Barry Obama won't let go of the millions and other stories

President-elect Barack Obama and the Obama for America team raised oodles of money during the protracted 2008 presidential election campaign.
Reportedly Obama had a cool $750 million in donations with which to fund his run for president.
Now the $30 million which was left over is causing some concern - will he sit on it until his bid for a second term or will he allow the Democratic Party to use some of this cash during mid-term elections?
I'm betting Barack finds a novel way to sit on it. The second time around he won't have quite the same electoral charm and the current surplus would allow him to hit the ground running come 2012.

Outgoing president George Dubbya is leaving the White House at the beginning of 2009 for Sleepy Hollow er Preston Hollow in Dallas and that ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The new home "has a market value of just over $2 million, according to property records, was built in 1959 and sits on 1.13 acres. Amenities of the brick house include a wet bar and a fireplace. There is also a cabana, a detached garage and servants’ quarters. The records show that unlike the White House, the couple’s new home does not have a pool."
He's also likely to be buying the house next door for his security detail.
At least the International Criminal Court will know where to find him in future.

Official presidential race loser John McCain is continent hopping this month as he offers his on-the-spot opinion to leaders and officials in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan. 'Bout as useful as.........well you know the saying.

Failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin may be deciding to lower her public profile and manage her PR better now it seems that she may be a contender for the next republican round of presidential nominations in 2012.
Whatever the reason, she appears to be giving talk-show host Oprah Winfrey a wide berth.
Perhaps because that ever growing list of wardrobe and grooming expenses is getting kinda embarrassing.
It's now reached a whopping $180,000 give or take a designer pair of shoes or two.

Joe the Plumber aka Samuel Wurzelbacher ended his part in the US presidential campaign by promising the world a book on his 15 minutes in the spotlight as the typical American and victim of digital spying.
It looks at though this book is delayed and subscribers are a tad unhappy.

Visiting Brisbane? Then put this on your list of things to do. (And it’s free!)

Optimism

Currently showing at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) is ‘Contemporary Australia: Optimism’.

It's the first in a major new national triennial series of thematic contemporary art exhibitions.

The exhibition presents work by more than 60 emerging, mid-career, and senior Indigenous and non-Indigenous contemporary artists from every state and territory.

"As you would expect, many of the works in Optimism are as colourful as a Gold Coast property developer." (Richard Jinman, The Sydney Morning Herald)

Optimism has something for everybody.
Sydney artists Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy combined to produce Not Under My Roof, which is a must-see. In fact, viewers of Optimism cannot miss seeing it. It's in the gallery's main atrium.

Cordeiro and Healy found a Queenslander home in south-west Brisbane, removed everything above the skirting boards, took the wooden floor plate to the gallery and mounted it on the wall.
All nine of the building's rooms are decorated with a different linoleum - together they form a fantastic geometric design - it's both abstract AND a reminder of generations of human life.

Optimism is at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, until February 22.

Credits: Photos taken from the Gallery of Modern Art's Optimism - Media Kit

Australian Senate disappoints the New Guard's heirs and successors

Well the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has published its report into Allegations of academic bias in universities and schools.

The natural successors to former Australian prime minister John Howard's neo-fascist philosophy must be disappointed that they have been listened to and tolerantly dismissed as dummy spitters in the Standing Committee's majority opinion and weakly defended by five Coalition senators in the minority opinion.

This must be particularly galling for Liberal students and Make Australia Fair when the inquiry was dominated by Liberal Party senators whom they would have felt were their natural allies.

Here are a few excerpts:

1.3 Liberal Students' organisations, who appear to have been the main instigators of this inquiry, and some academics who gave evidence, observe that the prevailingideology in the social science and humanities faculties in universities is strongly, if not overwhelmingly, leftist. To the extent this may be true, why would it matter? The issue is whether this has any bearing on teaching and learning, or any effect on theintellectual development of students other than to open their minds to ideas to whichthey should be exposed.

1.7 The committee has had difficulty in dealing with argument that is highly subjective, and where the evidence provided to sustain the argument is either anecdotal or clearly exceptional. In neither their submissions nor their testimony did Student Liberals describe a state of affairs that suggested any significant magnitude of political bias on the part of academic staff. A number of instances were given, which like the case cited above, could give rise to concern, but the committee concludes that these are isolated instances. They do not represent the 'tip of an iceberg'. There is insufficient evidence to draw such a conclusion. Far more evident was a lack of knowledge that students have of grievance processes.

1.8 The committee also notes that such incidences occur at a time when interestand involvement in political activity by university students is generally very low. If a leftist orthodoxy does prevail, most students would either be unaware of it, or put it down to eccentricity on the part of their lecturers. It is perhaps the observation of this prevailing attitude which provokes such anger among the more politically active students on the right, and who see a need to confront the bias they identify.

1.33 First, it has not been demonstrated to the committee's satisfaction that what is being complained about is particularly significant. That is, it appears to concern only a very small proportion of the student population. Of the 69 submissions received, about 28 came from aggrieved university students. Even 50 times that number would have represented a tiny minority of students in humanities, social sciences and other fields of study most prone to this kind of complaint. There are nearly 530 000 full-time undergraduate students currently attending university. If the problem was as common as it is claimed there would be uproar.

