On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Alice Grundy discuss Trump’s empire pantomime, the devastating California fires and the death of Jimmy Carter.
This discussion was recorded on Monday 13 January 2025 and things may have changed since recording.
Conservatives interested in higher education reform have spun their wheels for decades. They have demanded free speech, stopping racial preferences, abolishing DEI offices, and ending tenure in the hope of getting universities to appreciate Western civilization. While conservative causes are noble, the mismatch between means and ends predestined its reforms to failure.
Opportunities to reform universities are coming. But conservatives must be willing to take the time to understand how universities work and how to use the levers of power within the academic system to their advantage.
As I show in a new report on the University of Wyoming, one such lever available to conservatives is program review.
Program review, which all accreditors endorse, involves identifying academic programs that lose money or do not fit a school’s mission. Even tenured faculty can be released if their programs do not survive review.
In less than 20 years, the average student loan debt for people in their 20s has more than doubled.
Over the last four decades, the price of tertiary education has risen faster than the price of other everyday items. Today Australia collects far more from student debt repayments than it does from the gas industry through the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT)—a fact that reveals the priorities of the multiple governments since 1989, when university course fees were introduced.
The HECS-HELP System
For domestic undergraduates, university fees are covered partially by a government subsidy. The remainder, for which the student is liable, is known as a “student contribution”, and is usually funded through a HECS-HELP loan. Student contributions are government-regulated through a price cap known as the “maximum student contribution amount”.
The repayments on a HECS-HELP debt are deducted once a debtor’s income reaches $54,435. The government has announced plans to raise this threshold. Debts are subject to indexation each year, which is interest charged at the rate of inflation or wage growth, whichever is lower.
On this Summer Book Club episode of Follow the Money, Bri Lee, the award-winning author of Eggshell Skull, Beauty and Who Gets to be Smart, joins us to discuss The Work, a stunning story of art, power, love and money.
This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 7 May 2024 and things may have changed since recording.
1800RESPECT is the national domestic, family and sexual violence counselling, information and support service. Call 1800 737 732, text 0458 737 732, chat online or video call via their website.
In the 1920s, Joseph Stalin coined the term “American Exceptionalism.” He called it the “heresy of American exceptionalism.” In his Marxist religion, the class struggle outlined in the words of the prophet Marx were gospel. To suggest that the universal history described in Marx’s works somehow didn’t apply to America was therefore a heresy.
This story comes to mind as leftists, in the wake of the election, take to re-evaluating the prudence of wokeness. Their assessment seems to be that overemphasizing sexuality, and to a lesser extent race, was a mistake not because it offended America’s egalitarian sensibilities, but because it distracted from the really urgent inequalities: those of the class struggle.
If one was paying attention, one saw this line of criticism emerge in response to the New York Times’s 1619 Project. Many of the earliest and most influential critiques of the Project were published on a Socialist website. One of the main critics, the distinguished historian Sean Wilentz, is a critic of exceptionalism in the Stalinist sense of the term (he published an article “Against Exceptionalism” early in his career).
Discover how hearts and minds are being shifted on climate change in Indonesia and empowering the Islamic community to take climate action through the concept of Green Islam, which merges Islamic principles with climate advocacy.
This presentation is from a session by Elok Faiqutol Mutia at the FWD+Organise 2024 Conference held in Naarm|Melbourne. Elok is a climate campaigner in Indonesia.
Breaking Out of the Echo Chamber
After discovering in a 2019 survey that Indonesia had the highest levels of climate change denialists in the world Elok realised the need to have climate conversations with everyone.
There is the need to break the echo chamber – climate change is not just for academics, activists, and bureaucrats – it belongs to everyone. – Elok Faiqutol Mutia
Climate and environmental issues were not a top priority for the public because the discourse was limited to activists, academics, and bureaucrats. The public perceived it as an “elite” issue that was less urgent for them.
