new wave of marijuana traffic

Law enforcement officers in the smaller, often isolated counties in states ringing Colorado say their departments shudder under the weight of Colorado pot flowing illegally across the border. Drug arrests are rising, straining already strapped budgets in places where marijuana remains illegal.

"It has just devastated these smaller agencies," says Tom Gorman, director of the federally funded Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, a network of law enforcement organizations in four Western states. "The marijuana laws [in Colorado] were supposed to eliminate the black market. But in effect they have become the black market."

A study by his organization last year found that between 2005 and 2012, the amount of seized Colorado pot heading for other states increased 400%. Although it is legal for adults to possess small amounts of marijuana in Colorado, it remains against the law to take it out of the state.

But most agree it's fantasy to think that won't happen.

Just noting if money makes a difference

No austerity in Hockey household | The Australian

Just thought I would go back to re-read the articles about the wealth of Joe Hockey and his merchant banker wife, given that in 1987 poor old Joe thought $250 was an outrageous fee for students to pay:

Searches show the austerity budget measures will have a limited impact on the Treasurer and his family, who live in a Sydney mansion worth $6m, own a beachside home south of Sydney [estimated value $1.5 million] and have Queensland cattle properties worth more than $2m....

In addition to those property assets, the Hockeys hold a family trust and a self-managed super fund.

In Mr Hockey’s parliamentary pecuniary interests register, the Treasurer notes those assets are: “Managed solely by spouse — I am unaware of interests.”

That last line is a little cute, isn't it?

Interestingly, most assets seem to be held in his wife's name.

I don't think his kids will have trouble paying for their $100,000 + degrees; upfront in fact.

[If you think I'm turning socialist, blame Piketty!]  

How very entertaining

I suggest the Abbott government just leave the building quietly now.   Just paste up some notices on the office doors "Sorry, it all became too difficult.  We are going outside and we may be some time."

The source of my amusement?    The sight of Joe Hockey, university student, talking about the fight for free university education in 1987.  According to the report, it was actually a protest about a $250 fee.

Yes, the Treasurer in a government deregulating university fees entirely, a policy introduced in haste with no substantial discussion prior to the election, leading to the not unreasonable speculation that this will mean some courses costing upwards of $100,000. 

Simply delicious material for Labor to work with.

What's more, it seems to me that the Frances Abbott undeclared "scholarship" scandal is biting a bit more than I expected, given that a fair bit of the media (including the ABC) has not wanted to touch it for fear of being seen to be inviting a Frances pile on.

No, I'm not talking about highly taxed economist Sinclair Davidson's "A new low" post in which he gets upset about some pretty low level looking protesting and sticker vandalism of the Whitehouse Institute of Design (motto - "Don't phone us for a scholarship - we'll phone you!")   (Oh, and I like the drama queenery in comments "this is not an Australia I recognise;"  "Just like Alabama in the sixties"  Update:  some are now suggesting rubber bullets and letting everyone carry revolvers for self protection for such rioters.   Having now seen video of what the students did, it looks like about 30 doing a rather mild moving protest.  Annoying if you're delayed in your car for 5 minutes, but people like Bolt and Davidson are having a lend of themselves about the seriousness of it all.) 

No, it's more the fact that there a substantial number of comments following Neil Mitchell's story on the 3AW website dispute his take that this is a matter of disgracefully attacking Abbott's family.   For example:

Its fair game. This was a merit-less award no question. That Abbotts office are even taking that position shows how dishonest they are.
a. You could not apply for the scholarship.
b. Its not a published scholarship.
c. It would have remained secret except someone leaked it.
This was a gift to a prime minister through his child, to get the girl into his school to make it more prestigious so they could charge the other pooor students more.
Plain and simple.
And then same PM guts education funding and tells people get ready to pay more.
The protest is completely valid.

And, in a remarkable turn up for the books, someone even in the Catallaxy thread (just one - mind you) gets it about 95% right.   I'm worried that hell is freezing over:

So yes the Socialist Alliance are twits and it’s a disgrace that the police are required for protection. But I for one am not going to pretend it’s a desirable state of affairs that a politician elected on an integrity platform hasn’t disclosed that his daughter was given a secret scholarship and potentially acted as a lobbyist.

Heroin revival, continued

Heroin epidemic: New York becomes first big city to make cops carry antidote 

The Christian Science Monitor has another report here on the increase in heroin in America.   Part of the reason for its increase in popularity appears to be tougher control of prescription painkillers:

No longer the stereotype of a shivering urban junkie, heroin users are now found among the working and professional classes, including suburban abusers of opiate-based painkillers like oxycodone. Faced with higher prices and shortages in the illegal market for pills, these now seek out what street users often refer to as “smack.”

