Donnie & The Trumpettes have a new website to play with

U.S. president-elect Donald J. Trump has created an official transition website which appears to be the repository of all his official media releases – www.greatagain.gov.

The website allows an Internet user to directly email the president-elect’s transition team to go on a mailing list and contains links to ‘policies’  but does not contain a search button, so as content grows it may be difficult to find older material.

There are a few things one must remember about this site.

Firstly, Donnie & The Trumpettes have reserved the right to collect, retain and pass on to third parties all information that can be accessed from your personal computer or other digital device – including but not limited to information on the device you are using, your ISP server and your internet address.

They further reserves the right to personally identify you from that information for “site security or law enforcement purposes”, to retain all information indefinitely, share it freely with undisclosed others and apparently spam at will.

This website privacy policy also states:

If you choose to identify yourself (or otherwise provide us with personal information) when you use our online forms:

We will collect (and may retain) any personally identifying information, such as your name, street address, email address, and phone number, and any other information you provide. We will use this information to try to fulfill your request and may use it to provide you with additional information at a later time. We may share your information with third parties.

If you request information, services, or assistance, we may disclose your personal information to those third parties that (in our judgment) are appropriate in order to fulfill your request. If, when you provide us with such information, you specify that you do not want us to disclose the information to third parties, we will honor your request. Note, however, that if you do not provide such information, it may be impossible for us to refer, respond to or fulfill your request.

If your communication relates to a law enforcement matter, we may disclose the information to law enforcement agencies that we deem appropriate….

We may keep information that will collect for an unlimited period of time.

Secondly, Trump reserves the right to limit access of individual Internet users to www.greatagain.gov for their infringement of the “intellectual property rights of others”:

For readers who may be interested, Trump’s transition team communications director is firing off the propaganda with gusto over at @JasonMillerinDC.

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The 7th Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report released today

Australian Government, Productivity Commission, 17 November 2016:

In April 2002, the Council of Australian Governments commissioned the Steering Committee to produce a regular report against key indicators of Indigenous disadvantage. The Steering Committee is advised by a working group made up of representatives from all Australian governments, the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

The Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report measures the wellbeing of Australia's Indigenous peoples. The report provides information about outcomes across a range of strategic areas such as early child development, education and training, healthy lives, economic participation, home environment, and safe and supportive communities. The report examines whether policies and programs are achieving positive outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

The most recent edition of the report is, Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators 2016, released on Thursday 17 November 2016.

ABC News, 17 November 2016:

The report points to a failure of policy and oversight, with the commission estimating only 34 of 1,000 Indigenous programs are been properly evaluated by authorities.

Productivity Commission deputy chair Karen Chester told the ABC's AM program the findings are a wake up call for all levels of government about the reality of Indigenous wellbeing and whether the $30 billion budget is being properly spent.

"You want to know that money is being spent not just in terms of bang for buck for taxpayers, but that we're not short-changing Indigenous Australians," Ms Chester said.

"Of over a thousand policies and programs, we could only identify 34 across the whole of Australia that have been robustly and transparently evaluated.

"At the end of the day, we can't feign surprise that we're not seeing improvement across all these wellbeing indicators if we're not lifting the bonnet and evaluating if the policies and programs are working or not."

The report is being billed by the commission as "compulsory reading" and the most comprehensive report on Indigenous wellbeing undertaken in Australia….

But Ms Chester says it was now up to state, territory and federal governments to take the report on board to determine what is working and what is failing.

"I think the clock has been ticking for a while already," Ms Chester said.

"We have the data, we have the analysis and we know what indicators are linked to the others."

While the report includes case studies of examples of "things that work", it says the small number available underscores the lack of Indigenous programs that are being rigorously evaluated for effectiveness.

Excerpt from Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators 2016:

