Australia is the only country founded with a deliberately imposed class system, says David Horton, and the Liberal Party's budget shows the battle is still on in earnest for equality.

WHAT ELSE can possibly be said about the worst Australian Budget in history that wasn't said by Abbott's smirk as Hockey screwed the students; his comment that they were going to undo everything the Australian Labor Party had ever done in government; and Hockey's comment that they were going to get government out of people's lives (given that the government is, or should be, the people, this translates as 'getting people out of their own lives')?

Well, possibly this:

Australia is the only country founded with a deliberately imposed class system.

The division, from 1788 on was clear cut — an upper class comprised of Governor, senior Army officers and, after a few years, rich "squatters" who arrived in the colony and were given huge chunks of Aboriginal land; and a lower class comprised of convicts.

There were also, of course, the original owners of the chunks of land, but they were seen as lower than the convicts, totally outside any white class system —ordinis nullius.

A perfect system, a Utopia, as seen by the British upper classes occupying Whitehall, or those eager to send their good-for-nothing younger sons out to the colony to make a fortune  — a land grant being a license to print money, based as it was on dispossessing original owners without payment, and then running an enterprise based on slave labour and sure sales to a captive market or the Mother Country.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-australian-tories-and-the-currency-lads-and-lasses,6484

 

Well, I can understand why just at the moment politicians aren’t much trusted because we’ve had too many politicians who say one thing before an election to win votes and then do the opposite after the election…

Tony Abbott, Newcastle radio, June 13, 2013.

The Prime Minister is a liar. There is no point mincing words. We have never seen anything like it.

With this budget he has shown himself to be cynically dishonest on a scale unprecedented in modern politics. Although Abbott is not the first political leader to break an election promise and will not be the last, no prime minister in memory, Liberal or Labor, has come even close to his contemptuous deception of the electorate he sucker-punched on Tuesday.

To a point, this is not surprising. All my adult life I have been lied to by the Tories, from the Vietnam war on down to John Howard's invention of the non-core promise. I was therefore expecting duplicity from Abbott. It's what people like him do, how they think, how they govern.

But it was genuinely shocking to see his wholesale abandonment of the bargain of candour to be expected between leader and people. Almost every significant commitment he made in the election campaign last year has been flung overboard or distorted beyond recognition.

No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.
Tony Abbott, SBS NEWS – September 6, 2013

There are five separate betrayals in that lot alone. The most heinous is his full frontal assault upon Medicare, with even the poorest families forced to fork out a $7 "co-payment" – as the euphemism goes – to see their GP, to get a pathology test, to have a CT scan, to fill a prescription. It's a tax from a government that promised no new taxes. Pay it, or join the ever-lengthening queue at your local hospital's emergency department, where Abbott has given them the green light to charge you as well.

In education, university fees will soar as they are thrown onto the open market. Stand by for the $120,000 arts degree. This, despite Christopher "Poodles" Pyne's promise to Sky News on November 7 last year that " we're not going to raise fees ... I am not even considering it because we promised that we wouldn’t."

But these two hits – gross as they are – pale against the enormity of the biggest surprise in this no-surprises budget, the government's decision to unload $80 billion of health and education spending onto the states in the coming years.

It is the end of the Gonski education reforms. It is the shredding of the health care safety net by a Prime Minister who just weeks ago could proclaim, without batting an eyelid, that he was "the best friend Medicare has ever had".

The state and territory leaders – Tories all bar one – are livid. Mike Baird rightly called it " a kick in the guts for the people of NSW," and Queensland's Campbell Newman demanded an emergency COAG meeting. At which, no doubt, the states will howl for an increase in the GST. Eventually they will get it, expanded to catch food and anything else it does not hit now, and then hoicked to 12.5% by a prime minister who could boast in opposition:

"We are about reducing taxes, not increasing taxes. We are about getting rid of taxes, not imposing new taxes. This is my whole reason for being in politics, in the Parliament."

Tony Abbott, November 20, 2012.

And on it goes. Up with the fuel excise, hitting you at the servo. Old people will fall back in the race against inflation. Eventually they will have to work to 70 to get the pension ; OK, perhaps, if you're an office worker. Frightening if you're on the tools, driving a truck, teaching infants, or nursing in intensive care.

The young unemployed are savagely bashed with the refusal of the dole for six months. The disabled are to be interrogated, yet again, to determine if they are cheating. The ABC, bludgeoned as well, will be forced to shed staff, cut programs and very probably close some of its foreign news bureaus. And that's before the so-called "efficiency dividend" is imposed. Goaded by the Murdoch press, the Liberals make no secret of their loathing for the ABC as a nest of lefty traitors. It is punishment politics at its most vindictive.

