Still Unaccountable: Oregon’s highway department has a cost overrun problem, so naturally they hired consultants to fix it. The twist? Those same consultants have their own impressive track record of blowing budgets and breaking rules.
The new “roadmap for accountability” comes courtesy of AtkinsRéalis-Horrocks, whose principals Shane Marshall and Joshua Laipply recently departed Utah and Colorado DOTs (respectively)—both agencies with spectacular cost problems during their tenures. Marshall oversaw Utah’s I-15 expansion, which doubled from $1.7 billion to $3.7 billion after legislative approval. Laipply’s Colorado DOT spent twice the national average on consultants and violated state contracting laws.
In the first months of 2025, Donald Trump played a game of Russian roulette with the American economy and survived. Although the president had never hidden his enthusiasm for tariffs, the way he went about implementing them on taking office sowed confusion. Targeting not just geostrategic competitors like China but also allies like Canada and Britain, issuing demands that economists struggled to explain, reversing world-shaping policies from one hour to the next, and doing all of this on doubtful constitutional authority, sent markets into a tailspin.
And just when the president had been enjoying a honeymoon. In the last days of January, a majority of Americans had declared themselves—for the first time—Trumpians. They were particularly optimistic about his economic plans. But their enthusiasm diminished as the rumble of artillery from the trade war grew louder. By mid-April, fewer than 40% backed the president’s policy, and Trump was less popular than he had been at the same point in his first term.
Three years have passed since I contemplated writing this story. I kept changing my mind. What’s the point of a story in which nothing happens, and no answer is found?
Then again: does anything sum up the middle of 2022 better than that?
In November 2016, the weekend before the election, I took my children to southern Illinois on what I came to call “the last good day.” They were five and nine. We drove three hours and back from St. Louis to show them the southlands of our neighboring state. We visited Shawnee National Forest, home to the Garden of the Gods: giant towers of rock where even small children can climb on cliffs of arboreal splendor.
It was a perfect day, a free day, the kind you keep in your mind to revisit in darker times. After we climbed the rocks, we took the kids to the Ohio River. I have photos of them skipping stones near an old bandit cave, clapping in joy as they skimmed the surface, unaware of the future behind them.
“I want to go back,” I told my husband in 2022. “I want another perfect day.”
In January, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded a policy enacted by the Obama Administration, and expanded by the Biden Administration, that barred immigration law enforcement from making arrests in “sensitive” areas, namely churches and schools. According to Biden DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, this had become “fundamental” agency practice, which is something like so-called “super precedent”—that is, rules that progressives prefer.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” declared President Trump’s DHS. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense.” To most Americans this seems like common sense. If fugitives are exploiting lenient policies to avoid arrest and deportation, then those policies need adjusting.
The narratives surrounding Israel and their genocidal campaign against the Palestinians took decades to create and embed into the West’s psyche. The Holocaust, decades after its end, became a central part of the Jewish and Israeli identity. Enemies of the Israeli state were conflated with Nazis. The physical location of Israel became essential to Christian evangelicals who believe the second coming of Jesus Christ was to take place there.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Matt Grudnoff joins Elinor to discuss how the Government could help first home-buyers by restricting the ability of investors to borrow, what the fuss is about ‘unrealised gains’, and why the Government’s proposed superannuation tax changes are “a good first step.”
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 29 May 2025 and things may have changed since recording.
Order After America: Australia and the new world order or become a foundation subscriber to Vantage Point at australiainstitute.org.au/store.
Our independence is our strength – and only you can make that possible. By donating to the Australia Institute’s End of Financial Year appeal today, you’ll help fund the research changing Australia for the better.
Host: Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist, the Australia Institute // @mattgrudnoff
Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek
On this episode of Follow the Money, Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at the Australia Institute, joins Glenn Connley to discuss the government’s modest proposal to change the superannuation tax concessions and the bizarre backlash to the policy.
This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 28 May 2025 and things may have changed.
Order After America: Australia and the new world order or become a foundation subscriber to our Vantage Point series and save 25% on the Australia Institute website.
Guest: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @grogsgamut
Host: Glenn Connley, Senior Media Advisor, the Australia Institute // @glennconnley
Everybody’s Home looks forward to working constructively with the new Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness Andrew Bragg, and urges the Opposition to ditch discredited policies in favour of real solutions.