Key points

 This report measures the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, and was produced in consultation with governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Around 3 per cent of the Australian population are estimated as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin (based on 2011 Census data).  Outcomes have improved in a number of areas, including some COAG targets. For indicators with new data for this report: – Mortality rates for children improved between 1998 and 2014, particularly for 0<1 year olds, whose mortality rates more than halved (from 14 to 6 deaths per 1000 live births). – Education improvements included increases in the proportion of 20–24 year olds completing year 12 or above (from 2008 to 2014-15) and the proportion of 20–64 year olds with or working towards post-school qualifications (from 2002 to 2014-15). – The proportion of adults whose main income was from employment increased from 32 per cent in 2002 to 43 per cent in 2014-15, with household income increasing over this period. – The proportion of adults that recognised traditional lands increased from 70 per cent in 2002 to 74 per cent in 2014-15.  However, there has been little or no change for some indicators. – Rates of family and community violence were unchanged between 2002 and 2014-15 (around 22 per cent), and risky long-term alcohol use in 2014-15 was similar to 2002 (though lower than 2008). – The proportions of people learning and speaking Indigenous languages remained unchanged from 2008 to 2014-15.  Outcomes have worsened in some areas. – The proportion of adults reporting high levels of psychological distress increased from 27 per cent in 2004-05 to 33 per cent in 2014-15, and hospitalisations for self-harm increased by 56 per cent over this period. – The proportion of adults reporting substance misuse in the previous 12 months increased from 23 per cent in 2002 to 31 per cent in 2014-15. – The adult imprisonment rate increased 77 per cent between 2000 and 2015, and whilst the juvenile detention rate has decreased it is still 24 times the rate for non-Indigenous youth.  Change over time cannot be assessed for all the indicators — some indicators have no trend data; some indicators report on service use, and change over time might be due to changing access rather than changes in the underlying outcome; and some indicators have related measures that moved in different directions.  Finally, data alone cannot tell the complete story about the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, nor can it fully tell us why outcomes improve (or not) in different areas. To support the indicator reporting, case studies of 'things that work' are included in this report (a subset in this Overview). However, the relatively small number of case studies included reflects a lack of rigorously evaluated programs in the Indigenous policy area.

Call to make Byron Bay rental properties pet friendly - community forum 7 pm 23 November 2016 at RSL

Bliss Communications, media release, 14th November 2016:

Byron Bay To Be First City in Australia To Have Pets Are Welcome Policy

Welfare advocate Karen Justice is leading the way to bring in a Pets Are Welcome Policy to Byron Bay to curb the high number of animals surrendered because of housing restrictions.   

“Sadly 36 percent of cats and dogs that end up in shelters and pounds are there because their owner can’t find pet friendly accommodation,” said Ms Justice.

“The horrifying statistic is 20,000 family pets per year are surrendered to the RSPCA alone because landlords say no to animals,” she said.

“As at July 2016 Australia’s major cities and surrounding suburbs have the following amount of “pets allowed rentals” as compared to total available rentals – Sydney – 2%, Melbourne 1%, Brisbane 8%, Darwin 5%, Perth 4%, Adelaide 4%, and Hobart 12%.”

“Renting in Byron Bay with a pet is almost impossible and in extreme cases people have ended up homeless because they can’t part with their pet.”

“I’m forming a Community Council to try and educate others about the benefits of having pet friendly accommodation.”

“I’m inviting real estate agents, strata management, and local council members to be part of this Community Council to put Byron Bay on the map for making a difference in animal welfare.”

“The Community Council can help re-educate landlords about the benefits of pet friendly accommodation and lobby the NSW Government to introduce strata by laws that welcome pets rather than discourage them.”

“Not allowing pets into homes only leads to dogs and cats unnecessarily being killed and their owners left distraught because they have lost a loved one.”

“I want Byron Bay to show the rest of Australia that it can be done – an across the board Pets Are Welcome Policy – to see a huge drop in animals left at shelters.”

“It’s a bold plan but something has to be done or more and more animals will be killed because a landlord won’t let them into their homes.”

Ms Justice said the benefits of pet friendly accommodation are :

1.     Saving Lives : Allowing pets into homes means owners don’t need to surrender them to shelters and pounds which means less animals are put to sleep.

2.     Health Benefits : There is scientific proof having a pet makes people happy and healthier.

3.     Rental Longevity : Tenants with pets tend to stay in rental properties longer saving landlords time and money rather than face uncertainty of securing another rental property.

Ms Justice believes if one city can do it then the rest of Australia might just follow.

A community forum is being held on Wednesday 23 November 2016 between 7pm and 9pm at Byron Bay RSL 

Facebook's reputation going downhill fast

Facebook killing off its users……

Inshorts, 12 November 2016:

A Facebook bug on Friday caused the social network to briefly declare around two million people, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, dead on their profiles. Several users were greeted with a eulogy message when visiting the profiles of friends and family, while some found their own accounts memorialised. Facebook apologised for the mistaken posts and said it was a 'terrible error'.

