I also think that we need to actually give him a chance. The constant sniping and complaining by those not happy with the result isn't going to achieve anything.
Political Discussion
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There has to be a good chance that Pence is in by then. It already seems like such a train wreck, and you think the Republicans will cut him loose once he's made some unpopular decisions (so they don't have to do them).
Can they cut him loose? I didn't think they could get rid of Presidents?
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I think there is a good chance he may be impeached before he sees out his 4 year term.
Can't see him getting a 2nd term, but then I thought the same for George W Bush... so I'm not the best person on predicting US voting.
It will depend on how well he does. If he does well, the idiots who voted for him will most probably do the same again and he may attract some new voters.
This is going to be one big soap opera
Kane McGoodwin
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It's tough.
A LOT are about to lose healthcare. Plus the expectations on him - bringing back businesses to the Midwest that have left - are pretty unrealistic.
That being said, a lot of this has become very tribal. People will mostly only believe reports that tell them things they already think.
I want to see the episode when he has Kim and Kanye over.
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Kane McGoodwin
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Don't laugh, it probably will happen...
DD#23
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oh for sure.
just to make a point of it though - I had something more like the French Revolution in mind than "aren't we lucky the Americans saved us from Vietnam"
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Bit of an oxymoron there EC......in the event Trump does well against the common held belief that he will be a disaster that really doesn't make those that voted for him idiots.......What most people don't seem to get is this was not so much a vote for Trump but a vote against more of the same where "ordinary" people felt they were very low on the priority list of the previous Government and obviously given Clinton's involvement in same they did not see their lot in life improving any if she was elected. Personally I'm not convinced Sanders would have done a whole lot better either, put simply I believe if the Democrats had fielded a better candidate they win easy, and by that I mean a candidate seen as a clean skin and not as part of the old Democrat "establishment".
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/president-trump-declares-independence-1484956174
President Trump Declares Independence
His message to America: Remember those things I said in the campaign? I meant them. I meant it all.
By
PEGGY NOONAN
Jan. 20, 2017 6:49 p.m. ET
1600 COMMENTS
Washington
I was more moved than I expected. Then more startled.
The old forms and traditions, the bands and bunting, endured. I thought, as I watched the inauguration: It continues. There were pomp and splendor, happy, cheering crowds; and for all the confounding nature of the past 18 months, and all the trauma, it came as a reassurance to see us do what we do the way we do it. A friend in the Southwest, a longtime Trump supporter, emailed just before the swearing in: “I have been crying all morning.” From joy.
I found myself unexpectedly moved during the White House meeting of the Trumps and the Obamas, at the moment Melania Trump emerged from her car. She was beautiful, seemed so shy and game. There are many ways to show your respect for people and events, and one is to present yourself with elegance and dignity.
The inaugural address was utterly and uncompromisingly Trumpian. The man who ran is the man who’ll reign. It was plain, unfancy and blunt to the point of blistering. A little humility would have gone a long way, but that’s not the path he took. Nor did he attempt to reassure. It was pow, right in the face. Most important, he did not in any way align himself with the proud Democrats and Republicans arrayed around him. He looked out at the crowd and said he was allied with them.
He presented himself not as a Republican or a conservative but as a populist independent. The essential message: Remember those things I said in the campaign? I meant them. I meant it all.
The address was bold in its assertion of the distance in America between the leaders and the led: “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished—but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered—but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country.”
It was an unmistakable indictment of almost everyone seated with him on the platform.
Then a stark vow: “That all changes—starting right here and right now.” Jan. 20 “will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.”
And these words were most remarkable, not because they were new, but because he didn’t back away from them, he repeated them in an improvisation: “From this day forward it’s going to be only America first—America first.” To American workers and families: “You will never be ignored again.”
The speech will electrify President Trump’s followers. They will feel satisfaction that they understood him and knew what they were backing. And it will deepen the Washington establishment’s unease. Republican leaders had been hoping the address would ameliorate their anxieties about the continued primacy of their traditional policy preferences. Forget that. This was a declaration that the president is going his own way and they’d best follow.
Throughout the speech, and much of the day, Mr. Trump looked stern. At first I thought it was the face he puts on when he’s nervous. I don’t think so now.
Anyway, it was a remarkable speech, like none before it, and it marked, I think, yet another break point in the two-party reality that has dominated our politics for many decades.