This is a brief response to Tim Thornton’s recent article for JAPE (94, Summer 2024/2025), ‘Beyond green growth, degrowth, post-growth and growth agnosticism’. I am not intending to go into the arguments he uses in detail but instead to explain the green growth and degrowth positions as I see them. I find his account of it confusing and somewhat misleading — and feel there is a point in setting the record straight.
Learn how to navigate online culture wars and survive social media pile-ons with tips and information from Larah Kennedy, an online community and social media specialist who is General Manager at Quiip.
Larah gave this presentation at FWD+Organise 2024, a conference hosted by Australian Progress in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia.
Social Media Trains Us for Outrage
Humans are motivated by social reward such as praise, recognition, attention or acceptance. We feel socially rewarded when we have our opinions validated, receive a strong reaction to something we’ve said or get a sense of belonging/identity from feeling like we are part of a group. We are particularly sensitive to social reward when it comes to expressions of outrage.
Social media algorithms amplify content that sparks outrage, because they are programmed to facilitate social reward. So not only are we motivated by interactions that result in social reward, but we are also more likely to see it across social media platforms.
In recent years, insurance costs facing Australian households have surged much faster than inflation, driven by a string of natural disasters, like the 2022 floods in northern New South Wales.
Natural disasters are leaving vulnerable areas virtually uninsurable – or making insurance coverage unaffordable.
Global ratings agency, Moody’s, has found that global insured losses from natural disasters have averaged about US $100 billion over the past five years. FitchRatings reports that insured natural catastrophe costs were “47% above the 20-year average” in the first half of 2023.
The Insurance Council of Australia’s Catastrophe Resilience Report 2022-23 concludes that “global events have cost impacts in Australia, too. The impact of Hurricane Ian in Florida made last year the third-costliest hurricane season on record, contributing to global pressures in the reinsurance market.”
On November 5, the American people delivered President-elect Trump a historic mandate to advance the agenda he championed on the campaign trail. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, several Republican senators have already turned the cabinet confirmation process into their own personal vanity project. Even before the process has officially commenced, they have signaled that they may resist confirming, or outright vote against, some of Trump’s nominees. Republicans in that camp would do well to remember—for the good of the country and their own political future—that the electoral mandate was given specifically to President-elect Trump, not the Republican Party as a whole.
Trump far outpaced many Senate Republican candidates on Election Day. He won all five swing states with concurrent Senate races, yet the Republican Senate candidate won in just one of them—Pennsylvania—and by mere thousands of votes despite Trump winning by over 100,000. In the other four swing states—Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan—all four Republican candidates came up short.
Whether a president-elect squeaks out a marginal Electoral College victory while losing the popular vote, achieves a Nixon/Reagan-esque landslide, or winds up somewhere in between as most do, a president has the absolute right, and even obligation, to follow through on as many campaign promises as possible. But for those who believe margins and public perception matter, President-elect Trump’s victory was an undeniable landslide given the current state of the electoral map.
Australia needs better ways of storing renewable electricity for later. That’s where ‘flow batteries’ can help Maria Skyllas-Kazacos As more and more solar and wind…
Reports released by two House committees in December shine a harsh light on the deceptions and oppressive tactics utilized by numerous federal agencies, the Intelligence Community, and leaders of the Democratic Party. During the last year of the first Trump Administration, agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), State Department, and Justice Department (DOJ) initiated improper contacts with media in an effort to censor conservative views. These agencies also took steps to interfere in the 2020 election to benefit Joe Biden.
CEO of Meta (Facebook, Instagram) Mark Zuckerberg, well known human being from earth, has announced that hate speech against LGBTQ+ people is totally fine on the massive social media platforms he owns!
During his 26 years in parliament, Pyne was a master at obfuscation. He would deploy it with charm, but one of his main strengths, at least for his political allies, was muddying the waters. Give someone a line, repeat it with confidence and before you knew it, the conversation was over what Pyne actually meant, rather than the policy itself.