Indeed, as the illicit use of painkillers has become more difficult with stricter regulations and law enforcement – which has led to a corresponding low supply and higher price, officials say – users have turned to heroin for a cheaper and more readily available high. And Mexican cartels, funneling heroin from Colombia, have been flooding the market with a purer and cheaper product.

And with its higher purity, users can now snort the drug, officials say, rather than cook and shoot it with needles – a well-known pop-cultural image that has scared away many
first-time users in the past.

Almost worth it

Watching the writhing pain of Catallaxy over the Coalition's umming and ahhing over how to amend s18C of the Race Discrimination Act so as to placate Andrew Bolt, the IPA and ethnic voters, as well as the knowledge that about the only budget measure that seems guaranteed to pass Parliament is a tax increase that will affect free speech warrior-in-chief (and all round tax hater) Sinclair Davidson (and Andrew Bolt and Tim Wilson), almost (but not quite) makes seeing a Coalition win worthwhile.  

In truth, with the benefit of hindsight, as I have written somewhere on the net (if not here), the Coalition win was probably for the good of the country, but only because it rid Labor of their disastrous experiment with Kevin Rudd.

If we could only have a double dissolution within 6 to 9 months, and a competition between a Turnbull led Coalition and a re-invigorated Labor (and held after Palmer's party has suffered its inevitable implosion), things could be looking pretty sweet.   (I somehow doubt it is going to work out that well, especially given a Labor win would probably be at the cost of a moderate bit of GST reform which seems to be warranted.)

Sucked in by an article heading?

I see that Jason Soon has tweeted about the Comment is Free article in the Guardian with the Pyne/Norton friendly title:

Higher fees don't mean fewer working class students - look at the UK for proof

Yet the details in the body of the article indicate that the true title should be something like:

Higher but still capped university fees with generous enough loan support does not put off working class students  (or so it seems after 2 years of a new system)

I mean, from the article:

In 2011 the UK's governing Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition announced substantial reforms to higher education funding. Following the recommendations of a review into higher education funding commenced by the prior Labour government, the cap on student fees was almost tripled to £9,000 ($16,400) and public funding significantly reduced. 

The present cap in Australia:

At present in 2014, Australia’s fee cap ranges between A$6,044 and A$10,085 (£3,358 and £5,603), varying with the type of course studied.

The Guardian piece itself says:

Readers should be cautioned against drawing too much inference from the UK experience. Alongside generous income-substitution loans, the UK still maintains a fee cap, charges a progressively indexed interest rate only when graduates are earning an income and writes off any unpaid debt after 30 years. An Office for Fair Access was also created to negotiate equitable student access targets with universities and monitor compliance.

 And Bruce Chapman in Australia thinks fees at top universities will rapidly go up:

''Fees will go up and they will go up quite significantly,'' Professor Chapman, director of policy impact at the Australian National University, said.

''I expect most universities will increase tuition fees to international student fee levels, which are currently about three times higher. The Group of Eight universities will do that pretty quickly.

'Fees will go up and they will go up quite significantly.': Bruce Chapman. Photo: Glenn Hunt

''Past changes to HECS didn't deter students from entering university, but now that there will be a real rate of interest on the debt we are in uncharted waters.''

Professor Chapman said it was plausible the cost of a bachelor of medical science would rise from $24,000 to $120,000 – the fee for international students at the University of Sydney.

''The idea fees will go down anywhere is frankly fantasy land,'' he said.

 There are a few things I don't really understand:

*  Pyne has been arguing that the scheme will mean lots of new university places (80,000 is bandied about, but it seems to be guesswork) available from the lower level universities for "sub degree" courses which may prepare students for higher degrees.   But wait a minute - I thought it was a common view amongst the Right that there is too much emphasis on students doing University for the sake of doing University, and that these students would often be better doing more direct occupational training?   Or is there some push on now that we want to fully emulate an American system of high school to college to university?  (As if the American system is worth emulating.)   Next I expect Pyne to be suggesting Rugby scholarships be introduced.

*  If you make medical degrees a lot more expensive, don't you risk doctors wanting to increase their fees? Is this part of the reason that the US health system is so expensive?

*  The English (see this earlier link) appear to think the Australia system is a great big experiment that will be very interesting to watch.  Yes indeed - and one which the Coalition gave us no forewarning would be suddenly undertaken.

*  Why not do it via incrementally increasing the cap and monitoring what happens?  This is what the Guardian writer actually suggests:

With the exact consequences of fee deregulation hard to predict, incrementally raising the fee cap could offer a period of evaluation. However, with the full package unlikely to get through the Senate unamended, there is a high chance some of the more dubious changes will be throttled back.

