We all know that the Coalition’s dire predictions about the
introduction of the carbon tax proved false – Whyalla was not wiped off
the map and lamb roasts did not cost $100.
We now know that Greg Hunt was wrong in saying that the carbon tax
would do nothing to reduce emissions. Carbon emissions declined across
Australia by 1.4 per cent in the second year, compared with a decline of 0.8 per cent in the first year.
Matthias Cormann jumped to attribute the drop in emissions to lower growth.
“Over the past two years the economy has grown below trend, and below
trend growth means that emissions will be lower than they otherwise
would have been.”
There may be some truth in that but I thought getting rid of the
carbon tax was supposed to “help small business and restore confidence
to the economy.”
And the Coalition has been governing for 75% of those last two years.
In December, the NAB changed its forecast after much weaker than expected gross domestic product
figures for the September quarter and a larger than anticipated slump
in Australia’s terms of trade, which compares the prices received for
exports with those paid for imports.
I thought removing the carbon tax was supposed to make our exports more competitive and hence improve our terms of trade.
The Liberal Party website made a number of claims and promises regarding the repeal of the carbon tax. My comments are in italics.
“The carbon tax has meant:
a $9 billion a year new tax;
Paid by polluters into the common wealth
a 10 per cent hike in electricity bills in the first year alone;
Over the past five years the average Australian household’s electricity bill has risen by 70 per cent.
a 9 per cent per cent hike in gas bills in the first year alone;
Average households in most major cities can expect gas bills to soar by hundreds of dollars a year as prices surge amid an emerging export industry
higher marginal tax rates for low and middle income earners.
And an increase in the tax free threshold from $6000 to $18,200
making them much better off and relieving many low income earners from
having to fill in a tax return
If Labor is re-elected, Australians will still be
paying more – a total of over $3,000 for the average family over the six
years to mid‑2020, on top of $545 this year.
As we were moving to a floating price this purposely ignores up-to-date information on EU carbon prices.
The Coalition will not let the carbon tax destroy
Australian industry and Australian jobs. The carbon tax is an act of
economic self-harm that unnecessarily adds to the cost of living.
NAB has slashed its growth forecast for the current financial
year from 2.9 to 2.5 per cent, and also trimmed its 2015-16 forecast to 3
per cent.
It is also expecting a higher peak in unemployment at 6.75 per
cent, which would be a considerable rise from the current rate of 6.2
per cent.
NAB’s November Monthly Business Survey showed that confidence
slipped from +5 to +1, while conditions dropped from a very high +13 to
+5, giving up most of a steep rise in October.
Measures of trading, profitability, employment and stocks also went backwards, while forward orders and exports remained steady.
Business confidence declined as well, and is now at its lowest level since the pre-election jump in mid-2013.
Mining has the lowest trend confidence (-12) by a significant margin.
The Coalition will keep the current income tax
thresholds and the current pension and benefit fortnightly rates while
scrapping the carbon tax.
This means that Australian workers, families and
pensioners will keep the tax cuts and fortnightly pension and benefit
increases provided in Labor’s carbon tax package, but without the carbon
tax.
As a result these tax cuts and fortnightly benefit
increases will become genuine cost of living relief, worth around $4
billion a year, rather than partial compensation for Labor’s damaging
carbon tax hit.
No change to pensions?
But under Kevin Rudd’s minor tweaking, the carbon tax
will still be a $58 billion tax through to 2020 instead of a $64
billion tax.
Lost revenue
Electricity is not a luxury – it is an essential part
of daily life. If the Rudd-Gillard Government was even half sincere
about taking the pressure off electricity, gas and other utility prices
it would start by scrapping its carbon tax.
Or we could scrap the GST on this essential item?
They included the ubiquitous table telling us how we would be better off when the carbon tax was removed.
Impact on families: More than $3,000 better off
The federal government delivered its May budget fully aware its
spending cuts would hit poorer households much harder than wealthier
ones
The Treasury analysis of the budget reveals the spending cuts cost an average of $842 a year for lower income households, while the average high income family lost just $71. Middle income families were down $477.
This does not include the abandoning of the superannuation guarantee increase or possible GP co-payments.
Electricity prices: 10 per cent lower
The effect on prices has varied from state to state. In
Queensland, electricity bills for typical customers supplied under most
tariffs will still increase even though the carbon tax has been removed.