And so, now, it begins. And it simply has to be repeated: We have never had a political moment like this in our lives. We have never had a president like this, such a norm-breaker, in all the ways we know. We are in uncharted seas.
His supporters, who flooded Washington this week, were friendly, courteous—but watchful. Two Midwestern women told me separately that they used to be but no longer are Republican. They’re something new, waiting for a name.
They like Mr. Trump the way you learn to like someone you hired and will depend on. They judged him as exactly what’s needed to cut through the merde machine of modern Washington. He is a destabilizer; he shifts the tectonic plates; in the chaos that results, breakthroughs are possible.
And yet all admit that yes, we’re in uncharted waters.
The mood among Republicans in Washington is hopeful apprehension. Even Trump supporters, even his staff and advisers, feel it. No one knows what he’ll be like as president, how this will go. Including, probably, him. A GOP senator characterized his mood as “tentatively positive.” Another said, with a big grin: “I feel somewhat optimistic!”
We’ll find out a lot the next few months. How will Mr. Trump work with Congress, and what are his specific legislative priorities? How important will the cabinet be? Will the Trumps really live in the White House or just stay and do events a few days a week? Will they come to own the physical space, the psychic space, of the executive mansion and the presidency? Will they give Camp David—those rustic cabins that are a glass, brass and marble-free zone—a chance?
The big embassies this week gave receptions to celebrate the inauguration, and invited official Washington. Ambassadors made friendly speeches about their countries’ long, deep and unchanging ties to America. They approached the big change with sangfroid, even jolliness. But Washington still doesn’t know what to make of this thing America did.
At the Kuwaiti Embassy I looked out at hundreds of Washingtonians of both parties—diplomats, lobbyists, military brass, journalists—all networking, meeting, greeting, all handsomely dressed. As I surveyed the scene I turned to a social figure of 40 years’ standing. “Do they have any sense they’re living through big history?” I asked. “Noooooo!” she said. The look on her face—if it had been the late 19th century she would have said, “Pshaw!” History is not what they’re about, she was suggesting; satisfying their personal and immediate hungers is what they’re about.
The Trump Wars of the past 18 months do not now go away. Now it becomes the Trump Civil War, every day, with Democrats trying to get rid of him and half the country pushing back. To reduce it to the essentials: As long as Mr. Trump’s party holds the House, it will be a standoff. If the Democrats take the House, they will move to oust him.
Because we are divided. We are two nations, maybe more.
Normally a new president has someone backing him up, someone publicly behind him. Mr. Obama had the mainstream media—the big broadcast networks, big newspapers, activists and intellectuals, pundits and columnists of the left—the whole shebang. He had a unified, passionate party. Mr. Trump in comparison has almost nothing. The mainstream legacy media oppose him, even hate him, and will not let up. The columnists, thinkers and magazines of the right were mostly NeverTrump; some came reluctantly to support him. His party is split or splitting. The new president has gradations of sympathy, respect or support from exactly one cable news channel, and some websites.
He really has no one but those who voted for him.
Do they understand what a lift daily governance is going to be, and how long the odds are, with so much arrayed against him, and them?
President Trump Declares Independence
His message to America: Remember those things I said in the campaign? I meant them. I meant it all.
By
PEGGY NOONAN
Jan. 20, 2017 6:49 p.m. ET
1600 COMMENTS
Washington
I was more moved than I expected. Then more startled.
The old forms and traditions, the bands and bunting, endured. I thought, as I watched the inauguration: It continues. There were pomp and splendor, happy, cheering crowds; and for all the confounding nature of the past 18 months, and all the trauma, it came as a reassurance to see us do what we do the way we do it. A friend in the Southwest, a longtime Trump supporter, emailed just before the swearing in: “I have been crying all morning.” From joy.
I found myself unexpectedly moved during the White House meeting of the Trumps and the Obamas, at the moment Melania Trump emerged from her car. She was beautiful, seemed so shy and game. There are many ways to show your respect for people and events, and one is to present yourself with elegance and dignity.
The inaugural address was utterly and uncompromisingly Trumpian. The man who ran is the man who’ll reign. It was plain, unfancy and blunt to the point of blistering. A little humility would have gone a long way, but that’s not the path he took. Nor did he attempt to reassure. It was pow, right in the face. Most important, he did not in any way align himself with the proud Democrats and Republicans arrayed around him. He looked out at the crowd and said he was allied with them.