Chickens well funded

Chicken project gets off the ground 

At Nature News:

In a bid to learn more about the chicken and its lineage, the UK
government is funding a £1.94-million (US$3.3-million) effort to
determine how the chicken went from being a wild fowl roaming the
jungles of southeast Asia several thousand years ago to one of the
world’s most abundant domesticated animals. The Cultural and Scientific
Perceptions of Human–Chicken Interactions project — ‘Chicken Coop’ for
short — will examine human history from the perspective of the fowl.

OK, well the article does go on to note some practical point to better understanding their evolution:

 a better understanding of the bird’s history will help people to address
some of the problems facing chickens and the poultry industry, such as
avian influenza and leg weakness among broiler chickens. Research on
ancient breeds could help us to “refresh the genetics” of broilers, he
suggests. Last month, Hutchinson ran a conference, Towards the Chicken
of the Future, to tackle such issues. “Science has got us into this
problem through intense selection,” he says. “It can maybe help us out
of it.”

but I'm not sure that's how I would prefer to see science money being spent.

Nuclear cat litter

Nuclear-waste facility on high alert over risk of new explosions : Nature News & Comment

How odd:

The drum was one of a batch from the Los Alamos National Laboratory
(LANL) in New Mexico that contained a mix of nitrate salts — generated,
for example, in the recovery of plutonium from metal and other scrap
during waste processing — and cellulose in the form of a wheat-based
commercial cat litter used to absorb liquid waste. The DOE believes a reaction between the nitrates and cellulose blew the lid off of the container.

An interesting point about the Piketty big picture

From The Atlantic:

The future is dire, he concludes, because he expects the economies of the countries he surveyed to grow at a rate of 1 to 1.5 percent per year, while the average return on capital increases at a rate of 4 to 5 percent per year. Inequality, in other words, is bound to rise....

It is not accurate to assert that in countries like Russia, Nigeria, Brazil, and China, the main driver of economic inequality is a rate of return on capital that is larger than the rate of economic growth. A more holistic explanation would need to include the massive fortunes regularly created by corruption and all kinds of illicit activities. In many countries, wealth grows more as a result of thievery and malfeasance than as a consequence of the returns on capital invested by elites (a factor that is surely at work too)....

Most of the roughly 20 nations from which Piketty forms his analysis classify as high-income countries and rank among the least-corrupt in the world, according to Transparency International. Unfortunately, most of humanity lives in countries where “c > h” and dishonesty is the primary driver of inequality. This point has not attracted as much attention as Piketty’s thesis. But it should. 

Dictionary needed at Hot Air

Right wing web site Hot Air has put up an open thread about the recent Isla Vista shooting, and makes the following "only in America" statement (my bold):

The alleged shooter – I’m going to stop using “alleged” after this, given the circumstances – purchased all of his hardware legally, and no gun control measures currently on the books or being realistically considered would have prevented it. (Unless, of course, you’re talking about a complete national ban on handguns, and I don’t think we’ve slid that far down the road to anarchy just yet.)

Yeah.  A ban on handguns is like an obvious start to anarchy.

Not just Australia, but England and Japan are all places bordering on anarchy due to the lack of handguns amongst the populace.  It's really scary.  [/sarc, of course.]

A beautiful set of numbers

While Essential Poll seems strangely, persistently, stuck on a 2 party preferred vote of 52/48 in favour of Labor (when other polls are showing clearer post-Budget away from the Coalition), this table from today's poll gives me encouragement that my take on Tony Abbott is gaining more popularity with the Australian public.  It is very amusing to look at the downwards trajectory of several of the assessments:


4


Bill Shorten, on the other hand, has been on the upwards trajectory.  Essential notes:

Compared to Bill Shorten, Tony Abbott is much more likely to be considered out of touch with ordinary people (+28), arrogant (+27), narrow minded (+26), intolerant (+26) and aggressive (+20).
Bill Shorten is regarded by more respondents to be intelligent (-14) and  a capable leader (-10).

 Labor should be taking some encouragement.  

Potential donations made daily

BBC News - The brave new world of DIY faecal transplant

This is a very lengthy article on the wonders of faecal transplant, and how some people are doing it for themselves.   (I really think the photo with the poo-y blender was unnecessary, but the editor probably giggled a lot about whether to include it.)

As noted at Catallaxy

Sinclair Davidson actually thinks Bronwyn Bishop is doing a good job as speaker. Simply astonishing, as he likes to say.  He likes how Scott Morrison handles himself too, as do many of the commenters at the site.  [Update:  see what Sinclair says himself in clarification in comments below.]   I'm always amused about how much some libertarian/conservative types like "hard men" (and hard haired women) who they think are successfully putting the boot into their political opponents.  (To be fair, we saw the same thing from Labor followers with Paul Keating; but I always disagreed with them too that the aggro was a good look.  Also - Morrison is making politics out of a secret government operation on the high seas - that is something to deplore, not celebrate.) 