This is a fair budget, everyone is doing his or her bit, including, dare I say it, politicians.”
Tony Abbott, Channel Ten, May 14.

If Labor had brought in a "deficit levy" on the wealthy – yes, another tax – the Tories and their claque of media toadies would have shrieked blue murder about socialist class warfare. Instead, they portray Abbott as a strong leader taking tough decisions to end a budget "emergency" they themselves invented.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-name-is-mud-20140515-zrd9w.html#ixzz31wOCQzGQ

 

 

Is this really what we want politicians to see? A group of angry university students who resort to violence? Mikaela Davis shares her experience of the protest against Sophie Mirabella at the University of Melbourne.

I am a firm believer in protests. They are a pillar of democracy which allow the public to have a voice and tell the government exactly what they're thinking.

As a student, I resent most of the changes to university fees that have been announced in the budget, but I admit, I'm not one to protest about it. In that sense, protesters are also speaking out for those who don't want to speak up. For that, I am grateful.

But there comes a time when protesting can get out of hand. On Monday May 19, I was in the University of Melbourne lecture theatre when members of the Socialist Alternative (SAlt) surrounded Sophie Mirabella, which saw her have to be escorted out by police. The week before, Julie Bishop was jostled by students at the University of Sydney.

There's something to be said about the lack of respect that we hold for politicians. Love them or hate them, I believe that it's still important to respect these people. I don't agree with Ms Mirabella on almost all of her views, but that doesn't mean that I have the right to say to her "you don't deserve to exist".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-22/davis-when-protests-go-too-far/5470966

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Dear Mikaela...

Sorry to interrupt here... You are a firm believer of protest?... Important to respect these people? Do they respect you? They possibly do, as a nice girl next door but not as a group of student. They will piss on you after having told you about freedom. This is always the problem.

A protest can be silent, peaceful or violent. But no matter, the police will come in to "restore order" should the person in power decides so... Sometimes no matter what your beliefs are, you need to disrupt the bullshit-outlet from these people, who too readily use their "freedom (and power) to tell you crap" in a cunning rounded way in which you will feel sheepishly inadequate...

There is a point at which "these" people like Mirabella need to be disrupted. Why should they be given the power to lecture anyone anyway in the first place?

A protest of one is lousy. A protest is there to be shared, like we did on the Vietnam anti-war protest when the boss threatened us with being sacked. We had to tell him to go to hell. We had to be united in our protest. A protest has to be disruptive, otherwise may as well blow soap bubbles.

In a protest you never tell these people that "they don't deserve to exist"... This is not the purpose. But the protest is to stop them performing a function which may or may not have been acquired by bullshitting (mostly bullshitting). You know that some (all) of their ideas are not worth being propagated. Thus there is a need to protest and show  that "enough is enough'...

But you don't have too.

I know some scientists who loved forest but disagreed with people who protested and chained themselves to trees. Had there not been any protest, there would not be any trees left in the Franklin River, Tasmania and the famous Tasmanian Wilderness would now only be a couple of rows of trees either side of a road, while the rest would be wood chips and toilet paper, for example... Protest need to be measured and also need to show "enough is enough" — otherwise may as well pack up.

In mid-May, the recently elected conservative government in Australia proposed its federal budget. Although Australia enjoys one of the most resilient economies in the developed world, and was left relatively unscathed by the global financial crisis, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey have revealed massive spending cuts and new taxes.

Losers include low- and medium-income earners, students, and pensioners, who are all set to receive fewer benefits and increased fare costs in their day-to-day living. Two of the most contentious proposed policies would result in car fuel prices being increased and patients paying an up-front fee to see a medical doctor where previously there was no cost involved.

Meanwhile, high-income earners have been left relatively unaffected.

This is all in sharp contrast to Abbott's pre-election promises. Famously, on election eve, he promised Australian voters that, if elected, his government would enact: "no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the [goods and services tax] and no cuts to [the public broadcasters] ABC and SBS."

All of those promises have been broken.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/05/australia-george-bush-2014521131043210644.html

Young Australians are more politically engaged than many older Australians and are just as likely to stand for public office, according to new research done for the Museum of Australian Democracy.

Researcher Max Halupka from the University of Canberra says the research showed Australia's oldest and youngest citizens have engaged in the highest number of political activities, overturning the conventional view that those aged under 35 are the most apathetic.

"This idea that this new generation is disengaged is unfair," Mr Halupka said.

"It is just engaging in new ways. It's got a broader repertoire of engagement."