The national housing campaign is asking the Coalition to back serious solutions to Australia’s housing crisis and make affordability a top priority.
Everybody’s Home is calling on the shadow ministry to back:
A major expansion of social housing with an aim to deliver 940,000 new homes in the next two decades
A phase out of unfair tax handouts to property investors
National protections for renters
A boost to income support to keep people housed and out of poverty.
Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize said: “Voters made it clear at this election that they expect the government to step up and help people by building homes that people can afford, not pushing failed ideas that will leave them worse-off in the long-run.
“We look forward to engaging constructively with the Opposition’s spokesperson for housing and homelessness, Senator Andrew Bragg. This is an opportunity for the Opposition to respond to what voters really want: real action on housing that makes homes affordable and secure.
News broke a few weeks ago that President Trump would seek to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in his next budget proposal, along with several other federal cultural agencies. Hours later, it was also widely reported that some of our current grants were being withdrawn and canceled with immediate effect.
These announcements have caused fear, anger, and bewilderment inside our agency. I find myself (as the historian for the NEA) in the unique position of explaining to my fellow employees how matters have reached this dire pass.
When I arrived at this agency in 2004, in the first years of the George W. Bush Administration, the staff was mostly composed of Democratic Party supporters. But they were also cognizant of the near-death experience that the NEA suffered during the so-called “culture wars” (which stretched from 1989-1998), when the agency was widely lambasted for providing sub-grants that were used for exhibitions which included Andres Serrano’s blasphemous work “Piss Christ,” as well as Robert Mapplethorpe’s sado-masochist and homosexual pornography.
The result of that foolish grantmaking was the restructuring of the NEA so that from then on 40% of our total budget was automatically awarded to state arts agencies, while an independent council was created to oversee the entire grants authorization process as a watchdog appointed by the executive branch.
With a huge majority and a climate-friendly Senate, this government is in an optimal position to stop the expansion of gas and coal and to plan a phase-out.
“This term of parliament will not be about politics, it will be about Labor’s priorities,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.
“The government can use its historic majority to prioritise expanding the export gas industry, or it can take real action on climate, protect the country and its people.
I've been busy over the past couple of weeks helping Indivisible Santa Fe (ISF) restructure, redesign its website, and generally scale up in response to the influx of new members that has built ever since Trump's inauguration. ISF isn't done growing, not by a long shot. We are using our No Kings Day protest as an occasion to recruit new participants. I urge everybody to join their local Indivisible group. You can learn about the Indivisible National here. You can find your local No Kings event here. I'm also writing regularly for the ISF blog and newsletter. I won't always crosspost but what I wrote there yesterday is a good introduction to what I'm writing about here on Heidi Says today.
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This is a long post. I've split it into two, related parts. Each can certainly be read on its own.
The government’s Safeguard Mechanism is the key policy designed, apparently, to set Australia on the path to a low-emissions economy. According to the government’s website, the mechanism “requires Australia’s highest greenhouse gas emitting facilities to reduce their emissions in line with Australia’s emission reduction targets of 43% below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050”.
You might then be wondering how is Woodside Energy’s massive existing North West Shelf fossil gas processing facility, which is one of the biggest emitters of CO23 in Australia, is faring under this policy. Surely the Safeguard Mechanism has caused a big change in how it operates?
Alas no. The simple answer is that under the Safeguard Mechanism,the North West Shelf Facility isn’t enacting deep, structural emissions reductions. Woodside happily knows the “Safeguard” part of the Mechanism is safeguarding Woodside and other heavy emitters from having to worry about reducing emissions.
The policy isn’t imposing any material cost on the corporation or affecting the impending approval of the extension of this site for 40 years.
Using the latest data release from the Safeguard Mechanism, here’s a fun collection of facts about the North West Shelf project, and Woodside Energy:
The effects of screens on children are even worse than you can imagine: they can literally break down the human body. In her forthcoming book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, Clare Morell tells the story of an optometrist who discovered that an eight-year-old girl seeking relief from pain in her eyes no longer had Meibomian glands—which means her eyes cannot produce lubricating tears. Hours of daily digital screen time had trained the child to stare, which dried up her glands. At such a tender age she runs the risk of eventual blindness, as do thousands of other pediatric patients with her diagnosis. It is a fitting illustration of the tragic phenomenon that technology is having on human beings: pained children with blank stares who are unable to cry tears.
