Paul Jensen, president of the North American corporate practice for Weber Shandwick, told PR Daily publisher Mark Ragan that the firm's research shows 70 percent of consumers will stop buying a company’s product if the brand doesn’t behave the way they expect them. He also warned that a "companies' reputation can be ruined in two hours."

Watch the interview:

Think about the consequences for politics, noting all the usual caveats that political and consumer brands are different.

The 'media storm' is increasingly one in the social media sphere, and Tweeting politicians have never been so directly in touch with their constituents before. That all sounds good in theory – at last the pollies are listening! But in practice, at the most macro level, politicians are becoming terrified to act on principle – it's as if each of them has a focus group following them around parliament house, sniping at their every policy suggestion.

Could this be a reason, therefore, for the rising levels of incivility and pure bile flying back and forth in parliament? The carbon tax is the exemplar of a tough policy decision that needs to be made, but on which it is easier than ever before to whip up irrational public opprobrium. In the days of 'old media' that was much harder to do.

Something tells me that although Rob Burgess flitters through Parliament fairly often, he is still a bit fuzzy on how policy is made and politics conducted. The idea that a "backlash" or outcry on Twitter or Facebook would cause any government (state or federal) to change their policy is fairly far fetched.

I'd be interested if there is any evidence or examples of politicians in decision-making roles regularly looking at social media as a "focus group" or reacting to social media criticism. While there are MPs like Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke who are very active on Twitter, I would find it highly unlikely that their Twitter feeds would be considered in Cabinet.

But I could be convinced otherwise.

Paul's campaign chairman Jesse Benton insists that it does not mean he is dropping out of the race. 

"No, not at all," campaign manager Jesse Benton said, when we asked if today's news meant the race was over. "We will focus all of our resources on winning delegates and party leadership positions."

Ron Paul is in this for the long-game... driving the GOP towards a more extremist libertarian/conservative bent. And his tactics are probably sound.

The World Bank tells us "large-scale, illegal logging operations are carried out by sophisticated criminal networks".

The World Bank also estimated the cost of illegal logging to global timber markets to be in the vicinity of $10 billion per annum and losses in Government revenues in timber producing countries to be around $5 billion per annum (2006).

Illegal logging is big business.

Julie Bishop recently changed the Liberal Party policy on illegal wood products being imported into Australia from one of "making it an offence" (the current Labor policy) to a mealy-mouthed "in principle" prohibition of trade in illegally logged timber.

In Victoria, where the Liberal/National Party has openly declared their hatred of our old-growth forests, Liberal MP for Wannon, Dan Tehan, defended and tried to justify the criminal logging of forests in developing countries, and its importation to Australia.

Mitt Romney Is Using One Word To Describe Barack Obama Over And Over Again

Think about how Abbott is trying to label Gillard and Labor -- repetition, simplicity, repetition, and repetition. Like he's working from a song-sheet. A Republican song-sheet.

The Federal Treasurer will unveil his Budget tonight and announce that the Government aims to achieve a small surplus in 2012-13. He will claim an “economic imperative” for this strategy and provide optimistic forecasts for economic growth and unemployment. He will reinforce earlier claims that “you can’t be a Keynesian on the way down, but not on the way back up” and will say that the economy is close to full employment with a huge “investment pipeline” that poses an inflation risk.

The problem is that the Government’s surplus obsession is anti-Keynesian and the Australian economy is slowing and unemployment is rising. The Budget will constitute in the words of Fairfax journalist Tim Colebatch a 5000-word suicide note. The Government risks driving the economy into recession and forcing thousands more into unemployment. It will also lose office in the process.

There is no economic imperative to pursue a surplus. The Government has an inferiority complex when it comes to fiscal matters and wrongly thinks that surpluses constitute the hallmark of responsible fiscal management. They should never have made the promise in the first place. But now, in the light of a slowing economy, it would be reckless to undermine spending further.

The Government withdrew the fiscal stimulus too early which stifled the promising recovery. In turn, the slowing economy is undermining its tax revenue. Instead of acknowledging that as a sign that stimulus is required, the Government’s inane response is that they will cut harder. Further austerity will make matters worse and further reduce tax revenue. The Government will most likely fail to achieve a surplus but will damage our prosperity in the pursuit.

Economics professor Bill Mitchell takes a preemptive look at the budget. It's worth reading if you're a progressive who wants to be informed about Keynsian economics and a Keynsian perspective on budget surpluses.

It's worth noting that Mitchell saves his most savage criticism for the Liberal Party, whose blind crisis pragmatism means that they are not only economically illiterate, but dangerously so.

when I was NSW political correspondent for the Australian, I interviewed Carr on the tenth anniversary of his becoming premier. I asked him what he believed in; what ideals guided his government; what was the nature of the Carr project. After thirty years of fidelity to social democracy, Carr said, “I accept that I could no longer be described as a social democrat.” He had abandoned the creed that enticed him into politics and motivated his quest for power. He called himself a “restless reformer who place[d] the highest priority on saving the natural world, so much under threat, and driving kids from disadvantaged backgrounds through an education system that [was] academically and vocationally challenging and rigorous.”

Noble intentions, to be sure, but they essentially made Carr a preservationist who liked reading difficult books. It was hardly an agenda for enduring Labor reform. If, like Carr, Labor leaders say that governing is no longer about social democratic philosophy but merely the efficient delivery of services, where does that leave them when those services fail, as they did so spectacularly in New South Wales?

Great question from Andrew West. My answer: no, simple effective delivery of services is not enough for Labor.

One commentator (paywalled), deprived of any genuine activity observed, in his mind concluded:

The Labor leadership is now an empty shell. Gillard has lost public support and internal party support, and her agreement with Peter Slipper and Craig Thomson in the Parliament faces months of uncertainty as the federal police investigate allegations of Cabcharge fraud against the Speaker.

Despite the leadership vacuum, no challenges are planned, nor are challengers prepared to come forward.

Which is to say 'nothing is happening but look at all the activity!', a situation which far from being an impediment to the filling of newspaper columns is beginning to look like an ideal growth medium.

What we, the people apparently served by all of this, ought to ask is how long we want the processes of government to be obscured by all this smoke.

Your editorial (Politics of envy threatens our economy and ethos, 2 May) claims that “Research by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling has shown that all income levels prospered in the Howard years and that under the Rudd-Gillard governments the gap between rich and poor has widened.”  This is close to the exact opposite of the facts.

As one of the comments notes, we're talking about The Australian here, whose editors have long since stopped worrying about things like "facts".