1.34 Second, universities have a role in challenging young people who have not previously been exposed to ideas and opinions at odds with those they have grown up with. Part of the discomfort which has been expressed in submissions from undergraduates results from their encounters with tutors or lecturers, or even their fellow students, who may be blunt and forthright in manner as well as message. There can be no effective way of ensuring that a small proportion of undergraduates will not be distressed by some of their encounters with alternative views.

What appears to be high on the list of that which offends right-wing students is any derogatory mention of their god, John Winston Howard:

At my first tutorial in this unit of study the tutor opened her remarks with "well thank God the Howard government is gone".

Oh, the poor little sprogs!

Full PDF text of December 2008 Allegations of academic bias in universities and schools report here.

Windows Error Message #2008

Who's got the power?

Australia at night from a NASA perspective.

Taken from a composite of images called Earth Lights

Compared to the rest of the globe, Australia appears to use a relatively small amount of night lighting.

However, considering that only 21 million plus people can be seen so clearly from space in this way, it seems that Australia is still using far too much electrical power.

Have you turned off the lights yet?

Full Earth image here.

Things really must be crook in Tallarook if Rees and Borger are ripping off pensioners to this degree

The NSW Government budgetary bottom line really must be crook, if Premier Rees and Minister for Housing David Borger are turning a blind eye while Community Housing parts pensioners from a big slice of their meagre Centrelink benefits.
All in the name of propping up the government's own underfunding of the public rental sector.

In October this year I posted news that rent for community housing pensioner tenants living alone might increase by up to $33 minimum a fortnight.
Because according to the NSW Federation of Housing Associations:
"The government rent policy determining how community housing rents are set has changed. Community housing rents for new tenants have risen from July 1. Most of this increase will be offset by an increase in the tenant's entitlement to Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA). Existing tenants' rents will increase following their next scheduled rent review.
The new rents will be calculated based on a combination of 25% of 'assessable' household income, 15% of Family Tax Benefit, and 100% of Commonwealth Rent Assistance Entitlements (as long as the new rent is not more than market rent).
The new rent will mean a net increase in housing costs (after taking the increase in CRA into account) for most current tenants. This will be phased in over a number of years.
While the Federation welcomes the general approach to ensure stronger income streams which will allow associations to provide more housing opportunities for future tenants, we have expressed strong concerns to government about the impact on current tenants."

Seems pretty straightforward doesn't it?
However there is a small problem with such a plan and it quickly became evident - greed on a large scale.

According The Greens MLC Sylvia Hale:
"A pensioner contacted me today. He had received a letter, saying
that a change in Government policy means his rent will go up by $32 a
fortnight from July 1.
On the NSW North Coast the news is worse - it is leading to a December 2008 rent increase for some single pensioners of at least $105 a fortnight.

How is this coming about?
One has to imagine that the North Coast Community Housing Company doesn't realise that it can't arbitrarily decide to artificially inflate a pensioner's current total income (in some cases by between $79-$100 per fortnight) thereby inflating rent calculations.
Just so that further down the line the company can hopefully get its avaricious hands on the maximum amount allowed for individual Commonwealth Rent Assistance entitlement.

The wheels really fall of this greed wagon when single pensioners find that Centrelink will not always pay them the maximum rent assistance - yet North Coast Community Housing is still expecting them to find an additional $23-79 per fortnight out of their own threadbare pockets to meet any shortfall between what Centrelink will pay and the company's own strange rent assistance calculations.

Of course, for many tenants, this over-the-top rent increase comes just four days after the Federal Government's one-off Centrelink payment to retirees, returned servicemen, old age and disability support pensioners, families, carers etc.
Co-incidence? I wouldn't bet on it.
It seems this Christmas will not be as flush and worry-free as Kevin Rudd had planned for those living on or under the poverty line.
At least not in New South Wales while Scrooge Rees and Co. reign.

The Office of Community Housing (OCH) accepts complaints about:
"A community housing organisation or a resourcing agency (including conduct of staff, policies, procedures and processes, the board or employees)."
I'm told that the complaints have already begun and if community housing tenants in the region realise that they are being used in a clumsy corporate attempt to 'diddle' the Commonwealth, I expect that OCH may see a higher level of complaints in the next few months.
Especially when it is borne upon tenants that the daft mental arithmetic used by their community housing 'landlord' leaves them in many cases receiving less rent assistance than has been calculated on paper to inflate their rents.

The jungle drums are beating along the Northern Rivers and I'm told that in the 2007-08 financial year North Coast Community Housing paid out over $20,000 in Board expenses and at least $12,400 in directors fees - the seven board members granting themselves about $200 for every time they turned up at monthly meetings.
It seems they are a lot more understanding of their own financial circumstances than they are of the circumstances of the company's many pensioner tenants.

Office of Community Housing rental policy here.
Brotherhood of St. Lawrence poverty line August 2007 update here:





Click on image to expand

Cheezburgered!

Now that young cat looks a lot quieter than the possum in industrial work boots that is currently tap dancing across my patio in the early hours of the morning.