Thursday 13 December 2018
Centrelink's 'robodebt' headed to the Australian Federal Court?
9 News, 10 December 2018:
Centrelink’s robo-debt
recovery scheme was intended to seek out and destroy debts, but instead it’s
thrown more than 200,000 Australians into financial turmoil.
Now, Victoria’s former
head prosecutor, QC Gavin Silbert, is lending his voice and fighting back
against the controversial system which aims to claw back up to $4.5 billion in
welfare overpayments.
“I think it’s illegal
and I think it’s scandalous. In any other situation, you’d call it theft. I
think they’re bullying very vulnerable people,” Mr Silbert told A Current
Affair.
“If debts are owed to
the public purse they should be paid, they should be pursued. These are not
such debts,” he said.
He’s teamed up with
Melbourne-based solicitor Jeremy King to take a pro bono case to the Federal
Court which, if successful, could derail the robo-debt scheme and see thousands
of debts wiped.
“I hope this would set a
precedent to show that the way this robo-debt scheme had been rolled out is not
in accordance with the law and all of the other debts that have been sent out
to people are not in accordance with the law,” Mr King said....
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
2 December 2018:
Gavin Silbert, QC, who
retired as the state's chief crown prosecutor in March, has accused the
Department of Human Services of ignoring its legal obligations and acting like
a bully towards some of the nation's most vulnerable people.
A potential legal
challenge could have significant implications for future enforcement of the
robo-debt program, which aims to claw back up to $4.5 billion in welfare
overpayments with more than 1.5 million "compliance interventions".
Mr Silbert became embroiled
in the dispute when someone he knew was issued with a demand to repay a debt of
$10,230.97, which the department claimed was overpaid by Centrelink between
2010 and 2013.
He has provided pro bono
advice and helped prepare correspondence to the department, which repeatedly
asked for an explanation on how the debt was calculated.
However, the
department's compliance branch has ignored nine letters between May and
November 2018 that requested additional information. Last week, it made threats
to impose interest charges on the original debt.
"Other than the
bald assertion that I have a debt, I have never received any details of how the
debt is alleged to have arisen or anything which would enable me to verify or
understand the demand made of me," Mr Silbert's client wrote on June 7.
In another letter, Mr
Silbert's client wrote: "There is not a court in the country that will
uphold your demands for interest in the absence of fundamental details of how
the amount is alleged to have arisen."
The dispute escalated
further when the department engaged debt collection agency Dun &
Bradstreet, which threatened Mr Silbert's client with a "departure
prohibition order" that would prevent him travelling overseas.
Mr Silbert is keen to
launch Federal Court action to test the legal basis of the robo-debt program
and the government's apparent unwillingness to provide particulars.
"I'm itching to get
this before a court," he told Fairfax Media.
He said legislation that
regulates data-matching technology requires the department to "give
particulars of the information and the proposed action" before it can
recover overpayments.
The robo-debt program,
introduced by the Coalition government, calculates a former welfare recipient's
debt by taking a fortnightly average rather than discovering the exact amount
that was claimed.
The department was
forced to concede it was no longer in possession of the original claims made to
Centrelink by Mr Silbert's friend, after he made requests under
freedom-of-information laws.
Labels:
#notmydebt,
Centrelink,
law,
welfare payments
Wednesday 12 December 2018
Are Prime Minister Morrison & Co determined to reduce Australia to a hot, barren desert from sea to sea?
Human
activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming
above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global
warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to
increase at the current rate. (high confidence) (Figure SPM.1) {1.2} [United Nations (2018) Global Warming of 1.5°C. Summary
for Policymakers]
United Nations, Sustainable Development, 8 October 2018:
The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC was
approved by the IPCC on Saturday in Incheon, Republic of Korea. It will be a
key scientific input into the Katowice
Climate Change Conference in Poland in December, when governments
review the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change.
