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Notes on the Crises pivoted on February 1st into around the clock coverage of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025. Today is Day Twenty Seven

In removing General Charles Q. Brown, Jr. as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Trump made a necessary and long-overdue correction to a military leadership corps that has lost its way. For too long, the Pentagon has been governed by leaders more concerned with bureaucratic politics and ideological conformity than with the timeless requirements of combat: discipline, cohesion, and lethality.

America’s military is not merely a collection of well-equipped components—it is an institution forged by a distinct moral and martial tradition. Its strength has always come from a warrior ethos that prizes courage, merit, and excellence. Yet over the last two decades, that ethos has been eroded by a leadership class that increasingly serves the managerial regime rather than the nation it was sworn to protect.

In many ways, General Brown exemplified this decline.

His removal is not just about replacing one man—it is about reclaiming the military from an ideological project that has subordinated warfighting to the dictates of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Uniformed military officers have been active agents in this ideological capture, so it is only fitting to ensure accountability for this class of leaders.

“When Germany sneezes, Europe catches a cold” We’re in the grip of a worldwide inequality crisis and growth in support for the far right. The two are inextricably linked and share common features – which means there’s a lot we should learn from this week’s elections in Germany.  The election saw a historic rise in […]

The post Five Things Equality Activists Can Learn from the German Election appeared first on Equality Trust.

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.

Family Policy | Cincinnatus Series Ep. 4

It’s long past time to rein in the field of public administration, which supplies the bureaucrats who populate the administrative state. About 12,000 U.S. students a year graduate in the field, mainly at the master’s level through the Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree. About half of all MPA graduates end up in government, mostly at the state (25%) and local (15%) levels, but some (about 10%) at the federal level. This means that about 1,200 public administration graduates enter the federal bureaucracy every year, presumably in leadership and management-track roles.

Christi Grimm, a former inspector general in the Department of Health and Human Services, is one such MPA holder who did damage from the federal bureaucracy. Grimm issued a panicked report on COVID in its early days that President Trump viewed as an attempt to undermine his handling of the crisis (she has since sued for reinstatement after being fired shortly after Trump’s second inauguration). Another is Karen Chen, a senior analyst on environmental issues in the Government Accountability Office, who previously worked for Michael Bloomberg’s net-zero initiative for local governments that sought to counter policies of the first Trump Administration.

Salmon are dying in the pens of commercial farms and their rotting remains have been washing up along Tasmania’s beaches for the past week.

The foreign-owned salmon industry must come clean about the scale of this disaster and ensure Australians that not a single diseased fish is processed for sale.

The industry must ensure diseased fish do not end up on Australian supermarket shelves or dinner plates.

“Hundreds of thousands of salmon are continuing to die,” said Eloise Carr, Director of The Australia Institute Tasmania.

“The regulation of this industry is completely inadequate, so we don’t know much. But it looks like the dead fish are being extracted too slowly from pens that are still full of other fish. You can see the carcasses rotting and falling apart.

“Tasmanians are rightfully starting to ask what is being done to protect the health of consumers in all this?

“The salmon industry claims it gets more scrutiny than on-land agriculture. When there is a breakout of avian flu on land, the entire chicken flock is euthanised. In salmon pens, it appears the dead and live salmon are in the same pen. The dead ones are taken to the tip. What happens to the live ones?

“The Environment Protection Authority has not provided an update about this disease for a week now. Australians deserve better. Is this bacteria transferable or harmful to humans?”

At Per Capita’s February John Cain Lunch, Think Forward’s Thomas Walker spoke about the “Tax Wealth Not Work” campaign, and Per Capita’s Emma Dawson spoke about the upcoming Community Tax Summit. Watch the recording below.

All our lives, we’ve been told that hard work leads to economic security and a good life. For many younger Australians, particularly those without family wealth, this now feels like a lie.

Younger workers face higher tax rates than millionaires, property investors, or wealthy retirees because our tax system rewards the wrong things – accumulation, speculation and rent-seeking.

Instead of being able to set up their lives, young people are loaded up with increased education and housing debt, or stuck paying unaffordable rents to grow the wealth of others, all while real wages decline.

There is broad agreement among economists, social security experts, business leaders and the community sector that Australia’s tax and transfer system needs structural reform: to lift productivity, realise the benefits of a net zero economy, fund the essential social services and infrastructure upon which we all rely, and reduce inequality within and between generations

Yet we are told repeatedly that the restructure needed is “too politically difficult” to be attempted. We cannot continue this way. Our children and grandchildren deserve better.