Judith Sloan, in thinking about the Medicare co-payment, again gets the opportunity to express annoyance that other people (medical researchers) might get to fly business class.  (Last time it was those mooching pilots, remember?)

Update:  re Morrison and secrecy on ocean:

Immigration officials faced a grilling at a Senate estimates hearing on Monday night about unconfirmed reports an asylum seeker boat was intercepted off Christmas Island in mid-May and its passengers are in custody on the Customs Ocean Protector ship.

Customs chief executive Michael Pezzullo maintained that only an illegal foreign fishing boat had been intercepted near Christmas Island recently.

Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young referred to reports Christmas Islanders saw clothing packs being taken out to the Ocean Protector.

But Mr Pezzullo refused to comment on logistics, operational matters or any legal advice about holding people in custody.

He rejected Labor senator Kim Carr's description that asylum seekers were being detained on a ''prison ship''.

''People are being held in secure circumstances and subject to operational orders,'' he said, adding they were appropriately cared for with adequate food and water.

Senator Carr asked how many people were in custody on the Ocean Protector and other vessels.

''I'm not going to discuss that,'' Mr Pezzullo said.

On Monday, Senator Hanson-Young told Fairfax Media that the Abbott government's '' obsession with secrecy means that we are hearing eye-witness reports of refugee boats from Christmas Island locals, while Customs and Immigration officials remain tight-lipped''.

''The government is refusing to answer even the most basic questions about the health and safety of people who may be locked up inside a customs vessel right now,'' Senator Hanson-Young said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/border-protection-deny-running-prison-ship-for-asylum-seekers-20140527-38zpy.html#ixzz32s2AgYC1

The Greens are not realistic in how they would respond to the problem - yet they are still on the money when it comes to the appalling secrecy that the government is putting over this; and it is something of a scandal that there isn't a public scandal about it.

Not sure what is going on in Spain and Luxembourg

Found it at Business Insider, which notes:

The divorce rate is still high in the U.S. at 53%. But Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, and Hungary are worse off with divorce rates higher than 60%.
Australia fares a little better but had a rate of 43% in 2010.
Belgium has the highest rate of divorce in this data set at a staggering 70%.
The lowest official rate is in Chile with 3%.

About the Piketty claims

A good commentary piece, I think, on Piketty is here in The Guardian.

Fantasy crime and consequences

Mob kills man for 'stealing genitals' in Burkina Faso | The FRANCE 24 Observers

I had assumed that "penis stealing" was something that was done as a revenge curse against someone who had done you wrong.  But according to this report, it is used as a scam:

There are usually two or three accomplices who carry out this scam
in three parts: first, someone who claims to have magical powers touches
a victim and persuades him that they’ve stolen his genitals. Then,
another accomplice approaches the victim and drives home the point by
saying that if the victim doesn’t buy a specific product, he’ll lose his
ability to reproduce. Finally, the victim pays a hefty sum [Editor’s
note: around 30,000 CFA Francs, or 45 euros] for a Viagra-like medicine
that is supposed to make his genitals work again.

It had been several years since I had heard of any such cases in
Koudougou. There were a few isolated cases in nearby areas about 10
years ago, but they quickly stopped. This time, though, the first cases
in the beginning of May were handled very badly: local authorities
didn’t intervene immediately to calm the crowds, and a lot of people
were caught up in the hysteria. I don’t think the lynching of this man
has calmed tensions.

Just too many guns

Even in a State With Restrictive Laws, Gunman Amassed Weapons and Ammunition - NYTimes.com

Mass murderer  Elliott Rodger was able to acquire 3 handguns in California easily and legally, despite the State being considered to have some of the toughest gun laws in America.

There are two ways of looking at this:   the American gun lobby will be arguing that it demonstrates that restrictive  gun laws don't stop really determined killers (and it's true, he killed 3 by stabbing - although I still haven't read exactly how that happened) and so why bother with such laws?  In fact, no matter how a mass killing happens, there is a powerful fantasy amongst gun lovers that if only there were more guns around, more mass killings would be prevented.   An obscenely nutty ex Republican executive is said to have tweeted this:  "No idea how my son will die, but I know it won't be cowering like a bitch at UC Santa Barbara. Any son of mine would have been shooting back."  If the parent of one of the deceased beat this guy to within an inch of his life, no jury would convict.

The second way of looking at it is this:  you can never guarantee that mentally disturbed young men will not kill, but if you make it pretty hard for anyone in society to get guns (and handguns in particular), you are going to have very few mass shootings involving handguns.  Evidence for this - Australia and England.

Fortunately, Australians tend to think the second, sensible way.  American-lite, Heinlein-ian  libertarian fantasies of a society being better if everyone who wants to be armed is armed don't wash here, and may it forever remain so.