Gas prices: 9 per cent lower
In Melbourne, where 90 per cent of homes use gas for all their
cooking, hot water and heating, an average bill could rise be as much as
$435 a year. High gas users in Sydney will face an increase of about
$225, while high users in Adelaide will pay an extra $200 a year.
Cost to make an Australian-made car: Up to $400 cheaper
Except we no longer have Australian made cars
Impact on aluminium production: 61 per cent higher
In February, Alcoa announced that it was closing its Point Henry aluminium smelter and two rolling mills, costing a total of 980 jobs. The smelter will cut Alcoa’s aluminium output by 190,000 tonnes.
It follows the closure earlier of the Kurri Kurri smelter which was located in the Hunter valley, in NSW.
Impact on coal production: 17 per cent higher
Coal prices declined steadily in the first months of 2014 in
response to a combination of in-creased supply and lower import demand
from China.
Australian Mining estimates that more than 2500 jobs in the coal sector were cut as mining companies either downsized their operations or shut them down completely.
Impact on steel and iron production: 21 per cent higher
In a consistent slide since December 4, 2013, the benchmark iron ore price has fallen 41 per cent to reach the point where several of Australia’s junior exporters are barely break-even propositions.
The recent corporate reporting season was littered with companies
that named weakness in the mining sector as a factor in their own
underperformance.
The trend went far beyond the traditional mining services crowd
and was seen in airlines, media publishers and even clothing
manufacturers who have noticed demand for their workwear products to be
lower than in the past.
Billions of taxpayer dollars spent on foreign carbon credits: No
Direct Action is so inefficient that if we used it to meet targets similar to the US, the cost would be $30 billion a year.
Australia’s carbon emissions: Down
NEM demand for electricity stopped falling; total demand in both
July and August 2014 was higher than in the corresponding months in
2013, the first time this has happened in two consecutive months since
2010. This was equivalent to an increase in emissions of 0.8 per cent.
Your cost of living: Lower
In the September quarter 2014,
the first quarter after the repeal of the carbon tax, the living costs
of pensioner and beneficiary households (PBLCI) rose 0.2%. Over the same
period, the living costs of self-funded retiree households rose 0.5%,
employee households rose 0.4%, other government transfer recipient
households rose 0.3% and age pensioner households rose 0.1%.
In October, the Climate Performance Leadership Index found that
companies that anticipate climate change risks outperform the market on
average by almost 10%
In November, 350 investors worth over US$24 trillion signed the 2014
Global Investor Statement on Climate Change. Over 73 countries and
1,000 businesses also spoke out in support of a price on carbon.
Hundreds of world’s major companies & investment firms have agreed
that a charge for GHG damage to the environment is necessary
Singapore Exchange is now mandating all listed companies to publish sustainability reports.
Finally, on the local good news front, Tasmanian salmon producer
Tassal achieved a world first with WWF sustainability certification in
November. And Westpac was rated the highest ranked bank globally on the
Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the Most Sustainable Corporation in
the World. Westpac also increased the proportion of women in leadership
roles to 44%
A number of people commented on yesterday’s This is How Tony Got Elected
expressing the idea that the pictures were from a satiric site “Why I’m
Voting Liberal” and that I’d mistaken a satiric post for real actual
Liberal voters.
Now I am aware that people have sometimes taken made-up quotes from
my writing as genuine, even when they’ve clearly been satiric. Even when
I’ve used clearly fictional names and characters like “Hoe Jockey”,
“Tiny Habit”, “Arnie (I’m not sexist) Corperson”, “The Speaker: Dolores
Umbridge” or “Christopher Pyne”. Even when their behaviour has been so
outrageous, so unbelievable that surely, surely nobody could confuse
them with the actual Liberal Party. (Although there have been a
couple of times that the Libs have adopted my satire as their actual
policy a few days later – makes me wonder whether all those jobs Abbott
created for monitoring social media are actually just searching for new
policy ideas.)
Anyway, I always try to be careful not confuse what Liberals are
actually doing and saying with attempts to make them look ridiculous
through exaggeration. Admittedly, Abbott, Brandis, Pyne and others make
this an almost impossible task sometimes. But, in this case, the photos
weren’t taken from the site that wasn’t serious. I went back and
checked the site’s description. It asked for people under 30 to post
reasons that they were voting Liberal. I copied its description to show
to someone who assured me that the site wasn’t serious:
“Under 30?
