Take Rupert and Sol, please…

There are, as Americans sometimes remember to remind themselves, two Americas. There is rich America and there is poor America; America of the have-so-much, and America of the have-nots.
There is bold, noisy America that insists on ever reducing the size of government; and there is timid America that seeks a way to provide health insurance for its 50 million citizens who have none. Evading the eclipse of empire

The rest of the article was a plodding review of Cullen Murphy’s new book The New Rome? Cheerleaders for that bold, noisy America include the likes of former Australian, Rupert Murdoch. Don’t thank us, you are welcome to him.

But I warned before, when Rupert started playing footsies with Hillary, the man is shameless in the pursuit of building and defending his media empire. Loyalty is a simply thing to Murdoch and doesn’t reach beyond his business.

If the New York post has now come out in favour of Obama you can take that as a hint that Rupert can see who the next likely POTUS will be, and does not want to be left in the cold. If Obama fairs well in the Super Choose Day battles Rupert will become his new best friend.

Oh, we share so much, America and Australia, and some I wish we didn’t. But another of those have-so-much Americans has been doing battle with governments here for the past few years as CEO of the once government owned telco, Telstra.

Sol Trujillo is a feisty character, former head of US West Inc, based in Denver and confidant of Bush and advisor to McCain. Between taking pot shots at the Aussie government Sol is busy shoring up the Hispanic vote for the Republicans.

Trujillo's importance to McCain has become clear after the Hispanic vote proved pivotal in him winning the Florida primary despite failing to attract traditional Republican voters.

Sol is finding Kevin Rudd a much more difficult opponent than John Howard was. Telstra, through an unpopular sell-off of public assets control much of the landline infrastructure in Australia. It’s aging, but the giant telco refuses to upgrade unless government gives them an open cheque on what they can do and what they can charge.

Howard knew that would be political suicide, but simply stalled, ducked and weaved as the country fell further behind in the technology race. Our broadband is appalling, by any standards and narrowband totally unacceptable. But Sol doesn’t negotiate; Sol slaps the terms down and demands.

Rudd is less a politician than a super bureaucrat, he doesn’t grandstand or bluster and he doesn’t fold easily to demands. He wants broadband available across this sparse country and I can almost guarantee that he will get it, at a favourable consumer rate.

So there you go, Sol isn’t long for this country and the market is far too small for more than passing interest by Rupert. I wager Sol will be back in the US, full time, shortly concentrating on his back room intriguing. You never know, he might even be engaged to rebuild a shattered Republican party.