He presented himself not as a Republican or a conservative but as a populist independent. The essential message: Remember those things I said in the campaign? I meant them. I meant it all.
The address was bold in its assertion of the distance in America between the leaders and the led: “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished—but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered—but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country.”
It was an unmistakable indictment of almost everyone seated with him on the platform.
Then a stark vow: “That all changes—starting right here and right now.” Jan. 20 “will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.”
And these words were most remarkable, not because they were new, but because he didn’t back away from them, he repeated them in an improvisation: “From this day forward it’s going to be only America first—America first.” To American workers and families: “You will never be ignored again.”
The speech will electrify President Trump’s followers. They will feel satisfaction that they understood him and knew what they were backing. And it will deepen the Washington establishment’s unease. Republican leaders had been hoping the address would ameliorate their anxieties about the continued primacy of their traditional policy preferences. Forget that. This was a declaration that the president is going his own way and they’d best follow.
Throughout the speech, and much of the day, Mr. Trump looked stern. At first I thought it was the face he puts on when he’s nervous. I don’t think so now.
Anyway, it was a remarkable speech, like none before it, and it marked, I think, yet another break point in the two-party reality that has dominated our politics for many decades.
And so, now, it begins. And it simply has to be repeated: We have never had a political moment like this in our lives. We have never had a president like this, such a norm-breaker, in all the ways we know. We are in uncharted seas.
His supporters, who flooded Washington this week, were friendly, courteous—but watchful. Two Midwestern women told me separately that they used to be but no longer are Republican. They’re something new, waiting for a name.
They like Mr. Trump the way you learn to like someone you hired and will depend on. They judged him as exactly what’s needed to cut through the merde machine of modern Washington. He is a destabilizer; he shifts the tectonic plates; in the chaos that results, breakthroughs are possible.
And yet all admit that yes, we’re in uncharted waters.
The mood among Republicans in Washington is hopeful apprehension. Even Trump supporters, even his staff and advisers, feel it. No one knows what he’ll be like as president, how this will go. Including, probably, him. A GOP senator characterized his mood as “tentatively positive.” Another said, with a big grin: “I feel somewhat optimistic!”
We’ll find out a lot the next few months. How will Mr. Trump work with Congress, and what are his specific legislative priorities? How important will the cabinet be? Will the Trumps really live in the White House or just stay and do events a few days a week? Will they come to own the physical space, the psychic space, of the executive mansion and the presidency? Will they give Camp David—those rustic cabins that are a glass, brass and marble-free zone—a chance?
The big embassies this week gave receptions to celebrate the inauguration, and invited official Washington. Ambassadors made friendly speeches about their countries’ long, deep and unchanging ties to America. They approached the big change with sangfroid, even jolliness. But Washington still doesn’t know what to make of this thing America did.
At the Kuwaiti Embassy I looked out at hundreds of Washingtonians of both parties—diplomats, lobbyists, military brass, journalists—all networking, meeting, greeting, all handsomely dressed. As I surveyed the scene I turned to a social figure of 40 years’ standing. “Do they have any sense they’re living through big history?” I asked. “Noooooo!” she said. The look on her face—if it had been the late 19th century she would have said, “Pshaw!” History is not what they’re about, she was suggesting; satisfying their personal and immediate hungers is what they’re about.
The Trump Wars of the past 18 months do not now go away. Now it becomes the Trump Civil War, every day, with Democrats trying to get rid of him and half the country pushing back. To reduce it to the essentials: As long as Mr. Trump’s party holds the House, it will be a standoff. If the Democrats take the House, they will move to oust him.
Because we are divided. We are two nations, maybe more.
Normally a new president has someone backing him up, someone publicly behind him. Mr. Obama had the mainstream media—the big broadcast networks, big newspapers, activists and intellectuals, pundits and columnists of the left—the whole shebang. He had a unified, passionate party. Mr. Trump in comparison has almost nothing. The mainstream legacy media oppose him, even hate him, and will not let up. The columnists, thinkers and magazines of the right were mostly NeverTrump; some came reluctantly to support him. His party is split or splitting. The new president has gradations of sympathy, respect or support from exactly one cable news channel, and some websites.
He really has no one but those who voted for him.
Do they understand what a lift daily governance is going to be, and how long the odds are, with so much arrayed against him, and them?