“With more than 6,000
scientific references cited and the dedicated contribution of thousands of
expert and government reviewers worldwide, this important report testifies to
the breadth and policy relevance of the IPCC,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the
IPCC.
Ninety-one authors and
review editors from 40 countries prepared the IPCC report in response to an
invitation from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) when it adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015.
The report’s full name
is Global Warming of 1.5°C, an IPCC special report on the impacts of
global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global
greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global
response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts
to eradicate poverty.
“One of the key messages
that comes out very strongly from this report is that we are already seeing the
consequences of 1°C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea
levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice, among other changes,” said Panmao Zhai,
Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group I.
Limiting global
warming
The report highlights a
number of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global
warming to 1.5ºC compared to 2ºC, or more. For instance, by 2100, global sea
level rise would be 10 cm lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared with 2°C.
The likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once
per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared with at least once per
decade with 2°C. Coral reefs would decline by 70-90 percent with global warming
of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2ºC.
“Every extra bit of
warming matters, especially since warming of 1.5ºC or higher increases the risk
associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some
ecosystems,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II.
Limiting global warming
would also give people and ecosystems more room to adapt and remain below
relevant risk thresholds, added Pörtner. The report also examines pathways
available to limit warming to 1.5ºC, what it would take to achieve them and what
the consequences could be.
“The good news is that
some of the kinds of actions that would be needed to limit global warming to
1.5ºC are already underway around the world, but they would need to
accelerate,” said Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Co-Chair of Working Group I.
The report finds that
limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching”
transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global
net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about
45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This
means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from
the air.
“Limiting warming to
1.5ºC is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would
require unprecedented changes,” said Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group
III.
Allowing the global
temperature to temporarily exceed or ‘overshoot’ 1.5ºC would mean a greater
reliance on techniques that remove CO2 from the air to return global
temperature to below 1.5ºC by 2100. The effectiveness of such techniques are
unproven at large scale and some may carry significant risks for sustainable
development, the report notes.
“Limiting global warming
to 1.5°C compared with 2°C would reduce challenging impacts on ecosystems,
human health and well-being, making it easier to achieve the United Nations
Sustainable Development Goals,” said Priyardarshi Shukla, Co-Chair of IPCC
Working Group III.
The decisions we make
today are critical in ensuring a safe and sustainable world for everyone, both
now and in the future, said Debra Roberts, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II.
“This report gives
policymakers and practitioners the information they need to make decisions that
tackle climate change while considering local context and people’s needs. The
next few years are probably the most important in our history,” she said.
The
Denver Post,
8 December 2018:
Global emissions of
carbon dioxide have reached the highest levels on record, scientists projected
Wednesday, in the latest evidence of the chasm between international goals for
combating climate change and what countries are actually doing.
Between 2014 and 2016,
emissions remained largely flat, leading to hopes that the world was beginning
to turn a corner. Those hopes have been dashed. In 2017, global emissions grew
1.6 percent. The rise in 2018 is projected to be 2.7 percent.
The expected increase,
which would bring fossil fuel and industrial emissions to a record high of 37.1
billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, is being driven by nearly 5 percent
emissions growth in China and more than 6 percent in India, researchers
estimated, along with growth in many other nations throughout the world.
Emissions by the United States grew 2.5 percent, while emissions by the
European Union declined by just under 1 percent.
As nations are gathered
for climate talks in Poland, the message of Wednesday’s report was unambiguous:
When it comes to promises to begin cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that
fuel climate change, the world remains well off target.
“We are in trouble. We
are in deep trouble with climate change,” United Nations Secretary General
António Guterres said this week at the opening of the 24th annual U.N. climate
conference, where countries will wrestle with the ambitious goals they need to
meet to sharply reduce carbon emissions in coming years.
“It is hard to overstate
the urgency of our situation,” he added. “Even as we witness devastating
climate impacts causing havoc across the world, we are still not doing enough,
nor moving fast enough, to prevent irreversible and catastrophic climate disruption.”