In a discussion with James Poulos, Morell explains that well-meaning parents should not simply set up safeguards to filter out the toxic effects of addictive technology. This is like advising a drug addict to use only less frequently, even though every dose is toxic, mind-altering, and possibly laced with a deadly synthetic.
The outer-Melbourne electorate of Calwell was named “Australia’s most unpredictable seat” by The Age after the election and was – aside from those going to a recount – the last seat to be called. The AEC labelled the counting process for the seat “likely the most complex in Australia’s history”.
The count is complicated because, while Labor led on primary votes, the Liberals, Greens, and three independents each had a significant share of the vote. The AEC had no idea which candidate would make it to the final two alongside Labor, and then if any of them could win from there. In a very rare case, the AEC had to conduct a full count of the seat to an estimate of the final result, which still hasn’t finished (though Labor now seems assured of victory).
Calwell is extra interesting, because it is diverse. It’s one of the handful of electorates in Australia where most people speak a language other than English at home, as well as having one of the largest Muslim populations. Two independents and the Greens candidate made Labor’s response to the genocide in Gaza a significant issue in their campaign.
125 billion worth of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been shipped out of Gladstone, but 9 out of 10 companies involved in Queensland gas exports have paid zero company tax in this time, according to the latest data from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
Despite the huge volume of gas being extracted, domestic gas prices have increased significantly, pushed up by excessive gas exports.
Key points:
$125 billion in LNG has been sold out of Queensland over the last ten years, by companies that reported $330 billion in total Australian revenue to the ATO.
The only company involved in Queensland LNG exports to have paid tax in the last ten years is Australia’s Origin Energy, which paid a total of $966 million, not all of which relates to LNG.
None of the foreign-owned companies involved have paid company tax on Queensland LNG exports.
“The gas industry’s annual conference is in Brisbane this week and they will be at pains to avoid talking about tax,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute.
“None of the foreign-owned giant gas corporations like ConocoPhillips or Total, that export gas out of Queensland, have paid a cent in company tax.
“The burning of gas and other fossil fuels is driving disasters like the floods in NSW.
“Gas companies are cashing in while Australian communities are picking up the costs.
A new report purports to provide a roadmap for accountability at the Oregon Department of Transportation. In short, its a work of conflicted consultants, with a long history of cost overruns and excessive spending, offering slightly recycled versions of measures that have failed to control costs for the past decade.
Oregon’s highway department has a problem with chronic cost overruns. The report from AtkinsRéalis-Horrocks purports to address this problem, but actually offers more the same. These consultants have failed to clearly diagnose the underlying problem, have significant conflicts of interest, have their own long history of cost overruns and excessive spending, and are offering slightly recycled versions of measures that have failed to control costs for the past decade.
The authors of the management review—two senior sales executives at consulting firms hoping to expand in Oregon—have conflicts of interest that are not disclosed or addressed.
In their time working in the Utah and Colorado, their respective state highway departments racked up massive cost overruns on major highway projects (Utah), and were found to have spent excessively on consultants and violated state laws regarding contract bidding (Colorado).
While Australia’s electoral institutions are among the best in the world – like an independent electoral commission, Saturday voting, full preferential voting and compulsory voting – they are not perfect.
Lies in advertising and text spamming are among six key problems identified by The Australia Institute from the campaign, which suggests reforms to fix these areas of concern to safeguard Australia’s democracy.
A poll of 1500 voters was conducted by YouGov in the final week of the election campaign, asking Australians whether they’d seen misleading advertisements.
On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Angus Blackman discuss Trump’s false claims about ‘white genocide’, the administration’s war on Harvard University, Kamala Harris on the Goldie, and whether Anthony Albanese’s talk about “progressive patriotism” will be backed up with real action.
This discussion was recorded on Monday 26 May 2025 and things may have changed since recording.
Order After America: Australia and the new world order or become a foundation subscriber to Vantage Point at australiainstitute.org.au/store.
Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis
Host: Angus Blackman, Producer, the Australia Institute // @AngusRB
I have been very overdue in telling readers my plans in greater detail. I was going to put out this piece laying out what my plans for Notes on the Crises out last Sunday, but alas I got sick more than a week ago and it took me more than a week to recover.
Which, I guess, is a good place to start. I’ve been working on average at least 60 hours a week since the Trump-Musk Payments Crisis started January 31st. Probably closer to 70 hours if I’m honest. I’ve done a lot to manage my health and keep myself sane in this process; what I got sick with was unrelated to how much I have been working. Nevertheless, the reality is this amount of work is unsustainable in general. The past week of being sick is the longest continuous break I’ve taken from work since the second Trump administration started. Sooner or later I will crash if I try to keep up the depth and breadth of coverage I’ve (more or less) sustained on my own. As long as Notes on the Crises is just a name for what Nathan Tankus is writing, it will always be subject to these kinds of hiccups. Which is why I want to grow Notes on the Crises beyond the "Nathan Tankus show".
Trump’s FDA has recommended that going forward, COVID-19 vaccines be approved only for the elderly and so-called “vulnerable”. Those who are “healthy,” meanwhile, will not qualify for updated shots without new clinical trials to demonstrate durable efficacy at reducing infections, something that new shots may not show. Nonetheless, reducing risk of hospitalization and death is worthwhile- as is reducing the risk of Long COVID, something that those in power rarely acknowledge.
Complicating matters, the shots we refer to as boosters are in fact updated shots that reflect ongoing mutations to the virus. Vaccine makers work to match each fall’s new shots to circulating variants; the closer the strain in the vaccination to the circulating COVID variant genetically, the more effective it will be.
The Gauntlet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
In 1999, the then state-owned Servicio Postal Mexicano issued a postage stamp celebrating sixty-five years in Mexico of the development bank Nacional Financiera (Nafin).
Everybody’s Home has written to every newly elected Member of Parliament, urging them to make housing affordability a top priority in the next term of government.
The national housing campaign provided each MP with a detailed housing snapshot of their electorate, highlighting the scale of the crisis facing their local communities.
The data reveals alarming rates of homelessness, social housing shortfalls, and rising rental and mortgage stress in the very seats that flipped in this year’s federal election.
The electorate-level housing snapshots reveal:
Rents in many electorates are hundreds of dollars above the national average
Social housing waitlists stretch beyond a decade
Large portions of the electorate are in severe financial stress
Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize said: “Voters sent a clear message this election: they want real action on housing. This starts with MPs listening to what is happening in their own communities. We’ve given newly elected MPs a clear picture of what the housing crisis looks like on their doorstep and what needs to be done to fix it.
“New MPs have a responsibility to the people who elected them. These seats didn’t change by accident, people are demanding solutions to cost-of-living pressures, and housing is at the centre of it.
The State of the Housing System 2025 report is a sobering and necessary reminder to urgently invest in social housing and reform tax settings that fuel inequality, national housing campaign Everybody’s Home says.
The report, published today by the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC), found Australia’s housing system is failing to deliver secure, affordable homes.
Rental stress is at record highs, social housing is falling short of demand and access to a safe and affordable home is out of reach for many.
Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azizie said: “This report echoes what Australians are feeling every day: the housing system is in crisis. The message is clear – we’re not building enough social housing and the tax system is stacked in favour of investors over people looking for a place to live.
“Australia is facing a severe housing crisis which demands immediate government action. This report is a stark wake up call and sends a clear message to all governments: they must find ways to build more social housing.
“The Council has recognised the need to build more social housing and grow it to 10 percent of all homes. This is something that Everybody’s Home has been saying for years – Australia’s housing stock is woefully inadequate to meet the needs of people right across the country.
On this episode, Adelaide Writers Week director Louise Adler joins Paul Barclay to talk about the biggest challenges facing the arts sector, including higher costs and prices, greater reliance on philanthropy and greater vulnerability to political controversies.
This discussion was recorded on Monday 3 February 2025, and things may have changed since the recording.
In 1999, the then state-owned Servicio Postal Mexicano issued a postage stamp celebrating sixty-five years in Mexico of the development bank Nacional Financiera (Nafin).