Last edited:
That is true, but when you have someone who led the campaign he did, where he had no issue insulting anyone he pleased and with his history of being a sexist egomaniac who wouldnt even declare his taxes, then to me he was unelectable and they are idiots. How the hell can you vote for someone who mocks the disabled FFS? That in itself should tell you all you need to know about the man, he is a pig.
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Wall Street Journal article 20th January 2017 by WSJ 'Business World' Editor/Journalist Holman W. Jenkins Snr
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-did-not-save-the-economy-1484955778
Obama Did Not Save the Economy
It’s not his fault he arrived too late to play a role. But getting the credit wrong also gets the blame wrong.
At his final press conference as president, Jan. 18. PHOTO: YIN BOGU/ZUMA PRESS
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
Jan. 20, 2017 6:42 p.m. ET
As he goes out the door, President Obama is praised lavishly for saving the financial system and warding off a second Great Depression—which indeed would have been an amazing accomplishment for a backbench U.S. senator.
To cite an example almost at random, Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff claimed on NPR this week that Mr. Obama “pulled us out of a very deep abyss,” though Mr. Rogoff also allowed that President Bush deserves “a little credit here.”
Put aside the desire to be nice to the outgoing president. Such spin is unpromising simply in the face of the calendar.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program may have been the least of the rescue measures, but it was the highest risk, because the people’s bipartisan representatives were required to put their imprimatur on unpopular bailouts. Nonetheless, TARP was enacted Oct. 3, 2008, almost four months before President Obama took office.
On March 16, 2008, the Federal Reserve arranged a fire sale of Bear Stearns. Between Sept. 19 and Oct. 26, numerous other institutions were bailed out; the money-fund industry and commercial paper market were propped up; bank depositors were favored with a big extension of deposit insurance.
On Dec. 19, as a final act, the Bush administration directed $17.4 billion in TARP funds to keep General Motors and Chrysler afloat so the Obama administration wouldn’t be confronted with their liquidation on its first day in office.
There were numerous discrete acts that constituted the bailout. All were undertaken by the Bush administration. There was one heroic, pell-mell effort at bipartisan legislative coalition-building of the sort that never took place during eight years of the Obama administration. That was TARP.
Mr. Obama wasn’t even a character in the HBO movie about all this, “Too Big to Fail.”
When he finally arrived, his contribution consisted of fudgy bank “stress tests,” less to establish confidence in the banks than to establish confidence in the new administration, under lefty pressure at the time to reinflame the crisis by nationalizing the industry.
He gave us a $787 billion pork-barrel “stimulus,” an exercise in hand-waving which ever since has figured prominently in the efforts of Obama publicists to create confusion about what ended the crisis.
His own Council of Economic Advisers, in a yeoman effort, argues essentially that since a second Great Depression didn’t happen, whatever Mr. Obama did gets the credit. Never mind that recoveries normally follow recessions.
Many convince themselves that Mr. Obama surmounted overwhelming political opposition to prop up GM and Chrysler, when the clear lesson of the Bush action is that no president would have been prepared to pay the political price of letting them fail.
We are perfectly serious when we say that Mr. Obama will carry a burden of cognitive dissonance on this point in the decades ahead. It isn’t his fault that he arrived too late to play an important role in the rescue. But in getting the credit wrong, we also get the blame wrong.
As all now agree, it was Lehman, not the washing through of modest subprime losses, that turned a regional U.S. housing downturn into a global financial panic. In his memoirs, Fed chief Ben Bernanke protests that the Fed knew exactly what a catastrophe Lehman’s unmanaged collapse would be, but its hands were legally tied at the time.
Actually, what seemed obvious at the time was that the Fed and Treasury were reacting to the populist revulsion against bailouts. They feared getting on the wrong side of public opinion and the politicians.
New evidence on this agitated question comes from University of Pennsylvania legal scholar Peter Conti-Brown, in his history of the Fed, “The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve.” He finds Mr. Bernanke’s legal arguments wanting and concludes that political imperatives were indeed paramount.
He also argues that the Fed’s decision, though terrible for the economy, worked out just fine for the Fed. The post-Lehman meltdown justified the central bank’s subsequent bailout efforts and positioned the Fed to survive Dodd-Frank with its powers intact.
OK, presidents get credit they don’t deserve. They also sometimes escape blame. Let it be said that, in the kind of omission that damns a presidency in the eyes of the cognoscenti, it was President Bush who should have and could have stepped up and provided his appointees political cover to spare the world the Lehman meltdown.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-did-not-save-the-economy-1484955778
Obama Did Not Save the Economy
It’s not his fault he arrived too late to play a role. But getting the credit wrong also gets the blame wrong.