Guterres was not
commenting specifically on Wednesday’s findings, which were released in a trio
of scientific papers by researchers with the Global Carbon Project. But his
words came amid a litany of grim news in the fall in which scientists have warned
that the effects of climate change are no longer distant and hypothetical, and
that the impacts of global warming will only intensify in the absence of
aggressive international action.....
When
hard-right, anti-science, fundamentalist ideology in Australia descends into
madness………….
The
Guardian, 10
December 2018:
As four of the
world’s largest oil and gas producers blocked UN climate talks from “welcoming”
a key scientific report on global warming, Australia’s silence during a key
debate is being viewed as tacit support for the four oil allies: the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia
and Kuwait.
The end of the first week
of the UN climate talks – known as COP24 – in Katowice, Poland, has been mired by
protracted debate over whether the conference should “welcome” or “note” a key
report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The IPCC’s 1.5 degrees
report, released in October, warned the world would have to cut greenhouse gas
emissions by about 45% by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5C and potentially
avoid some of the worst effects of climate change, including a dramatically
increased risk of drought, flood, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of
millions of people.
The UN climate
conference commissioned the IPCC report, but when that body went to “welcome”
the report’s findings and commit to continuing its work, four nations – the US,
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia,
all major oil and gas producers – refused to accept the wording, insisting
instead that the convention simply “note” the findings.
Negotiators spent two
and a half hours trying to hammer out a compromise without success.
The apparently minor
semantic debate has significant consequences, and the deadlock ensures the
debate will spill into the second critical week of negotiations, with key
government ministers set to arrive in Katowice.
Most of the world’s
countries spoke out in fierce opposition to the oil allies’ position.
The push to adopt the
wording “welcome” was led by the Maldives, leader of the alliance of small
island states, of which Australia’s Pacific island neighbours are members.
They were backed by a
broad swathe of support, including from the EU, the bloc of 47 least developed
countries, the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean,
African, American and European nations, and Pacific countries such as the Marshall
Islands and Tuvalu.
Australia did not speak
during the at-times heated debate, a silence noted by many countries on the
floor of the conference, Dr Bill Hare, the managing director of Climate
Analytics and a lead author on previous IPCC reports, told Guardian Australia.
“Australia’s silence in
the face of this attack yesterday shocked many countries and is widely seen as
de facto support for the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait’s refusal to
welcome the IPCC report,” Hare said…..
Australia’s environment
minister, Melissa Price, arrived in Katowice on Sunday, with negotiations set
to resume Monday morning.
“The government is committed to the Paris
agreement and our emissions reduction targets,” she said before leaving
Australia. “Australia’s participation in the Paris agreement and in COP24 is in
our national interest, in the interests of the Indo-Pacific region, and the
international community as a whole.”
Price said a priority
for Australia at COP24 was to ensure a robust framework of rules to govern the
reporting of Paris agreement targets. “Australia’s emissions reporting is of an
exceptionally high standard and we are advocating for rules that bring other
countries up to the standard to which we adhere.”
The latest
Australian government
figures, released last month, show the country’s carbon
emissions continue to rise, at a rate significantly higher than recent
years.
Australia’s emissions,
seasonally adjusted, increased 1.3% over the past quarter. Excluding emissions
from land use, land use change and forestry (for which the calculations are
controversial), they are at a record high..... [my yellow highlighting]
Greenhouse gas emissions in Australia to date.....
The
Guardian, 11
December 2018:
Patrick Suckling (sitting on panel right),
Australia’s ambassador for the environment, waits as protesters disrupt an
event at the COP24 climate change summit in Katowice, Poland. Photograph:
Łukasz Kalinowski/Rex/Shutterstock
Australia has reaffirmed
its commitment to coal – and its unwavering support for the United States – by
appearing at a US government-run event promoting the use of fossil fuels at
the United
Nations climate talks in Poland.
