Making budget cuts (US Style).

One item in the White House's proposed budget for fiscal year 2012 will halve funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Its allocation will be reduced from just over $5 billion to $2.5 billion.
Roughly 8.3 million people used the program last year. Its target population is the elderly and the disabled. It is estimated that the reduction would amount to 3.1 million households going without assistance on heating and cooling costs.

Overall the Obama budget produces    $25 billion savings  over 10 years.

The cost of extending the Bush tax cuts
for those earning over $250, 000                     is $700 billion over 10 years

The projected cumulated shortfall
in the Obama budget                               is $7,200 billion over the next 10 years

Aftermath

When the tumult and the shouting dies, will the Egyptian people find their promised land? 
The demonstrations in Egypt this week brought back memories of the fall of the Berlin wall.  But Egypt faces enormous challenges to meet the aspirations of its people, especially its youth and its middle class.  Theirs will be a more difficult transition than that of Germany in 1989.
Compared with the problems of Pakistan, however, Egypt  seems more likely to come through its demonstration of people power to a better future.  Recent demonstrations in Pakistan have not been built on a strong middle-class base, do not propose a worthwhile future for the young and have ambivalent support from the army.  More often than not demonstrators have supported jihadist causes.
The aftermath of the Egyptian uprising may be uncertain, but it has dealt a death blow to the old entrenched regime, which is very likely to impact on the Arab Muslim world in general.   Unfortunately, however, it is not likely to provide a model for a better future for Pakistan.

The trees looked just like matchsticks

More disaster --- a category 5 cyclone struck the coast of north Queensland this week.  With extensive preparation,  effective emergency management and a degree of good luck the consequences were less disastrous than might have been expected.  Nevertheless there has been immense damage to infrastructure and agriculture and many people lost homes and possessions from the terrifying winds that stripped all the foliage from all the trees leaving them standing like matchsticks among the desolation and ruin.
There has been much media cover of the destruction and of the emergency responses.  There has been little consideration of the causes of these repeated exceptional natural disasters.  Ross Garnaut is reported in a recent article as saying that climate change is happening more quickly than he suggested in his first report, while Clive Hamilton goes so far as to say Queensland is being sacrificed to Australia’s and the world’s unwillingness to take global warming seriously.

Quip of the month

Adversity is the first path to truth

(Byron)

Music is a place

A highlight for me of our recent Museum of Old and Modern Art festival (Mona-Foma) was an interview with Philip Glass, accompanied by a recital from talented Hobart group 22SQ of Glass's brilliant Concerto for Saxophone Quartet.  After a dazzling performance the group received an enthusiastic ovation from the audience and praise from Glass, who then sat down with Mona-Foma curator Brian Ritchie to talk about saxophones, India and the way Glass's music had developed.   It was an interesting and engaging conversation, during which Glass revealed that he  had always wanted to know where music came from.  Eventually he realised he was asking the wrong question.  

Music, he said, is a place.

This event was held in the beautiful Bahai Centre in Hobart, a work of art in itself and well worth a visit.  The soprano, Joan Edwards, also performed there during the festival.  She sang two song cycles composed by Andrew Ford, the last one with a string quartet.  She sang beautifully and the blending of voice and instruments was particularly appealing.
 

Afterwards

Now that the Queensland floods have receded from an area as large as France and Germany combined (and Brisbane has begun to send around 200,000 tonnes of resulting rubbish to landfill) water has since covered 25 % of Victoria and will soon reach South Australia.  Only the tail end of the rain reached Tasmania, but even so it was enough to cause considerable damage to northern roads and farms.  Following the long dry these floods have been calamitous personally and nationally.

Yet another cause for reflection on the management of our land of drought and flooding rains this coming Australia Day.

Deluged

I was in Brisbane around Christmas visiting family.  It is hard to reconcile my memories of the Brisbane CBD and its marvellous cultural precinct with the today's tv images of a vast surging expanse of water covering a ghost city.  There have been truly shocking images of the inland tsunami that hit Toowoomba and extremely poignant stories from some of the survivors from the 12,000 houses that were inundated, the 15,000 that were partially inundated and the 5,000 businesses that were affected in Brisbane alone. There have also been impressive performances from the local, state and federal authorities, as well as outstanding volunteer and community involvement.  It's hard to avoid comparison with the Hurricane Katrina disaster.  At least this catastrophe hasn't been made worse by negligent authorities.  It will still be a long, hard year for Queensland, though.