It all depends on how political engagement is defined. If traditional actions like joining political parties or streets protests or writing a letter to a member of Parliament are the only criterion, then young people are more disengaged than ever.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-19/research-overturns-view-young-people-not-engaged-in-politics/5681740

Often we hear about Chinese students cheating, but now a scheme for rich American student to cheat has been exposed:

 

Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin, a famous fashion designer, and bunch corporate fat cats paid a life coach to help their children cheat on standardized tests — and buy fraudulent athletic accolades — in order to secure admission to various elite colleges. Then, the Justice Department found out. Now, Huffman is in the hoosegow, America’s largest-ever college admissions prosecution is underway, and all across social media, the upper-middle class is basking in the schadenfreude of old money’s humiliation.

The New York Times offers a succinct summary of the indictment:

At the center of the sweeping financial crime and fraud case was William Rick Singer, the founder of a college preparatory business called the Edge College & Career Network, also known as The Key.

The authorities said Mr. Singer, who has agreed to plead guilty to the charges and cooperated with federal prosecutors, used The Key and its nonprofit arm, Key Worldwide Foundation, which is based in Newport Beach, Calif., to help students cheat on their standardized tests, and to pay bribes to the coaches who could get them into college with fake athletic credentials.

[United States attorney Andrew] Lelling said that Ms. Huffman participated in the SAT cheating portion of the scam.

Mr. Singer also bribed Division 1 athletic coaches to tell admissions officers that they wanted certain students, even though the students did not have the necessary athletic credentials.

This is a very amusing criminal conspiracy. And it is refreshing to see any wealthy person actually pay a penalty for trying to rig our putative “meritocratic” institutions in their progeny’s favor. But these facts should not distract us from the broader truth: All of American higher education is, in essence, a giant pay-to-play scandal.

 

Some of the perfectly legal, anti-meritocratic features of college admissions are wholly transparent. It’s hard to discern much difference between the unearned advantages that William Singer’s clients enjoyed, and the ones that Harvard’s legacy admissions do. But the problem is much broader than that.

 

Read more:

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/college-admissions-bribery-scanda...

 

 

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Cheating goes on after getting "Rhodes" scholarships out of paper-bags, especially in those who gain access to the political levers. They bullshit with as much brilliance as the sun shines out of their arse... Tony (turdy) Abbott was (still is) the expert exponent of the subject.

 

 

Two years before Lori Loughlin was charged with bribing her children’s way into college, she gushed about sending her oldest child off to school on the “Today” show and how she was “preparing” for her departure.

“So many parents watching I’m sure are going through this where they’re about to watch a child go off to college… are you preparing for it in any other way?” Hoda Kotb asked Loughlin as she sat beside her daughter Isabella whose grades were at or just below the “low end” of USC’s admission standards, court documents revealed Tuesday.

“I think I’m in complete denial, I really am because when I think about it too much it will make me cry so I gotta stop,” Loughlin said, fanning away crocodile tears.

“My husband keeps saying, ‘Lori you’re not gonna see her so just be prepared.’”

 

Read more:

https://pagesix.com/2019/03/12/lori-loughlin-gushed-over-daughters-entrance-to-college-on-today/

Lori Louhglin’s daughter was celebrating spring break on a yacht owned by a USC board of trustees member the same day her mother was ensnared in a widespread college bribery case, according to a new report.

Loughlin’s daughter Olivia Jade was on Rick Caruso’s yacht in the Bahamas when federal prosecutors announced her mother would be charged with paying bribes to get her daughter accepted to USC, TMZ reported.

Olivia Jade and Caruso’s daughter, Gianna, are friends and appear in social media posts together, the gossip site reported.

Loughlin, who starred in the hit sitcom “Full House” in the 1990s, paid $500,000 with her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, to get their two daughters into the University of Southern California — by pretending the girls were crew athletes, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Jade returned to the US after her mother was charged, according to the report.

“My daughter and a group of students left for spring break prior to the government’s announcement yesterday,” Caruso told TMZ. “Once we became aware of the investigation, the young woman decided it would be in her best interests to return home.”

 

Read more:

https://pagesix.com/2019/03/13/lori-loughlins-daughter-olivia-jade-was-o...

 

The University of Southern California (USC[a] or SC) is an American private research university in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1880, it is the oldest private research university in California.[9] USC has historically educated a large number of the United States' business leaders and professionals. The university has also used its location in Los Angeles to establish relationships with research and cultural institutions throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim. USC contributes US$8 billion annually to the economy of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and California.[10]

For the 2018–19 academic year, there were 20,000 students enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs.[11] USC also has 27,500 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, engineering, social work, and medicine.[11]

USC was one of the earliest nodes on ARPANET and is the birthplace of the Domain Name System.[12] Other technologies invented at USC include DNA computing, dynamic programming, image compression, VoIP, and antivirus software.[13][14][15][16][17]

USC's alumni include 22 billionaires, 9 Rhodes Scholars, and 10 Marshall Scholars[18][19]. As of October 2018, 9 Nobel laureates, 6 MacArthurFellows, 18 Astronauts, and 1 Turing Award Winners have been affiliated as students, faculty, or researchers.