Australia was the only
country apart from the host represented at the event, entitled “US innovative
technologies spur economic dynamism”, designed to “showcase ways to use fossil
fuels as cleanly and efficiently as possible, as well as the use of
emission-free nuclear energy”.
Its panel discussion was
disrupted for several minutes by dozens of protesters who stood up suddenly
during speeches, unfurling a banner reading “Keep it in the ground” while
singing and chanting “Shame on you”.
Patrick Suckling,
Australia’s ambassador for the environment, and the head of the country’s
negotiating delegation at the climate talks, spoke on the panel. His nameplate
bore a US flag…..
…Simon Bradshaw, Oxfam
Australia’s climate change policy adviser, said it was “extremely
disappointing” to see Australia line up behind the US in pushing a pro-coal
ideas.
“It is a slap in the
face of our Pacific island neighbours, for whom bringing an end to the fossil
fuel era is matter of survival, and who are working with determination to
catalyse stronger international efforts to confront the climate crisis. And it
is firmly against the wishes of an overwhelming majority of Australians.”
Bradshaw said continuing
to use coal was not only uneconomic, but would “be measured in more lives lost,
entrenched poverty, rising global hunger, and more people displaced from their
land and homes”.
He said the advice of
the IPCC showed emphatically there was no space for new coal and that
Australia’s position on coal was isolating it from the rest of the world.
The Climate Vulnerable
Forum, a group of 48 countries most acutely affected by climate change, has
committed to achieving 100% renewable energy production by the middle of the
century at the latest. Other developed countries, including the UK, France,
Canada and New Zealand, have committed to phasing out coal power by 2030.
Wells Griffith, a Trump
administration adviser speaking alongside Suckling on the panel, said the US
would continue extracting fossil fuels, and warned against “alarmism” about
climate change…… [my yellow highlighting]
Trend emissions levels are inclusive of all sectors of the economy, including Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) |
Reading Quarterly Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: June 2018 [PDF 39 pages] released on 30 November 2018 it is highly unlikely that the Morrison Govenment will be able to meet Australia's commitments under the Paris Agreement.
Australia was closer to meeting Paris Agreement goals in 2013 under a Labor federal government than it is today under a Coalition federal government.
Do you know whose hands have harvested your medical information?
The
Medical Republic,
7 December 2018:
An
investigation by The Medical Republic has revealed state, territory
and federal police forces have sent around 2,600 requests a year for this
sensitive health data to the Department of Human Services over the past two
years. The department can legally disclose private health records to the police
without a court order.
The
department would not reveal how many of these requests were granted, but said
the number of disclosures per year had remained stable over the past decade.
Once
linked, Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and Medicare Benefits Schedule
(MBS) data, can paint a very detailed picture about a person’s medical history.
PBS
data includes every rebatable medication purchased at a chemist. MBS records
show which Medicare item numbers were billed for during each consultation, and
what tests were ordered.
This
information is as sensitive as MHR data, although it lacks the granularity of
laboratory test results or GP notes, which can be included in a MHR. In
November, the federal parliament passed legislation requiring police to produce
a court order to access MHR data.
“This
begs the question as to why similar protections are not being enacted in the
MBS and PBS legislation,” Malcolm Crompton, a former privacy commissioner of
Australia and founder and lead privacy advisor of Information Integrity
Solutions, told The Medical Republic.
The
legislative inconsistency was an “undeniable oddity” especially because most of
the content of a MHR would, at least initially, simply be MBS and PBS data, he
said.
Data
sharing between the Department of Human Services and the police is shrouded in
secrecy, with decisions being made behind closed doors by unnamed officials
using an undisclosed set of public interest guidelines, which were issued by
the secretary of the Department of Health in 2003.
The
human services department has refused to make its 18-page privacy guidelines public
under FOI laws, citing concerns that agencies might use their knowledge of the
guidelines to trick the department.