At his final press conference as president, Jan. 18. PHOTO: YIN BOGU/ZUMA PRESS
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
Jan. 20, 2017 6:42 p.m. ET
As he goes out the door, President Obama is praised lavishly for saving the financial system and warding off a second Great Depression—which indeed would have been an amazing accomplishment for a backbench U.S. senator.
To cite an example almost at random, Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff claimed on NPR this week that Mr. Obama “pulled us out of a very deep abyss,” though Mr. Rogoff also allowed that President Bush deserves “a little credit here.”
Put aside the desire to be nice to the outgoing president. Such spin is unpromising simply in the face of the calendar.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program may have been the least of the rescue measures, but it was the highest risk, because the people’s bipartisan representatives were required to put their imprimatur on unpopular bailouts. Nonetheless, TARP was enacted Oct. 3, 2008, almost four months before President Obama took office.
On March 16, 2008, the Federal Reserve arranged a fire sale of Bear Stearns. Between Sept. 19 and Oct. 26, numerous other institutions were bailed out; the money-fund industry and commercial paper market were propped up; bank depositors were favored with a big extension of deposit insurance.
On Dec. 19, as a final act, the Bush administration directed $17.4 billion in TARP funds to keep General Motors and Chrysler afloat so the Obama administration wouldn’t be confronted with their liquidation on its first day in office.
There were numerous discrete acts that constituted the bailout. All were undertaken by the Bush administration. There was one heroic, pell-mell effort at bipartisan legislative coalition-building of the sort that never took place during eight years of the Obama administration. That was TARP.
Mr. Obama wasn’t even a character in the HBO movie about all this, “Too Big to Fail.”
When he finally arrived, his contribution consisted of fudgy bank “stress tests,” less to establish confidence in the banks than to establish confidence in the new administration, under lefty pressure at the time to reinflame the crisis by nationalizing the industry.
He gave us a $787 billion pork-barrel “stimulus,” an exercise in hand-waving which ever since has figured prominently in the efforts of Obama publicists to create confusion about what ended the crisis.
His own Council of Economic Advisers, in a yeoman effort, argues essentially that since a second Great Depression didn’t happen, whatever Mr. Obama did gets the credit. Never mind that recoveries normally follow recessions.
Many convince themselves that Mr. Obama surmounted overwhelming political opposition to prop up GM and Chrysler, when the clear lesson of the Bush action is that no president would have been prepared to pay the political price of letting them fail.
We are perfectly serious when we say that Mr. Obama will carry a burden of cognitive dissonance on this point in the decades ahead. It isn’t his fault that he arrived too late to play an important role in the rescue. But in getting the credit wrong, we also get the blame wrong.
As all now agree, it was Lehman, not the washing through of modest subprime losses, that turned a regional U.S. housing downturn into a global financial panic. In his memoirs, Fed chief Ben Bernanke protests that the Fed knew exactly what a catastrophe Lehman’s unmanaged collapse would be, but its hands were legally tied at the time.
Actually, what seemed obvious at the time was that the Fed and Treasury were reacting to the populist revulsion against bailouts. They feared getting on the wrong side of public opinion and the politicians.
New evidence on this agitated question comes from University of Pennsylvania legal scholar Peter Conti-Brown, in his history of the Fed, “The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve.” He finds Mr. Bernanke’s legal arguments wanting and concludes that political imperatives were indeed paramount.
He also argues that the Fed’s decision, though terrible for the economy, worked out just fine for the Fed. The post-Lehman meltdown justified the central bank’s subsequent bailout efforts and positioned the Fed to survive Dodd-Frank with its powers intact.
OK, presidents get credit they don’t deserve. They also sometimes escape blame. Let it be said that, in the kind of omission that damns a presidency in the eyes of the cognoscenti, it was President Bush who should have and could have stepped up and provided his appointees political cover to spare the world the Lehman meltdown.
DD#23
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I am 100% on board with this, have been since day one, but the "ordinary" people have backed the wrong horse here.
Trump's as likely to raise their standard of living as Brisbane are to win the flag this year. He's played these people beautifully. I find it amazing that so many people were practically disqualifying McCain in 2008 because Sarah Palin seemed so crazy and Trump is 10x worse than she was.
and on your most recent post above about Obama, you'll have no argument from me about how overrated he is - like here the standards we hold our leaders to are pathetic.