 

 

Read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Southern_California

 

 

 

College admission scandal grew out of a system that was ripe for ...


theconversation.com/college-admission-scandal-grew-out-of-a-system-that-was-ripe-f...
17 hours ago - The college admission scandal that involved big bribes, coaches and ... dozens of people – including Hollywood actresses and wealthy ... some that guarantee higher scores for approximately US$1,000. ... The advantage varies by sport and athletic division, but is almost universal within higher education.
Opinion | What the Rich Won't Tell You - The New York Times


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/opinion/sunday/what-the-rich-wont-tell-you.html
Sep 8, 2017 - ... wealthy clients also hid prices, saying that expensive furniture and other items arrive ... Highly educated, they worked or had worked in finance and related ... Yet we believe that wealthy people seek visibility because those we see ... for uncomfortable rich people, but because they tell ussomething about ...
Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Show - The ...


https://www.nytimes.com/.../education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-stu...
Feb 9, 2012 - The widening achievement gap between affluent and low-income ... like the tendency of educated people to marry other educated people, as ...

“Full House” star Lori Loughlin appeared in federal court in Los Angeles Wednesday over her alleged role in the nationwide college bribery scandal.

She was released after posting $1 million bond.

Loughlin, 54, and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, are facing mail fraud charges for allegedly paying $500,000 to bribe their daughters’ way into the University of Southern California — as bogus crew athletes.

The actress said nothing in the courtroom other than responding “yes” to Magistrate Judge Steve Kim’s questions. The judge instructed her to limit her travel to the continental US and also reluctantly agreed to let her continue traveling to Vancouver, Canada, for filming, according to Variety.

Giannulli — the man behind the Mossimo T-shirt brand — already appeared in court Tuesday and was also released on $1 million bond. Loughlin had been in Vancouver but returned to California Wednesday morning, where she was taken into custody.

Read more

https://pagesix.com/2019/03/13/lori-loughlin-released-on-1m-bond-after-c...

The most destructive and pervasive myth in America today is that we live in a meritocracy. Our elites, so the myth goes, earned their places at Yale and Harvard, on Wall Street and in Washington—not because of the accident of their birth, but because they are better, stronger, and smarter than the rest of us. Therefore, they think, they’ve “earned” their places in the halls of power and “deserve” to lead.

The fervor with which so many believe this enables elites to lord over those worse off than they are. On we slumber, believing that we live in a country that values justice, instead of working towards a more equitable and authentically meritocratic society.

Take the Operation Varsity Blues scandal. On Tuesday, the FBI and federal prosecutors announced that 50 people had been charged in, as Sports Illustrated put it, “a nationwide college admissions scheme that used bribes to help potential students cheat on college entrance exams or to pose as potential athletic recruits to get admitted to high-profile universities.” Thirty-three parents, nine collegiate coaches, two SAT/ACT exam administrators, an exam proctor, and a college athletics administrator were among those charged. The man who allegedly ran the scheme, William Rick Singer, pled guilty to four charges of racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and obstruction of justice.

As part of the scam, parents would “donate” money to a fake charity run by Singer. The funds would then be laundered to either pay off an SAT or ACT administrator to take the exams or bribe an employee in college athletics to name the rich, non-athlete children as recruits. Virtually every scenario relied on multiple layers of corruption, all of which eventually allowed wealthy students to masquerade as “deserving” of the merit-based college slots they paid up to half a million dollars to “qualify” for.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-me...

 

Another lawsuit filed by Joshua Toy and his mother said he was denied college admission despite a 4.2 grade point average, and seeks $500 billion of damages from 45 defendants for defrauding and inflicting emotional distress on everyone whose “rights to a fair chance” to enter college was stolen. 

The defendants in that case include Singer and accused parents, including “Desperate Housewives” actor Felicity Huffman, Loughlin and Giannulli, and TPG Capital private equity partner William McGlashan Jr., who was fired by the firm on Thursday. 

“These class-action cases are opportunistic creatures of lawyers trying to obtain a windfall,” Donald Heller, a lawyer for Singer, said in a phone interview. 

Lawyers for the other plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-education-cheating/spurned-studen...

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