“Specifically,
with the benefit of having reviewed the document, requestors may construct
their requests in a manner that undermines the department’s procedures (e.g. by
misleading the delegate) in order to secure the disclosure of the requested
information,” an FOI decision maker said…..
The
department eventually provided a single case study for police use of private
health data, four months after initially being asked about the purpose of
disclosing this data, and only after The Medical Republic’s investigation
exposed the scale of police requests.
The
case study describes a scenario where the police are making an enquiry about a
missing person whose safety is in question, and are using MBS and PBS claims
information to determine whether the missing person had seen a doctor, obtained
medications or updated their contact details.
The
Medical Republic contacted each state, territory and federal police force
for this investigation, but only the NT Police confirmed how many times the
department had provided patient information.
The
NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services made an average of 26 requests per year
for private health data, including current contact details, next of kin, MBS or
PBS records.
All
of these requests were successful, and all were made without a court order.
“Requests are not made under court order but rather must satisfy certain
criteria,” Detective Acting Superintendent Peter Kennon said.
“That
is it must be for a missing person or in relation to an offence with a penalty of
two years or more imprisonment or 44 penalty units (about $6,000), and be
in the public interest.”
The
department is obliged to report the number of times it has disclosed
linked PBS and MBS data to law enforcement authorities on an annual basis to
the Office of Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).
The
Medical Republic obtained a copy of the OAIC reports, which showed that the DHS
gave linked MBS and PBS data to police five times in 2016-17, but did not
disclose data given to police in the previous three years.
“Most
of the public interest disclosures the department makes to law enforcement
agencies do not need to be included in our annual reports to the Privacy
Commissioner,” a department spokesperson said.
The
department only has to report the disclosure of “linked” MBS and PBS data to
police. The word “linked” is not defined in the legislative instrument, so in practice, the department
appears able to apply a definition that minimises its reporting obligations.
MBS
and PBS data was only “linked” if the information was “combined, joined or
merged”, a department spokesperson said. “The mere extraction of an
individual’s MBS and PBS claims information into separate documents does not
constitute linking for the purposes of the guidelines, even if those documents
are sent to the same email address,” the spokesperson said.
“The
department seems to be playing with semantics in order to avoid complying with
the intention of the guidelines,” Dr Robertson-Dunn said.
Labels:
Big Brother,
data mining,
data retention
Tuesday 11 December 2018
Just three months out from a state election and the NSW Berejiklian Government decides to introduce a new punative public housing policy guaranteed to upset a good many voters
In
2016 est. 37,715 people in New South Wales were recorded as
homeless on Census Night.
The following year the
NSW Berejiklian Coalition Government had a public
housing stock total of 110,221 dwellings and an est. 60,000 people
on the Dept. of Housing 2017 waiting list.
Below is the state government’s answer to the effects of decreasing
public housing stock and federal Coalition Government cuts to public
housing funding allocations to the states - introduce a new initiative under the 'Opportunity
Pathways' program which will cut the housing waiting list by increasing eligibility restrictions, privatise service delivery to certain categories of public housing applicants and tenants in order to ensure that vulnerable individuals and families are discouraged from seeking housing assistance.
The
Daily Telegraph,
7 December 2018, p.2:
Public housing applicants
will have to get a job if they want a taxpayer-funded home under a tough new
test to be introduced in NSW.
The state government is
overhauling the public housing system by stopping residents who
languish on welfare for decades feeling entitled to a cheap home, paid for by
the taxpayer, for their entire life.
Currently less than a
quarter of social housing tenants are in the workforce. There are
about 55,000 people on the public housing waitlist in NSW, and
under the new program they will be able to skip the queue if they agree to get
a job.
But if they get into the
home then fail to get a job or maintain work they will be booted from the
property.
Once they are secure in
a job they will then move into the private rental market and out of the welfare
system.
Social Housing Minister
Pru Goward said the program will “help break the cycle of disadvantage”.