Voting Liberal on September 7th?
Tell the country why!
We’re young people who care about our future and opportunities. We
care about the economy. We care about what jobs there will be for us in
the future. We care about good, sustainable and forward-thinking
government. We want real change.
I’m Voting Liberal is a campaign for young Australians.
Get involved! Get together with your friends and send photos to: imvotingliberal@gmail.com or message them to this page.”
And I found the other site – the satiric one. Yes, it is hard to tell
what’s satire and what’s not these days. I mean, how do you
caricature Andrew Bolt or Alan Jones? And yes, if that description
hadn’t been written before the election, one might easily think that it,
too, was purely a send-up of the Liberal’s Real Solutions document.
So yesterday I added the following P.S. to the article.
P.S. Just to clear up some confustion, this is a genuine site and not the parody site. Check out its description here.
Update at 8pm.. The site seems to have disappeared in the last couple of hours and that link no longer works.
If you’ve just clicked on the link. Yep, that’s right. It no longer exists.
Given that there seems to have been no updates to the pictures since
the election, it does seem a strange coincidence that the day “This Is
How Tony Got Elected” appears that within a few hours, the site
disappears, leaving no evidence that these people once cared about
“good, sustainable and forward-thinking government”.
Well, this is hardly shades of 1984. I mean, I don’t even know that
there was a direct connection to the Liberal Party it may have just been
created by a group of concerned young citizens determined to create a
stronger economy led by someone who wears speedos and can do a pull-up.
Whatever, it’s gone, and if that’s because of what I wrote yesterday then I’ll need to be careful what I write in future.
I mean, imagine if I wrote about Tony Abbott, and he was gone the next day.
The Abbott government says they are all about jobs and growth, but for who?
In 2012, unions were outraged by a decision to allow Gina Rinehart to
import more than 1,700 foreign workers on 457 visas for her latest
project in Western Australia.
Paul Howes said “This is a big win for Gina Rinehart, it’s a big win
for Clive Palmer, it’s a big win for Twiggy Forrest and it’s a massive
kick in the guts, a massive kick in the guts to those 130,000 workers in
the manufacturing industry who have lost their jobs since 2008.”
A number of companies in construction, mining and IT hired many more
foreign workers than they had applied for. The straw that broke the
camel’s back was one company allegedly bringing in 800 workers under the
457 visa in an 18 month period when they were only granted approval for
100 visas over three years.
In 2013, the Labor government tightened the regulations to prevent
employers from hiring more workers then they originally advertised to
the market.
Tony Abbott’s government have made adjustments to the 457 Visa
regulation, allowing employers to again hire an unlimited amount of
foreign workers with a temporary working visa.
In April this year, the Federal Government was asked to investigate claims that 457 work visas are being abused at Gina Rinehart’s $10 billion Roy Hill iron ore project in the Pilbara.
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union said there were
up to 200 Korean white collar 457 visa workers employed by contractor
Samsung C&T on the project doing low-level clerical work for Roy
Hill’s main construction contractor.
“The allegation is that they’ve been brought in to do certain types
of work and then they are being allocated other types of work in breach
of their visa conditions.”
Aside from being asked to do work outside their visa conditions, the
CFMEU alleged many of the staff were working more than 84 hours a week
and being paid as little as $16 an hour.
In March, Gina Rinehart’s mining group, Hancock Prospecting signed
off on a $US7.2 billion debt package for her highly anticipated Roy Hill
iron ore project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
In return for the US government loan, Hancock Prospecting will
purchase American mining and rail equipment from Caterpillar, General
Electric and Atlas Copco. The Export-Import Bank says their involvement
will “support” 3400 US jobs
Since we own the resources, and we have to give approval to any
mining venture, why do we not make it a condition of approval that you
must use Australian equipment, Australian steel, and Australian workers?
Threats that projects will not go ahead under these circumstances
indicate they were not profitable in the first place and, if we are
importing equipment and the profit is all going offshore and the
employment to lowly paid foreigners, then all we are left with is the
environmental damage, railways linking mines to ports paid for with our
royalties, and the demise of manufacturing and tourism.
