The Federal Opposition says the proposed regulations that will underpin national workplace safety laws are unworkable.

The Government has been moving to implement uniform laws across the country.

The Opposition supports the proposals but its spokesman on Employment and Workplace Relations, Eric Abetz, says business is worried about the complexity of the regulations.

For the 400 US taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income, the effective federal income tax rate - what they actually pay - fell from almost 30% in 1995 to just under 17% in 2007, according to the IRS.

And for the approximately 1.4 million people who make up the top 1% of taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate dropped from 29% to 23% in 2008. It may seem too fantastic to be true, but the top 400 end up paying a lower rate than the next 1,399,600 or so.

Was the photo of smiling Obama shaking hands with President Gadhafi taken before or after Obama knew he was a bad Libyan? Did Obama's smile came from constipation, or did God only recently inform him after prayer that Gadhafi was evil? Did Divine consultation convince Obama not to save rebels' lives in Bahrain and Yemen? He did nothing when their nasty leaders murdered them for protesting.

WASHINGTON — The hard-fought budget compromise late Friday that narrowly averted a government shutdown calls for increasing Pentagon spending while imposing significant cuts on a wide range of domestic federal programs.

In the LRB, David Runciman provides some telling insights in a review of recent books about the “off-shoring” of the world economy into tax havens, where the hyper-elite hide their money from the taxes and regulations that ordinary citizens are subject to. The review also deals with the political machinations involved in this corrosive process, which lies behind much of our dysfunctions and discontents. You should read the whole article, which provides rich historical context, but are some excerpts, in medias res:

Rupert Murdoch is about to be ambushed by a cross-party group of peers determined to stop the total takeover of BSkyB by News Corp, the Mole can reveal.

While MPs were packing their holiday shorts for the beach and a long holiday until April 26, protests were raised in the House of Lords by former Times journalist and Tory peer Lord Fowler about the latest developments in the telephone hacking saga - the arrests this week of chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, 50, and former news editor Ian Edmondson, 42, on suspicion of having unlawfully intercepted voicemail messages.

picture by Gus...

from Jeremy Buckingham

As I have said before, if Kevin was so keen on the ETS he would have carried on with it. He sort of blame others in his party for his decision to abandon it... Strangely Kev does not point the finger at Tony the Little Shit who sunk his baby.

We all know that Tony has no morals — well I mean proper human ethics and understandings of the mechanics of the earth, the only morals that count in my book...  The rest is just the management of the illusion of sin.

Ted Baillieu, Barry O'Farrell and Colin Barnett's state election victories may augur well federally for the Coalition and badly for Labor. There's clearly a huge swag of voters for whom Labor is on the nose, and while no one can be absolutely sure of the degree to which Labor's floundering federally has played a part, nobody sensible says it played no part.

Even the most jaundiced Coalition campaigner is enthused, and fear strikes in the hearts of Labor marginal seat holders.

I, along with the members of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, support the position that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four detainees charged with 9/11 crimes should be tried in federal courts and not in military tribunals.

So the joke begins like this: An economist, a lawyer and a professor of marketing walk into a room. What’s the punch line? They were three of the five “expert witnesses” Republicans called for last week’s Congressional hearing on climate science.

But the joke actually ended up being on the Republicans, when one of the two actual scientists they invited to testify went off script.

According to information released by WikiLeaks, through The Sydney Morning Herald, Mark Arbib was a 'protected source' of the American Embassy in Canberra.

Writing in The Good Weekend on 12 March, Nikki Barrowclough says in an article, "The Power of One", American diplomatic cables refer to Arbib as 'a tough political operator and evidence-based strategic thinker' who had met with embassy representatives 'repeatedly throughout his political rise'. In other words he met with US representatives over a period of time on a frequent basis over a number of years.