“This is about equipping
tenants with the skills they need to not only obtain a job, but keep it over
the longer term and achieve their full potential,” she said.
“We also want to set to
a clear expectation that social housing is not for life and, for
those who can work, social housing should be used as a stepping stone to
moving into the private rental market.” The new program will be trialled in
Punchbowl and Towradgi, near Wollongong, for three years across 20 properties.
Its success will be evaluated over this time and it’s likely the program will
be expanded across the state.
Homes will be leased for
six months at a time, with renewal dependent on the resident maintaining their
job or education, such as TAFE, and meeting agreed goals within the plan.
RFT ID FACS.18.30
RFT
Type Expression
of Interest for Specific Contracts
Published 23-Aug-2018
Closes 27-Sep-2018 2:00pm
Agency FACS Central Office
Tender Details
The NSW Department of
Family and Community Services (FACS) is seeking Expressions of Interest (EOI)
from non-government organisatons with the capability to deliver the Opportunity
Pathways program.
Opportunity Pathways is
designed for social housing tenants and their household members, approved
social housing applicants and clients receiving Rent Choice subsidies who
aspire and have the capacity to, with the appropriate support, gain, retain and
increase employment.
The program is voluntary
and uses a person-centred case management approach to provide wrap-around
support and facilitate participant access to services to achieve economic and
housing independence (where appropriate).
The objectives of the
program are to:
assist
participants to gain, retain or increase employment, by accessing supports and
practical assistance, and by participating in education, training and work
opportunities
encourage
and support participants to positively exit social housing or Rent Choice
subsidies to full housing independence, to reduce their reliance on governement
assistance, where appropriate
Please refer to the
Program Guidelines for further details.
Opportunity Pathways
will run for three years and delivered across NSW in those locations where a
need and service gaps are identified.
The program will be
delivered by one or more providers following an EOI and Select Tender.
Location
NSW Regions: Far
North Coast, Mid North Coast, New England, Central Coast, Hunter,
Cumberland/Prospect, Nepean, Northern Sydney, Inner West, South East Sydney,
South West Sydney, Central West, Orana/Far West, Riverina/Murray, Illawarra,
Southern Highlands
Estimated Value
From $0.00 to $36,100,000.00
RFT Type
Expression of Interest
for Specific Contracts - An invitation for Expression of Interest (EOI) for
pre-registration of prospective tenderers for a specific work or service.
Applicants are initially evaluated against published selection criteria, and
those who best meet the required criteria are invited to Tender (as tender type
Pre-Qualified/Invited). [my yellow highlighting]
As of June
2018 in NSW there were 200,564 people registered with Centrelink whose income
was Newstart Allowance and, by September there were only est. 82,400
job vacancies available as the Internet Vacancy Index had been
falling since April 2018. The number of job vacancies were still
falling in October 2018 to 66,000 job vacancies.
Just three months out from a state election and it doesn't appear that the Berejiklian Cabinet or other Liberal and Nationals members of the NSW Parliament have thought this new policy through to its logical conclusion.
Monday 10 December 2018
US President Donald Trump aka "Individual-1" named in relation to presidential election campaign violations & contact with Russian President's office
On 29 November 2018 attorney Michael Cohen plead guilty to charges of tax evasion, making false statements to financial institutions, lying to the US Congress and facilitating illegal campaign contributions totalling US$255,000 in the 2016 US presidential campaign.
His plea agreement can be found here.
US President Donald J. Trump is identified in the US Government's Sentencing Memorandums, the first of which recommenfs that Cohen be gaoled for up to three and a half years.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT
COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
-v.- MICHAEL COHEN: 18 Cr. 602 (WHP)
THE
GOVERNMENT’S SENTENCING MEMORANDUM, filed 7 December 2018, excerpts:
1.