Here’s a classic example:
But freed from the shackles of politics, and more obviously in the business of lobbying, Pyne is now free to pull back the curtain and gleefully point at the distractions behind it.
In his column, written at a time when most people are still attempting to shut out politics and enjoy life, Pyne spells out what he considers the genius of Peter Dutton’s nuclear ‘policy’.
Is the H-1B visa a talent visa or an outsourcing visa? Many Americans see it as an outsourcing visa, and for good reason. Until tech Right leaders like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy understand this perspective, their attempts to bring in more foreign labor via the existing H-1B program will face increasing opposition.
“Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.” Back in 2015, this headline made national waves when Disney replaced about 250 tech workers with H-1B holders. Even worse, these workers received no severance unless they trained their foreign replacements.
One employee, Leo Perrero, broke down crying as he testified before the Senate about his experience—especially when he talked about having to explain his firing to his kids. And lest you think that the H-1B is a talent visa, Perrero had to repeatedly explain basic concepts to his foreign replacements.
On Tuesday, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced sweeping changes that he claims will reduce censorship and promote better civic discourse on his social media platforms. If fully enacted, these policy shifts across the Meta family of companies would mark a significant departure from the organization’s practices since 2016.
While Zuckerberg’s apparent desire to halt overt information warfare against conservatives is a positive step, we should remain cautious in interpreting this move as a principled stand in favor of respecting constitutional and natural rights. It is far more likely that he is acting out of pragmatism rather than principle, sensing what he has to do given Trump’s victory and the Right’s ascending fortunes.
In the current cultural moment, the woke movement is in decline, and a conservative political ethos is on the rise. X is no longer dominated by progressives. Fortune 500 companies are dismantling Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, properly seeing them as liabilities. Despite the media casting Donald Trump and his supporters as extremists, he is set to begin a second presidential term this month with more popular support than he’s ever had. Within the military, pages promoting the LGBTQ agenda are being taken offline. As these shifts continue, expect to see a societal domino effect where leftism loses mainstream legitimacy and counterculture symbols return to their original fringe status.
Greg and guest host Adam Gottschalk discuss the media panic over the falling Aussie dollar, what it means for Greg’s Vegas blackjack losses, and how markets are responding to the incoming Trump administration.
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 9 January 2025 and things may have changed since recording.
Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute and Centre for Future Work // @grogsgamut
Host: Adam Gottschalk, Anne Kantor Fellow, the Australia Institute // @adamchalksitup
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.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said, “The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times.” International law enshrines medical facilities as sanctuaries for those in direst need but as Dr. Rupa Marya tells host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Israel’s attacks on hospitals amidst the ongoing genocide represent a catastrophic violation of this principle.
In a coalition government, parties make a formal agreement to share power.
In a minority government, the government relies on the ongoing support of crossbenchers.
A hung parliament is where no party or coalition has a majority of seats in the lower house (the House of Representatives)
Power sharing is common
Minority and coalition governments reflect the will of voters, are usually stable and constructive and are commonplace – including the very first Australian Government.
Minority and coalition governments make the conditions under which power is shared particularly visible and accessible. These forms of power-sharing government occur when a government must negotiate with MPs on the “crossbench” between the Government and the Opposition.
Australians have not given one party or coalition a majority of the vote in a federal election since 1975. All Australian states and territories have had minority/coalition governments in the last 20 years, and three have them now. After the last Tasmanian election, then Opposition Leader Rebecca White predicted,
It is very likely that Tasmania will continue to elect minority governments.
Power-sharing parliaments are also common internationally: New Zealand has not had a single-party government since 1994; Canada, Croatia, France, Portugal, Spain, Taiwan and the Nordic
countries, among others, currently have power-sharing governments.
On this Summer Book Club episode of Follow the Money, Lech Blaine joins Ebony Bennett to discuss the rise of Peter Dutton, the evolution of the Liberal Party, and his Quarterly Essay, ‘Bad Cop: Peter Dutton’s Strongman Politics’.