Under the new Free Trade Agreement, Chinese companies will be able to
bring skilled workers to Australia to plug labour shortages on big
infrastructure projects.
The deal says Chinese-owned companies will be able to ”negotiate
similarly to Australian business, increased labour flexibilities for
specific projects”.
The arrangements will apply to projects valued above $150 million
under the deal negotiated between the two countries. Projects will
involve the employment of foreign workers on 457 work visas.
ACTU president Ged Kearney said the effect on Australian jobs would
be “disastrous” if the agreement allowed “Chinese contractors on
Australian projects to nominate Chinese workers for visas without having
to advertise for jobs locally”.
Maritime Union of Australia Western Australian branch secretary
Christy Cain hit out at the visa concession and described the measure as
“an absolute disgrace”.
“These (mineral) resources are ours and those of the Australians
paying taxes for all their lives that are now seeing workshops closing
and car manufacturing dying,” Mr Cain said.
According to a report by the Australian Farm Institute, the value of
Australian agricultural exports to China grew by an average 12 per cent a
year in the 14 years to 2012. Not bad, except that Chinese imports of
agricultural products increased by an annual 16 per cent during the same
period. In terms of share of the Chinese market, that means Australia fell from 11 per cent to 6 per cent.
The AFI report says that Australia’s share of US agricultural imports
has fallen since the FTA between the two countries came into force in
2005, despite reductions in tariffs. The two countries that achieved the
fastest growth in agricultural exports to China over the 14 years to
2012 were the US and Brazil and neither has a free trade agreement with
China.
Two Chinese investment groups have established a $3 billion fund to
invest in Australian agriculture, as Australia edges closer to securing a
free trade deal with China.
The fund, known as the Beijing Australia Agricultural Resource
Cooperative Development Fund, is a joint partnership between
state-owned Beijing Agricultural Investment Fund and the Shenzen-based
Yuhu group.
John Lee, a China expert at Sydney University, points out that
Chinese policy is to be a net exporter of meat products, rice and wheat
by 2025.
That explains why the FTA with Australia contains no concessions for
rice and wheat and perhaps also why there is an important, though
largely overlooked, qualification to the reduction in tariffs on beef
imports. As our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade puts it, “China
has retained the right to apply a discretionary safeguard on beef … if
imports exceed a set annual ‘safeguard’ trigger volume.”
The safeguard trigger starts at 170,000 tonnes a year, which is only
10 per cent above Australian exports of 153,000 tonnes of beef to China
last year, although there is a so far unspecified provision for the
trigger to grow. For exports above this level, the tariff will be
reapplied. The department adds, not so reassuringly, that there is a
process to “consider” removal of the safeguard.
So it appears the FTA with China has resulted in Chinese investors
buying our mines and farms, employing Chinese workers, and then sending
the produce back to China at reduced rates. This produce could well
fill the 10% trigger for beef leaving Australian farmers’ produce still
attracting tariffs.
And when it comes to our huge spending on defence materiel it’s a similar story.
DMO spends up to $10 billion-a-year of taxpayer funds managing more
than 200 defence projects ranging from warships to bullets. About 40
per cent of the outlays are absorbed by administration costs.
Australia is considering buying 10 state-of-the-art Soryu class
submarines from Japan, at a reported price of more than $20 billion.
Former senior Japanese military personnel, Mr Yamauchi and Mr Ogawa,
both told the ABC that an Australian budget of $20 billion would mean
that all the construction would have to happen in Japan.
And they said any attempts to do any of the work in Adelaide would double the price.
“If the issue of military secrets can be resolved then Japanese business will be happy it will bring jobs and growth,” he said.
And then there is the $24 billion that Australia had allocated to buy and deploy a fleet of 72 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets.
Critics, including Federal Liberal MP and former analyst with the
Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Dr Dennis Jenson, claim
that politicians have been manipulated by an elaborate and at times
misleading sales pitch by the world’s largest military corporation,
Lockheed Martin.
In April Tony Abbott said “Australian business has already won some
$1.5 billion worth of work associated with this aircraft. Up to $7.5
billion worth of additional work is there potentially.”
The reality is Australian industries are only contracted for around
$370 million work, with Lockheed Martin assurances but no guarantees of
more to come. Current contracts are only for 12 months.