To prevent national security failures and mitigate them when they occur, the U.S. has built a national security state unlike anything humanity has ever seen. The U.S. government has a network of security intelligence and operations agencies that spans the world, working through a web of domestic and foreign governmental, nonprofit, and corporate institutions.

We outsiders think this network runs through the CIA. Yet as we are learning, thanks to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), that is only partly true. In 2023, while the Intelligence Community, including the CIA, was appropriated $71.7 billion dollars, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an “independent” but supposedly State Department-guided agency, received about $40 billion. While USAID has the word “International” in its name, it has spent a lot of money not only spreading atheism in Nepal but also on woke dogma and censorship at home.

The renewable energy transition is one of the most urgent questions facing national governments, international governance, and political economy scholarship and practice today. As extreme weather and climate events have continued to increase exponentially, temperatures rise to new records, and Antarctic glacial loss accelerates, this question is becoming even more urgent, just as global political will wanes. There has been some progress towards the transition to renewable energy in the last decade, but these efforts are still far too slow in general, and even when measured against the conservative pledges of the Climate Conference COP28.

New polling in key federal electorates reveals voters strongly prefer spending on affordable homes over investor tax breaks like negative gearing, by a ratio of 2.5 to 1.

Commissioned by Everybody’s Home, uComms polled more than 2,500 voters across Bennelong (NSW), Brisbane (Qld), Cowan (WA) and Kooyong (Vic), in February, highlighting a strong disconnect between voter priorities and political solutions to the housing crisis.

 The poll shows:

Wealth inequality in Australia has dramatically worsened over the past 20 years, mainly being driven by investment properties (excluding the family home).

The richest 10% have seen their property assets grow by an average of $2.2 million per household over the last two decades.

Wealth is being taxed more generously than income, with $100 billion of tax concessions going to the three biggest assets: other property, superannuation, and the family home.

Key points:

• ‘Other’ property is the most concentrated with half of their increase over the last 20 years going to the richest 10%. This was worth $900,000 per household.
• The poorest half of Australian households got just 7% of the benefit ($24,000 over 20 years).
• Superannuation was the second fastest growing of the three major assets, with 37% of the last 20 years growth going to the richest 10%. The bottom half received 15%.
• Huge tax concessions worth $100 billion per year are going to the three major assets. These concessions reduce taxes on wealth and add to wealth inequality.
• Investment properties benefit from negative gearing and the CGT discount, with 73% of their benefit going to the top 10% of income earners.
• Cracking down on these tax concessions would reduce wealth inequality.

Research from The Australia Institute shows closing tax loopholes on wealth will make housing more affordable and reduce wealth inequality.

Introduction

Training resources about conflict for changemakers including workshop exercises, activities and templates to explore in a group setting.

This is a live list. If you have a resource to add please let us know.

Training and Planning Resources

Exercises and Activities

Analysis / Understanding Conflict

Understanding Conflict, NEON, see pg 40
This tool will help you understand what conflict looks like now in your organisation and what you would like it to look like. This tool is adapted from this guide from the Centre for Community Organizations – adapted from Dismantling Racism Works, and can be done individually or in collaboration with other members of your team.
Time: 1-2 hours as a self-reflection exercise or as a group.

• Plummeting royalties: Last year NWS royalties made up just 1.3% of WA’s budget revenue. However, the gas fields subject to royalties are depleting and being replaced by non-royalty paying fields. By 2027-28, WA Treasury expects NWS royalties to drop by almost two-thirds, making up just 0.6% of WA government revenue, around one-sixth the amount paid WA motorists in vehicle registration fees. Research.
• Threat to WA domestic gas reserves: Woodside’s offshore gas fields are depleting rapidly, and it has not identified sufficient gas to fill its enormous export capacity, equivalent to more than double WA’s entire domestic gas use. Woodside is proposing it become a third-party tolling export facility for the next 46 years, able to buy gas from the domestic gas market. This is unprecedented in Australia. All previous LNG projects have included gas fields sufficient (at least in theory) to feed their exports. Research.
• NWS export of domestic gas has already tripled WA’s wholesale Gas and electricity prices: The WA government’s approval of exports of the state’s onshore domestic gas reserves from Waitsia in 2020 has exposed Western Australians to high global prices, leading to a tripling of wholesale prices in WA’s domestic gas and electricity markets.