This discussion was recorded on Friday 12 April 2024 and things may have changed since recording.
On this Summer Book Club episode of Follow the Money, climate scientist and author Dr Joëlle Gergis joins The Australia Institute’s Polly Hemming to discuss Australia’s climate policy inertia and the impact of rising temperatures.
This discussion was recorded on Friday 28 June 2024 and things may have changed since recording.
Mining company tax payments make up less than three cents in every dollar of government revenue on average. Over the last decade the mining industry paid $254 billion in tax, while total
government revenue reached almost $6.8 trillion.
The mining industry often conflates tax payments and mining royalties in its public relations materials. Royalties are not a tax; they are essentially a payment for the use of mineral resources that belong to the public. Describing royalties as a tax is like a builder describing the cost of the bricks they use as a tax.
It should also be noted that even if royalties are included, the mining industry’s contribution to Australia’s finances remains relatively small, comprising just 6% of total government revenue.
In 2023–24, Australian governments provided $14.5 billion in subsidies to coal mines, oil and gas operations and major fossil fuel users. This is equal to $27,581 for every minute of every day of the year, more than is spent on the army or the air force.
Economists and scientists have long called for fossil fuel subsidies to be stopped, as have international forums like the International Energy Agency, the G20 and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Examples of fossil fuel subsidies
There are a range of different fossil fuel subsidies in Australia. These are provided in different ways—some are direct payments, some involve governments building infrastructure for coal and gas companies, and others take the form of tax breaks.
Direct payments
Examples of payments made to fossil fuel companies include:
Fuck you Facebook. That was the first thought I had when I woke up this morning. Followed by: What ministry is Mark Zuckerberg volunteering to manage for the dictators of the world? All I could think of is how Orwell's Ministry of Love is about hate. So what are we creating here? The Ministry of Empowerment to ensure the oppression of the most vulnerable? Lovely. But maybe you, dear reader, have a better Ministry name for their new organizational identity?
Billie Sweeney is a trans journalist who was an editor for the New York Times until last year. Here, she recalls the losing battle for the soul of the paper of record.
Over the last 40 years, it has become increasingly clear that having open, unsecured borders is at odds with the interests of the American people. Our porous southern border has led to alarming surges in disease, illegal drugs, and human trafficking. Mass immigration has contributed to a growing housing crisis, while new job creation is being disproportionately soaked up by migrants at the expense of native-born Americans.
The most recent conflict over immigration, which erupted over the Christmas holiday, concerns the last point: how many foreign workers should we allow to displace American workers?
Join me tonight on my YouTube channel for a live Q&A at 4pm PT / 7pm ET. I will pull questions from the comments of this post, my X, and live on YouTube. We will discuss entering the second era of Trump. To post your questions here, you must be a paid subscriber to my Substack. Please attempt to keep your questions direct and relatively brief, as I cannot read entire paragraphs during the show.
After years of courtroom battles and federal investigations, the Sheriff’s Deputy who assaulted Emmett Brock and his coworkers who helped cover up the assault face some measure of justice.
As I was picking up my car from the mechanic last week, the maskless man ringing me up from behind the plexiglass gestured to my mask and asked a by-now familiar question: “Are you sick or trying not to get sick?” He said it with kind curiosity, with none of the ridicule or hostility that so often meets people “still” wearing masks in public. I happily replied that I was trying not to get sick.
He then shared the following information with me: others at the shop had been pressuring him to remove the plexiglass barrier that barely separated him from the customers, but he refused. A friend of his this year died of “it”; the mechanics at the shop are constantly out sick with “it”; and one mechanic lost his leg due to a blood clot after being intubated for three months with “it.” Not once was the word “Covid” mentioned, but we both knew what we were talking about. It had ravaged people he knew, and he wasn’t willing to get rid of the last protective barrier that separated him from the customers who come in sick all the time. In his own way, he insisted on continuing to acknowledge the pandemic by protecting himself the best way he knew how.