Background
Cohen
is a licensed attorney and has been since 1992. (PSR ¶ 149.) Until 2007, Cohen
practiced as an attorney for multiple law firms, working on, among other
things, negligence and malpractice cases. (PSR ¶¶ 156-157.) For that work,
Cohen earned approximately $75,000 per year. (Id.) In 2007, Cohen seized on an
opportunity. The board of directors of a condominium building in which Cohen
lived was attempting to remove from the building the name of the owner
(“Individual-1”) of a Manhattan-based real estate company (the “Company”). (PSR
¶ 155.) Cohen intervened, secured the backing of the residents of the building,
and was able to remove the entire board of directors, thereby fixing the
problem for Individual-1. (Id.) Not long after, Cohen was hired by the Company
to the position of “Executive Vice President” and “Special Counsel” to
Individual-1. (Id.) He earned approximately $500,000 per year in that position.
(Id.)
In
January 2017, Cohen formally left the Company and began holding himself out as
the “personal attorney” to Individual-1, who at that point had become the
President of the United States…..
4.
Cohen’s Illegal Campaign Contributions
On
approximately June 16, 2015, Individual-1, for whom Cohen worked at the time,
began an ultimately successful campaign for President of the United States.
Cohen had no formal title with the campaign, but had a campaign email address,
and, at various times advised the campaign, including on matters of interest to
the press. Cohen also made media appearances as a surrogate and supporter of
Individual-1. (PSR ¶ 39).
During the campaign, Cohen played a central role in
two similar schemes to purchase the rights to stories – each from women who
claimed to have had an affair with Individual-1 – so as to suppress the stories
and thereby prevent them from influencing the election. With respect to both
payments, Cohen acted with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential
election. Cohen coordinated his actions with one or more members of the
campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature,
and timing of the payments. (PSR ¶ 51). In particular, and as Cohen himself has
now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and
at the direction of Individual-1. (PSR ¶¶ 41, 45). As a result of Cohen’s
actions, neither woman spoke to the press prior to the election. (PSR ¶ 51)…..
First,
Cohen’s commission of two campaign finance crimes on the eve of the 2016
election for President of the United States struck a blow to one of the core
goals of the federal campaign finance laws: transparency. While many Americans
who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at
phone banks, or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices
heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows. He did so by orchestrating
secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made
public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1. In the process,
Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would
have had a substantial effect on the election. It is this type of harm that
Congress sought to prevent when it imposed limits on individual contributions
to candidates. To promote transparency and prevent wealthy individuals like
Cohen from circumventing these limits, Congress prohibited individuals from
making expenditures on behalf of and coordinated with candidates. Cohen clouded
a process that Congress has painstakingly sought to keep transparent. The
sentence imposed should reflect the seriousness of Cohen’s brazen violations of
the election laws and attempt to counter the public cynicism that may arise
when individuals like Cohen act as if the political process belongs to the rich
and powerful…..
in
a secretly recorded meeting Cohen took credit for the payment and assured
Individual-1 that he was “all over” the transaction. And after making the
payment to the second woman, and after Individual-1 was elected President,
Cohen privately bragged to friends and reporters, including in recorded
conversations, that he had made the payment to spare Individual-1 from damaging
press and embarrassment.....
GOVERNMENT’S
SENTENCING MEMORANDUM,
filed 7 December 2018:
The
Special Counsel’s Office (“SCO”) provides this memorandum in connection with
the sentencing of Michael Cohen scheduled for December 12, 2018. On November
29, 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to
Congress, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a). The government does not take a
position with respect to a particular sentence to be imposed but submits that
it is appropriate for any sentence of incarceration to be served concurrently
to any sentence imposed by the Court in United States v. Cohen, 18-cr-602
(WHP).
The
defendant’s crime was serious. He withheld information material to the
investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election
being conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (“SSCI”), the
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”), and the SCO. The
defendant lied to Congress about a business project (the “Moscow Project”) that
he worked on during the 2016 presidential campaign, while he served as
Executive Vice President at a Manhattan-based real estate company (the
“Company”) and as Special Counsel to the owner of the Company (“Individual 1”).