I'm guessing Zuckerberg isn't dead either... pic.twitter.com/9M9uaVsvjR

— Peter Stringer (@peterstringer) November 11, 2016

Facebook feeding its users lies as news……

The New York Times, 12 November 2016:

In May, the company grappled with accusations that politically biased employees were censoring some conservative stories and websites in Facebook’s Trending Topics section, a part of the site that shows the most talked-about stories and issues on Facebook. Facebook later laid off the Trending Topics team.

Mashable.com, 10 November 2016:

Every employee at Facebook should be ashamed of what their product became this year: a tangled mess of bizarre falsehoods and outdated information used as ammo to help people scream at one another. 

It has failed our bitterly divided country through its News Feed, which has weighed legitimate, reported information from good news organizations against propagandistic junk written by trolls and found there is no difference. Posted to your News Feed, a Pulitzer-winning New York Times report looks just the same as a blog post from The Right Stuff, an anti-Semitic content factory of the so-called "alt-right."

here's another thing facebook screwed up this week https://t.co/pJm8E3F5Kb

— Damon Beres ✨ (@dlberes) November 11, 2016

The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 November 2016:

Facebook has vowed to crack down on misinformation and burst the "filter bubble", highlighted by the US election….

The US election has highlighted the power of social media as a propaganda tool, underpinning the insidious concept of "voter suppression" – attempting to dissuade your opponent's supporters from voting. Thankfully it's ineffective in Australia due to our mandatory voting system but it could have a significant impact on a close US election.

A voter suppression push to convince Clinton supporters that they could vote via Twitter, rather than attending a polling booth, was so widespread that Twitter was forced to publicly denounce it.

Blatantly false trending news stories are also a problem on Facebook, which has spawned an entire cottage industry of fake news sites because social media's vetting process for news is clearly less stringent than Google News' processes.

Facebook has usurped the role of the mainstream media in disseminating news, but hasn't taken on the fourth estate's corresponding responsibility for keeping the bastards honest. The mainstream media has no-one to blame but itself, having engaged in a tabloid race to the bottom which devalued truth to the point that blatant liars are considered more honest.

Facebook caught out and scrambling……

Pro Publica, 11 November 2016:

Facing a wave of criticism for allowing advertisers to exclude anyone with an "affinity" for African-American, Asian-American or Hispanic people from seeing ads, Facebook said it would build an automated system that would let it better spot ads that discriminate illegally.

Federal law prohibits ads for housing, employment and credit that exclude people by race, gender and other factors.

Facebook said it would build an automated system to scan advertisements to determine if they are services in these categories. Facebook will prohibit the use of its "ethnic affinities" for such ads.

Facebook said its new system should roll out within the next few months. "We are going to have to build a solution to do this. It is not going to happen overnight," said Steve Satterfield, privacy and public policy manager at Facebook.

He said that Facebook would also update its advertising policies with "stronger, more specific prohibitions" against discriminatory ads for housing, credit and employment.

In October, ProPublica purchased an ad that targeted Facebook members who were house hunting and excluded anyone with an "affinity" for African-American, Asian-American or Hispanic people. When we showed the ad to a civil rights lawyer, he said it seemed like a blatant violation of the federal Fair Housing Act.

After ProPublica published an article about its ad purchase, Facebook was deluged with criticism. Four members of Congress wrote Facebook demanding that the company stop giving advertisers the option of excluding by ethnic group.

The federal agency that enforces the nation's fair housing laws said it was "in discussions" with Facebook to address what it termed "serious concerns" about the social network's advertising practices.

And a group of Facebook users filed a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that the company's ad-targeting technology violates the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Trump's America: that Russian link raises its head again

The Huffington Post, 11 November 2016:

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are reviewing the Democratic Coalition’s investigative report highlighting 10 “clear links” that the FBI failed to investigate about our President-elect’s business ties to Russia, and to the Putin regime.

It’s named “The Dworkin Report.”

“The FBI missed at least 10 key connections between President-elect Trump and Russia when they conducted their investigation and concluded that our President-elect had no links to the country,” said Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor to the Democratic Coalition and author of the report. “It is imperative that the American people be made aware of this information.”

The Dworkin Report shows that Donald Trump has incorporated almost 250 registered businesses in Russia.

This hard evidence directly contradicts Trump’s prior statements about having no business ties to Russia over the summer.