I don't often agree with you Bicks, but the bolded bit in particular is absolutely spot on.
Trump definitely had significant help from Russia and the FBI... but nobody can deny that the Democrats picked up the shotgun, loaded it, aimed at their own foot, and pulled the trigger when they selected Hillary.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...s/news-story/e19c39d56a71a65ba1500a25cf3eedd5
Bicks care to post the contents
Bicks care to post the contents
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NATIONAL AFFAIRS
Tony Abbott sounds alarm on FWC as vice-president Graeme Watson quits
Tony Abbott. Picture: Getty Images.
- The Australian
- 3:02PM January 23, 2017
- JOE KELLY
Political reporter
Canberra
@joekellyoz
In a letter to Employment Minister Michaelia Cash, revealed in The Australian Financial Review, Mr Watson said that his resignation was triggered by a conviction that the operation of the workplace system was “undermining the objects of the Fair Work legislation.”
“I do not consider that the system provides a framework for co-operative and productive workplace relations and I do not consider that it promotes economic prosperity or social inclusion,” he said. “Nor do I consider it can be described as balanced.”
Mr Watson wrote to the Governor-General Peter Cosgrove on Friday formally to step down from his role at the Fair Work Commission after being initially appointed to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in mid 2006.
Mr Abbott, who campaigned as Prime Minister against union corruption, today said the resignation of Mr Watson was unprecedented.
“(This) shows that the FWC (former workplace minister Bill) Shorten created is pro-union and anti-jobs,” Mr Abbott said.
The government’s former employment minister, Eric Abetz, took aim at the FWC President, Justice Iain Ross.
“Reports of repeated attempts at sidelining Vice President Watson from within the Commission reflects poorly on the FWC’s leadership,” Senator Abetz said.
“It also reflects poorly on Bill Shorten who stacked and packed the Commission with union cronies rather than meritorious and worthy appointments.”
Senator Abetz said it was “very unusual” to have a “resignation in these circumstances which reflects on the culture and the manner in which the FWC has been operating.”
President Ross also issued a statement today confirming the resignation and saying it would take effect at the close of business on February 28.
“Vice President Watson has been a Member of the Commission since 19 June 2006,” Justice Ross said. “I thank the Vice President for his service to the Commission and wish him well in his future endeavours.”
Australian Mines and Metals Association chief executive Steve Knott said that Mr Watson was well respected by all users of the workplace system and had proved to be fair, objective and pragmatic.
“While VP Watson’s resignation is a real loss to the Fair Work Commission, of even greater concern is the dysfunction in the tribunal and our workplace laws that has prompted the early resignation of one of its most senior and widely respected members,” he said.
Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said that the resignation was a “big loss” to the FWC and said that Mr Watson’s criticism of the Tribunal in his letter to Senator Cash added further weight to calls for the government to implement reforms to the industrial relations framework.
“The Government needs to move without delay to implement its response to the Productivity Commission’s report on Australia’s Workplace Relations Framework,” Mr Willox said.
“There are many positive recommendations in the Productivity Commission’s report, including those dealing with enterprise agreement content, transfer of business, and unfair dismissal laws.”
Chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, James Pearson, said the resignation underscored the need for the workplace relations system to be urgently reformed.
“The critique offered by Mr Watson should not be ignored — it should prompt action from those who have the power to do something about the problems he raises, including the Parliament and the Fair Work Commission itself,” he said.
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I did laugh, I admit...
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Interesting numbers from Gallup on Presidents since World War 2...
http://www.gallup.com/poll/202742/obama-averages-job-approval-president.aspx
http://www.gallup.com/poll/202742/obama-averages-job-approval-president.aspx
DD#23
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its an interesting one, if you had have asked me at the start of last year if Trump could be president I would have said no way in hell, BUT... when all the Brexit stuff was brewing I was at least 60% confident that that was going to go through. The plucky Brits giving the big F U to the bureaucrats felt oh so likely.
awful stories came out of the place afterwards though, its one thing to have a concern over the number of migrant workers being accepted into the country, its an entirely different thing altogether to tell people on the bus that they're scum and should * off back to Poland.
in my opinion that result was a great enabler for Trump, it mobilised the cause. Took him from a ridiculous joke candidate to a this might actually happen. Still surprised they could get the polls so wrong though.
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