Dr Jenson said “The warning I’d give is: don’t bank on the work that
you’re being told you’re going to get. You will get it while Lockheed
Martin is still pushing very hard for signatures on the dotted line, but
once all those signatures are there, don’t bet on winning any future contracts.”
Dr Jenson raised questions about problems posed by the F-35’s heavy
weight and the threat that it will be no match for possible adversaries
with a high-ranking Lockheed Martin delegation before a joint
parliamentary inquiry in Canberra. Lockheed Martin’s response: “We
cannot answer that question, just as we cannot answer the threat
question, because we get into classified areas very, very quickly.”
RAAF head flight test engineer, Peter Goon, warned “The aircraft is
not coming within a bull’s roar of its – some of its operational
specifications. The designs are riddled with single points of failure.
And many of the critical elements of design have been painted into what
we engineers call “coffin corner”.”
“Coffin corner” is the concern that the F-35 couldn’t compete against
these cheaper, lighter and more agile Russian and Chinese stealth
fighter jets, which are expected to be sold widely around the world.
The US Air Force Combat Command, meantime, has expressed its own
reservations. It has warned the US must continue to maintain its older,
more agile and far more effective fleet of F-22 jet fighters to back up
the F-35s or they’ll be rendered irrelevant. So should Australia instead
try to buy the proven F-22? Well, according to the Defence Minister,
Australia did ask, but the Americans insisted there was no choice, but
to take the troubled F-35 or nothing.
DAVID JOHNSTON: “They’ve said, “No, you can’t have the F-22; that is
for the United States Air Force. But you can certainly participate in
our program with the Joint Strike Fighter.” We do not have anywhere else
to go.”
Commissioner Dyson Heydon (Image via @BenSchneiders) Trade Union Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon has given several people an early Christmas present with his Interim Report, writes Peter Wicks from Wixxyleaks.
Last Friday there must have been a lot of thankful people dishing out a lot of thank you messages.
The report was originally due later in January, but was released
earlier for reasons that may only be speculated upon. But it is fair to
say it was released on a day that shows that the government thought this
Royal Commission had been a failed exercise, why else dump it out there without the prime minister on the Friday before Christmas?
The most thankful of all would be Kathy Jackson, whose appearance and
testimony at the Royal Commission caused more headlines and front page
news stories than any other witness, what with charity shags and claims of ambush. In fact, the only witness that received more attention on the day they appeared was former Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the day she was shown at long last to be completely clean, even in the eyes of a right-wing witch hunt like this Commission.
Jackson would be thankful she has been completely ignored by the Commissioner's report. Not even the $250K she took from cancer workers and
threw in a personal bank account to go on a wild spending spree. The
account that was disguised to look legitimate in the HSU books and then,
when discovered, an attempt was made for it to be passed off as a slush
fund.
Not only did Jackson go on a wild spending spree, but she shared the
love and the loot around with accomplices, giving huge sums of money to
her ex-husband Jeff, as well as a big chunk in an envelope to her factional ally and standover man Marco Bolano — apparently so Marco could use the money to illegally fund his own union election campaign.
Still, Commissioner Heydon must have been asleep at the wheel on
those days, as it didn’t rate a mention, apart from one passing
reference.
Also thankful would be Attorney General George Brandis and Senator
Eric Abetz, for saving them the embarrassment of their Royal Commission
pointing out their star witness as the most corrupt person appearing
before the Commission if the allegations are proven true. Even based on
those allegations she has admitted to under oath during the parts the
Commissioner seems to have slept through, there has been no other
witness appear that has personally acquired such vast sums of money from
their union without the members knowledge, let alone blessing.
In fact, there must be a truckload of Coalition MP’s, including
Abbott himself, going “phew” and silently giving thanks that
Commissioner Heydon was happy to put his own reputation at risk to save
them the embarrassment of pointing out their unwavering support of an
alleged criminal.
However it is the union movement that should be thankful,
particularly the CFMEU who seem to have been the most targeted in this
whole taxpayer-funded charade.
The union movement should be overjoyed that this report cannot be
taken in any way seriously, if its 1,817 pages have blatantly missed
possibly the most corrupt official to have appeared before the
Commission. This highlights the fact the whole commission has been
nothing but a very expensive witch hunt done for political purposes.