Additionally, the evidence shows that Trump has travelled to Russia dating back to 1987, before the end of the Soviet Union.

In particular, a visit in 2010 included a tour of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum led by a Russian government official of sufficient ranking, that he earned a personal photo and award from Vladimir Putin earlier this year.

The Democratic Coalition also revealed a 2013 video recorded interview with Donald Trump to MSNBC’s Thomas A. Roberts - which he has confirmed as authentic - where he claimed twice to have a relationship with Putin.

Also in 2012, Donald Trump Jr. told Latvian interviewers in a video recorded interview, that he had been to Russia many times and that the Trump Organization has a significant business there.

The Dworkin Report was also shared with Democratic Congressional leaders Senator Harry Reid, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Congressman Keith Ellison on Thursday evening.

Russia’s authoritarian President Putin himself sent warm congratulations, after Tuesday night’s Presidential election, in which his government has already openly admitted to interfering.

Since Tuesday night, Putin’s regime has publicly admitted to having a hand in the Wikileaks deluge of emails during the election.

Russian government officials told the New York Times that they had direct contact with Trump’s closest allies this week, after polls closed....

The Washington Post, 10 November 2016:

MOSCOW — Russian government officials had contacts with members of Donald Trump’s campaign team, a senior Russian diplomat said Thursday, in a disclosure that could reopen scrutiny over the Kremlin’s role in the president-elect’s bitter race against Hillary Clinton.

Facing questions about his ties to Moscow because of statements interpreted as lauding Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, Trump repeatedly denied having any contact with the Russian government.

After the latest statement by the Russian diplomat, Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks denied that there were interactions between Russia and the Trump team before Tuesday’s election.

“The campaign had no contact with Russian officials,” she said in an email.

But Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said in an interview with the state-run Interfax news agency that “there were contacts” with the Trump team.

“Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage,” Ryabkov said. “Those people have always been in the limelight in the United States and have occupied high-ranking positions. I cannot say that all of them but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives.”…..

U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. accused the Russian government last month of deploying hackers to meddle in the U.S. elections. Officials said Russian hackers, possibly with high-level intelligence links, broke into the email account of Clinton’s campaign chief, John Podesta. The emails were then disclosed by WikiLeaks in an effort that Clinton supporters claim was intended to damage her White House bid.

Putin throughout the campaign interfering with the elections.

But neither the administration’s hacking allegations nor reporting of Trump’s apparent ties to Russia dissuaded more than 59 million voters from casting their ballots for the Republican.

Speculation has swirled about Trump’s links to Russia since early in the campaign, both because of his warm words about Putin and past business ventures in Russia. It is not clear whether Trump currently has any investments in the country, because he has not released any tax records.

But he made millions of dollars by bringing the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013. Wealthy Russians also have been an important source of investments in Trump’s businesses. His son, Donald Trump Jr., said in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” adding that “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Several Trump advisers have also had well-publicized ties to Russia, including his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who managed an investment fund for a Russian aluminum magnate with close ties to Putin. He resigned from the campaign days after his name was found in a ledger of payouts from the party of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in a pro-European street revolution in 2014…..

The Dworkin Report by The Democratic Coalition by Grant Stern on Scribd

List of alleged Trump companies registered in Russia here.

Clarence Valley Council announces Section 55 amendment to application for SUB2015/0034 a 162 lot subdivision at Lot 99 Hickey Street, Iluka

On 10 November 2016 Clarence Valley Council sent out by email a letter dated 7 November 2016 concerning a development application being determined by the Northern Joint Regional Planning Panel:

Redesigned subdivision plan for 157 lot development:

NOTE: This is not the plan sent with the official notification email. This final plan was sent by a second email 4 days later - cutting the time in which a submission based on accurate information could be created by a total of 7 submission period days.

Previous subdivision plan for 162 lot development:

Note: Streetscape plantings are indicative only and were not part of the development application.

Amended DA documents can be viewed and download here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fo7a1wml2tak7xf/SUB2015-0034%20Amended%20Application%20Documents.pdf?dl=0

A brief history of the development application here.

Voting in federal elections is an obstacle course for U.S. citizens compared with Australian voting rules

Next time you feel inclined to bitch about being obliged to exercise your right to vote in Australian elections, pause and be thankful you still have a relatively unfettered ability to vote.