The defendant admitted he told these lies—which he made publicly and in
submissions to Congress—in order to (1) minimize links between the Moscow
Project and Individual 1 and (2) give the false impression that the Moscow
Project had ended before the Iowa caucus and the first presidential primaries, in hopes of
limiting the ongoing Russia investigations being conducted by Congress and the
SCO.....
The
defendant’s false statements obscured the fact that the Moscow Project was a
lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance
of the Russian government. If the project was completed, the Company could have
received hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees
and other revenues. The fact that Cohen continued to work on the project and
discuss it with Individual 1 well into the campaign was material to the ongoing
congressional and SCO investigations, particularly because it occurred at a
time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S.
presidential election. Similarly, it was material that Cohen, during the
campaign, had a substantive telephone call about the project with an assistant
to the press secretary for the President of Russia.....
The
defendant, without prompting by the SCO, also corrected other false and
misleading statements that he had made concerning his outreach to and contacts
with Russian officials during the course of the campaign. For example, in a
radio interview in September 2015, the defendant suggested that Individual 1
meet with the President of Russia in New York City during his visit for the
United Nations General Assembly. When asked previously about these events, the
defendant claimed his public comments had been spontaneous and had not been
discussed within the campaign or the Company. During his proffer sessions, the
defendant admitted that this account was false and that he had in fact
conferred with Individual 1 about contacting the Russian government before
reaching out to gauge Russia’s interest in such a meeting. The meeting
ultimately did not take place…..
Labels:
corruption,
Donald Trump,
US politics,
US-Russia relations
Australia 2018: Is long-term rental destroying the wellbeing of low income households?
Across the nation,
people who rent are living on insecure tenancies. Almost 9 in 10 Australians
who rent (88%) are on leases of a year or less, and are not certain of where
they will be living in a year’s time. This impacts a person’s ability to feel
part of the local community and establish roots.
The
Land, 1 May
2018:
AFFORDABLE rentals on
the state’s North Coast are increasingly few and far between, but the
continued rise of the Airbnb-model now sees 3000-plus homes sit empty
while low-income and government-assisted tenants are shut out.
Anglicare’s latest
Housing Affordability Snapshot says the region’s rental crisis has
worsened as property owners in Ballina, Byron Bay, and the Tweed are
incentivised to target short-term holidaymakers through web-based booking
companies instead of potential long-term renters.
The Anglicare report,
released on Sunday, showed available
North Coast rental properties were in steep decline (down from 795 in
2017 to 660 in 2018) with all family groups on income support, and single
households on minimum wage, likely to struggle to find housing for themselves
and their children.
Clair, A. et al, 24 May 2016, The impact of housing payment problems on health status during economic recession: A comparative analysis of longitudinal EU SILC data of 27 European states, 2008–2010, excerpt:
Transitioning into
housing arrears was associated with a significant deterioration in the health
of renters…..
Housing arrears is one
of the so-called ‘soft’ ways in which housing influences health (Shaw, 2004),
especially mental health, alongside the ‘hard’, physical impacts of the
infrastructure itself, such as damp, mould, and cold. A growing body of
scholarship indicates that people who experience housing insecurity,
independent of other financial difficulties, experience declines in mental health
(Gili et al., 2012, Keene et al., 2015, Meltzer et al., 2013, Meltzer et al., 2011, Nettleton and Burrows, 1998).
In Australia, analysis of the longitudinal HILDA dataset found that those in
lower income households who had moved into unaffordable housing experienced a
worsening in mental health (Bentley, Baker, Mason,
Subramanian, & Kavanagh, 2011), with male renters faring worse (Bentley et al., 2012, Mason et al., 2013).
One has to
wonder if being a long-term renter affects quality of life to such a degree
that on average renters die earlier than
home-owners.
Labels:
Australian society,
cost of living,
health,
housing,
Northern Rivers
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