But perhaps the most thankful of all should be the public; after all,
as the legal fraternity involved rack up hundreds of thousands of
billable hours, it is the public that are footing the bill.
You may think that’s nothing to be thankful for, but at least we now know exactly what it is we are paying for.
Any doubt that this Commission was actually about protecting member’s
interests rather than a witch hunt for political purposes has now been
shown as wishful thinking.
There is only one certainty in all of this and that is one of the
items on the Royal Commission's agenda was the protection of the
Coalition's golden girl Kathy Jackson.
Perhaps a hint for the media was the departure of the Royal
Commission’s media director Adrian Kerr immediately after the report was
released. This meant that after Commission dropped its bombshell, they
could not face media scrutiny about it.
Kerr had been visibly uncomfortable in his role on some of the
sitting days and was particularly touchy on matters involving the
Commissions integrity. In his email to the press regarding the release
of the Commissioners report, Kerr finished off by saying this
'This is my final day with the Commission. Thank you all for a
great professional year on the job. I’ll keep your contact details for
future reference.'
A strange way of announcing your departure to the country's media — or perhaps strange timing is better phrase.
A Royal Commission is considered the most powerful legal inquiry this
country has in its arsenal and is considered by many to be beyond
reproach.
An inquiry of this magnitude, set up to expose corruption in the
union movement so offenders can be criminally prosecuted, that is found
to have as part of its agenda the protection of possibly the most
corrupt union official this country has ever seen, is an inquiry that
is, in itself, corrupted to its core.
We should be thankful that, at long last, that the Royal Commission has shown its true colours.
A corruption inquiry that seeks to smear the union movement and
selectively ignores allegations of corruption on a grand scale? The only
thing that could be more corrupt than that is the Government that set
it up.
You can follow Peter Wicks on Twitter @madwixxy. Catch up on the full Jacksonville saga here.
Sydney bureau chief Ross Jones ponders Tony Abbott's new team and wonders: where is Mal Brough?
You put your right foot in You take your right foot out You put your right foot in And you shake it all about You do the hokey pokey And you turn yourself around That's what it's all about
Why a reshuffle and not just a plain, garden-variety shuffle is
anyone’s guess. The LNP has been in power just 15 months and the only
previous shuffle I can recall was a bit of tinkering at the edges to try
and fill the yawning intellectual gap left by Arthur Sinodinos
when he decided hiding was the better part of valour and stepped aside
as assistant treasurer. The gap, sadly, remains unfilled.
You will recall Arthur as the chap in the ICAC witness box
running his finger round the inside of his blue-tied collar when
pressed on his memory, or lack of it, of sending money to himself, from
AWH, of which he was a director, to the NSW Liberals, of which he was
treasurer.
Arthur’s career finished at that point. He didn’t resign though. He
kept the job title but just kind of hung around in the background,
mooching. That left the overworked Joe Hockey to carry the nation’s
financial burdens without an able assistant, and we all know how well
that’s worked out.
No one wanted to mention Arthur’s name, because the next name anyone thought of was Obeid and no one wanted that. Sleeping dogs.
But apparently, someone in the Liberal
Party finally decided enough was enough and that memories had dimmed
enough for Arthur to have one last moment in the sun. Reluctantly, and
with deep regret, Abbott, his strings being visibly jerked, announced
Arthur was to hop in his Jag and bugger off. Arthur had a little flurry
of press about pulling the pin then dropped off the radar
And that cleared the way for a shuffle and a jolly good bottom scouring.
I have only one question: where is Mal Brough when you need him?
And I know the answer — Coventry
Brough is an experienced Liberal minister. In 2001, he was made
Howard’s Mminister for employment services. In July 2004, he was made
assistant treasurer and minister for revenue. In January 2006, he was
made minister for families and community services and Indigenous affairs
(see Intervention).
Brough has been there and done that. He was Howard’s pet. Abbott is
on several records singing his praises and saying what a great
contribution he’d make to the Government. He is also brutally ambitious.
But no shuffle guernsey for Mal.
Someonehas serious doubts about Brough and wants his head kept below the parapets.
Believe it or not, aspects of the Ashby/Doane/Slipper matter are
still playing their way through the courts. Brough, despite his
disingenuous protestations, waded knee deep through this mire. Now, he’s
smiling tropical like a island with storm clouds hanging over its head.