Because the largest and most well-known Western democracy is bit by bit taking that right away from its own citizens – and given the number of far-right wing ideologues in the current Australian federal parliament and their obvious admiration for the US Republican Party we may yet have to fight to keep them from tampering with our near universal franchise.

The situation in the United States…..

The Nation, 4 November 2016:

Nearly half of counties that previously approved voting changes with the federal government have cut polling places this election.

When Aracely Calderon, a naturalized US citizen from Guatemala, went to vote in downtown Phoenix just before the polls closed in Arizona’s March 22 presidential primary, there were more than 700 people in a line stretching four city blocks. She waited in line for five hours, becoming the last voter in the state to cast a ballot at 12:12 am. “I’m here to exercise my right to vote,” she said shortly before midnight, explaining why she stayed in line. Others left without voting because they didn’t have four or five hours to spare.

The lines were so long because Republican election officials in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, the largest in the state, reduced the number of polling places by 70 percent from 2012 to 2016, from 200 to just 60—one polling place per 21,000 registered voters. Previously, Maricopa County would have needed federal approval to reduce the number of polling sites, because Arizona was one of 16 states where jurisdictions with a long history of discrimination had to submit their voting changes under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This part of the VRA blocked 3,000 discriminatory voting changes from 1965 to 2013. That changed when the Supreme Court gutted the law in the June 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision.

The polling place reductions in Maricopa County were a glaring example of a disturbing trend. The Leadership Conference for Civil Rights surveyed 381 of the 800 counties previously covered by Section 5 where polling place information was available in 2012 or 2014 and found there are 868 fewer places to cast a ballot in 2016 in these areas. “Out of the 381 counties in our study, 165 of them—43 percent—have reduced voting locations,” says the important new report.

DemocracyNow! 7 November 2016:

On Saturday, the U.S. Supreme Court restored a Republican-supported law in Arizona banning political campaigners from collecting absentee ballots filled out by voters.

In New Jersey, a federal judge decided against the Democratic National Committee in a complaint it brought against the Republican National Committee, ruling that the RNC’s poll monitoring and ballot security activities did not violate a legal settlement.

But in a ruling hailed by voting rights advocates, a federal judge late Friday ordered county elections boards in North Carolina to immediately restore registrations wrongfully purged from voter rolls.

All of this comes as this year’s presidential election is the first in half a century to take place without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act.

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down crucial components in Section 5 of the act in a case called Shelby County v. Holder, when it ruled that states with histories of voting-related racial discrimination no longer had to "pre-clear" changes to their voting laws with the federal government.

For more, we’re joined by Ari Berman, author of the recent article, "There Are 868 Fewer Places to Vote in 2016 Because the Supreme Court Gutted the Voting Rights Act."

New York University School of Law, Brennan Centre For Justice, 12 September 2016:

New Voting Restrictions in Place for 2016 Presidential Election

In 2016, 14 states will have new voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election. The new laws range from strict photo ID requirements to early voting cutbacks to registration restrictions.

Those 14 states are: Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

(This number decreased from 15 to 14 when the D.C. Circuit blocked a voter registration requirement in Alabama, Georgia, and Kansas on September 9, 2016. Georgia was removed, but Alabama and Kansas remain on the map because certain restrictions remain in place. Other recent court rulings have impacted the map: North Carolina and North Dakota were removed after courts blocked restrictive laws. Despite a recent court victory mitigating the impact of Texas’s photo ID law, it is still included because the requirement is more restrictive than what was in place for the 2012 presidential election.)  

This is part of a broader movement to curtail voting rights, which began after the 2010 election, when state lawmakers nationwide started introducing hundreds of harsh measures making it harder to vote.

Overall, 20 states have new restrictions in effect since the 2010 midterm election. Since 2010, a total of 10 states have more restrictive voter ID laws in place (and six states have strict photo ID requirements) seven have laws making it harder for citizens to register, six cut back on early voting days and hours, and three made it harder to restore voting rights for people with past criminal convictions.

This page details the new restrictive voting requirements put in place during that time period.

Voting Restrictions in Place for First Time in Presidential Election in 2016

Status Key: 

RED - RESTRICTION IN PLACE FOR FIRST TIME IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN 2016

PINK - RESTRICTION IN PLACE FOR 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

The New York Times, 12 November 2016:

States won by Trump (red) and Clinton (blue) as at count on 12 November 2016

Wikipedia:

States won by Romney (red) and Obama (blue) in the 2012 US Presidential Election